Note 78 — APPENDICES

These tables, giving an excess of imports over exports, will be seen not to tally with my statement in the final chapter. In other years similar tables have given rise to the belief that China is being denuded of silver to pay for the balance, and is drifting towards bankruptcy. But the Inspector-General, in the Customs Report for 1898, from which these figures are taken, points out that, taking into account the value of the gold exported from China, of the tea sent to Siberia and Russia viâ the Han River, of the twenty million pounds of tea exported annually to Tibet, of the junk traffic to Korea and the South, and of other exports of which the Customs take no cognizance, there is an actual excess of exports over imports, as was shown by careful statistics in 1897. He also points out as a positive proof that the nation is well able to pay its way, that the Government remittances to Europe for the service of loans, amounting in 1898 to about Hk. Tls. 18,000,000, were made through foreign banks by the medium of bills of exchange against exports.—I. L. B.