Our Pacific
States Are Possessed Of Enormous Natural Resources; Their Manufactures
Have Quadrupled In Twenty Years, And Will, In The Course Of Time, Find A
Most Advantageous Market In The Far East.
When the Nicaragua Canal shall
have been dug, the Atlantic States will also be brought into close
connection with China and with the rest of Eastern Asia.
The volume of the
United States traffic with China already represented a considerable part
of the foreign trade of the empire in 1896. While the imports from China
received by the United States have increased but slowly, the exports from
the last-named country to the Middle Kingdom have increased 126 per cent
in ten years, and are more than fifty per cent greater than the exports of
Germany to the same market. The export of American cotton cloths to China
amounted to $7,485,000 in 1897, or nearly one-half the entire value of
cotton cloths sent abroad by the United States. The export of kerosene oil
from the States to China now ranks second in importance to that of cotton
goods, and is likely to increase at a rapid rate. The Chinese demand for
the illuminating fluid is quickly growing, and the delivery of it from the
United States to China has more than trebled in value during the past ten
years. That is to say, it has risen from $1,466,000 in 1888 to $4,498,000
in 1897. The Russian oil has hitherto been the only serious foreign
competitor of the American product, but the Langkat oil is coming to some
extent into use. The exports of American wheat flour to China reached a
value in 1897 of $3,390,000, and those of chemicals, dyes, etc.,
$1,000,000. At present, the export trade of the United States to China is
confined mainly to cottons and mineral oils; that is to say, it is largely
restricted to commodities which would be hard to sell in any Chinese port
where the conditions of equal trade did not prevail. It would probably
prove impossible to sell them in any Asiatic port controlled by Russia or
by France. It follows that, although England has most to lose by the
partition of China, even though she should receive a large share of
territory, the United States are also deeply interested in the question,
for their trade is already considerable, and is likely, under favorable
circumstances, to undergo great expansion.
Let us, finally, examine the Chinese question from a political point of
view. We concur with Mr. Colquhoun in believing that Englishmen are now at
the parting of the ways, and that their failure to take the right course
in the Far East will mean the loss of England's commercial supremacy, and,
eventually, the disintegration of the British Empire. He maintains that,
since November 16, 1896, when the German government was compelled by
Bismarck's revelations to disclose the drift of its future policy, it has
been apparent that there is an increasing tendency toward cooperation in
the Near East and the Par East between Germany and Russia, and therefore,
also, between those powers and France, which is Russia's ally.
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