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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 5, June 8th, 1949.
[Introduction]
Interview granted to Salient's Paris correspondent by Dr. J. G. Endicott, leader of the Canadian Delegation to the World Peace Congress held in Paris, April 20th—25th.
Dr. Endicott was born in China and passed 22 years there as a missionary of the United Church of Canada. For two years (39-40) he was not only advisor to Madame Chiang and the Generalissimo, but was on intimate personal terms with them and the members of the Nationalist government; a government (which was not elected) but seized power by an army and promises, naturally unfulfilled.
The revolution which is now taking place in China has been going on for 100 years. It began with the Taiping Rebellion in 1850. There were outbursts in 1900, 1911 and 1927.
The long range view of history will show that this movement marks the break-up of feudalism and it can therefore be regarded as the Chinese equivalent of the English revolution of Cromwell's time or the French Revolution of 1789.
The changes in China did not come about by the natural, internal, industrial development of the economy. They were forced on the country by the impact of the Industrial Revolution from the West. The old feudal economy of China did not enable the tenent farmer and the landless peasant to make a living by farming. Each had to supplement it by home industries. These home industries are being destroyed by the advent of cheap machine-made goods.
| (a) | a land reform which will relieve the starving peasant of high crop rent, high interest, oppressive taxation and the continuous conscription of his labour by both the government and the landlord. |
| (b) | a programme of industrialisation which will take care of the surplus population and at the same time guarantee a free and independent China. |
The Chinese reformers of today are afraid that China may become an agricultural and raw material colony of the industrial West and that it may be forced into the old position of being a market of "400,000,000 customers."
In the past, each attempt of the Chinese people to bring about these reforms was stopped or set back by western armed intervention. When it was not direct armed intervention, it consisted of arming and financing a small reactionary group which would stop the reforms and give the West the economic advantages it demanded.
From 1911 onwards imperialist Japan was particularly successful at this sort of intervention. Modern American policy is no different and accounts for the Anti-American feeling in China which is not the work of agitators but represents a deep fear on the part of the great majority of the Chinese people that the "Twenty-one demands" of Japan and the "Co-prosperity Sphere" may come out in a revised and condensed U.S. edition.