China’S Economic Penetration Of

So Big We Can’t See It!

Indonesia And The Pacific

THE manner in which the Chinese are slowly, steadily and inexorably extending their hold over the islands of Indonesia and the Pacific is not generally recognised.

Elsewhere, reference is made to the way the Chinese traders are showing up again in the Solomon Islands. Elsewhere in this issue, also, a commentator reminds us that most of the worth-while trade in French Oceania is commanded by the 10,000-12,000 Chinese there , . . The Chinese community in Fiji is small, but influential.

A well-known writer, describing conditions in and around Indonesia said recently that “Communist China’s education authorities have prepared a new geography text book for Asian schools which shows Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaya, Singapore, Sumatra and the Celebes as part of the New China.”

Apart from the predominant Chinese community in Malaya, there are over 2,000,000 Chinese in Indonesia, and they not only

control the commerce but also the politics of the late Dutch empire.

There is so close a connection between Communist China and the Chinese in Indonesia that it is now generally accepted that Red China virtually directs the policies ostensibly framed in Jakarta.

THIS is what Osmar White, well known Australian commenta tor, said about the New Guinea Chinese in Melbourne Herald of March 29: The plain, inescapable fact is that a great deal of the Trust Territory of New Guinea is already under Chinese commercial and financial domination, Chinese trade stores in the larger centres like Rabaul, Lae and Wewak do the bulk of business with the natives, and Chinese retailers have practically captured the casual shopping of European women.

Many a small European planter or businessman raises the wind, when his own bank has turned him down, from the Chinese store owner who doubles as agent for

some rich and powerful Chi] bank whose name is unknown all but the best informed w men.

More and more Chinese are ing over ownership of copra, co rubber and coffee plantations assume control of them straight-out investors or m gagees.

How does this sort of t; happen when Australia so stn gently restricts Asian migratioi The New Guinea Chinese ar theory anyway, either Austrs or Island-born—some third fourth generation expatriates 1 China. We possess no legal r to expel them.

OVER the years and throughi generations, they have served their Chinese cult their Chinese thinking, and t Chinese way of life. Their i giance, in sentiment and phi ophy if not legality, is to t mother country. Although ni of them are educated in the Australian schools, their west isation is merely a useful vem There is no real secret in t amazing success at silent, im ceptible colonisation and dora tion.

They are the most unobtru of citizens —quiet, law-abiding, polite. Seldom or never do admit to possession of a polii opinion.

n business they are commend y honest, superb but self icing salesmen and uncannily sclent buyers. They are thodical, terrifyingly industri i, and terrifyingly frugal in ir personal lives; •hey have large familes at an ly age, and the cohesiveness of Chinese family has to be tested be believed. ■hey are not, and seemingly e not the slightest wish to be, orbed by the alien communities which they live.

'o me, these are the people who xant the drawing of fresh maps delineate the borders of the v China. To make a personal ss. I should say that most of tn are secretly but profoundly ifferent to all political theories lat they are as little moved by ) (Communist leader) as they by Chiang (Nationalist leader). . They are soulbound to their her country, whoever her lers may be. his truth is something Aus ia’s leaders must consider, and irately evaluate, if they are to : the security of Australia’s itiers and the protection of tralia’s vital interests in the ific. rich Oceania’s Asiatics