Shanghai, .
A British naval wireless message from Hankow states that Borodin, the Soviet Envoy, and Eugene Chen, the Communist foreign Minister, have returned from Kuling.
Chen announces that Borodin is leaving Hankow permanently in the near future.
The Nanking (non-Communist National Government) is offering a reward of 100,000 dollars to anyone causing the arrest of Borodin.
The Yangtse continues quiet.
No news from the Shantung front was received today and it is believed that there is a lull in the fighting
Captain Barrett, commissioner of police in the International Settlement at Shanghai announced to the press this afternoon that the municipal council has notified the Chinese newspapers that unless they pay the new municipal taxes within 24 hours their electricity will be cut off.
In the meantime the tax war is unabated.
The police are sealing dozens of native shops daily without resistance.
The water police have recovered several more bodies which had been thrown over board from a plague-infested troopship from Canton.
Today, a couple of notes about tax resistance against the war taxes instituted by the various nationalist factions of the civil war in China in 1927.
First, a dispatch sent on from Shanghai, as carried in the Adelaide Register:
…The first efforts of Nationalist officials to collect the new 50 per cent.
tax on tobacco , in contravention of
the treaties, were frustrated by the merchants who refused to pay. The
officials took up positions outside the customs releasing depots and refused
deliveries except upon payment of the new impost. Importers complained to
their respective Chambers of Commerce and at a combined meeting it was
decided to write to the senior Consul (United States) and to request the
consular body to meet a deputation of merchants who are preparing a list of
questions to present to the consular body, and they declare that they are
determined not to pay, explaining their action by stating that the
Nationalists frankly admit that the increase is necessary to continue the
campaign against the North. The merchants refuse to finance the Chinese
military campaign and thus prolong the civil war, apart from the contention
that the tax is illegal, according to the findings of recent tariff
conference. The tobacco tax is but one instance of a wholesale imposition of
taxes, amounting to an attempt to enforce tariff autonomy in order to raise
military funds as quickly as possible at the expense of trade. Such a
programme as carried out by the Hankow Government has reduced Hankow to a
condition of industrial idleness and, paralyzed the entire trade of Central
China.
Next, this Shanghai dispatch from , as carried in the Launceston (Tasmania)
Examiner:
On Nationalist surtaxes on
practically all imports to China will be enforced. British commerce is
seriously threatened, and the proposals are being strongly opposed. It is
understood that the Government has instructed merchant bodies, through their
Consuls, to refuse payment.
The diplomatic body at Peking is handling the matter, and it is believed
that, failing the co-operation of the Japanese and the Americans, resistance
will take the form of independent action to protect British trade. It is
understood that British vessels will be instructed that only at British
wharves can they land goods without the payment of the illegal taxes, and
that interference by the Chinese will be forcibly resisted.
The increase in some instances amounts to 57 per cent., and the lowest tax is
15 per cent. The increased tonnage dues of 50 per cent. have not been paid by
foreign companies, a policy of defiance being followed.
Over the course of the following months, the nationalists would flat-out
appropriate much of what had been acquired by foreign imperialists, including
the British, so this didn’t work out too well for the resisters.
