Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

300 INDEPENDENCE CONGRESS PROCEEDINGS

population of 500 million congested in her cities and plains
which comprise only one-third of her territory; the insecurity,of life and property in the country as a result of the frequent
wars and rebellions, the poverty and famine that have swept
over her people, and the encouragement of Chinese immigration by Chinese officials in the Philippines seem to conspire
together in driving the Chinese from the densely populated and
war-ridden regions into her sparsely settled neighboring countries. Chinese of the congested central plains of Honan,
Shantung, and Chile are moving at the rate of one hundred
thousand a year into Tibet, Mongolia, and Siberia. The movement from the crowded provinces of Fukien and Kwantung
has spread out into French Indo-China, British Malaya, India,
Formosa, Siam, and the Dutch colonies to the number of not
less than 8,500,000, of which the Philippines has only about
53,000. That, with the lifting of the Chinese exclusion laws
as a result of independence, a greater flow of Chinese into the
Philippines will be inevitable, we must admit; we must also
admit our defenselessness against such an invasion. Friendliness
toward China will enable us to limit immigration by a quota
system, and this plan may be resorted to; but our only salvation under present conditions seems to lie in the inherent tendency of all population movements to reach a saturation point,
and in the future development of China. The Chinese population which is moving into the direction of countries southeast of China comes from the crowded provinces of Fukien
and Kuantung. Fukien has a population of 13,000,000 with
an area half as large as that of the Philippines, while Kuantung with an area a little smaller than that of the Philippines
has the enormous population of 37,000,000. These two
provinces are certainly more crowded than the Philippines; but
it is equally true that, outside of the Philippines, there are
about twelve countries to which their surplus population can
be encouraged to go. There will come a time, as has happened
in Ireland, France and Spain, when they can no longer release
a part of their population and will take a hand in discouraging
emigration. The present forces of emigration from these two
provinces and other parts of China cannot always work