Instead of coercion, Japan applied secret and corrupt influence through alliance with purchasable officials kept in office by Japanese support. The latter insidious policy is more dangerous because it gave the appearance that rights are duly acquired through grant of the Chinese Government; no demands or ultimatums are necessary because corrupt officials strongly supported by Japanese finance, acting absolutely in secret channels, suppressing all public discussion with the strong arm of the police, are able to deliver contractual rights regular in form, though of corrupt secret origin and evil tendency. Japan has used every possible means to demoralize China by creating and sustaining trouble; by supporting and financing the most objectionable elements, particularly a group of corrupt and vicious military governors akin to bandits in their methods; by employing instigators of trouble; by protection given to bandits; by the introduction of morphia and opium; by the corruption of officials through loans, bribes, and threats; by the wrecking of native banks and the debauching of local currency; by illegal export of the copper currency of the people; by local attempts to break down the salt administration; by persistent efforts to prevent China from going into the war and then seeing to it that China was never in a position to render to the common cause such aid as would be in her power and as she would willingly render if left to herself: finally, by utilizing the war and the preoccupation of the Allies for enmeshing China in the terms of a secret military alliance. As a result of these methods and manipulations, Japan has gained the following advantages: a consolidation of her special position in Manchuria and eastern Mongolia, and the foundation of the same in Shantung and Fukien; control in the matter of Chinese finance through the control of the Bank of Communications and the Bureau of Public Printing and the appointment of a high financial adviser together with the adoption of the unsound gold-note scheme happily not yet put in force. She has secured extensive railway concessions in Manchuria, Shantung, Chihli, and Kiangsu; mining rights in various provinces; and special monopolistic rights through the Kirin forestry loan, the telephone loan, and others. Through the secret military convention Japan attempts not only to control the military policy of China but incidentally national resources such as iron deposits. All these arrangements are so secretly made that in most cases not even the Foreign Office is in possession of the documents relating thereto. Together with this goes the persistent assertion of special interests which are interpreted as giving a position of predominance.