Considering how rich China is in iron ore, this state of affairs needs
explanation. The explanation is valuable to anyone who wishes to
understand modern politics.
The _China Year Book_ for 1919[105] (a work as little concerned with
politics as _Whitaker's Almanack_) gives a list of the five principal
iron mines in China, with some information about each. The first and
most important are the Tayeh mines, worked by the Hanyehping Iron and
Coal Co., Ltd., which, as the reader may remember, was the subject of
the third group in the Twenty-one Demands. The total amount of ore in
sight is estimated by the _China Year Book_ at 50,000,000 tons, derived
chiefly from two mines, in one of which the ore yields 65 per cent. of
iron, in the other 58 to 63 per cent. The output for 1916 is given as
603,732 tons (it has been greatly increased since then). The _Year Book_
proceeds: "Japanese capital is invested in the Company, and by the
agreement between China and Japan of May 1915 [after the ultimatum which
enforced the revised Twenty-one Demands], the Chinese Government
undertook not to convert the Company into a State-owned concern nor to
compel it to borrow money from other than Japanese sources." It should
be added that there is a Japanese accountant and a Japanese technical
adviser, and that pig-iron and ore, up to a specified value, must be
sold to the Imperial Japanese works at much below the market price,
leaving a paltry residue for sale in the open market.
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