THE REPUBLIC IN COLLISION WITH REALITY: TWO TYPICAL INSTANCES OF
"FOREIGN AGGRESSION"
Such, then, were the internal conditions which the new
administration was called upon to face with the death of Yuan
Shih-kai. With very little money in the National Treasury and with
the provinces unable or unwilling to remit to the capital a single
dollar, it was fortunate that at least one public service, erected
under foreign pressure, should be brilliantly justifying its
existence. The Salt Administration, efficiently reorganized in the
space of three years by the great Indian authority, Sir Richard
Dane, was now providing a monthly surplus of nearly five million
dollars; and it was this revenue which kept China alive during a
troubled transitional period when every one was declaring that she
must die. By husbanding this hard cash and mixing it liberally
with paper money, the Central Government has been able since June,
1916, to meet its current obligations and to keep the general
machinery from breaking down.
But in a country such as China new dangers have to be constantly
faced and smoothed away--the interests of the outer world pressing
on the country and conflicting with the native interest at a
myriad points. And in order to illustrate and make clear the sort
of daily exacerbation which the nation must endure because of the
vastness of its territory and the octopus-hold of the foreigner we
give two typical cases of international trouble which have
occurred since Yuan Shih-kai's death. The first is the well-known
Chengchiatun incident which occurred in Manchuria in August, 1916:
the second is the Laohsikai affair which took place in Tientsin in
November of the same year and created a storm of rage against
France throughout North China which, at the moment of writing has
not yet abated.
The facts about the Chengchiatun incident are incredibly simple
and merit being properly told. Chengchiatun is a small Mongol-
Manchurian market-down lying some sixty miles west of the South
Manchurian railway by the ordinary cart-roads, though as the crow
flies the distance is much less. The country round about is "new
country," the prefecture in which Chengchiatun lies being
originally purely Mongol territory on which Chinese squatted in
such numbers that it was necessary to erect the ordinary Chinese
civil administration. Thirty or forty miles due west of the town
cultivation practically ceases; and then nothing meets the eye but
the rolling grasslands of Mongolia, with their sparse encampments
of nomad horsemen and shepherds which stretch so monotonously into
the infinities of High Asia.
The region is strategically important because the trade-routes
converge there from the growing marts of the Taonanfu
administration, which is the extreme westernly limit of Chinese
authority in the Mongolian borderland. A rich exchange in hides,
furs, skins, cattle and foodstuffs has given this frontier-town
from year to year an increasing importance in the eyes of the
Chinese who are fully aware of the dangers of a laissez aller
policy and are determined to protect the rights they have acquired
by pre-emption. The fact that notorious Mongol brigand-chiefs,
such as the famous Babachapu who was allied to the Manchu
Restoration Party and who was said to have been subsidized by the
Japanese Military Party, had been making Chengchiatun one of their
objectives, brought concern early in 1916 to the Moukden Governor,
the energetic General Chang Tso-lin, who in order to cope with the
danger promptly established a military cordon round the district,
with a relatively large reserve based on Chengchiatun, drawn from
the 28th Army Division. A certain amount of desultory fighting
months before any one had heard of the town had given Chengchiatun
the odour of the camp; and when in the summer the Japanese began
military manoeuvres in the district with various scattered
detachments, on the excuse that the South Manchuria railway zone
where they alone had the right under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty
to be, was too cramped for field exercises, it became apparent
that dangerous developments might be expected--particularly as a
body of Japanese infantry was billeted right in the centre of the
town.
On the 13th August a Japanese civilian at Chengchiatun--there is
a small Japanese trading community there--approached a Chinese boy
who was selling fish. On the boy refusing to sell at the price
offered him, the Japanese caught hold of him and started beating
him. A Chinese soldier of the 28th Division who was passing
intervened; and a scuffle commenced in which other Chinese
soldiers joined and which resulted in the Japanese being severely
handled. After the Chinese had left him, the man betook himself to
the nearest Japanese post and reported that he had been grievously
assaulted by Chinese soldiers for no reason whatsoever. A Japanese
gensdarme made a preliminary investigation in company with the
man; then returning to the Japanese barracks, declared that he
could find no one in authority; that his attempts at discovering
the culprits had been resisted; and that he must have help. The
Japanese officer in command, who was a captain, detailed a
lieutenant and twenty men to proceed to the Chinese barracks to
obtain satisfaction from the Chinese Commander--using force if
necessary. It was precisely in this way that the play was set in
motion.
The detachment marched off to the headquarters of the offending
Chinese detachment, which was billeted in a pawnshop, and tried to
force their way past a sentry who stood his ground, into the inner
courtyards. A long parley ensued with lowered bayonets; and at
last on the Chinese soldier absolutely refusing to give way, the
lieutenant gave orders to cut him down. There appears to be no
doubt about these important facts--that is to say, that the act
of war was the deliberate attack by a Japanese armed detachment on
a Chinese sentry who was guarding the quarters of his Commander.
A frightful scene followed. It appears that scattered groups of
Chinese soldiers, some with their arms, and some without, had
collected during this crisis and point-blank firing at once
commenced. The first shots appear to have been fired--though this
was never proved--by a Chinese regimental groom, who was standing
with some horses some distance away in the gateway of some
stabling and who is said to have killed or wounded the largest
number of Japanese. In any case seven Japanese soldiers were
killed outright, five more mortally wounded and four severely so,
the Chinese themselves losing four killed, besides a number of
wounded. The remnant of the Japanese detachment after this rude
reverse managed to retreat with their wounded officer to their own
barracks where the whole detachment barricaded themselves in,
firing for many hours at everything that moved on the roads though
absolutely no attempt was made by the Chinese soldiery to advance
against them.
The sound of this heavy firing, and the wild report that many
Japanese had been killed, had meanwhile spread panic throughout
the town, and there was a general sauve qui pent, a terrible
retribution being feared. The local Magistrate finally restored
some semblance of order; and after dark proceeded in person with
some notables of the town to the Japanese barracks to tender his
regrets and to arrange for the removal of the Japanese corpses
which were lying just as they had fallen, and which Chinese custom
demanded should be decently cared for, though they constituted
important and irrefragible evidence of the armed invasion which
had been practised. The Japanese Commander, instead of meeting
these conciliatory attempts half-way, thereupon illegally arrested
the Magistrate and locked him up, being impelled to this action by
the general fear among his men that a mass attack would be made in
the night by the Chinese troops in garrison and the whole command
wiped out. Nothing, however, occurred and on the 14th instant the
Magistrate was duly released on his sending for his son to take
his place as hostage. On the 16th the Magistrate had successfully
arranged the withdrawal of all Chinese troops five miles outside
the town to prevent further clashes. On the 15th Japanese cavalry
and infantry began to arrive in large numbers from the South
Manchuria railway zone (where they alone have the Treaty right to
be) and the town of Chengchiatun was arbitrarily placed by them in
a state of siege.
Here is the stuff of which the whole incident was made: there is
nothing material beyond the facts stated which illustrate very
glaringly the manner in which a strong Power acts towards a weak
one.
Meanwhile the effect in Tokyo of these happenings had been
electrical. Relying on the well-known Japanese police axiom, that
the man who gets in his story first is the prosecutor and the
accused the guilty party, irrespective of what the evidence may
be, the newspapers all came out with the same account of a
calculated attack by "ferocious Chinese soldiers" on a Japanese
detachment and the general public were asked to believe that a
number of their enlisted nationals had been deliberately and
brutally murdered. It was not, however, until more than a week
after the incident that an official report was published by the
Tokyo Foreign Office, when the following garbled account was
distributed far and wide as the Japanese case:--
"When one Kiyokishy Yoshimoto, aged 27, an employee of a Japanese
apothecary at Chengchiatun, was passing the headquarters of the
Chinese troops on the 13th instant, a Chinese soldier stopped him,
and, with some remarks, which were unintelligible to the Japanese,
suddenly struck him on the head. Yoshimoto became enraged, but was
soon surrounded by a large number of Chinese soldiers and others,
who subjected him to all kind of humiliation. As a result of this
lawlessness on the part of the Chinese, the Japanese sustained
injuries in seven or eight places, but somehow he managed to break
away and reach a Japanese police box, where he applied for help.
On receipt of this news, a policeman, named Kowase, hastened to
the spot, but by the time he arrived there all the offenders had
fled. He therefore repaired to the headquarters of the Chinese to
lay a complaint, but the sentry stopped him, and presented a
pistol at him, and under these circumstances he was obliged to
apply to the Japanese Garrison headquarters, where Captain Inone
instructed Lieutenant Matsuo with twenty men to escort the
policeman to the Chinese headquarters. When the party approached
the Chinese headquarters, Chinese troops began to fire, and the
policemen and others were either killed or wounded. Despite the
fact that the Japanese troops retired, the Chinese troops did not
give up firing, but besieged the Japanese garrison, delivering
several severe attacks. Soon after the fighting ceased, the
Chinese authorities visited the Japanese barracks, and expressed
the desire that the affair be settled amicably. It was the
original intention of the Japanese troops to fight it out, but
they were completely out-numbered, and lest the safety of the
Japanese residents be endangered, they stopped fighting. On
examination of the dead bodies of seven Japanese soldiers, who
were attacked outside the barracks, it was discovered that they
had been all slain by the Chinese troops, the bodies bearing marks
of violence."
Without entering again into the merits of the case, we would ask
those who are acquainted with recent history whether it is likely
that Chinese soldiers, knowing all the pains and penalties
attaching to such action, would deliberately attack a body of
twenty armed Japanese under an officer as the Japanese official
account states? We believe that no impartial tribunal,
investigating the matter on the spot, could fail to point out the
real aggressors and withal lay bare the web of a most amazing
state of affairs. For in order to understand what occurred, on the
13th August, 1916, it is necessary to turn far away from
Chengchiatun and see what lies behind it all.
At the back of the brain of the Japanese Military Party, which by
no means represents the Japanese nation or the Japanese Government
although it exercises a powerful influence on both, is the fixed
idea that South Manchuria and Inner Mongolia must be turned into a
strongly held and fortified Japanese ENCLAVE, if the balance of
power in Eastern Asia is to be maintained. Pursuant to this idea,
Japanese diplomacy was induced many months ago to concentrate its
efforts on winning--if not wringing--from Russia the
strategically important strip of railway south of the Sungari
River, because (and this should be carefully noted) with the
Sungari as the undisputed dividing-line between the Russian and
Japanese spheres in Manchuria, and with Japanese shallow-draft
gun-boats navigating that waterway and entering the Nonni river,
it would be easily possible for Japan to complete a "Continental
quadrilateral" which would include Korea, South Manchuria and
Inner Mongolia, the extreme western barrier of which would be the
new system of Inner Mongolian railways centring round Taonanfu and
terminating at Jehol, for which Japan already holds the building
rights. [Footnote: Russian diplomats now deny that the Japanese
proposals regarding the cession of the railway south of the
Sungari river have ever been formally agreed to.] policing rights
--in the outer zone of this enclave,--with a total exclusion of all
Chinese garrisons, is the preliminary goal towards which the
Japanese Military Party has been long plainly marching; and long
before anybody had heard of Chengchiatun, a scheme of
reconnoitring detachments had been put in force to spy out the
land and form working alliances with the Mongol bands in order to
harass and drive away all the representatives of Chinese
authority. What occurred, then, at Chengchiatun might have taken
place at any one of half-a-dozen other places in this vast and
little-known region whither Japanese detachments have silently
gone; and if Chinese diplomacy in the month of August, 1916, was
faced with a rude surprise, it was only what political students
had long been expecting. For though Japan should be the real
defender of Chinese liberties, it is a fact that in Chinese
affairs Japanese diplomacy has been too long dictated to by the
Military Party in Tokio and attempts nothing save when violence
allows it to tear from China some fresh portion of her
independence.
And here we reach the crux of the matter. One of the little known
peculiarities of the day lies in the fact that Japan is the land
of political inaction because there is no tradition of action save
that which has been built up by the military and naval chiefs
since the Chinese war of 1894-95. Having only visualized the world
in international terms during two short decades, there has been no
time for a proper tradition to be created by the civil government
of Japan; and because there is no such tradition, the island
empire of the East has no true foreign policy and is at the mercy
of manufactured crises, being too often committed to petty
adventures which really range her on the side of those in Europe
the Allies have set themselves to destroy. It is for this reason
that the Chinese are consistently treated as though they were
hewers of wood and drawers of water, helots who are occasionally
flattered in the columns of the daily press and yet are secretly
looked upon as men who have been born merely to be cuffed and
conquered. The Moukden Governor, General Chang Tso-ling,
discussing the Chengchiatun affair with the writer, put the matter
in a nutshell. Striking the table he exclaimed: "After all we are
not made of wood like this, we too are flesh and blood and must
defend our own people. A dozen times I have said, 'Let them come
and take Manchuria openly if they dare, but let them cease their
childish intrigues.' Why do they not do so? Because they are not
sure they can swallow us--not at all sure. Do you understand? We
are weak, we are stupid, we are divided, but we are innumerable,
and in the end, if they persist, China will burst the Japanese
stomach."
Such passionate periods are all very well, but when it comes to
the sober business of the council chamber it is a regrettable fact
that Chinese, although foreign friends implore them to do so, do
not properly use the many weapons in their armoury. Thus in this
particular case, instead of at once hurrying to Chengchiatun some
of the many foreign advisers who sit kicking their heels in Peking
from one end of the year to the other and who number competent
jurisconsults, China did next to nothing. No proper report was
drawn up on the spot; sworn statements were not gathered, nor were
witnesses brought to Peking; and it therefore happened that when
Japan filed her demands for redress, China had not in her
possession anything save an utterly inadequate defence. Mainly
because of this she was forced to agree to foregoing any direct
discussion of the rights and wrongs of the case, proceeding
directly to negotiations based on the various claims which Japan
filed and which were as follows:--
1. Punishment of the General commanding the 28th Division.
2. The dismissal of officers at Chengchiatun responsible for the
occurrence as well as the severe punishment of those who took
direct part in the fracas.
3. Proclamations to be posted ordering all Chinese soldiers and
civilians in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia to refrain
from any act calculated to provoke a breach of the peace with
Japanese soldiers or civilians.
4. China to agree to the stationing of Japanese police officers in
places in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia where their
presence was considered necessary for the protection of Japanese
subjects. China also to agree to the engagement by the officials
of South Manchuria of Japanese police advisers.
And in addition:--
1. Chinese troops stationed in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner
Mongolia to employ a certain number of Japanese Military officers
as advisers.
2. Chinese Military Cadet schools to employ a certain number of
Japanese Military officers as instructors.
3. The Military Governor of Moukden to proceed personally to Port
Arthur to the Japanese Military Governor of Kwantung to apologize
for the occurrence and to tender similar personal apologies to the
Japanese Consul General in Moukden.
4. Adequate compensation to be paid by China to the Japanese
sufferers and to the families of those killed.
The merest tyro will see at once that so far from caring very much
about the killing of her soldiery, Japan was bent on utilizing the
opportunity to gain a certain number of new rights and privileges
in the zone of Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia--
notably an extension of her police and military-supervision
rights. In spite, however, of the faulty procedure to which she
had consented, China showed considerable tenacity in the course of
negotiations which lasted nearly half a year, and by the end of
January, 1917, had whittled down the question of Japanese
compensation to fairly meagre proportions. To be precise the two
governments agreed to embody by the exchange of Notes the five
following stipulations:
1. The General commanding the 28th Division to be reprimanded.
2. Officers responsible to be punished according to law. If the
law provides for severe punishment, such punishment will be
inflicted.
3. Proclamations to be issued enjoining Chinese soldiers and
civilians in the districts where there is mixed residence to
accord considerate treatment to Japanese soldiers and civilians.
4. The Military Governor of Moukden to send a representative to
Port Arthur to convey his regret when the Military Governor of
Kwantung and Japanese Consul General at Moukden are there
together,
5. A solatium of $500 (Five Hundred Dollars) to be given to the
Japanese merchant Yoshimoto.
But though the incident was thus nominally closed, and amicable
relations restored, the most important point--the question of
Japanese police-rights in Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner
Mongolia--was left precisely where it had been before, the most
vigorous Chinese protests not having induced Japan to abate in the
slightest her pretensions. During previous years a number of
Japanese police-stations and police-boxes had been established in
defiance of the local authorities in these regions, and although
China in these negotiations recorded her strongest possible
objection to their presence as being the principal cause of the
continual friction between Chinese and Japanese, Japan refused to
withdraw from her contention that they did not constitute any
extension of the principle of extraterritoriality, and that indeed
Japanese police, distributed at such points as the Japanese
consular authorities considered necessary, must be permanently
accepted. Here then is a matter which will require careful
consideration when the Powers meet to revise their Chinese
Treaties as they must revise them after the world-war; for Japan
in Manchuria is fundamentally in no different a position from
England in the Yangtsze Valley and what applies to one must apply
to the other. The new Chinese police which are being distributed
in ever greater numbers throughout China form an admirable force
and are superior to Japanese police in the performance of nearly
all their duties. It is monstrous that Japan, as well as other
Powers, should act in such a reprehensible manner when the Chinese
administration is doing all it can to provide efficient guardians
of the peace.
The second case was one in which French officialdom by a curious
act of folly gravely alienated Chinese sympathies and gave a
powerful weapon to the German propaganda in China at the end of
1916. The Lao-hsi-kai dispute, which involved a bare 333 acres of
land in Tientsin, has now taken its place beside the Chengchiatun
affair, and has become a leading case in that great dossier of
griefs which many Chinese declare make up the corpus of Euro-
Chinese relations. Here again the facts are absolutely simple and
absolutely undisputed. In 1902 the French consular authorities in
Tientsin filed a request to have their Concession extended on the
ground that they were becoming cramped. The Chinese authorities,
although not wishing to grant the request and indeed ignoring it
for a long time, were finally induced to begin fitful
negotiations; and in October, 1916, after having passed through
various processes of alteration, reduction, and re-statement
during the interval of fourteen years, the issue had been so fined
down that a virtual agreement regarding the administration of the
new area had been reached--an agreement which the Peking
Government was prepared to put into force subject to one
reasonable stipulation, that the local opposition to the new grant
of territory which was very real, as Chinese feel passionately on
the subject of the police-control of their land-acreage, was first
overcome. The whole essence or soul of the disputes lay therein:
that the lords of the soil, the people of China, and in this case
more particularly the population of Tientsin, should accept the
decision arrived at which was that a joint Franco-Chinese
administration be established under a Chinese Chairman.
When the terms of this proposed agreement were communicated to the
Tientsin Consulate by the French Legation the arrangement did not
please the French Consul-General, who was under transfer to
Shanghai and who proposed to settle the case to the satisfaction
of his nationals before he left. There is absolutely no dispute
about this fact either--namely that the main pre-occupation of a
consular officer, charged primarily under the Treaties with the
simple preservation of law and order among his nationals, was the
closing-up of a vexatious outstanding case, by force if necessary,
before he handed over his office to his successor. It was with
this idea that an ultimatum was drawn up by the French Consul
General and, having been weakly approved by the French Legation,
was handed to the Chinese local authorities. It gave them a time-
limit of twenty-four hours in which to effect the complete police
evacuation of the coveted strip of territory on the ground that
the delay in the signature of a formal Protocol had been wilful
and deliberate and had closed the door to further negotiations;
and as no response came at the end of the time-limit, an open
invasion of Chinese territory was practised by an armed French
detachment; nine uniformed Chinese constables on duty being
forcibly removed and locked up in French barracks and French
sentries posted on the disputed boundary.
The result of this misguided action was an enormous Chinese outcry
and the beginning of a boycott of the French in North China,--and
this in the middle of a war when France has acted with inspiring
nobility. Some 2,000 native police, servants and employes promptly
deserted the French Concession en masse; popular unions were
formed to keep alive resentment; and although in the end the
arrested police were set at liberty, the friendly intervention of
the Allies proved unable to effect a settlement of the case which
at the moment of writing remains precisely where it was a year
ago. [Footnote: A further illustration of the action of French
diplomacy in China has just been provided (April, 1917) in the
protest lodged by France against the building of a railway in
Kwangsi Province by American engineers with American capital,--
France claiming exclusive rights in Kwangsi by virtue of a letter
sent by the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs to the French
Legation in 1914 as settlement for a frontier dispute in that
year. The text of the letter is as follows:
"The dispute that rose in consequence of the disturbance at the
border of Annam and Kwangsi has been examined into by the Joint
Committee detailed by both parties concerned, and a conclusion has
been reached to the effect that all matters relating to the
solution of the case would be carried out in accordance with the
request of Your Excellency.
"In order to demonstrate the especially good friendly relations
existing between the two countries, the Republican Government
assures Your Excellency that in case a railway construction or a
mining enterprise being undertaken in Kwangsi Province in the
future, for which foreign capital is required, France would first
be consulted for a loan of the necessary capital. On such an
occasion, the Governor of Kwangsi will directly negotiate with a
French syndicate and report to the Government." It is high time
that the United States raises the whole question of the open door
in China again, and refuses to tolerate any longer the old
disruptive and dog-in-the-manger policy of the Powers. America is
now happily in a position to inaugurate a new era in the Far East
as in the Far West and to stop exploitation.]
Here you have the matter of foreign interests in China explained
in the sense that they appear to Chinese. It is not too much to
say that this illustration of the deliberate lawlessness, which
has too often been practised in the past by consuls who are simply
Justices of the Peace, would be incredible elsewhere; and yet it
is this lawlessness which has come to be accepted as part and
parcel of what is called "policy" in China because in the fifty
years preceding the establishment of the Republic a weak and
effeminate mandarinate consistently sought safety in surrenders.
It is this lawlessness which must at all costs be suppressed if we
are to have a happy future. The Chinese people have so far
contented themselves by pacific retaliation and have not exploded
into rage; but those who see in the gospel of boycott an ugly
manifestation of what lies slumbering should give thanks nightly
that they live in a land where reason is so supreme. Think of what
might not happen in China if the people were not wholly
reasonable! Throughout the length and breadth of the land you have
small communities of foreigners, mere drops in a mighty ocean of
four hundred millions, living absolutely secure although
absolutely at the mercy of their huge swarms of neighbours. All
such foreigners--or nearly all--have come to China for purposes of
profit; they depend for their livelihood on co-operation with the
Chinese; and once that co-operation ceases they might as well be
dead and buried for all the good residence will do them. In such
circumstances it would be reasonable to suppose that a certain
decency would inspire their attitude, and that a policy of give-
and-take would always be sedulously practised; and we are happy to
say that there is more of this than there used to be. It is only
when incidents such as the Chengchiatun and Laihsikai affairs
occur that the placid population is stirred to action. Even then,
instead of turning and rending the many little defenceless
communities--as European mobs would certainly do--they simply
confine themselves to boycotting the offenders and hoping that
this evidence of their displeasure will finally induce the world
to believe that they are determined to get reasonable treatment.
The Chinese as a people may be very irritating in the slowness
with which they do certain things--though they are as quick in
business as the quickest Anglo-Saxon--but that is no excuse why
men who call themselves superior should treat them with contempt.
The Chinese are the first to acknowledge that it will take them a
generation at least to modernize effectively their country and
their government; but they believe that having erected a Republic
and having declared themselves as disciples of the West they are
justified in expecting the same treatment and consideration which
are to be given after the war even to the smallest and weakest
nations of Europe.