Solomons

The Chinese In

the

Some Outspoken Comment

by

Leslie F. Gill, Bsi Planter

In recent months no less than 55 Chinese residents of the Solomons — mostly traders—have left the Group for China, and do not propose to return. They took with them some £60,000 —much of it the result of pro fitable trading during the Dollar In vasion. News item from August, 1946,

Pim.

SCENE: A crowded Chinese store in Gizo, BSI.

TIME; The Fall of Hongkong to the

Japanese . . . evening.

After the radio had told the fateful news, a stunned silence fell upon the assembled Cantonese, broken soon by the scornful remarks of a young Chinese trader in pidgin: “No gammon! British say he strong fella. He got plenty man-a-war, plenty soldier, plenty aeroplane. China no got plenty something belong fight. But he win him Japan. Japan try three year for take Canton, but no can do, China stop him. But Japan take Hongkong in six weeks from the British. What name?”

That is the sympathy extended to Britain in her dark hour by one of her Allies’ subjects, an individual who had prospered in a British country.

A few months passed, bringing the Dollar Invasion. An apparently well founded report was current in wartime which said that a young Chinese be sought a loan from the BSI Government at Honiara to finance his entry into a curio-trading business at Guadalcanal.

Granted—to the amazement of all hands, who thought the Government would never grant such an unheard-of request, particularly as there were British traders who would have jumped at such an opportunity, and have found the finance (a modest sum) themselves.

Within eighteen months that Celestial had made a fortune. This could be cited as an example of the most-favoured treatment accorded the Chinese over the years in the BSI, which made the British traders assert that it was a disability to be a British subject in that British coun try. The saying that Malaya was a Native country, administered by the British for the benefit of the Chinese, was applicable to the Solomons also.

THE Chinese are not pioneers. They are camp-followers, or “squatters,” who move into a country like locusts, after it has been made safe by others — usually the British. They take all and give very little.

In the Solomons they set up their political society, and largely remained unnaturalised ... a separate bloc, with thoughts turned ever China-wards, not caring for the future of the country.

They did not train natives in trades or commercial occupations, employing them solely as unskilled labourers. And the Government did nothing about it.

The nattives turned to the European traders for training, and did not turn in

vain. Towards the end of the pre-war period the natives became alarmed at the incursion of Chinese into all the minor trading avenues which they con sidered, with their advancing education, should have provided opportunities for themselves. Natives are keen traders, and were going increasingly into trade, so resented finding their legitimate expansion blocked by the Chinese.

THEN came the war. The Europeans and the Natives fought to the limit.

Though China had been at war for years with Japan, yet I do not recollect any eligible young Chinese leaving the Solomons to fight for his country. That job was left to the natives and the whites and the folks at home in China.

The local Chinese war effort was on a par with that of the Indians in Fiji.

When will we British wake up to these Asiatic blocs in our Colonies? They give us lip service, but have no real regard for or loyalty to us. It, is because I realise the menace of the situation that I advo cate Australian Control of these Islands.

The Colonial Office, to state it baldly, is simply not Asia-minded.

BETWEEN World Wars I and II the Chinese influx started and grew to a flood in the Solomons. In that period we witnessed the phenomenon of the Chinese population, with the assistance of the Government, grow till it approached that of the European. In the process practically all of the white pioneer traders were eliminated.

During the war, the Government set up native trade stores under its Trade Rehabilitation Scheme. In the Western Solomons, these were capably staffed by native storekeepers trained by myself and Burns Philp in peace time.

But, in the Eastern Solomons, certain Chinese were given such appointments, which sometimes they combined with, profitable curio-making and trading.

Some European traders would have been glad of such jobs, but Eastern Solomons Officials have ever been blind when it is a matter of giving a British whiteman preference over a Chinese alien.

Is there any nation but the British which consistently boosts the foreigner at the expense of its own subject? If there is, I should like to hear of it.

Opinion in the Solomons is that this is so, because Officialdom’s conscience is so uneasy at the raw deal accorded Britishers, that it would like to see the last of them and thjeir protestations.

Foreigners are much easier to live with.

They are more flattering and servile: and do not talk about their rights.

As a measure of the extent to which the Advisory Council is out of touch with realities in the Solomons, due to the nominee system of Non-Official Mem bers, it is only necessary to mention that, to my knowledge, no debate has ever taken place in the Council on the most startling change in our history.

I refer to the profound alteration in the non-Native population of the coun try in the between-wars years, whereby alien Chinese have so increased as to approximate the white population in numbers.

That surely is a subject important enough for any legislature to discuss: that, and its implications as regards future British Control of these Islands and the welfare of the Natives and their opportunities for development.

The Advisory Council will discuss everything from the Main Drain down wards, but never gets around to the most important of all—the Chinese Ques tion.