THE CHINESE CHARACTER
There is a theory among Occidentals that the Chinaman is inscrutable,
full of secret thoughts, and impossible for us to understand. It may be
that a greater experience of China would have brought me to share this
opinion; but I could see nothing to support it during the time when I
was working in that country. I talked to the Chinese as I should have
talked to English people, and they answered me much as English people
would have answered a Chinese whom they considered educated and not
wholly unintelligent. I do not believe in the myth of the "Subtle
Oriental": I am convinced that in a game of mutual deception an
Englishman or American can beat a Chinese nine times out of ten. But as
many comparatively poor Chinese have dealings with rich white men, the
game is often played only on one side. Then, no doubt, the white man is
deceived and swindled; but not more than a Chinese mandarin would be in
London.
One of the most remarkable things about the Chinese is their power of
securing the affection of foreigners. Almost all Europeans like China,
both those who come only as tourists and those who live there for many
years. In spite of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, I can recall hardly a
single Englishman in the Far East who liked the Japanese as well as the
Chinese. Those who have lived long among them tend to acquire their
outlook and their standards. New arrivals are struck by obvious evils:
the beggars, the terrible poverty, the prevalence of disease, the
anarchy and corruption in politics. Every energetic Westerner feels at
first a strong desire to reform these evils, and of course they ought to
be reformed.
But the Chinese, even those who are the victims of preventable
misfortunes, show a vast passive indifference to the excitement of the
foreigners; they wait for it to go off, like the effervescence of
soda-water. And gradually strange hesitations creep into the mind of the
bewildered traveller; after a period of indignation, he begins to doubt
all the maxims he has hitherto accepted without question. Is it really
wise to be always guarding against future misfortune? Is it prudent to
lose all enjoyment of the present through thinking of the disasters that
may come at some future date? Should our lives be passed in building a
mansion that we shall never have leisure to inhabit?
The Chinese answer these questions in the negative, and therefore have
to put up with poverty, disease, and anarchy. But, to compensate for
these evils, they have retained, as industrial nations have not, the
capacity for civilized enjoyment, for leisure and laughter, for pleasure
in sunshine and philosophical discourse. The Chinese, of all classes,
are more laughter-loving than any other race with which I am acquainted;
they find amusement in everything, and a dispute can always be softened
by a joke.
I remember one hot day when a party of us were crossing the hills in
chairs--the way was rough and very steep, the work for the coolies very
severe. At the highest point of our journey, we stopped for ten minutes
to let the men rest. Instantly they all sat in a row, brought out their
pipes, and began to laugh among themselves as if they had not a care in
the world. In any country that had learned the virtue of forethought,
they would have devoted the moments to complaining of the heat, in order
to increase their tip. We, being Europeans, spent the time worrying
whether the automobile would be waiting for us at the right place.
Well-to-do Chinese would have started a discussion as to whether the
universe moves in cycles or progresses by a rectilinear motion; or they
might have set to work to consider whether the truly virtuous man shows
_complete_ self-abnegation, or may, on occasion, consider his own
interest.
One comes across white men occasionally who suffer under the delusion
that China is not a civilized country. Such men have quite forgotten
what constitutes civilization. It is true that there are no trams in
Peking, and that the electric light is poor. It is true that there are
places full of beauty, which Europeans itch to make hideous by digging
up coal. It is true that the educated Chinaman is better at writing
poetry than at remembering the sort of facts which can be looked up in
_Whitaker's Almanac_. A European, in recommending a place of residence,
will tell you that it has a good train service; the best quality he can
conceive in any place is that it should be easy to get away from. But a
Chinaman will tell you nothing about the trains; if you ask, he will
tell you wrong. What he tells you is that there is a palace built by an
ancient emperor, and a retreat in a lake for scholars weary of the
world, founded by a famous poet of the Tang dynasty. It is this outlook
that strikes the Westerner as barbaric.
The Chinese, from the highest to the lowest, have an imperturbable quiet
dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a European education.
They are not self-assertive, either individually or nationally; their
pride is too profound for self-assertion. They admit China's military
weakness in comparison with foreign Powers, but they do not consider
efficiency in homicide the most important quality in a man or a nation.
I think that, at bottom, they almost all believe that China is the
greatest nation in the world, and has the finest civilization. A
Westerner cannot be expected to accept this view, because it is based on
traditions utterly different from his own. But gradually one comes to
feel that it is, at any rate, not an absurd view; that it is, in fact,
the logical outcome of a self-consistent standard of values. The typical
Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his
environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as
delicately as possible. This difference is at the bottom of most of the
contrast between China and the English-speaking world.
We in the West make a fetish of "progress," which is the ethical
camouflage of the desire to be the cause of changes. If we are asked,
for instance, whether machinery has really improved the world, the
question strikes us as foolish: it has brought great changes and
therefore great "progress." What we believe to be a love of progress is
really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power, an enjoyment of the
feeling that by our fiat we can make things different. For the sake of
this pleasure, a young American will work so hard that, by the time he
has acquired his millions, he has become a victim of dyspepsia,
compelled to live on toast and water, and to be a mere spectator of the
feasts that he offers to his guests. But he consoles himself with the
thought that he can control politics, and provoke or prevent wars as may
suit his investments. It is this temperament that makes Western nations
"progressive."
There are, of course, ambitious men in China, but they are less common
than among ourselves. And their ambition takes a different form--not a
better form, but one produced by the preference of enjoyment to power.
It is a natural result of this preference that avarice is a widespread
failing of the Chinese. Money brings the means of enjoyment, therefore
money is passionately desired. With us, money is desired chiefly as a
means to power; politicians, who can acquire power without much money,
are often content to remain poor. In China, the _tuchuns_ (military
governors), who have the real power, almost always use it for the sole
purpose of amassing a fortune. Their object is to escape to Japan at a
suitable moment; with sufficient plunder to enable them to enjoy life
quietly for the rest of their days. The fact that in escaping they lose
power does not trouble them in the least. It is, of course, obvious that
such politicians, who spread devastation only in the provinces committed
to their care, are far less harmful to the world than our own, who ruin
whole continents in order to win an election campaign.
The corruption and anarchy in Chinese politics do much less harm than
one would be inclined to expect. But for the predatory desires of the
Great Powers--especially Japan--the harm would be much less than is
done by our own "efficient" Governments. Nine-tenths of the activities
of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are
performed, the better. In China, where the Government is lazy, corrupt,
and stupid, there is a degree of individual liberty which has been
wholly lost in the rest of the world.
The laws are just as bad as elsewhere; occasionally, under foreign
pressure, a man is imprisoned for Bolshevist propaganda, just as he
might be in England or America. But this is quite exceptional; as a
rule, in practice, there is very little interference with free speech
and a free Press.[96] The individual does not feel obliged to follow the
herd, as he has in Europe since 1914, and in America since 1917. Men
still think for themselves, and are not afraid to announce the
conclusions at which they arrive. Individualism has perished in the
West, but in China it survives, for good as well as for evil.
Self-respect and personal dignity are possible for every coolie in
China, to a degree which is, among ourselves, possible only for a few
leading financiers.
The business of "saving face," which often strikes foreigners in China
as ludicrous, is only the carrying-out of respect for personal dignity
in the sphere of social manners. Everybody has "face," even the humblest
beggar; there are humiliations that you must not inflict upon him, if
you are not to outrage the Chinese ethical code. If you speak to a
Chinaman in a way that transgresses the code, he will laugh, because
your words must be taken as spoken in jest if they are not to constitute
an offence.
Once I thought that the students to whom I was lecturing were not as
industrious as they might be, and I told them so in just the same words
that I should have used to English students in the same circumstances.
But I soon found I was making a mistake. They all laughed uneasily,
which surprised me until I saw the reason. Chinese life, even among the
most modernized, is far more polite than anything to which we are
accustomed. This, of course, interferes with efficiency, and also (what
is more serious) with sincerity and truth in personal relations. If I
were Chinese, I should wish to see it mitigated. But to those who suffer
from the brutalities of the West, Chinese urbanity is very restful.
Whether on the balance it is better or worse than our frankness, I shall
not venture to decide.
The Chinese remind one of the English in their love of compromise and in
their habit of bowing to public opinion. Seldom is a conflict pushed to
its ultimate brutal issue. The treatment of the Manchu Emperor may be
taken as a case in point. When a Western country becomes a Republic, it
is customary to cut off the head of the deposed monarch, or at least to
cause him to fly the country. But the Chinese have left the Emperor his
title, his beautiful palace, his troops of eunuchs, and an income of
several million dollars a year. He is a boy of sixteen, living peaceably
in the Forbidden City. Once, in the course of a civil war, he was
nominally restored to power for a few days; but he was deposed again,
without being in any way punished for the use to which he had been put.
Public opinion is a very real force in China, when it can be roused. It
was, by all accounts, mainly responsible for the downfall of the An Fu
party in the summer of 1920. This party was pro-Japanese and was
accepting loans from Japan. Hatred of Japan is the strongest and most
widespread of political passions in China, and it was stirred up by the
students in fiery orations. The An Fu party had, at first, a great
preponderance of military strength; but their soldiers melted away when
they came to understand the cause for which they were expected to fight.
In the end, the opponents of the An Fu party were able to enter Peking
and change the Government almost without firing a shot.
The same influence of public opinion was decisive in the teachers'
strike, which was on the point of being settled when I left Peking. The
Government, which is always impecunious, owing to corruption, had left
its teachers unpaid for many months. At last they struck to enforce
payment, and went on a peaceful deputation to the Government,
accompanied by many students. There was a clash with the soldiers and
police, and many teachers and students were more or less severely
wounded. This led to a terrific outcry, because the love of education in
China is profound and widespread. The newspapers clamoured for
revolution. The Government had just spent nine million dollars in
corrupt payments to three Tuchuns who had descended upon the capital to
extort blackmail. It could not find any colourable pretext for refusing
the few hundred thousands required by the teachers, and it capitulated
in panic. I do not think there is any Anglo-Saxon country where the
interests of teachers would have roused the same degree of public
feeling.
Nothing astonishes a European more in the Chinese than their patience.
The educated Chinese are well aware of the foreign menace. They realize
acutely what the Japanese have done in Manchuria and Shantung. They are
aware that the English in Hong-Kong are doing their utmost to bring to
naught the Canton attempt to introduce good government in the South.
They know that all the Great Powers, without exception, look with greedy
eyes upon the undeveloped resources of their country, especially its
coal and iron. They have before them the example of Japan, which, by
developing a brutal militarism, a cast-iron discipline, and a new
reactionary religion, has succeeded in holding at bay the fierce lusts
of "civilized" industrialists. Yet they neither copy Japan nor submit
tamely to foreign domination. They think not in decades, but in
centuries. They have been conquered before, first by the Tartars and
then by the Manchus; but in both cases they absorbed their conquerors.
Chinese civilization persisted, unchanged; and after a few generations
the invaders became more Chinese than their subjects.
Manchuria is a rather empty country, with abundant room for
colonization. The Japanese assert that they need colonies for their
surplus population, yet the Chinese immigrants into Manchuria exceed the
Japanese a hundredfold. Whatever may be the temporary political status
of Manchuria, it will remain a part of Chinese civilization, and can be
recovered whenever Japan happens to be in difficulties. The Chinese
derive such strength from their four hundred millions, the toughness of
their national customs, their power of passive resistance, and their
unrivalled national cohesiveness--in spite of the civil wars, which
merely ruffle the surface--that they can afford to despise military
methods, and to wait till the feverish energy of their oppressors shall
have exhausted itself in internecine combats.
China is much less a political entity than a civilization--the only one
that has survived from ancient times. Since the days of Confucius, the
Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires have
perished; but China has persisted through a continuous evolution. There
have been foreign influences--first Buddhism, and now Western science.
But Buddhism did not turn the Chinese into Indians, and Western science
will not turn them into Europeans. I have met men in China who knew as
much of Western learning as any professor among ourselves; yet they had
not been thrown off their balance, or lost touch with their own people.
What is bad in the West--its brutality, its restlessness, its readiness
to oppress the weak, its preoccupation with purely material aims--they
see to be bad, and do not wish to adopt. What is good, especially its
science, they do wish to adopt.
The old indigenous culture of China has become rather dead; its art and
literature are not what they were, and Confucius does not satisfy the
spiritual needs of a modern man, even if he is Chinese. The Chinese who
have had a European or American education realize that a new element, is
needed to vitalize native traditions, and they look to our civilization
to supply it. But they do not wish to construct a civilization just like
ours; and it is precisely in this that the best hope lies. If they are
not goaded into militarism, they may produce a genuinely new
civilization, better than any that we in the West have been able to
create.
So far, I have spoken chiefly of the good sides of the Chinese
character; but of course China, like every other nation, has its bad
sides also. It is disagreeable to me to speak of these, as I experienced
so much courtesy and real kindness from the Chinese, that I should
prefer to say only nice things about them. But for the sake of China, as
well as for the sake of truth, it would be a mistake to conceal what is
less admirable. I will only ask the reader to remember that, on the
balance, I think the Chinese one of the best nations I have come across,
and am prepared to draw up a graver indictment against every one of the
Great Powers. Shortly before I left China, an eminent Chinese writer
pressed me to say what I considered the chief defects of the Chinese.
With some reluctance, I mentioned three: avarice, cowardice and
callousness. Strange to say, my interlocutor, instead of getting angry,
admitted the justice of my criticism, and proceeded to discuss possible
remedies. This is a sample of the intellectual integrity which is one of
China's greatest virtues.
The callousness of the Chinese is bound to strike every Anglo-Saxon.
They have none of that humanitarian impulse which leads us to devote one
per cent. of our energy to mitigating the evils wrought by the other
ninety-nine per cent. For instance, we have been forbidding the
Austrians to join with Germany, to emigrate, or to obtain the raw
materials of industry. Therefore the Viennese have starved, except those
whom it has pleased us to keep alive from philanthropy. The Chinese
would not have had the energy to starve the Viennese, or the
philanthropy to keep some of them alive. While I was in China, millions
were dying of famine; men sold their children into slavery for a few
dollars, and killed them if this sum was unobtainable. Much was done by
white men to relieve the famine, but very little by the Chinese, and
that little vitiated by corruption. It must be said, however, that the
efforts of the white men were more effective in soothing their own
consciences than in helping the Chinese. So long as the present
birth-rate and the present methods of agriculture persist, famines are
bound to occur periodically; and those whom philanthropy keeps alive
through one famine are only too likely to perish in the next.
Famines in China can be permanently cured only by better methods of
agriculture combined with emigration or birth-control on a large scale.
Educated Chinese realize this, and it makes them indifferent to efforts
to keep the present victims alive. A great deal of Chinese callousness
has a similar explanation, and is due to perception of the vastness of
the problems involved. But there remains a residue which cannot be so
explained. If a dog is run over by an automobile and seriously hurt,
nine out of ten passers-by will stop to laugh at the poor brute's howls.
The spectacle of suffering does not of itself rouse any sympathetic pain
in the average Chinaman; in fact, he seems to find it mildly agreeable.
Their history, and their penal code before the revolution of 1911, show
that they are by no means destitute of the impulse of active cruelty;
but of this I did not myself come across any instances. And it must be
said that active cruelty is practised by all the great nations, to an
extent concealed from us only by our hypocrisy.
Cowardice is prima facie a fault of the Chinese; but I am not sure that
they are really lacking in courage. It is true that, in battles between
rival tuchuns, both sides run away, and victory rests with the side that
first discovers the flight of the other. But this proves only that the
Chinese soldier is a rational man. No cause of any importance is
involved, and the armies consist of mere mercenaries. When there is a
serious issue, as, for instance, in the Tai-Ping rebellion, the Chinese
are said to fight well, particularly if they have good officers.
Nevertheless, I do not think that, in comparison with the Anglo-Saxons,
the French, or the Germans, the Chinese can be considered a courageous
people, except in the matter of passive endurance. They will endure
torture, and even death, for motives which men of more pugnacious races
would find insufficient--for example, to conceal the hiding-place of
stolen plunder. In spite of their comparative lack of _active_ courage,
they have less fear of death than we have, as is shown by their
readiness to commit suicide.
Avarice is, I should say, the gravest defect of the Chinese. Life is
hard, and money is not easily obtained. For the sake of money, all
except a very few foreign-educated Chinese will be guilty of corruption.
For the sake of a few pence, almost any coolie will run an imminent risk
of death. The difficulty of combating Japan has arisen mainly from the
fact that hardly any Chinese politician can resist Japanese bribes. I
think this defect is probably due to the fact that, for many ages, an
honest living has been hard to get; in which case it will be lessened as
economic conditions improve. I doubt if it is any worse now in China
than it was in Europe in the eighteenth century. I have not heard of any
Chinese general more corrupt than Marlborough, or of any politician more
corrupt than Cardinal Dubois. It is, therefore, quite likely that
changed industrial conditions will make the Chinese as honest as we
are--which is not saying much.
I have been speaking of the Chinese as they are in ordinary life, when
they appear as men of active and sceptical intelligence, but of somewhat
sluggish passions. There is, however, another side to them: they are
capable of wild excitement, often of a collective kind. I saw little of
this myself, but there can be no doubt of the fact. The Boxer rising was
a case in point, and one which particularly affected Europeans. But
their history is full of more or less analogous disturbances. It is this
element in their character that makes them incalculable, and makes it
impossible even to guess at their future. One can imagine a section of
them becoming fanatically Bolshevist, or anti-Japanese, or Christian, or
devoted to some leader who would ultimately declare himself Emperor. I
suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in spite
of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the world. And
many emperors have lost their thrones through the force of romantic
love, although romantic love is far more despised than it is in the
West.
To sum up the Chinese character is not easy. Much of what strikes the
foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have preserved an ancient
civilization which is not industrial. All this is likely to pass away,
under the pressure of the Japanese, and of European and American
financiers. Their art is already perishing, and being replaced by crude
imitations of second-rate European pictures. Most of the Chinese who
have had a European education are quite incapable of seeing any beauty
in native painting, and merely observe contemptuously that it does not
obey the laws of perspective.
The obvious charm which the tourist finds in China cannot be preserved;
it must perish at the touch of industrialism. But perhaps something may
be preserved, something of the ethical qualities in which China is
supreme, and which the modern world most desperately needs. Among these
qualities I place first the pacific temper, which seeks to settle
disputes on grounds of justice rather than by force. It remains to be
seen whether the West will allow this temper to persist, or will force
it to give place, in self-defence, to a frantic militarism like that to
which Japan has been driven.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 96: This vexes the foreigners, who are attempting to establish
a very severe Press censorship in Shanghai. See "The Shanghai Printed
Matter Bye-Law." Hollington K. Tong, _Review of the Far East,_ April 16,
1922.]