CANADA'S OPPORTUNITY BY BASIL C. WALKER HE Far East is the world's TH greatest potential market. Men with years of experience in trade with all parts of the world share this opinion. In this great market China plays an important, if not indeed, a leading part. Probably possessing, with the possible exception of India, the greatest consuming capacity of all Oriental markets, the China import trade is a very fair index of the status of the import trade of the Orient. Having this in mind, it is interesting to note that Canada's direct exports to China in the five years between 1913 and 1918 increased nearly five times as rapidly as did those of the United States and three times as fast as those of Japan. In other words Canada's direct sales to China increased more rapidly than did those of any other of China's leading overseas suppliers.* This remarkable rate of increase draws attention to the many advantages which Canada has in this field, advantages which she does not possess or does not possess to a similar degree in other fields. It is not generally realized that Canada is the nearest of the Western nations to the Orient. Furthermore she commands the shortest and most direct all-water route from the West to the great trade centers of the Far East which lie east of the Straits Settlements and north of the Dutch East Indies on the Japanese Islands and on the mainland of Asia from French Indo-China to Kamchatka. An examination of the chart of the Pacific will show that, while the great trade routes converge not at one point, but at several, twice as many converge on Yokohama as converge on any other center. From this it is evident that Yokohama and the neighboring ports of Japan and the Asiatic mainland constitute the most important center on the Oriental side of the Pacific. Of all the ports of the Western *Note: In considering China's trade statistics, it should be remembered that Hongkong is treated as a foreign country, while as a matter of fact many millions of dollars worth of Hongkong exports to China are really imports from various countries destined for China. Naturally a considerable part of Canadian exports to China lose their identity in the same way, because they are transhipped at Hongkong. world, none is nearer to this busy center of the Orient than are Canada's Pacific gateways, Vancouver and Victoria. These two ports are nearer Yokohama than is San Francisco (which is approximately the same number of degrees of longitude east of Yokohama) by from 300 to 600 miles, in spite of the fact that Yokohama is almost due west of San Francisco, while it is more than 800 miles south of Vancouver's latitude. This apparent contradiction is explained by the spherical shape of the earth. Mathematics show that the shortest distance between any two points on the surface of a sphere is a sector of the great circle intersecting those two points. Now it so happens that the great circle passing through Yokohama and its vicinity and also passing through the region of the Pacific coast of North America, runs northwest to the general latitude of Victoria. In other words, whereas a ship sailing from San Francisco has to swing north for a considerable distance on the shortest course for Japan, a ship sailing from Victoria is almost from the start of the voyage on that short course. Perhaps nothing shows this more strikingly than a comparison between two routes from San Francisco to Yokohama. One route is traced almost due west direct to Yokohama, and is 4,799 miles long, while the other swings up into the north until at one point it is almost in the latitude of Victoria, yet this latter route is only 4,536 miles long From Victoria the same voyage is about 4,200 miles long. While Yokohama has been used here in making these comparisons, it is obvious that what has been said applies with equal force to all Japanese ports and with greater force to ports north of Yokohama, such as Vladivostok. The difference in distance is marked, although gradually growing less as the more southern latitudes are reached, to Hongkong, Shanghai and to Hankow, Ichang, and other ports of the Yangtszekiang. Shanghai, always an important port in the China trade has recently acquired a new importance with the dynamiting of channels through the gorges of the upper Yangtsze-kiang, by means of which this great river has been opened to steam navigation to Chungking, 1,500 miles from the sea. The Yangtsze, which is one of the greatest inland water highways of the world, flows through seven of the eighteen provinces in which are to be found 140,000,000* out of the 350,000,000* of the population of China proper. With the inevitable development of the interior communications, both by rail and by water, the importance of this river and, with it, that of Shanghai, will be materially increased. However, as all practical foreign trade men know, the nation that depends solely on its proximity to its markets for its ability to control those markets is living in a fool's paradise. A nation must also have the right merchandise to sell in those markets, if it is to derive any solid advantage from its proximity. While it is not pretended that Canada has any monopoly of the princi *Note: Population figures are based on Minchengpu census of 1910. |