The Role of the

Letter to the Editor

The Role of the Chinese in N. Guinea

RECENT items in the PIM touch on the subject of the displace ment of Europeans by Chinese n New Guinea, and on the status )f the Chinese themselves.

In fairness to the latter, it seems ;hat much has been left unsaid.

In the first place, the harrowing jicture is drawn of the Old Hand jlanter leaving New Guinea because le feels that he cannot live there my longer under the present con litions. So he has sold his planta ion to a Chinese and is leaving or the South with more money in lis bank account than he thought here was in the world when he first vent to New Guinea.

To me he seems a subject for con ;ratulation rather than for com aiseration and I cannot raise one alt tear on his behalf. Not that begrudge him his fortune. He de erves it. Unless conditions are uch that a man who works hard n NG can make enough to retire t a reasonably early age, no one f any ability will go there. In par icular, pioneers deserve a good eward.

Now it is held against the Chinese

that they did no pioneering.

What was pioneering? Back in the twenties, it was the opening up of new areas by Government patrols; the bringing in of new natives to labour; the prospecting of unknown areas for minerals; the development of plantations and, in a lesser degree living in the small settlements of the country where life was hard and amenities few.

It is only in the last category that the Chinese were found.

Why weren’t they in the other, harsher, types of pioneering?

Firstly, they could not be in the Government type because none of them were in the District Services, and one can imagine the howl of protest there would have been from the PIM if the Government had appointed a few Chinese Patrol Officers.

Nor could they recruit in the partly controlled areas as Chinese were issued Recruiter’s Licences only to recruit labour for themselves, a need they could fulfil quite well in the settlements.

Nor could they go prospecting as they were not issued with Miners’

Rights, and if they found payable ground, could not get a title to it.

Finally, they were not granted Agri cultural Leases, though a few had land which they had obtained from the German Administration. So they kept trade stores, and such like, as they could not do anything else.

This, of course, does not prove that the Chinese would have wel comed the hardship and loneliness of true pioneering, even if they had had equal opportunities with the Europeans. The young Chinese of the thirties looked for the soft jobs, mainly, and I remember that in the w'orst of the depression when I

wanted a carpenter’s apprentice, only a half-caste Chinese would take the job on. However, on the facts, we cannot hold it against the Chinese that they were not true pioneers back in those years.

Yet we expect, even demand, their loyalty, though they were treated as an inferior people, no land, no min ing, no recruiting and not much respect for them—though personal relationships between Europeans and Chinese were generally good.

But when the Japanese invaded Rabaul, we left them there with their women and children when we had already evacuated our own. It was not that any Australian wanted to deny them refuge but that the immigration regulations made no provision for Asiatics to shelter in Australia.

Though this act was not wanton or deliberate (and I think the Chinese themselves recognise this) it was a piece of careless disregard for others of which we cannot be proud. So, if we still demand their loyalty, even against their fellow Chinese, it is up to us to give them full status, which the recent laws have provided.

Lastly, there is the fear expressed in some publications that New Guinea will become completely Chinese. The reasoning is that the

Chinese have less overhead ex penses, a lower living standard and a greater tolerance for the climate than Europeans and this will allow them to displace the latter in all walks of life. If this reasoning is correct, then the Chinese tenure will be very short, for those factors apply even more to the Tolais and they will, then, drive out the Chinese. I do not subscribe to this

point of view; life is not nearly so simple and Marxian as that.

I am, etc.,

Eric Feldt.

Brisbane, Q’ld., December 17, 1957. t Captain Phil Oakley, Qantas fly ing-boat captain, has been trans ferred from Port Moresby to Lae, NG.