CONCLUDING REMARKS

The subjects of our political and trade relations with China have been so ably and exhaustively treated by Lord Charles Beresford, M.P., and Mr. Colquhoun, and have been threshed out by so many other writers, that in these brief remarks I shall chiefly confine myself to the Chinese people and to my impressions of them, received in fifteen months of journeyings in three of the most important years in modern Chinese history.^[63]

I doubt very much whether China is “breaking up.” If she breaks up it will be owing to the policy of the great European nations in making her “lose face,” and thereby weakening the authority of the Central Government over the provinces, local risings and possible disintegrations being the result. The “sphere of influence” policy, if pursued in earnest, would undoubtedly break up the empire.

In the three years in which I was travelling, off and on, in China, the Dragon Throne reeled, but righted itself, and the Government survived the Japanese war, the heavy indemnity, the loss of the suzerainty of Korea, and the aggressions of Russia. It extinguished, in blood, the serious Mohammedan rebellion in Kansuh, and has lately brought about the collapse of the rebellion in Sze Chuan. The bond of union which connects the provinces with each other and with Peking has survived all these mishaps, and if it is broken, I believe it will be by foreign interference, and by the shifting and opportunist policy, enormous ambitions, and ill-concealed rivalries of certain foreign powers.

Nor do I believe that China is “in decay.” I have travelled more than 8000 miles in the empire, and have seen, in some 531regions, roads, canals, temples,^[64] and some ancient public works, falling into disrepair. The Oriental throughout Asia prefers construction to renovation, and alongside of these decaying works there are new temples, new pagodas, new and handsome bridges, new pai-fangs, new bunds, and new works, rather of private than public origin.

The reader who has followed the foregoing chapters with any degree of interest can scarcely think that Sze Chuan, at least, is in decay. Commercial and industrial energy is not decaying, the vast fleets of junks are not rotting in harbours and reaches; industry, thrift, resourcefulness, and the complete organisation both of labour and commerce, meet the traveller at every turn. Mercantile credit stands high, contracts are kept, labour is docile, teachable, and intelligent, its earnings are secure, and, on the whole, law and order prevail.

Nor is it like “decay” that in 1898—in spite of a political situation full of menace, of sporadic rebellions which largely checked business in their localities, of the serious news from Peking in September, which disorganised the trade of the northern ports, and of the disasters in connection with the Yellow River—the elasticity was such that the value of the import trade exceeded all previous records, while that of the export trade exceeded that of every previous year except 1897, the total volume of trade being the highest on record.

There was no export of silver, but a net import of Hk. Tls. 4,722,025, and there was no scarcity of it in any part of the country. China met the whole of her obligations without any depletion of her currency, and imported nothing that she did not obtain in exchange for exports.^[65] The importance of stimulating the Chinese export trade is apt to be overlooked. China will only purchase from foreign countries that for which she can pay with her own products. The verdict of the Inspector-General of Maritime Customs in China on the commercial situation for 1898 is, “No doubt the Government is hard pressed for funds, but the country grows wealthier every year.”^[66]

532Among the reasons given for the alleged “decay” of China is its “over-population.” It is true that there are seriously congested areas, even in Sze Chuan, but if we take 400,000,000, the extreme estimate of the population, it is but ten times that of Great Britain, while the area of the empire is from sixteen to eighteen times as great.

What is “in decay” is the administration of government. The people are straight, but officialism is corrupt.^[67]

The subject has been fully dwelt upon in other books, with which I suppose my readers to be acquainted. The theory of the Chinese Government is one of the best ever devised by the wit of man. Against every possible abuse apparent safeguards were provided. The enjoyment of property and life was secured to the people. The laws in the main were just, concise, and of equal pressure. The right of rising against a corrupt and oppressive official was guaranteed. Literary examinations were made the entrance to official life. Inferior birth was no bar to the attainment of high position. The laws of the country embodied the highest teaching of political ethics which it had received. The patriarchal theory of government was never so systematised, or acted upon for so long, and with so much consistency. The ethical teaching and the laws based upon it remain, and the strongest power in China to-day is Confucius; but the admirable theory of government has proved weak in presence of the neglected factor of the downward tendency of human nature in a pagan nation. The infamies of Chinese administration to-day have been riveted upon China by centuries of political retrogression, and the gradual lowering of the standard of public virtue in the absence of a wholesome public opinion. Certain forms of bribery, corruption, and peculation have obtained the force of custom, seven-tenths of the revenue is arrested by the “three hands” of officials, all sums allotted for public works, repairs, and military and naval equipment, suffer enormous depletion en route to their destinations, so that in the Japanese 533war “a straight people with a corrupt Government” were easily subdued by “a corrupt people with a straight Government.”^[68]

One of the heaviest indictments against the system is, that under it it is hardly possible for a good man to be rigidly honest, and there are good men: and there are mandarins who, after a long and laborious period of office, actually live and die poor. A well-meaning man, finding himself entangled in the meshes of this system, is greatly to be pitied. Custom is all in favour of peculation, and however much such men would welcome a way of escape, to break with custom is as hard as to break off the opium habit. Another difficulty besets the well-intentioned man—his knowledge that his best efforts will certainly be frustrated by the unscrupulous clerks and retainers of his yamen.

In Chapter XXIII. I just touched on the very laborious life of a mandarin, who has to perform the work of six men, and rarely gets a holiday. For this amount of work he is virtually unpaid, far more than his wretchedly insufficient salary being expended on the necessary state of his office. These nominal salaries are the deadly upas tree, which has cast its fatal shadow over Chinese official life. They are the crux of the situation. They make peculation and corruption all but an absolute necessity. Short periods of office, paying for appointments, the evil custom of making presents to official superiors, the practice that, after paying into the Imperial Exchequer the fixed quota of taxation for his district, the magistrate can appropriate all that he can squeeze beyond it, subject to liberal gifts to the high officials of his province, are only a few of the evils of the Chinese administrative system. It is chiefly out of this margin squeezed 534out of the people that the fortunes of the higher officials are made.^[69]

Every writer on China exposes the iniquities of the system, and they come more or less to the ears and under the observation of every traveller. They affect a fourth of the human race, and have brought the most ancient of existing empires into the position of a “sick man”—helpless, appealing, with voracious Western nations gnawing at his extremities, and prepared to prey upon his vitals.

But China bristles with contradictions. The “sick man” ought to be “in decay,” but he is not. His innate cheeriness is scarcely clouded by our repeated assertions that he ought to be dead, and he faces the future which we prophesy for him without misgiving! On the whole, peace, order, and a fair amount of prosperity prevail throughout the empire. The gains of labour are secure, taxation, even with the squeezes attending it, is rarely oppressive in the country, and in the towns is extremely light. The phrase “ground down” does not apply to the Chinese peasant. There is complete religious toleration. Guilds, trades unions, and other combinations carry out their systems unimpeded, and the Chinese genius for association is absolutely unfettered. The Chinese practically in actual life are one of the freest peoples on earth!

The reader may be staggered by what appears a monstrous paradox, in face of the opinions regarding the infamies of administration previously expressed, but if a single statement is applicable to the whole empire it is this, that freedom is the birthright of the people, that they possess “inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and that China is one of the most democratic countries on earth. The Government, feeble and evasive in its dealings with foreigners, when it sets its mind on something among its own people, is quite capable of carrying out its will, and is not nearly so impotent as many suppose. Yet it habitually plays only a most minute part in the economy of national life, and a Chinese may live and die without any other contact with it than the payment of land-tax. He is free in all trades and industries: to make money and to keep it: to emigrate and to return with his gains: free to rise from the peasant’s hut to place and dignity: 535to become a millionaire, and confer princely gifts upon his province: free in his religion and his amusements: and in his social and commercial life.

I have not space, knowledge, or ability to enter into the inwardness of these extraordinary contradictions, and would only remark that we have to deal in China not with a mass of downtrodden serfs, but with a nation of free men.

I may be permitted, however, very diffidently to point out a few of the reasons which, in my opinion, militate against the evils of administration, and tend to the stability of the country. First among these is the village system. In China the unit is not the individual but the family, indivisible and sacred, the members of which are bound to each other in life and death by indissoluble ties, of the strength of which we cannot form a conception. Villages consist of groups of such families, with their headmen and elders, who are responsible for each individual, the step above them being the hsien, or district magistrate, who may be regarded as the administrative unit. The Chinese have a genius for self-government, and are by no means the “dumb, driven cattle” which some suppose them to be. The villages are self-governing, and no official dares to trench on their hereditary privileges. Every successive dynasty has found itself bound to protect them in these, and no “Son of Heaven” who called them in question could occupy the Dragon Throne for six months.

These privileges, which by established custom have become actual rights, consist primarily in the complete control of local affairs, the possession of lands, and absolute freedom for trade and industry. Among the many advantages of the village system is, that it enables villagers in countless civil cases to avoid the serious evils of litigation in the yamens by the simple method of referring them to arbitration before their headmen and elders.

Among other causes which tend to counterbalance the evils of the administration, is the system of strict surveillance and mutual responsibility, under which no man stands alone, and which as a vast network holds China together. This has its own evils, one of which is mutual distrust, which has, however, the good result of preventing men from combining intelligently 536against the Government. The system makes government easy, and certainly does not tend to disintegration.

Besides these there are the recognised right of rebellion when grievances become intolerable; the execution of a species of lynch law on culpable officials, which often takes the place of memorials to the Throne, and courts of appeal; a certain dread on the part of magistrates of being reported for corruption or inefficiency by the many spies of the Central Government, or by the Censors, who, though said not to be altogether free from venality, can, on occasion, be most remarkably outspoken; the general education of the people in the principles on which government is based; the genius for association which gives strength to the weak; and the universal training both at home and school in “The Five Duties of Man,” which are: (1) Loyalty to the Sovereign, (2) piety to parents, (3) submissiveness to elders, (4) harmony between husband and wife, (5) fidelity to friends.^[70]

This is the empire which we speak of “partitioning” and “breaking up,” with as little emotion as if it were an ant’s nest, with all its singular contradictions, and emphatic antagonisms of good and evil.

There is a wide difference between bullying, in diplomatic language “applying strong pressure,” and making righteous and politic demands upon China. Nothing could be better for herself than the drastic reforms suggested by Lord C. Beresford, but some of them involve what I think would be an unwarrantable interference with her internal organisation. Among righteous demands may certainly be placed the fulfilment of treaty obligations—the giving security to the lives and property of foreigners throughout the empire, which can only be attained by the formation of an efficient army, or gendarmerie, well disciplined, drilled, armed, and paid, and mobile—giving foreigners the right 537to live for trade purposes in the interior (a right only conceded by Japan in July, 1899), and an equable rearrangement of likin and loti-shui.^[71]

Likin and loti-shui are obnoxious taxes, and hamper trade effectively, and the abuses of the system are very great, but abrupt and sweeping changes would be very dangerous. It must be remembered that the provincial governments have lost seriously through the operations of the Imperial Maritime Customs (see p. 155), and rely mainly on likin for their revenue, that its abolition would involve a resort to direct taxation, which would be intolerable to a people accustomed to indirect, and would certainly lead to very serious risings in the West River and Yangtze valleys. Official needs, established custom, and the relations of the masses to custom, render the forcing of abrupt fiscal changes of this nature upon the Chinese most impolitic, risking the disorganisation and break up of China.

By bullying the Central Government it is made to “lose face” with its subjects, and its authority is by so much weakened. The value of our treaties absolutely depends on the power of the Government to give effect to them. The sole security of the Chinese bondholder, and for the sums invested, or to be invested in the railroads of the future, is the integrity and cohesion of the Chinese Empire. Touch this integrity, whether by active claims for “spheres of influence,” with consequent disintegration, the enforced abolition of likin, or any policy of pressure, and our treaties will be but waste paper. With regard to most arrangements, however desirable in the way of reform they may be, the word “insist,” pointing to coercion, should be blotted out of the vocabulary of discussion.

I am still a believer in the justice and expediency of the “Open Door” policy, as opposed to what I think is the fatal alternative policy of “spheres of influence.” Many who would “rush” reforms in China, and are impatient of delay, and are perhaps bitten by the “lust of domination,” assert that it is too 538late for it, but I fail to see the reasons for such a “counsel of despair.” The Marquess of Salisbury, at the end of June, 1898, said: “If I am asked what our policy in China is, my answer is very simple. It is to maintain the Chinese Empire, to prevent it falling into ruins, to invite it into paths of reform, and to give it every assistance which we are able to give it, to perfect its defence or to increase its commercial prosperity. By so doing we shall be aiding its cause and our own.”^[72] This announcement of policy has not been recalled.

In the meantime it is impossible for China, pressed on every side, and vaguely conscious that she stands at the “parting of the ways,” that “the old order” is changing, and that she is in the grip of new forces, to collect herself with a view to the reforms from which she cannot hope to escape, and she falls back on her old idea of statesmanship—the playing off one foreign country against another. After a career of empire of two thousand years, in which she has increased in wealth and population up to the present time, she finds herself at the dawn of a new century, confronted by problems of which her classics and her experience offer no solution, and the greatest of these is the FOREIGNER.

In concluding this chapter, it is worth while to consider whether there are any indications of reform from within, and whether the phrase, “The awakening of China,” represents fact or not.

Our mechanical inventions, steamers, railroads, gas, telegraphs, electric light, steam machinery, dredgers, artillery, torpedoes, arms of precision, submarine telegraphy, steam printing, photography—our surgery, the beauty and “up-keep” of our foreign settlements, and their admirable municipal government, and our obvious wealth, have all been emissaries knocking the conceit out of those who come in contact with them. Chinese now work telegraph lines, own and run steam launches in large numbers, enter our hospitals as medical students, and take admirable photographs, nearly perfect in technique, only lacking in artistic feeling. Factories owned and run by Chinese are springing up here and there, and may eventually be successful. One of the great passenger lines on the Lower Yangtze belongs to the “Chinese Merchants’ Company.”

539Inland, for many years, foreign families have been living lives elsewhere described—of different nationalities, but all worshippers of one invisible God. Such persons have introduced into remote regions kerosene lamps—which are doing much to alter social life in China, soap, lucifer matches and vesta lights, condensed milk and tinned provisions, sewing machines—enormously adopted by tailors, and much else, the utility of all of which has been recognised, and which have compelled the Chinese to admit the ability of the “barbarians.”

It is known, at least to the Chinese within fifty miles of the coast, and up the Yangtze, on which Japanese steam lines are now running, that the Japanese, who received from themselves the Chinese classics centuries ago, have adopted the political and legal systems, industries, and naval and military methods of foreigners; that they have a straight Government, which no foreign power dares to bully; that they have been received on equal terms into the family of nations, and that their methods of warfare, before which China collapsed, were foreign methods. The fact that a yellow people, venerating and teaching their own classics, with a social order founded on Confucian principles, and with Chinese as its official language, has adopted, to a great extent, Western civilisation, and with manifest advantage, has produced a remarkable effect since the war.

Last, but very far from being least, as it affects the brain of the country and its natural leaders, is the circulation of the scientific, historical, and Christian literature of the West. This is the Western ferment which may “leaven the whole lump.” This circulation received an enormous impulse when the reform edicts of the Emperor were promulgated, making a knowledge of Western learning imperative on students, and has not been greatly affected by the subsequent retrograde movement. It cannot be doubted that those edicts, premature and unwise as some of them were, were the direct result of the foreign literature which the Emperor had previously been reading with avidity.

The larger portion of this literature, which I believe is destined to reform and transform China, has been published by a society founded twelve years ago by some of the leading men in China, and named the “Society for the Diffusion of Christian and 540General Knowledge.” Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G., is its president in China, and Mr. Timothy Richards, an enthusiast about the language and people, and an optimist about the future of the empire, is its secretary and inspiring spirit.

The literature for which the demand is now greater than the supply, consists of distinctly Christian books, such as Butler’s Analogy; a Life of Christ; Christianity, and the Progress of Nations; scientific books, as on Agricultural Chemistry and Astronomy; books on economic subjects, such as Productive and Non-Productive Labour, The Relation of Education to National Progress, etc., and some of our best standard books are now in circulation, together with such special literature as Essays for the Times, The Renaissance of China, Progress of China’s Neighbours, a periodical called A Review of the Times, and various others. The drift of the desire for knowledge is shown by the very large sale of Mackenzie’s History of the Nineteenth Century, and of a History of the Japanese War; Sixty Years of Queen Victoria’s Reign being also much in demand.

These books and many others, circulating largely among the literati, at once creating and expressing aspirations, all present in some form or other that higher ideal which produced those reformers, greatly led by Kang Yen-Wei, who advocated political, commercial, educational, and religious reform in 1898, rendering it memorable in Chinese history as a year in which men showed that the welfare of their country was dearer to them than life itself.

A few instances taken at random show how the Western leaven is working. Large sums have been subscribed by the Chinese for the object of teaching Western languages and learning, specially in the ports. Two wealthy Chinese offered to raise 10,000 dollars for the enlargement of the Women’s Hospital in Shanghai, if Dr. Reifsnyder, the lady medical missionary, would consent to teach Western medicine to Chinese girls. A Cantonese, one of the managers of the China Merchants’ Co., was so impressed by Mr. Richards’ translation of Mackenzie’s History of the Nineteenth Century, that he bought a hundred copies, and sent them to the leading mandarins in Peking.

A Hunan gentleman, visiting Shanghai two years ago, met 541with the “C.L.S.” magazine, Review of the Times, and was so impressed with its helpfulness to China, that he ordered two hundred copies, and distributed them monthly in Hunan to those who had specially opposed foreigners and Christianity. These men, in their turn, ordered a complete set of the “C.L.S.” books, and read them for two years in order to be sure of their contents. Recently the Literary Chancellor of the province wrote to the “C.L.S.” to the effect that China must reform, and on the lines indicated in the Society’s publications, and in the name of the governor and gentry of Hunan invited the Chinese editor to become a professor in the college of the provincial capital.^[73]

The volume on Agricultural Chemistry has been very largely read. Early in 1899 the Viceroy of Nanking and others raised £50,000 for an agricultural college, and invited Mr. Bentley, the author of the book, an American missionary, to be its head. The Viceroy in Central China, Chang-Chih-Tung, whose views on the use of opium I have previously quoted, actually sympathised with the Yangtze anti-foreign riots in 1891, but by 1894 had been so profoundly influenced by the study of Western literature that he sent a large donation to the “C.L.S.,” and has lately published a book in which he strongly advocates the immediate adoption of a modern system of education.

It is not alone among the older men that our literature is producing marked effects here and there, but the literary students in considerable numbers are fired with the desire for Western learning. Fifteen hundred applied for entrance to the new Peking University, of which the learned Rev. W. Martin, author of A Cycle of Cathay, is principal. Occasionally foreign literature produces almost grotesque effects. A Hsien magistrate, having read Dr. Faber’s Civilization, East and West, was much impressed by the chapter on our Western treatment of prisoners, and at once set his own to work at spinning, weaving, and basket-making, to the intense amusement of the retainers of the yamen.

In Sze Chuan I saw few, if any, indications of the awakening 542which undoubtedly exists. A foreign traveller, whether he speak Chinese or not, does not see below the surface, and the province is far away from the centres in which the Western leaven is working most energetically, but in several places where I halted the mandarin sent to inquire if I had any “foreign books?” Kuei-chow is one of the most anti-foreign of the provinces, and it is noteworthy that lately her governor has sent to the “C.L.S.” for 1000 dollars’ worth of Western literature.

I think that there is no doubt that the leaven of Western thought is working surely though slowly among the literary class, and that the reform movement, scotched, but not killed, by the strong measures of the Empress Dowager, grew out of it.

Two causes favour the spread of Western literature; first that the four hundred millions of the empire possess one written language, and second, that there are 200 examination centres in China, and that at each, from 5000 to 10,000 students, the mandarins, lawyers, and leaders of the future, a million in all, are under examination every year. Our best literature, and our Christian literature, supplied to these centres reaches the most influential homes in the country. Mr. Archibald Little, the pioneer of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze, and himself a Chinese scholar, strongly urges the supply of “C.L.S.” literature to all these centres. He considers that the mental revolution now proceeding, and the reform movement, are largely due to the influence of books, and even says that in the circulation of Western literature he sees the great hope for the “Open Door!”

That irresistible forces are beginning to drive China out of her conceit and seclusion is evident. Ten years ago there were only two or three papers in the vernacular besides the official Peking Gazette. To-day there are over seventy, and native journalism is actively developing. Through the press the Young China Party—the creation of Anglo-Chinese schools and foreign influence, chiefly in the ports—gives expression to those feelings of unrest and discontent which its wider outlook on affairs produces. Through it the younger literati, awakened to a new conception of patriotism by contact with Western thought, denounce the ignorance and corruption of the magistracy, and urge as a remedy the introduction of mathematics and political economy into the provincial examinations! The Viceroy, ChangChih-Tung, 543not only founded a paper “which was to engage the sympathies of the literary class in the work of progress and reform, and to interest its readers in questions of international and general importance,”^[74] but made its support compulsory in all the yamens and libraries in the Hu provinces. Its staff is said to be composed of men who combine broad views with classical scholarship, and it is reputed to have great influence with the upper classes, even though the reforming Viceroy has had to withdraw his official support from it.

It is too early to write of the probable influence of the coming railroads. It is easy to take an exaggerated view, but undoubtedly rapid communication is a great foe to darkness and ignorance. Everywhere there are indications of a change in the “classes” which lead the “masses.” There is a Chinese saying, that “if you wish to irrigate a piece of land you must first carry the water to the highest level, so, if you wish to enlighten a nation, you must begin with its leaders.” Very important and valuable inquiries have been made into all subjects connected with trade; but this mental change, which will probably exercise an enormous influence on trade and our relations with China, has been singularly overlooked.

It is perhaps best that there should be no abrupt rupture with the past. The reform edicts, though abrogated, have kindled a flame; and though there may be suspended progress, China can never really go back any more, for the forces which have been set in motion have never yet suffered defeat. “The mills of God grind slowly,” but they grind inexorably. Let us be patient with our ancient ally, and “invite” rather than bully her into “paths of reform.” I fear much that the desperate determination of the European nations to secure her potentialities of trade by fair means or foul, may be driving her to her doom, and that in the clash and turmoil the symptoms of an increasing desire for reform from within—a reform which would slowly give us all we can righteously ask—are being overlooked or ignored.

Into her archaic and unreformed Orientalism the Western leaven has fallen for good or evil. Rudely awakened by the Japanese victories out of her long sleep, China, half dismayed 544and wholly dazed, with much loss of “face,” and shaken confidence in the methods of diplomacy which have served her so well in the past, finds herself confronted by an array of powerful, grasping, ambitious, and not always over-scrupulous powers, bent, it may be, on over-reaching her and each other, ringing with barbarian hands the knell of the customs and polity which are the legacy of Confucius, clamouring for ports and concessions, and bewildering her with reforms, suggestions, and demands, of which she sees neither the expediency nor the necessity.

In this turmoil, and with the European nations thundering at her gates, it is impossible for China to attempt any reforms which would not from the nature of the case be piecemeal and superficial. The reform of an administration like hers needs the prolonged and careful consideration of the best minds in the empire, with such skilled and disinterested foreign advice as was given by Sir Harry Parkes to Japan when she embarked on her new career.

It must be remembered that the remodelling of the administrative system of China is beset with difficulties which have not existed in any other country, and which are accentuated by the vast population and area of the empire. Chinese statesmen (if there be such) have to consider what reforms could be carried out with the approval of the masses, i.e., without bringing about a revolution. The very abuses of administration have gained something of the sanctity which attends on custom among this singular people. It is most important that those who have to deal with Chinese affairs should be able to obtain such information as would enable them to make a just estimate of the strength and probable diffusion of the desire for reform among the literati, at whose feet the masses lie with a genuine reverence.

China is certainly at the dawn of a new era. Whether the twentieth century shall place her where she ought to be, in the van of Oriental nations, or whether it shall witness her disintegration and decay, depends very largely on the statesmanship and influence of Great Britain.

545