ABSTRACT
The main feature of the new policy was the lending of money to China. There was nothing sudden about the reform. China was still subject to dictation from time to time, and the lending of money had begun actively while Marquis Okuma was still in power. In July 1916 Mr. Chang Tsung-hsiang, the newly appointed Chinese Minister in Tokyo, complained that it was very easy for China to contract Japanese loans but very difficult to get any money. The borrowers were expected to take a large part of their loan in kind or in the form of credits. It was not a new idea, but had not formerly been pressed so hard. However, there were reports during August and September of loans by the Yokohama Specie Bank to Peking, by the Bank of Korea
to Mukden, by the Bank of Formosa to the revolutionaries of the South; and there were other loans rumoured or discussed. A corporation unheard of before, the Asiatic Development Co., offered to lend money to the Chinese Government, but demanded as “collateral security” a licence for buying up copper cash throughout China. The total results of the purchases in Shantung and elsewhere, which the Chinese Government had at last succeeded in stopping, had shortly before been published, the figures given showing a total of 45,000 tons, and the estimated profits being 400 yen a ton.
