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Show FRENCH LOAN Chiang Kai-shek said last May that, •frvrpi.c.n r^r>ita| w n ild ha WPI. come for this industrialization of China. A French loan has already been given for the Chungking- Chengtu Railway, now under construction. British ' capital is being sought for developments towards Burma. There is plenty of opportunity for America to supply rails, engines, equipment for mines, steel mills and road building equipment, tractors for reclaiming new lands; in short, all that is needed to develop a pioneer country. Is it safe? As safe as anything in our unsafe world. Financially, the Chinese are known as the world's most honest debtors. Whole families bankrupt themselves for generations to pay the debts of a dead grand-lather. China even made payments this past year on foreign debts secured by the Chinese customs- though the Japanese were collecting the customs revenues. Besides, the projects need not be loans to the Chinese Government; they may be secured by mines, railways and industries. Is it safe against war? Japan might protest against even peaceful aid to China, but short of declaring war on France and Great Britain she could not stop shipments to French Indo- China and British Burma, neighbors of this inland empire. Nor would she dare to declare war on America. China, alone, with steel mills and modern industry in her back country, would be more than a match for Japan. What are the channels for doing this? They are many. First, American relief funds now used to feed Chinese in the occupied areas, thus subsidizing cheap, labor for Japan, should be employed to set up mobile industrial cooperatives in inland villages and to givev work relief to refugees in the back country, building permanent support for homeless millions, EXTENSIVE PROJECTS Next there is the Export-Import Bank. Before the war it had worked out extensive projects for Chinese development by self-retiring long term loans. Since the war, however, the State Department has clamped down "for political reasons." Thirdly, there is the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which was approached recently by a large Detroit firm to assist in financing tens of millions of dollars' worth of motor cars, steel rails and similar commodities, ordered by the Chinese Government. The R. F. C. refused, tentatively, until "our. attitude in this Weft" should be clarified. Wherefore this watchful waiting? Is it to placate Japan while she builds up a base -for future attack against us? Or to please Britain by letting her take all the profits of a slower development in China? Or is it just the cautious policy characteristic of the permanent staff of our 'State Department? A creative approach to this problem would develop large scale ways of action, through the above or , other channels. Has America the j brains to find her way into interior j China, a China friendly to us and approached through friendly lands? (Copyright, 1938, for The Tribune) |