of the protests in China, the Daily Mail made such statements as "the British empire is the prime object of Bolshevist hatred" and "the real evil-doer in China is the Soviet government...These dismal, long-haired criminals who are holding Russia down by terrorism and murder make the mistake of their lives if they imagine the British empire is going to be frightened of their threats and grimaces". Rothermere also used the crisis in China as a way to criticise Baldwin as the Daily Mail declared in a leader: "The trouble in China is that there really is no government, and consequently nothing to protect that unhappy country against the Bolsheviks...Are we much better off in this country?" In 1926 Harmsworth sold his magazine concern, Amalgamated Press, and moved into the field of provincial newspaper publishing. In 1928 he founded Northcliffe Newspapers Ltd and announced that he intended to launch a chain of evening newspapers in the main provincial cities. There then ensued the so-called "newspaper war" of 1928–29, which culminated in Harmsworth establishing new evening papers in Bristol and Derby and gaining a controlling interest in Cardiff's newspapers. By the end of 1929, his empire had 14 daily and Sunday newspapers, with a substantial holding in another three. Rothermere in a leader conceded that Fascist methods were "not suited to a country like our own", but qualified his remark with the statement, "if our northern cities became Bolshevik we would need them". In a Daily Mail article in October 1927 that elebrated five years of Fascism in Italy, it was argued that there were parallels between modern Britain and Italy in the last years of the Liberal era as it was argued Italy went through a series of weak liberal and conservative governments that made concessions to the Italian Socialist Party such as granting universal male suffrage in 1912 whose "only result was to hasten the arrival of disorder". In the same article, Baldwin was compared to the Italian prime ministers of the Liberal era as the article argued that the General Strike of 1926 should never have been allowed to occur and the Baldwin government was condemned "for the feebleness which it tries to placate opposition by being more Socialist than the Socialists". The clear implication of the article was that concessions to socialists whatever in Italy or the United Kingdom only caused chaos, and Britain needed a leader like