Modernist Magazines and Digital Humanities

In the New Age, an article titled, “Foreign Affairs” by S. Verdad, is interesting on many different levels. First and foremost is the fact that the article primarily deals with Sino-Japanese relations during this tumultuous time in Europe. There is an analogy made between the situation of China and Belgium. At the time of WWI, Belgium was under the occupation of German troops and this article makes a parallel between the two countries, “China stands in the same relation to Japan as Belgium to Germany” (5).  Secondly, the article exposes China’s subservience to Japan and it’s reliance on foreign loans, which understates the difference between the China of the early twentieth century and the China of today. 
In today’s marketplace, China holds a significant portion of not only the United States debt, but many other foreign governments as well. After taking a trip to China this past winter, it is hard to imagine that most of what I witnessed, in terms of the infrastructure, was not even a thought of the Chinese government during the time of this article. In fact, only in the last 20-30 years has there been a mass urbanization like none ever seen in history before. The article is quite emphatic on it’s opinion that Belgium’s economy will rebound because “Belgium has always differed from China in being a country that paid its way” (5). Although Belgium today is a country with a healthy GDP it is not even I in comparison to the juggernaut that which is China’s economy. This article lets the contemporary reader have a historical snapshot of Britain’s and possibly the world’s viewpoint on the status of China during the time of WWI.