Cycle

POLICIES & PRINCIPLES

A quarter century ago the two nations most bitterly opposed to special foreign privileges in East Asia were the Chinese and the Soviet Russians. China's surging nationalists denounced the "unequal treaties" which had given 19 nations, including Denmark, extraterritoriality and other rights in China. Russia's new Workers' and Peasants' Government thundered:

"Every nation, small or great ... or incorporated against its will into the structure of another state, should be free in its inner life. . . . [We declare] annulled all the ... treaties by which the Tsar's Government together with its allies, through force and corruption, enslaved the peoples of the Orient, and especially the Chinese nation, in order to profit the Russian capitalists, the Russian landlords and the Russian generals."

Last week the only two nations carving out new foreign privileges in East Asia were the Soviet Russians and the Chinese. In Manchuria the Russians had taken back many of the Tsar's concessions--a naval base at Port Arthur, a free port at Dairen, a 30-year partnership in the main Manchurian railways. They were asking for more--reportedly for control of Manchurian heavy industry, long regarded as the key to China's future.

In Chungking the Chinese Government signed a new treaty with France. The weakened Fourth Republic gave up its old extraterritoriality rights in China. It also agreed to special privileges for China in French Indo-China--a free port at Haiphong and railway rights from the Indo-China coast to the South China hinterland.

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