302
Modern Business Geography
stead of demanding the manufactured leather shoe of the West, they
are content to go barefooted or to wear a simple straw sandal.
The conditions in China, however, are gradually changing. In-
creasing exports of tea, silk, beans, and raw cotton enlarge China’s
power to buy from the outside world. Missionaries, merchants, and
Chinese students who have studied abroad are teaching the Chinese
new standards of living, and are creating new desires. Hence imports
into China are increasing in both quantity and variety. Among the
imports, cotton goods are the most important, but metal goods, rice,
fish, coal, and cigarettes also find a market.
The imports of today, however, are generally supposed to be merely
a promise of the great volume that may be wanted in the not distant
future. Therefore all the great commercial countries are much in-
terested in China. Nevertheless, in spite of our position just across
the Pacific from China, we have only one sixth of the country’s foreign
trade while the British Empire and Japan each have more than
a quarter.
In southeastern China, Great Britain controls the island of Hong-
kong and the opposite mainland. She has loaned money to China,
established banks, built railroads, secured mining concessions, assisted
in the collection of customs, and in various other ways has strength-
ened her position.
Japan has lagged only a little behind Great Britain in attention to
Chinese trade. The Japanese are trying in every possible way to de-
velop a Chinese market for their rapidly increasing manufactures, and
they have been eager to secure railroad, mining, police, and banking
rights, especially in the part of China near Chosen, and in Shantung.
The United States has always stood for the equal rights of all na-
tions in the Chinese market, and for fair play to the Chinese. This
“ open door ” policy has been subscribed to by all the principal na-
tions. It will not, however, create American trade unless alert busi-
ness men are ready to supply just the goods that the Chinese want,
at prices they can afford to pay, and of as good quality as those
offered by other countries.
SOUTH AMERICA AS A MARKET
The continent of South America buys great quantities of manu-
factured goods, especially textiles, farming implements and machinery,
railroad equipment, and other iron and steel goods. It pays for these
by exporting rubber, coffee, foodstuffs, wool, hides, and minerals
like nitrate of soda. The whole continent of ten republics and
