34 BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



her great population becomes awakened and organised by western technical 

 science. 



It is true that the people of the East are rapidly adopting the methods 

 and using the mechanical facilities of western nations — railways, telegraphs, 

 power factories, steel ships and other metal-consuming devices ; but the 

 critical investigations made by mining geologists, especially since the war, 

 tend, with a striking degree of unanimity towards recognising the remark- 

 able circumstances that China, as well as other countries of the Far East, is 

 deficient in those essential deposits of minerals on which our mechanised 

 form of civilisation is based.* 



When China was still an unknown land it was possible for after-dinner 

 speakers to impress non-critical hearers by talk of the ' yellow peril ' and 

 the ' challenge of Asia ' ; but these expressions have been used without 

 thought of the circumstances that natural resources in minerals now sets 

 a rigid limit to power, whether industrial or military. We have known 

 for some time of the natural limitations of India, of Japan and of smaller 

 political units in the East ; but until very recently we have had insuffi- 

 ciently precise data for estimating the quantitative value of the terms 

 ' vast ' and ' unlimited ' which have been so often applied to China. 

 Assuming that China may yet become a homogeneous national unit, or 

 even assuming that her resources may become developed by Japanese 

 energy, there is very little doubt now that, as an industrial area, the 

 country is deficient in those minerals that form the essential basework of 

 the modern form that civilisation has definitely taken. 



And the obvious limit in development, as defined by local natural 

 resources, can be extended only to a limited degree by the importation of 

 raw materials from other areas ; for a country can buy metals only by 

 the exchange of other products ; its buying powers are limited by its 

 selling powers. Abundant cheap labour, assisted by a semi-tropical 

 climate, can produce an exportable surplus of food stuffs only in limited 

 parts of the Far East ; even the so-called luxury products, which to our 

 early navigators formed the inspiration of what we call geographical 

 research, are now obtained elsewhere, and some are being replaced by 

 artificial products evolved from the chemical laboratory. 



Exploratory work by mining geologists tends more and more to show 

 that the essential mineral products are far from evenly distributed over 



* A comprehensive study of this question with bibUography has recently been 

 published by a competent and judicial authority, H. Foster Bain : ' Ores and Industry 

 in the Far East," 1927. 



