There is another, the Asiatic, side to the question. Without a doubt the Asiatic territories in the Pacific will not continue to offer rich prizes for European Powers seeking trade advantages through setting up "spheres of influence." Since Japan won recognition as a nation she has framed her tariffs to suit herself. In the earlier stages of her industrial progress she imported articles, learned to copy them, and then imposed a prohibitive tariff on their importation. Various kinds of machinery were next copied and their importation stopped. China may be expected to follow the same plan. Europe and America may not expect to make profits out of exploiting her development. A frank recognition of this fact would conduce to peace in the Pacific. If it can be agreed that neither as regards her territory nor her markets is China to be served up as the prize of successful dominance of the Pacific, one of the great promptings to warfare there would disappear. "Asia for the Asiatics" is a just policy, and would probably prove a wise one.
In discussing the position of Asiatic labour in the Pacific I have taken a view which will dissatisfy some alarmists who cite the fact that the wage rate for labour in Western Canada and Australia is about 8s. a day, and in China and Japan about 1s. a day; and conclude therefore that the Asiatic power in the industrial field is overwhelming. But an examination of actual working results rather than theoretical conclusions from a limited range of facts will very much modify that conclusion. Asiatic labour competition, if allowed liberty of access for the worker as well as his work, would undoubtedly drag down the White communities of the Pacific. But when the competition is confined to the work, and the workman is kept at a distance, it is not at all as serious a matter as some have held, and can always be easily met with tariff legislation. The most serious blow to European and American industrialism that Asia could inflict would be an extension of the Japanese protective system to the Asiatic mainland. Yet that we could not grumble at; and it would have a compensating advantage in taking away the temptation to conflict which the rich prize of a suzerainty over the Chinese market now dangles before the industrial world.