Meanwhile the Manchus were gaining support. Almost all the Mongol

princes voluntarily joined them and took part in the raids into North

China. In 1637 the united Manchus and Mongols conquered Korea. Their

power steadily grew. What the insurgents in China failed to achieve, the

Manchus achieved with the aid of their Chinese advisers: they created a

new military organization, the "Banner Organization". The men fit for

service were distributed among eight "banners", and these banners became

the basis of the Manchu state administration. By this device the

Manchus emerged from the stage of tribal union, just as before them

Turks and other northern peoples had several times abandoned the

traditional authority of a hierarchy of tribal leaders, a system of

ruling families, in favour of the authority, based on efficiency, of

military leaders. At the same time the Manchus set up a central

government with special ministries on the Chinese model. In 1638 the

Manchus appeared before Peking, but they retired once more. Manchu

armies even reached the province of Shantung. They were hampered by the

death at the critical moment of the Manchu ruler Abahai (1626-1643). His

son Fu Lin was not entirely normal and was barely six years old; there

was a regency of princes, the most prominent among them being Prince

Dorgon.

Meanwhile Li Tzu-ch'eng broke through to Peking. The city had a strong

garrison, but owing to the disorganization of the government the

different commanders were working against each other; and the soldiers

had no fighting spirit because they had had no pay for a long time. Thus

the city fell, on April 24th, 1644, and the last Ming emperor killed

himself. A prince was proclaimed emperor; he fled through western and

southern China, continually trying to make a stand, but it was too late;

without the support of the gentry he had no resource, and ultimately, in

1659, he was compelled to flee into Burma.

Thus Li Tzu-ch'eng was now emperor. It should have been his task rapidly

to build up a government, and to take up arms against the other rebels

and against the Manchus. Instead of this he behaved in such a way that

he was unable to gain any support from the existing officials in the

capital; and as there was no one among his former supporters who had any

positive, constructive ideas, just nothing was done.

This, however, improved the chances of all the other aspirants to the

imperial throne. The first to realize this clearly, and also to possess

enough political sagacity to avoid alienating the gentry, was General Wu

San-kui, who was commanding on the Manchu front. He saw that in the

existing conditions in the capital he could easily secure the imperial

throne for himself if only he had enough soldiers. Accordingly he

negotiated with the Manchu Prince Dorgon, formed an alliance with the

Manchus, and with them entered Peking on June 6th, 1644. Li Tzu-ch'eng

quickly looted the city, burned down whatever he could, and fled into

the west, continually pursued by Wu San-kui. In the end he was abandoned

by all his supporters and killed by peasants. The Manchus, however, had

no intention of leaving Wu San-kui in power: they established themselves

in Peking, and Wu became their general.

(C) The Manchu Dynasty (1644-1911)

1 _Installation of Manchus_

The Manchus had gained the mastery over China owing rather to China's

internal situation than to their military superiority. How was it that

the dynasty could endure for so long, although the Manchus were not

numerous, although the first Manchu ruler (Fu Lin, known under the rule

name Shun-chih; 1644-1662) was a psychopathic youth, although there were

princes of the Ming dynasty ruling in South China, and although there

were strong groups of rebels all over the country? The Manchus were

aliens; at that time the national feeling of the Chinese had already

been awakened; aliens were despised. In addition to this, the Manchus

demanded that as a sign of their subjection the Chinese should wear

pigtails and assume Manchurian clothing (law of 1645). Such laws could

not but offend national pride. Moreover, marriages between Manchus and

Chinese were prohibited, and a dual government was set up, with Manchus

always alongside Chinese in every office, the Manchus being of course in

the superior position. The Manchu soldiers were distributed in military

garrisons among the great cities, and were paid state pensions, which

had to be provided by taxation. They were the master race, and had no

need to work. Manchus did not have to attend the difficult state

examinations which the Chinese had to pass in order to gain an

appointment. How was it that in spite of all this the Manchus were able

to establish themselves?

The conquering Manchu generals first went south from eastern China, and

in 1645 captured Nanking, where a Ming prince had ruled. The region

round Nanking was the economic centre of China. Soon the Manchus were in

the adjoining southern provinces, and thus they conquered the whole of

the territory of the landowning gentry, who after the events of the

beginning of the seventeenth century had no longer trusted the Ming

rulers. The Ming prince in Nanking was just as incapable, and surrounded

by just as evil a clique, as the Ming emperors of the past. The gentry

were not inclined to defend him. A considerable section of the gentry

were reduced to utter despair; they had no desire to support the Ming

any longer; in their own interest they could not support the rebel

leaders; and they regarded the Manchus as just a particular sort of

"rebels". Interpreting the refusal of some Sung ministers to serve the

foreign Mongols as an act of loyalty, it was now regarded as shameful to

desert a dynasty when it came to an end and to serve the new ruler, even

if the new regime promised to be better. Many thousands of officials,

scholars, and great landowners committed suicide. Many books, often

really moving and tragic, are filled with the story of their lives. Some

of them tried to form insurgent bands with their peasants and went into

the mountains, but they were unable to maintain themselves there. The

great bulk of the elite soon brought themselves to collaborate with the

conquerors when they were offered tolerable conditions. In the end the

Manchus did not interfere in the ownership of land in central China.

At the time when in Europe Louis XIV was reigning, the Thirty Years War

was coming to an end, and Cromwell was carrying out his reforms in

England, the Manchus conquered the whole of China. Chang Hsien-chung and

Li Tzu-ch'eng were the first to fall; the pirate Coxinga lasted a little

longer and was even able to plunder Nanking in 1659, but in 1661 he had

to retire to Formosa. Wu San-kui, who meanwhile had conquered western

China, saw that the situation was becoming difficult for him. His task

was to drive out the last Ming pretenders for the Manchus. As he had

already been opposed to the Ming in 1644, and as the Ming no longer had

any following among the gentry, he could not suddenly work with them

against the Manchus. He therefore handed over to the Manchus the last

Ming prince, whom the Burmese had delivered up to him in 1661. Wu

San-kui's only possible allies against the Manchus were the gentry. But

in the west, where he was in power, the gentry counted for nothing; they

had in any case been weaker in the west, and they had been decimated by

the insurrection of Chang Hsien-chung. Thus Wu San-kui was compelled to

try to push eastwards, in order to unite with the gentry of the Yangtze

region against the Manchus. The Manchus guessed Wu San-kui's plan, and

in 1673, after every effort at accommodation had failed, open war came.

Wu San-kui made himself emperor, and the Manchus marched against him.

Meanwhile, the Chinese gentry of the Yangtze region had come to terms

with the Manchus, and they gave Wu San-kui no help. He vegetated in the

south-west, a region too poor to maintain an army that could conquer all

China, and too small to enable him to last indefinitely as an

independent power. He was able to hold his own until his death,

although, with the loss of the support of the gentry, he had had no

prospect of final success. Not until 1681 was his successor, his

grandson Wu Shih-fan, defeated. The end of the rule of Wu San-kui and

his successor marked the end of the national governments of China; the

whole country was now under alien domination, for the simple reason that

all the opponents of the Manchus had failed. Only the Manchus were

accredited with the ability to bring order out of the universal

confusion, so that there was clearly no alternative but to put up with

the many insults and humiliations they inflicted--with the result that

the national feeling that had just been aroused died away, except where

it was kept alive in a few secret societies. There will be more to say

about this, once the works which were suppressed by the Manchus are

published.

In the first phase of the Manchu conquest the gentry had refused to

support either the Ming princes or Wu San-kui, or any of the rebels, or

the Manchus themselves. A second phase began about twenty years after

the capture of Peking, when the Manchus won over the gentry by desisting

from any interference with the ownership of land, and by the use of

Manchu troops to clear away the "rebels" who were hostile to the gentry.

A reputable government was then set up in Peking, free from eunuchs and

from all the old cliques; in their place the government looked for

Chinese scholars for its administrative posts. Literati and scholars

streamed into Peking, especially members of the "Academies" that still

existed in secret, men who had been the chief sufferers from the

conditions at the end of the Ming epoch. The young emperor Sheng Tsu

(1663-1722; K'ang-hsi is the name by which his rule was known, not his

name) was keenly interested in Chinese culture and gave privileged

treatment to the scholars of the gentry who came forward. A rapid

recovery quite clearly took place. The disturbances of the years that

had passed had got rid of the worst enemies of the people, the

formidable rival cliques and the individuals lusting for power; the

gentry had become more cautious in their behaviour to the peasants; and

bribery had been largely stamped out. Finally, the empire had been

greatly expanded. All these things helped to stabilize the regime of the

Manchus.

2 _Decline in the eighteenth century_

The improvement continued until the middle of the eighteenth century.

About the time of the French Revolution there began a continuous

decline, slow at first and then gathering speed. The European works on

China offer various reasons for this: the many foreign wars (to which we

shall refer later) of the emperor, known by the name of his ruling

period, Ch'ien-lung, his craze for building, and the irruption of the

Europeans into Chinese trade. In the eighteenth century the court

surrounded itself with great splendour, and countless palaces and other

luxurious buildings were erected, but it must be borne in mind that so

great an empire as the China of that day possessed very considerable

financial strength, and could support this luxury. The wars were

certainly not inexpensive, as they took place along the Russian

frontier and entailed expenditure on the transport of reinforcements and

supplies; the wars against Turkestan and Tibet were carried on with

relatively small forces. This expenditure should not have been beyond

the resources of an ordered budget. Interestingly enough, the period

between 1640 and 1840 belongs to those periods for which almost no

significant work in the field of internal social and economic

developments has been made; Western scholars have been too much

interested in the impact of Western economy and culture or in the

military events. Chinese scholars thus far have shown a prejudice

against the Manchu dynasty and were mainly interested in the study of

anti-Manchu movements and the downfall of the dynasty. On the other

hand, the documentary material for this period is extremely extensive,

and many years of work are necessary to reach any general conclusions

even in one single field. The following remarks should, therefore, be

taken as very tentative and preliminary, and they are, naturally,

fragmentary.

[Illustration: (Chart) POPULATION GROWTH OF CHINA]

[Illustration: 14 Aborigines of South China, of the 'Black Miao' tribe,

at a festival. China-ink drawing of the eighteenth century. _Collection

of the Museum fuer Voelkerkunde, Berlin. No. ID_ 8756, 68.]

[Illustration: 15 Pavilion on the 'Coal Hill' at Peking, in which the

last Ming emperor committed suicide. _Photo Eberhard_.]

The decline of the Manchu dynasty began at a time when the European

trade was still insignificant, and not as late as after 1842, when China

had had to submit to the foreign Capitulations. These cannot have been

the true cause of the decline. Above all, the decline was not so

noticeable in the state of the Exchequer as in a general impoverishment

of China. The number of really wealthy persons among the gentry

diminished, but the middle class, that is to say the people who had

education but little or no money and property, grew steadily in number.

One of the deeper reasons for the decline of the Manchu dynasty seems to

lie in the enormous increase in the population. Here are a few Chinese

statistics:

_Year_ _Population_

1578 (before the Manchus) 10,621,463 families or 60,692,856 individuals

1662 19,203,233 families 100,000,000 individuals *

1710 23,311,236 families 116,000,000 individuals *

1729 25,480,498 families 127,000,000 individuals *

1741 143,411,559 individuals

1754 184,504,493 individuals

1778 242,965,618 individuals

1796 275,662,414 individuals

1814 374,601,132 individuals

1850 414,493,899 individuals

(1953) (601,938,035 individuals)

* Approximately

It may be objected that these figures are incorrect and exaggerated.

Undoubtedly they contain errors. But the first figure (for 1578) of some

sixty millions is in close agreement with all other figures of early

times; the figure for 1850 seems high, but cannot be far wrong, for even

after the great T'ai P'ing Rebellion of 1851, which, together with its

after-effects, costs the lives of countless millions, all statisticians

of today estimate the population of China at more than four hundred

millions. If we enter these data together with the census of 1953 into a

chart (see p. 273), a fairly smooth curve emerges; the special features

are that already under the Ming the population was increasing and,

secondly, that the high rate of increase in the population began with

the long period of internal peace since about 1700. From that time

onwards, all China's wars were fought at so great a distance from China

proper that the population was not directly affected. Moreover, in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Manchus saw to the maintenance

of the river dykes, so that the worst inundations were prevented. Thus

there were not so many of the floods which had often cost the lives of

many million people in China; and there were no internal wars, with

their heavy cost in lives.

But while the population increased, the tillage failed to increase in

the needed proportion. I have, unfortunately, no statistics for all

periods; but the general tendency is shown by the following table:

_Date_ _Cultivated area_ mou _per person_

_in_ mou

1578 701,397,600 11.6

1662 531,135,800

1719 663,113,200

1729 878,176,000 6.1

(1953) (1,627,930,000) (2.7)

Six _mou_ are about one acre. In 1578, there were 66 _mou_ land per

family of the total population. This was close to the figures regarded

as ideal by Chinese early economists for the producing family (100

_mou_) considering the fact that about 80 per cent of all families at

that time were producers. By 1729 it was only 35 _mou_ per family, i.e.

the land had to produce almost twice as much as before. We have shown

that the agricultural developments in the Ming time greatly increased

the productivity of the land. This then, obviously resulted in an

increase of population. But by the middle of the eighteenth century,

assuming that production doubled since the sixteenth century, population

pressure was again as heavy as it had been then. And after _c_. 1750,

population pressure continued to build up to the present time.

Internal colonization continued during the Manchu time; there was a

continuous, but slow flow of people into Kwangsi, Kweichou, Yuennan. In

spite of laws which prohibited emigration, Chinese also moved into

South-East Asia. Chinese settlement in Manchuria was allowed only in the

last years of the Manchus. But such internal colonization or emigration

could allevitate the pressure only in some areas, while it continued to

build up in others.

In Europe as well as in Japan, we find a strong population increase; in

Europe at almost the same time as in China. But before population

pressure became too serious in Europe or Japan, industry developed and

absorbed the excess population. Thus, farms did not decrease too much in

size. Too small farms are always and in many ways uneconomical. With the

development of industries, the percentage of farm population decreased.

In China, however, the farm population was still as high as 73.3 per

cent of the total population in 1932 and the percentage rose to 81 per

cent in 1950.

From the middle of the seventeenth century on, commercial activities,

especially along the coast, continued to increase and we find gentry

families who equip sons who were unwilling or not capable to study and

to enter the ranks of the officials, but who were too unruly to sit in

villages and collect the rent from the tenants of the family, with money

to enter business. The newly settled areas of Kwangtung and Kwangsi were

ideal places for them: here they could sell Chinese products to the

native tribes or to the new settlers at high prices. Some of these men

introduced new techniques from the old provinces of China into the

"colonial" areas and set up dye factories, textile factories, etc., in

the new towns of the south. But the greatest stimulus for these

commercial activities was foreign, European trade. American silver which

had flooded Europe in the sixteenth century, began to flow into China

from the beginning of the seventeenth century on. The influx was stopped

not until between 1661 and 1684 when the government again prohibited

coastal shipping and removed coastal settlements into the interior in

order to stop piracy along the coasts of Fukien and independence

movements on Formosa. But even during these twenty-three years, the

price of silver was so low that home production was given up because it

did not pay off. In the eighteenth century, silver again continued to

enter China, while silk and tea were exported. This demand led to a

strong rise in the prices of silk and tea, and benefited the merchants.

When, from the late eighteenth century on, opium began to be imported,

the silver left China again. The merchants profited this time from the

opium trade, but farmers had to suffer: the price of silver went up, and

taxes had to be paid in silver, while farm products were sold for

copper. By 1835, the ounce of silver had a value of 2,000 copper coins

instead of one thousand before 1800. High gains in commerce prevented

investment in industries, because they would give lower and later

profits than commerce. From the nineteenth century on, more and more

industrial goods were offered by importers which also prevented

industrialization. Finally, the gentry basically remained

anti-industrial and anti-business. They tried to operate necessary

enterprises such as mining, melting, porcelain production as far as

possible as government establishments; but as the operators were

officials, they were not too business-minded and these enterprises did

not develop well. The businessmen certainly had enough capital, but they

invested it in land instead of investing it in industries which could at

any moment be taken away by the government, controlled by the officials

or forced to sell at set prices, and which were always subject to

exploitation by dishonest officials. A businessman felt secure only when

he had invested in land, when he had received an official title upon the

payment of large sums of money, or when he succeeded to push at least

one of his sons into the government bureaucracy. No doubt, in spite of

all this, Chinese business and industry kept on developing in the Manchu

time, but they did not develop at such a speed as to transform the

country from an agrarian into a modern industrial nation.

3 _Expansion in Central Asia; the first State treaty_

The rise of the Manchu dynasty actually began under the K'ang-hsi rule

(1663-1722). The emperor had three tasks. The first was the removal of

the last supporters of the Ming dynasty and of the generals, such as Wu

San-kui, who had tried to make themselves independent. This necessitated

a long series of campaigns, most of them in the south-west or south of

China; these scarcely affected the population of China proper. In 1683

Formosa was occupied and the last of the insurgent army commanders was

defeated. It was shown above that the situation of all these leaders

became hopeless as soon as the Manchus had occupied the rich Yangtze

region and the intelligentsia and the gentry of that region had gone

over to them.

A quite different type of insurgent commander was the Mongol prince

Galdan. He, too, planned to make himself independent of Manchu

overlordship. At first the Mongols had readily supported the Manchus,

when the latter were making raids into China and there was plenty of

booty. Now, however, the Manchus, under the influence of the Chinese

gentry whom they brought, and could not but bring, to their court, were

rapidly becoming Chinese in respect to culture. Even in the time of

K'ang-hsi the Manchus began to forget Manchurian; they brought tutors to

court to teach the young Manchus Chinese. Later even the emperors did

not understand Manchurian! As a result of this process, the Mongols

became alienated from the Manchurians, and the situation began once more

to be the same as at the time of the Ming rulers. Thus Galdan tried to

found an independent Mongol realm, free from Chinese influence.

The Manchus could not permit this, as such a realm would have threatened

the flank of their homeland, Manchuria, and would have attracted those

Manchus who objected to sinification. Between 1690 and 1696 there were

battles, in which the emperor actually took part in person. Galdan was

defeated. In 1715, however, there were new disturbances, this time in

western Mongolia. Tsewang Rabdan, whom the Chinese had made khan of the

Oeloet, rose against the Chinese. The wars that followed, extending far

into Turkestan and also involving its Turkish population together with

the Dzungars, ended with the Chinese conquest of the whole of Mongolia

and of parts of eastern Turkestan. As Tsewang Rabdan had tried to extend

his power as far as Tibet, a campaign was undertaken also into Tibet,

Lhasa was occupied, a new Dalai Lama was installed there as supreme

ruler, and Tibet was made into a protectorate. Since then Tibet has

remained to this day under some form of Chinese colonial rule.

This penetration of the Chinese into Turkestan took place just at the

time when the Russians were enormously expanding their empire in Asia,

and this formed the third problem for the Manchus. In 1650 the Russians

had established a fort by the river Amur. The Manchus regarded the Amur

(which they called the "River of the Black Dragon") as part of their own

territory, and in 1685 they destroyed the Russian settlement. After this

there were negotiations, which culminated in 1689 in the Treaty of

Nerchinsk. This treaty was the first concluded by the Chinese state with

a European power. Jesuit missionaries played a part in the negotiations

as interpreters. Owing to the difficulties of translation the text of

the treaty, in Chinese, Russian, and Manchurian, contained some

obscurities, particulary in regard to the frontier line. Accordingly, in

1727 the Russians asked for a revision of the old treaty. The Chinese

emperor, whose rule name was Yung-cheng, arranged for the negotiations

to be carried on at the frontier, in the town of Kyakhta, in Mongolia,

where after long discussions a new treaty was concluded. Under this

treaty the Russians received permission to set up a legation and a

commercial agency in Peking, and also to maintain a church. This was the

beginning of the foreign Capitulations. From the Chinese point of view

there was nothing special in a facility of this sort. For some fifteen

centuries all the "barbarians" who had to bring tribute had been given

houses in the capital, where their envoys could wait until the emperor

would receive them--usually on New Year's Day. The custom had sprung up

at the reception of the Huns. Moreover, permission had always been given

for envoys to be accompanied by a few merchants, who during the envoy's

stay did a certain amount of business. Furthermore the time had been

when the Uighurs were permitted to set up a temple of their own. At the

time of the permission given to the Russians to set up a "legation", a

similar office was set up (in 1729) for "Uighur" peoples (meaning

Mohammedans), again under the control of an office, called the Office

for Regulation of Barbarians. The Mohammedan office was placed under two

Mohammedan leaders who lived in Peking. The Europeans, however, had

quite different ideas about a "legation", and about the significance of

permission to trade. They regarded this as the opening of diplomatic

relations between states on terms of equality, and the carrying on of

trade as a special privilege, a sort of Capitulation. This reciprocal

misunderstanding produced in the nineteenth century a number of serious

political conflicts. The Europeans charged the Chinese with breach of

treaties, failure to meet their obligations, and other such things,

while the Chinese considered that they had acted with perfect

correctness.

4 _Culture_

In this K'ang-hsi period culture began to flourish again. The emperor

had attracted the gentry, and so the intelligentsia, to his court

because his uneducated Manchus could not alone have administered the

enormous empire; and he showed great interest in Chinese culture,

himself delved deeply into it, and had many works compiled, especially

works of an encyclopaedic character. The encyclopaedias enabled

information to be rapidly gained on all sorts of subjects, and thus were

just what an interested ruler needed, especially when, as a foreigner,

he was not in a position to gain really thorough instruction in things

Chinese. The Chinese encyclopaedias of the seventeenth and especially of

the eighteenth century were thus the outcome of the initiative of the

Manchurian emperor, and were compiled for his information; they were not

due, like the French encyclopaedias of the eighteenth century, to a

movement for the spread of knowledge among the people. For this latter

purpose the gigantic encyclopaedias of the Manchus, each of which fills

several bookcases, were much too expensive and were printed in much too

limited editions. The compilations began with the great geographical

encyclopaedia of Ku Yen-wu (1613-1682), and attained their climax in the

gigantic eighteenth-century encyclopaedia _T'u-shu chi-ch'eng,_

scientifically impeccable in the accuracy of its references to sources.

Here were already the beginnings of the "Archaeological School", built

up in the course of the eighteenth century. This school was usually

called "Han school" because the adherents went back to the commentaries

of the classical texts written in Han time and discarded the orthodox

explanations of Chu Hsi's school of Sung time. Later, its most prominent

leader was Tai Chen (1723-1777). Tai was greatly interested in

technology and science; he can be regarded as the first philosopher who

exhibited an empirical, scientific way of thinking. Late nineteenth and

early twentieth century Chinese scholarship is greatly obliged to him.

The most famous literary works of the Manchu epoch belong once more to

the field which Chinese do not regard as that of true literature--the

novel, the short story, and the drama. Poetry did exist, but it kept to

the old paths and had few fresh ideas. All the various forms of the Sung

period were made use of. The essayists, too, offered nothing new, though

their number was legion. One of the best known is Yuean Mei (1716-1797),

who was also the author of the collection of short stories _Tse-pu-yue_

("The Master did not tell"), which is regarded very highly by the

Chinese. The volume of short stories entitled _Liao-chai chich-i_, by

P'u Sung-lin (1640-1715?), is world-famous and has been translated into

every civilized language. Both collections are distinguished by their

simple but elegant style. The short story was popular among the greater

gentry; it abandoned the popular style it had had in the Ming epoch, and

adopted the polished language of scholars.

The Manchu epoch has left to us what is by general consent the finest

novel in Chinese literature, _Hung-lou-meng_ ("The Dream of the Red

Chamber"), by Ts'ao Hsueeh-ch'in, who died in 1763. It describes the

downfall of a rich and powerful family from the highest rank of the

gentry, and the decadent son's love of a young and emotional lady of the

highest circles. The story is clothed in a mystical garb that does

something to soften its tragic ending. The interesting novel _Ju-lin

wai-shih_ ("Private Reports from the Life of Scholars"), by Wu Ching-tzu

(1701-1754), is a mordant criticism of Confucianism with its rigid

formalism, of the social system, and of the examination system. Social

criticism is the theme of many novels. The most modern in spirit of the

works of this period is perhaps the treatment of feminism in the novel

_Ching-hua-yuean_, by Li Yu-chen (d. 1830), which demanded equal rights

for men and women.

The drama developed quickly in the Manchu epoch, particularly in

quantity, especially since the emperors greatly appreciated the theatre.

A catalogue of plays compiled in 1781 contains 1,013 titles! Some of

these dramas were of unprecedented length. One of them was played in 26

parts containing 240 acts; a performance took two years to complete!

Probably the finest dramas of the Manchu epoch are those of Li Yue (born

1611), who also became the first of the Chinese dramatic critics. What

he had to say about the art of the theatre, and about aesthetics in

general, is still worth reading.

About the middle of the nineteenth century the influence of Europe

became more and more marked. Translation began with Yen Fu (1853-1921),

who translated the first philosophical and scientific books and books on

social questions and made his compatriots acquainted with Western

thought. At the same time Lin Shu (1852-1924) translated the first

Western short stories and novels. With these two began the new style,

which was soon elaborated by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, a collaborator of Sun

Yat-sen's, and by others, and which ultimately produced the "literary

revolution" of 1917. Translation has continued to this day; almost every

book of outstanding importance in world literature is translated within

a few months of its appearance, and on the average these translations

are of a fairly high level.

Particularly fine work was produced in the field of porcelain in the

Manchu epoch. In 1680 the famous kilns in the province of Kiangsi were

reopened, and porcelain that is among the most artistically perfect in

the world was fired in them. Among the new colours were especially green

shades (one group is known as _famille verte_), and also black and

yellow compositions. Monochrome porcelain also developed further,

including very fine dark blue, brilliant red (called "ox-blood"), and

white. In the eighteenth century, however, there began an unmistakable

decline, which has continued to this day, although there are still a few

craftsmen and a few kilns that produce outstanding work (usually

attempts to imitate old models), often in small factories.

In painting, European influence soon shows itself. The best-known

example of this is Lang Shih-ning, an Italian missionary whose original

name was Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766); he began to work in China in

1715. He learned the Chinese method of painting, but introduced a number

of technical tricks of European painters, which were adopted in general

practice in China, especially by the official court painters: the

painting of the scholars who lived in seclusion remained uninfluenced.

Dutch flower-painting also had some influence in China as early as the

eighteenth century.

The missionaries played an important part at court. The first Manchu

emperors were as generous in this matter as the Mongols had been, and

allowed the foreigners to work in peace. They showed special interest in

the European science introduced by the missionaries; they had less

sympathy for their religious message. The missionaries, for their part,

sent to Europe enthusiastic accounts of the wonderful conditions in

China, and so helped to popularize the idea that was being formed in

Europe of an "enlightened", a constitutional, monarchy. The leaders of

the Enlightenment read these reports with enthusiasm, with the result

that they had an influence on the French Revolution. Confucius was found

particularly attractive, and was regarded as a forerunner of the

Enlightenment. The "Monadism" of the philosopher Leibniz was influenced

by these reports.

The missionaries gained a reputation at court as "scientists", and in

this they were of service both to China and to Europe. The behaviour of

the European merchants who followed the missions, spreading gradually in

growing numbers along the coasts of China, was not by any means so

irreproachable. The Chinese were certainly justified when they declared

that European ships often made landings on the coast and simply looted,

just as the Japanese had done before them. Reports of this came to the

court, and as captured foreigners described themselves as "Christians"

and also seemed to have some connection with the missionaries living at

court, and as disputes had broken out among the missionaries themselves

in connection with papal ecclesiastical policy, in the Yung-cheng period

(1723-1736; the name of the emperor was Shih Tsung) Christianity was

placed under a general ban, being regarded as a secret political

organization.

5 _Relations with the outer world_

During the Yung-cheng period there was long-continued guerrilla fighting

with natives in south-west China. The pressure of population in China

sought an outlet in emigration. More and more Chinese moved into the

south-west, and took the land from the natives, and the fighting was the

consequence of this.

At the beginning of the Ch'ien-lung period (1736-1796), fighting started

again in Turkestan. Mongols, now called Kalmuks, defeated by the

Chinese, had migrated to the Ili region, where after heavy fighting they

gained supremacy over some of the Kazaks and other Turkish peoples

living there and in western Turkestan. Some Kazak tribes went over to

the Russians, and in 1735 the Russian colonialists founded the town of

Orenburg in the western Kazak region. The Kalmuks fought the Chinese

without cessation until, in 1739, they entered into an agreement under

which they ceded half their territory to Manchu China, retaining only

the Ili region. The Kalmuks subsequently reunited with other sections of

the Kazaks against the Chinese. In 1754 peace was again concluded with

China, but it was followed by raids on both sides, so that the Manchus

determined to enter on a great campaign against the Ili region. This

ended with a decisive victory for the Chinese (1755). In the years that

followed, however, the Chinese began to be afraid that the various Kazak

tribes might unite in order to occupy the territory of the Kalmuks,

which was almost unpopulated owing to the mass slaughter of Kalmuks by

the Chinese. Unrest began among the Mohammedans throughout the

neighbouring western Turkestan, and the same Chinese generals who had

fought the Kalmuks marched into Turkestan and captured the Mohammedan

city states of Uch, Kashgar, and Yarkand.

The reinforcements for these campaigns, and for the garrisons which in

the following decades were stationed in the Ili region and in the west

of eastern Turkestan, marched along the road from Peking that leads

northward through Mongolia to the far distant Uliassutai and Kobdo. The

cost of transport for one _shih_ (about 66 lb.) amounted to 120 pieces

of silver. In 1781 certain economies were introduced, but between 1781

and 1791 over 30,000 tons, making some 8 tons a day, was transported to

that region. The cost of transport for supplies alone amounted in the

course of time to the not inconsiderable sum of 120,000,000 pieces of

silver. In addition to this there was the cost of the transported goods

and of the pay of soldiers and of the administration. These figures

apply to the period of occupation, of relative peace: during the actual

wars of conquest the expenditure was naturally far higher. Thus these

campaigns, though I do not think they brought actual economic ruin to

China, were nevertheless a costly enterprise, and one which produced

little positive advantage.

In addition to this, these wars brought China into conflict with the

European colonial powers. In the years during which the Chinese armies

were fighting in the Ili region, the Russians were putting out their

feelers in that direction, and the Chinese annals show plainly how the

Russians intervened in the fighting with the Kalmuks and Kazaks. The Ili

region remained thereafter a bone of contention between China and

Russia, until it finally went to Russia, bit by bit, between 1847 and

1881. The Kalmuks and Kazaks played a special part in Russo-Chinese

relations. The Chinese had sent a mission to the Kalmuks farthest west,

by the lower Volga, and had entered into relations with them, as early

as 1714. As Russian pressure on the Volga region continually grew, these

Kalmuks (mainly the Turgut tribe), who had lived there since 1630,

decided to return into Chinese territory (1771). During this enormously

difficult migration, almost entirely through hostile territory, a large

number of the Turgut perished; 85,000, however, reached the Ili region,

where they were settled by the Chinese on the lands of the eastern

Kalmuks, who had been largely exterminated.

In the south, too, the Chinese came into direct touch with the European

powers. In 1757 the English occupied Calcutta, and in 1766 the province

of Bengal. In 1767 a Manchu general, Ming Jui, who had been victorious

in the fighting for eastern Turkestan, marched against Burma, which was

made a dependency once more in 1769. And in 1790-1791 the Chinese

conquered Nepal, south of Tibet, because Nepalese had made two attacks

on Tibet. Thus English and Chinese political interests came here into

contact.

For the Ch'ien-lung period's many wars of conquest there seem to have

been two main reasons. The first was the need for security. The Mongols

had to be overthrown because otherwise the homeland of the Manchus was

menaced; in order to make sure of the suppression of the eastern

Mongols, the western Mongols (Kalmuks) had to be overthrown; to make

them harmless, Turkestan and the Ili region had to be conquered; Tibet

was needed for the security of Turkestan and Mongolia--and so on. Vast

territories, however, were conquered in this process which were of no

economic value, and most of which actually cost a great deal of money

and brought nothing in. They were conquered simply for security. That

advantage had been gained: an aggressor would have to cross great areas

of unproductive territory, with difficult conditions for reinforcements,

before he could actually reach China. In the second place, the Chinese

may actually have noticed the efforts that were being made by the

European powers, especially Russia and England, to divide Asia among

themselves, and accordingly they made sure of their own good share.

6 _Decline; revolts_

The period of Ch'ien-lung is not only that of the greatest expansion of

the Chinese empire, but also that of the greatest prosperity under the

Manchu regime. But there began at the same time to be signs of internal

decline. If we are to fix a particular year for this, perhaps it should

be the year 1774, in which came the first great popular rising, in the

province of Shantung. In 1775 there came another popular rising, in

Honan--that of the "Society of the White Lotus". This society, which had

long existed as a secret organization and had played a part in the Ming

epoch, had been reorganized by a man named Liu Sung. Liu Sung was

captured and was condemned to penal servitude. His followers, however,

regrouped themselves, particularly in the province of Anhui. These

risings had been produced, as always, by excessive oppression of the

people by the government or the governing class. As, however, the anger

of the population was naturally directed also against the idle Manchus

of the cities, who lived on their state pensions, did no work, and

behaved as a ruling class, the government saw in these movements a

nationalist spirit, and took drastic steps against them. The popular

leaders now altered their programme, and acclaimed a supposed descendant

from the Ming dynasty as the future emperor. Government troops caught

the leader of the "White Lotus" agitation, but he succeeded in escaping.

In the regions through which the society had spread, there then began a

sort of Inquisition, of exceptional ferocity. Six provinces were

affected, and in and around the single city of Wuch'ang in four months

more than 20,000 people were beheaded. The cost of the rising to the

government ran into millions. In answer to this oppression, the popular

leaders tightened their organization and marched north-west from the

western provinces of which they had gained control. The rising was

suppressed only by a very big military operation, and not until 1802.

There had been very heavy fighting between 1793 and 1802--just when in

Europe, in the French Revolution, another oppressed population won its

freedom.

The Ch'ien-lung emperor abdicated on New Year's Day, 1795, after ruling

for sixty years. He died in 1799. His successor was Jen Tsung

(1796-1821; reign name: Chia-ch'ing). In the course of his reign the

rising of the "White Lotus" was suppressed, but in 1813 there began a

new rising, this time in North China--again that of a secret

organization, the "Society of Heaven's Law". One of its leaders bribed

some eunuchs, and penetrated with a group of followers into the palace;

he threw himself upon the emperor, who was only saved through the

intervention of his son. At the same time the rising spread in the

provinces. Once more the government succeeded in suppressing it and

capturing the leaders. But the memory of these risings was kept alive

among the Chinese people. For the government failed to realize that the

actual cause of the risings was the general impoverishment, and saw in

them a nationalist movement, thus actually arousing a national

consciousness, stronger than in the Ming epoch, among the middle and

lower classes of the people, together with hatred of the Manchus. They

were held responsible for every evil suffered, regardless of the fact

that similar evils had existed earlier.

7 _European Imperialism in the Far East_

With the Tao-kuang period (1821-1850) began a new period in Chinese

history, which came to an end only in 1911.

In foreign affairs these ninety years were marked by the steadily

growing influence of the Western powers, aimed at turning China into a

colony. Culturally this period was that of the gradual infiltration of

Western civilization into the Far East; it was recognized in China that

it was necessary to learn from the West. In home affairs we see the

collapse of the dynasty and the destruction of the unity of the empire;

of four great civil wars, one almost brought the dynasty to its end.

North and South China, the coastal area and the interior, developed in

different ways.

Great Britain had made several attempts to improve her trade relations

with China, but the mission of 1793 had no success, and that of 1816

also failed. English merchants, like all foreign merchants, were only

permitted to settle in a small area adjoining Canton and at Macao, and

were only permitted to trade with a particular group of monopolists,

known as the "Hong". The Hong had to pay taxes to the state, but they

had a wonderful opportunity of enriching themselves. The Europeans were

entirely at their mercy, for they were not allowed to travel inland, and

they were not allowed to try to negotiate with other merchants, to

secure lower prices by competition.

The Europeans concentrated especially on the purchase of silk and tea;

but what could they import into China? The higher the price of the goods

and the smaller the cargo space involved, the better were the chances of

profit for the merchants. It proved, however, that European woollens or

luxury goods could not be sold; the Chinese would probably have been

glad to buy food, but transport was too expensive to permit profitable

business. Thus a new article was soon discovered--opium, carried from

India to China: the price was high and the cargo space involved was very

small. The Chinese were familiar with opium, and bought it readily.

Accordingly, from 1800 onwards opium became more and more the chief

article of trade, especially for the English, who were able to bring it

conveniently from India. Opium is harmful to the people; the opium trade

resulted in certain groups of merchants being inordinately enriched; a

great deal of Chinese money went abroad. The government became

apprehensive and sent Lin Tse-hsue as its commissioner to Canton. In 1839

he prohibited the opium trade and burned the chests of opium found in

British possession. The British view was that to tolerate the Chinese

action might mean the destruction of British trade in the Far East and

that, on the other hand, it might be possible by active intervention to

compel the Chinese to open other ports to European trade and to shake

off the monopoly of the Canton merchants. In 1840 British ships-of-war

appeared off the south-eastern coast of China and bombarded it. In 1841

the Chinese opened negotiations and dismissed Lin Tse-hsue. As the

Chinese concessions were regarded as inadequate, hostilities continued;

the British entered the Yangtze estuary and threatened Nanking. In this

first armed conflict with the West, China found herself defenceless

owing to her lack of a navy, and it was also found that the European

weapons were far superior to those of the Chinese. In 1842 China was

compelled to capitulate: under the Treaty of Nanking Hong Kong was ceded

to Great Britain, a war indemnity was paid, certain ports were thrown

open to European trade, and the monopoly was brought to an end. A great

deal of opium came, however, into China through smuggling--regrettably,

for the state lost the customs revenue!

This treaty introduced the period of the Capitulations. It contained the

dangerous clause which added most to China's misfortunes--the Most

Favoured Nation clause, providing that if China granted any privilege to

any other state, that privilege should also automatically be granted to

Great Britain. In connection with this treaty it was agreed that the

Chinese customs should be supervised by European consuls; and a trade

treaty was granted. Similar treaties followed in 1844 with France and

the United States. The missionaries returned; until 1860, however, they

were only permitted to work in the treaty ports. Shanghai was thrown

open in 1843, and developed with extraordinary rapidity from a town to a

city of a million and a centre of world-wide importance.

The terms of the Nanking Treaty were not observed by either side; both

evaded them. In order to facilitate the smuggling, the British had

permitted certain Chinese junks to fly the British flag. This also

enabled these vessels to be protected by British ships-of-war from

pirates, which at that time were very numerous off the southern coast

owing to the economic depression. The Chinese, for their part, placed

every possible obstacle in the way of the British. In 1856 the Chinese

held up a ship sailing under the British flag, pulled down its flag, and

arrested the crew on suspicion of smuggling. In connection with this and

other events, Britain decided to go to war. Thus began the "Lorcha War"

of 1857, in which France joined for the sake of the booty to be

expected. Britain had just ended the Crimean War, and was engaged in

heavy fighting against the Moguls in India. Consequently only a small

force of a few thousand men could be landed in China; Canton, however,

was bombarded, and also the forts of Tientsin. There still seemed no

prospect of gaining the desired objectives by negotiation, and in 1860 a

new expedition was fitted out, this time some 20,000 strong. The troops

landed at Tientsin and marched on Peking; the emperor fled to Jehol and

did not return; he died in 1861. The new Treaty of Tientsin (1860)

provided for (a) the opening of further ports to European traders; (b)

the session of Kowloon, the strip of land lying opposite Hong Kong; (c)

the establishment of a British legation in Peking; (d) freedom of

navigation along the Yangtze; (e) permission for British subjects to

purchase land in China; (f) the British to be subject to their own

consular courts and not to the Chinese courts; (g) missionary activity

to be permitted throughout the country. In addition to this, the

commercial treaty was revised, the opium trade was permitted once more,

and a war indemnity was to be paid by China. In the eyes of Europe,

Britain had now succeeded in turning China not actually into a colony,

but at all events into a semi-colony; China must be expected soon to

share the fate of India. China, however, with her very different

conceptions of intercourse between states, did not realize the full

import of these terms; some of them were regarded as concessions on

unimportant points, which there was no harm in granting to the trading

"barbarians", as had been done in the past; some were regarded as simple

injustices, which at a given moment could be swept away by

administrative action.

But the result of this European penetration was that China's balance of

trade was adverse, and became more and more so, as under the commercial

treaties she could neither stop the importation of European goods nor

set a duty on them; and on the other hand she could not compel

foreigners to buy Chinese goods. The efflux of silver brought general

impoverishment to China, widespread financial stringency to the state,

and continuous financial crises and inflation. China had never had much

liquid capital, and she was soon compelled to take up foreign loans in

order to pay her debts. At that time internal loans were out of the

question (the first internal loan was floated in 1894): the population

did not even know what a state loan meant; consequently the loans had to

be issued abroad. This, however, entailed the giving of securities,

generally in the form of economic privileges. Under the Most Favoured

Nation clause, however, these privileges had then to be granted to other

states which had made no loans to China. Clearly a vicious spiral, which

in the end could only bring disaster.

The only exception to the general impoverishment, in which not only the

peasants but the old upper classes were involved, was a certain section

of the trading community and the middle class, which had grown rich

through its dealings with the Europeans. These people now accumulated

capital, became Europeanized with their staffs, acquired land from the

impoverished gentry, and sent their sons abroad to foreign universities.

They founded the first industrial undertakings, and learned European

capitalist methods. This class was, of course, to be found mainly in the

treaty ports in the south and in their environs. The south, as far north

as Shanghai, became more modern and more advanced; the north made no

advance. In the south, European ways of thought were learnt, and Chinese

and European theories were compared. Criticism began. The first

revolutionary societies were formed in this atmosphere in the south.

8 _Risings in Turkestan and within China: the T'ai P'ing Rebellion_

But the emperor Hsuean Tsung (reign name Tao-kuang), a man in poor health

though not without ability, had much graver anxieties than those

caused by the Europeans. He did not yet fully realize the seriousness of

the European peril.

[Illustration: 16 The imperial summer palace of the Manchu rulers, at

Jehol. _Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson._]

[Illustration: 17 Tower on the city wall of Peking. _Photo H.

Hammer-Morris son_.]

In Turkestan, where Turkish Mohammedans lived under Chinese rule,

conditions were far from being as the Chinese desired. The Chinese, a

fundamentally rationalistic people, regarded religion as a purely

political matter, and accordingly required every citizen to take part in

the official form of worship. Subject to that, he might privately belong

to any other religion. To a Mohammedan, this was impossible and

intolerable. The Mohammedans were only ready to practise their own

religion, and absolutely refused to take part in any other. The Chinese

also tried to apply to Turkestan in other matters the same legislation

that applied to all China, but this proved irreconcilable with the

demands made by Islam on its followers. All this produced continual

unrest.

Turkestan had had a feudal system of government with a number of feudal

lords (_beg_), who tried to maintain their influence and who had the

support of the Mohammedan population. The Chinese had come to Turkestan

as soldiers and officials, to administer the country. They regarded

themselves as the lords of the land and occupied themselves with the

extraction of taxes. Most of the officials were also associated with the

Chinese merchants who travelled throughout Turkestan and as far as

Siberia. The conflicts implicit in this situation produced great

Mohammedan risings in the nineteenth century. The first came in

1825-1827; in 1845 a second rising flamed up, and thirty years later

these revolts led to the temporary loss of the whole of Turkestan.

In 1848, native unrest began in the province of Hunan, as a result of

the constantly growing pressure of the Chinese settlers on the native

population; in the same year there was unrest farther south, in the

province of Kwangsi, this time in connection with the influence of the

Europeans. The leader was a quite simple man of Hakka blood, Hung

Hsiu-ch'uean (born 1814), who gathered impoverished Hakka peasants round

him as every peasant leader had done in the past. Very often the nucleus

of these peasant movements had been a secret society with a particular

religious tinge; this time the peasant revolutionaries came forward as

at the same time the preachers of a new religion of their own. Hung had

heard of Christianity from missionaries (1837), and he mixed up

Christian ideas with those of ancient China and proclaimed to his

followers a doctrine that promised the Kingdom of God on earth. He

called himself "Christ's younger brother", and his kingdom was to be

called _T'ai P'ing_ ("Supreme Peace"). He made his first comrades,

charcoal makers, local doctors, peddlers and farmers, into kings, and

made himself emperor. At bottom the movement, like all similar ones

before it, was not religious but social; and it produced a great

response from the peasants. The programme of the T'ai P'ing, in some

points influenced by Christian ideas but more so by traditional Chinese

thought, was in many points revolutionary: (a) all property was communal

property; (b) land was classified into categories according to its

fertility and equally distributed among men and women. Every producer

kept of the produce as much as he and his family needed and delivered

the rest into the communal granary; (c) administration and tax systems

were revised; (d) women were given equal rights: they fought together

with men in the army and had access to official position. They had to

marry, but monogamy was requested; (e) the use of opium, tobacco and

alcohol was prohibited, prostitution was illegal; (f) foreigners were

regarded as equals, capitulations as the Manchus had accepted were not

recognized. A large part of the officials, and particularly of the

soldiers sent against the revolutionaries, were Manchus, and

consequently the movement very soon became a nationalist movement, much

as the popular movement at the end of the Mongol epoch had done. Hung

made rapid progress; in 1852 he captured Hankow, and in 1853 Nanking,

the important centre in the east. With clear political insight he made

Nanking his capital. In this he returned to the old traditions of the

beginning of the Ming epoch, no doubt expecting in this way to attract

support from the eastern Chinese gentry, who had no liking for a capital

far away in the north. He made a parade of adhesion to the ancient

Chinese tradition: his followers cut off their pigtails and allowed

their hair to grow as in the past.

He did not succeed, however, in carrying his reforms from the stage of

sporadic action to a systematic reorganization of the country, and he

also failed to enlist the elements needed for this as for all other

administrative work, so that the good start soon degenerated into a

terrorist regime.

Hung's followers pressed on from Nanking, and in 1853-1855 they advanced

nearly to Tientsin; but they failed to capture Peking itself.

The new T'ai P'ing state faced the Europeans with big problems. Should

they work with it or against it? The T'ai P'ing always insisted that

they were Christians; the missionaries hoped now to have the opportunity

of converting all China to Christianity. The T'ai P'ing treated the

missionaries well but did not let them operate. After long hesitation

and much vacillation, however, the Europeans placed themselves on the

side of the Manchus. Not out of any belief that the T'ai P'ing movement

was without justification, but because they had concluded treaties with

the Manchu government and given loans to it, of which nothing would

have remained if the Manchus had fallen; because they preferred the weak

Manchu government to a strong T'ai P'ing government; and because they

disliked the socialistic element in many of the measured adopted by the

Tai P'ing.

At first it seemed as if the Manchus would be able to cope unaided with

the T'ai P'ing, but the same thing happened as at the end of the Mongol

rule: the imperial armies, consisting of the "banners" of the Manchus,

the Mongols, and some Chinese, had lost their military skill in the long

years of peace; they had lost their old fighting spirit and were glad to

be able to live in peace on their state pensions. Now three men came to

the fore--a Mongol named Seng-ko-lin-ch'in, a man of great personal

bravery, who defended the interests of the Manchu rulers; and two

Chinese, Tseng Kuo-fan (1811-1892) and Li Hung-chang (1823-1901), who

were in the service of the Manchus but used their position simply to

further the interests of the gentry. The Mongol saved Peking from

capture by the T'ai P'ing. The two Chinese were living in central China,

and there they recruited, Li at his own expense and Tseng out of the

resources at his disposal as a provincial governor, a sort of militia,

consisting of peasants out to protect their homes from destruction by

the peasants of the T'ai P'ing. Thus the peasants of central China, all

suffering from impoverishment, were divided into two groups, one

following the T'ai P'ing, the other following Tseng Kuo-fan. Tseng's

army, too, might be described as a "national" army, because Tseng was

not fighting for the interests of the Manchus. Thus the peasants, all

anti-Manchu, could choose between two sides, between the T'ai P'ing and

Tseng Kuo-fan. Although Tseng represented the gentry and was thus

against the simple common people, peasants fought in masses on his side,

for he paid better, and especially more regularly. Tseng, being a good

strategist, won successes and gained adherents. Thus by 1856 the T'ai

P'ing were pressed back on Nanking and some of the towns round it; in

1864 Nanking was captured.

While in the central provinces the T'ai P'ing rebellion was raging,

China was suffering grave setbacks owing to the Lorcha War of 1856; and

there were also great and serious risings in other parts of the country.

In 1855 the Yellow River had changed its course, entering the sea once

more at Tientsin, to the great loss of the regions of Honan and Anhui.

In these two central provinces the peasant rising of the so-called "Nien

Fei" had begun, but it only became formidable after 1855, owing to the

increasing misery of the peasants. This purely peasant revolt was not

suppressed by the Manchu government until 1868, after many collisions.

Then, however, there began the so-called "Mohammedan risings". Here

there are, in all, five movements to distinguish: (1) the Mohammedan

rising in Kansu (1864-5); (2) the Salar movement in Shensi; (3) the

Mohammedan revolt in Yuennan (1855-1873); (4) the rising in Kansu (1895);

(5) the rebellion of Yakub Beg in Turkestan (from 1866 onward).

While we are fairly well informed about the other popular risings of

this period, the Mohammedan revolts have not yet been well studied. We

know from unofficial accounts that these risings were suppressed with

great brutality. To this day there are many Mohammedans in, for

instance, Yuennan, but the revolt there is said to have cost a million

lives. The figures all rest on very rough estimates: in Kansu the

population is said to have fallen from fifteen millions to one million;

the Turkestan revolt is said to have cost ten million lives. There are

no reliable statistics; but it is understandable that at that time the

population of China must have fallen considerably, especially if we bear

in mind the equally ferocious suppression of the risings of the T'ai

P'ing and the Nien Fei within China, and smaller risings of which we

have made no mention.

The Mohammedan risings were not elements of a general Mohammedan revolt,

but separate events only incidentally connected with each other. The

risings had different causes. An important factor was the general

distress in China. This was partly due to the fact that the officials

were exploiting the peasant population more ruthlessly than ever. In

addition to this, owing to the national feeling which had been aroused

in so unfortunate a way, the Chinese felt a revulsion against

non-Chinese, such as the Salars, who were of Turkish race. Here there

were always possibilities of friction, which might have been removed

with a little consideration but which swelled to importance through the

tactless behaviour of Chinese officials. Finally there came divisions

among the Mohammedans of China which led to fighting between themselves.

All these risings were marked by two characteristics. They had no

general political aim such as the founding of a great and universal

Islamic state. Separate states were founded, but they were too small to

endure; they would have needed the protection of great states. But they

were not moved by any pan-Islamic idea. Secondly, they all took place on

Chinese soil, and all the Mohammedans involved, except in the rising of

the Salars, were Chinese. These Chinese who became Mohammedans are

called Dungans. The Dungans are, of course, no longer pure Chinese,

because Chinese who have gone over to Islam readily form mixed

marriages with Islamic non-Chinese, that is to say with Turks and

Mongols.

The revolt, however, of Yakub Beg in Turkestan had a quite different

character. Yakub Beg (his Chinese name was An Chi-yeh) had risen to the

Chinese governorship when he made himself ruler of Kashgar. In 1866 he

began to try to make himself independent of Chinese control. He

conquered Ili, and then in a rapid campaign made himself master of all

Turkestan.

His state had a much better prospect of endurance than the other

Mohammedan states. He had full control of it from 1874. Turkestan was

connected with China only by the few routes that led between the desert

and the Tibetan mountains. The state was supported against China by

Russia, which was continually pressing eastward, and in the south by

Great Britain, which was pressing towards Tibet. Farther west was the

great Ottoman empire; the attempt to gain direct contact with it was not

hopeless in itself, and this was recognized at Istanbul. Missions went

to and fro, and Turkish officers came to Yakub Beg and organized his

army; Yakub Beg recognized the Turkish sultan as Khalif. He also

concluded treaties with Russia and Great Britain. But in spite of all

this he was unable to maintain his hold of Turkestan. In 1877 the famous

Chinese general Tso Tsung-t'ang (1812-1885), who had fought against the

T'ai P'ing and also against the Mohammedans in Kansu, marched into

Turkestan and ended Yakub Beg's rule.

Yakub was defeated, however, not so much by Chinese superiority as by a

combination of circumstances. In order to build up his kingdom he was

compelled to impose heavy taxation, and this made him unpopular with his

own followers: they had had to pay taxes under the Chinese, but the

Chinese collection had been much less rigorous than that of Yakub Beg.

It was technically impossible for the Ottoman empire to give him any

aid, even had its internal situation permitted it. Britain and Russia

would probably have been glad to see a weakening of the Chinese hold

over Turkestan, but they did not want a strong new state there, once

they had found that neither of them could control the country while it

was in Yakub Beg's hands. In 1881 Russia occupied the Ili region,

Yakub's first conquest. In the end the two great powers considered it

better for Turkestan to return officially into the hands of the weakened

China, hoping that in practice they would be able to bring Turkestan

more and more under their control. Consequently, when in 1880, three

years after the removal of Yakub Beg, China sent a mission to Russia

with the request for the return of the Ili region to her, Russia gave

way, and the Treaty of Ili was concluded, ending for the time the

Russian penetration of Turkestan. In 1882 the Manchu government raised

Turkestan to a "new frontier" (Sinkiang) with a special administration.

This process of colonial penetration of Turkestan continued. Until the

end of the first world war there was no fundamental change in the

situation in the country, owing to the rivalry between Great Britain and

Russia. But after 1920 a period began in which Turkestan became almost

independent, under a number of rulers of parts of the country. Then,

from 1928 onward, a more and more thorough penetration by Russia began,

so that by 1940 Turkestan could almost be called a Soviet Republic. The

second world war diverted Russian attention to the West, and at the same

time compelled the Chinese to retreat into the interior from the

Japanese, so that by 1943 the country was more firmly held by the

Chinese government than it had been for seventy years. After the

creation of the People's Democracy mass immigration into Sinkiang began,

in connection with the development of oil fields and of many new

industries in the border area between Sinkiang and China proper. Roads

and air communications opened Sinkiang. Yet, the differences between

immigrant Chinese and local, Muslim Turks, continue to play a role.

9 _Collision with Japan; further Capitulations_

The reign of Wen Tsung (reign name Hsien-feng 1851-1861) was marked

throughout by the T'ai P'ing and other rebellions and by wars with the

Europeans, and that of Mu Tsung (reign name T'ung-chih: 1862-1874) by

the great Mohammedan disturbances. There began also a conflict with

Japan which lasted until 1945. Mu Tsung came to the throne as a child of

five, and never played a part of his own. It had been the general rule

for princes to serve as regents for minors on the imperial throne, but

this time the princes concerned won such notoriety through their

intrigues that the Peking court circles decided to entrust the regency

to two concubines of the late emperor. One of these, called Tzu Hsi

(born 1835), of the Manchu tribe of the Yehe-Nara, quickly gained the

upper hand. The empress Tzu Hsi was one of the strongest personalities

of the later nineteenth century who played an active part in Chinese

political life. She played a more active part than any emperor had

played for many decades.

Meanwhile great changes had taken place in Japan. The restoration of the

Meiji had ended the age of feudalism, at least on the surface. Japan

rapidly became Westernized, and at the same time entered on an

imperialist policy. Her aims from 1868 onward were clear, and remained

unaltered until the end of the second World War: she was to be

surrounded by a wide girdle of territories under Japanese domination, in

order to prevent the approach of any enemy to the Japanese homeland.

This girdle was divided into several zones--(1) the inner zone with the

Kurile Islands, Sakhalin, Korea, the Ryukyu archipelago, and Formosa;

(2) the outer zone with the Marianne, Philippine, and Caroline Islands,

eastern China, Manchuria, and eastern Siberia; (3) the third zone, not

clearly defined, including especially the Netherlands Indies,

Indo-China, and the whole of China, a zone of undefined extent. The

outward form of this subjugated region was to be that of the Greater

Japanese Empire, described as the Imperium of the Yellow Race (the main

ideas were contained in the Tanaka Memorandum 1927 and in the Tada

Interview of 1936). Round Japan, moreover, a girdle was to be created of

producers of raw materials and purchasers of manufactures, to provide

Japanese industry with a market. Japan had sent a delegation of amity to

China as early as 1869, and a first Sino-Japanese treaty was signed in

1871; from then on, Japan began to carry out her imperialistic plans. In

1874 she attacked the Ryukyu islands and Formosa on the pretext that

some Japanese had been murdered there. Under the treaty of 1874 Japan

withdrew once more, only demanding a substantial indemnity; but in 1876,

in violation of the treaty and without a declaration of war, she annexed

the Ryukyu Islands. In 1876 began the Japanese penetration into Korea;

by 1885 she had reached the stage of a declaration that Korea was a

joint sphere of interest of China and Japan; until then China's

protectorate over Korea had been unchallenged. At the same time (1876)

Great Britain had secured further Capitulations in the Chefoo

Convention; in 1862 France had acquired Cochin China, in 1864 Cambodia,

in 1874 Tongking, and in 1883 Annam. This led in 1884 to war between

France and China, in which the French did not by any means gain an

indubitable victory; but the Treaty of Tientsin left them with their

acquisitions.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1875, the young Chinese emperor died of

smallpox, without issue. Under the influence of the two empresses, who

still remained regents, a cousin of the dead emperor, the three-year-old

prince Tsai T'ien was chosen as emperor Te Tsung (reign name Kuang-hsue:

1875-1909). He came of age in 1889 and took over the government of the

country. The empress Tzu Hsi retired, but did not really relinquish the

reins.

In 1894 the Sino-Japanese War broke out over Korea, as an outcome of the

undefined position that had existed since 1885 owing to the

imperialistic policy of the Japanese. China had created a North China

squadron, but this was all that can be regarded as Chinese preparation

for the long-expected war. The Governor General of Chihli (now

Hopei--the province in which Peking is situated), Li Hung-chang, was a

general who had done good service, but he lost the war, and at

Shimonoseki (1895) he had to sign a treaty on very harsh terms, in which

China relinquished her protectorate over Korea and lost Formosa. The

intervention of France, Germany, and Russia compelled Japan to content

herself with these acquisitions, abandoning her demand for South

Manchuria.

10 _Russia in Manchuria_

After the Crimean War, Russia had turned her attention once more to the

East. There had been hostilities with China over eastern Siberia, which

were brought to an end in 1858 by the Treaty of Aigun, under which China

ceded certain territories in northern Manchuria. This made possible the

founding of Vladivostok in 1860. Russia received Sakhalin from Japan in

1875 in exchange for the Kurile Islands. She received from China the

important Port Arthur as a leased territory, and then tried to secure

the whole of South Manchuria. This brought Japan's policy of expansion

into conflict with Russia's plans in the Far East. Russia wanted

Manchuria in order to be able to pursue a policy in the Pacific; but

Japan herself planned to march into Manchuria from Korea, of which she

already had possession. This imperialist rivalry made war inevitable:

Russia lost the war; under the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 Russia gave

Japan the main railway through Manchuria, with adjoining territory. Thus

Manchuria became Japan's sphere of influence and was lost to the Manchus

without their being consulted in any way. The Japanese penetration of

Manchuria then proceeded stage by stage, not without occasional

setbacks, until she had occupied the whole of Manchuria from 1932 to

1945. After the end of the second world war, Manchuria was returned to

China, with certain reservations in favour of the Soviet Union, which

were later revoked.

11 _Reform and reaction: the Boxer Rising_

China had lost the war with Japan because she was entirely without

modern armament. While Japan went to work at once with all her energy to

emulate Western industrialization, the ruling class in China had shown a

marked repugnance to any modernization; and the centre of this

conservatism was the dowager empress Tzu Hsi. She was a woman of strong

personality, but too uneducated--in the modern sense--to be able to

realize that modernization was an absolute necessity for China if it was

to remain an independent state. The empress failed to realize that the

Europeans were fundamentally different from the neighbouring tribes or

the pirates of the past; she had not the capacity to acquire a general

grasp of the realities of world politics. She felt instinctively that

Europeanization would wreck the foundations of the power of the Manchus

and the gentry, and would bring another class, the middle class and the

merchants, into power.

There were reasonable men, however, who had seen the necessity of

reform--especially Li Hung-chang, who has already been mentioned. In

1896 he went on a mission to Moscow, and then toured Europe. The

reformers were, however, divided into two groups. One group advocated

the acquisition of a certain amount of technical knowledge from abroad

and its introduction by slow reforms, without altering the social

structure of the state or the composition of the government. The others

held that the state needed fundamental changes, and that superficial

loans from Europe were not enough. The failure in the war with Japan

made the general desire for reform more and more insistent not only in

the country but in Peking. Until now Japan had been despised as a

barbarian state; now Japan had won! The Europeans had been despised; now

they were all cutting bits out of China for themselves, extracting from

the government one privilege after another, and quite openly dividing

China into "spheres of interest", obviously as the prelude to annexation

of the whole country.

In Europe at that time the question was being discussed over and over

again, why Japan had so quickly succeeded in making herself a modern

power, and why China was not succeeding in doing so; the Japanese were

praised for their capacity and the Chinese blamed for their lassitude.

Both in Europe and in Chinese circles it was overlooked that there were

fundamental differences in the social structures of the two countries.

The basis of the modern capitalist states of the West is the middle

class. Japan had for centuries had a middle class (the merchants) that

had entered into a symbiosis with the feudal lords. For the middle class

the transition to modern capitalism, and for the feudal lords the way to

Western imperialism, was easy. In China there was only a weak middle

class, vegetating under the dominance of the gentry; the middle class

had still to gain the strength to liberate itself before it could become

the support for a capitalistic state. And the gentry were still strong

enough to maintain their dominance and so to prevent a radical

reconstruction; all they would agree to were a few reforms from which

they might hope to secure an increase of power for their own ends.

In 1895 and in 1898 a scholar, K'ang Yo-wei, who was admitted into the

presence of the emperor, submitted to him memoranda in which he called

for radical reform. K'ang was a scholar who belonged to the empiricist

school of philosophy of the early Manchu period, the so-called Han

school. He was a man of strong and persuasive personality, and had such

an influence on the emperor that in 1898 the emperor issued several

edicts ordering the fundamental reorganization of education, law, trade,

communications, and the army. These laws were not at all bad in

themselves; they would have paved the way for a liberalization of

Chinese society. But they aroused the utmost hatred in the conservative

gentry and also in the moderate reformers among the gentry. K'ang Yo-wei

and his followers, to whom a number of well-known modern scholars

belonged, had strong support in South China. We have already mentioned

that owing to the increased penetration of European goods and ideas,

South China had become more progressive than the north; this had added

to the tension already existing for other reasons between north and

south. In foreign policy the north was more favourable to Russia and

radically opposed to Japan and Great Britain; the south was in favour of

co-operation with Britain and Japan, in order to learn from those two

states how reform could be carried through. In the north the men of the

south were suspected of being anti-Manchu and revolutionary in feeling.

This was to some extent true, though K'ang Yo-wei and his friends were

as yet largely unconscious of it.

When the empress Tzu Hsi saw that the emperor was actually thinking

about reforms, she went to work with lightning speed. Very soon the

reformers had to flee; those who failed to make good their escape were

arrested and executed. The emperor was made a prisoner in a palace near

Peking, and remained a captive until his death; the empress resumed her

regency on his behalf. The period of reforms lasted only for a few

months of 1898. A leading part in the extermination of the reformers was

played by troops from Kansu under the command of a Mohammedan, Tung

Fu-hsiang. General Yuean Shih-k'ai, who was then stationed at Tientsin in

command of 7,000 troops with modern equipment, the only ones in China,

could have removed the empress and protected the reformers; but he was

already pursuing a personal policy, and thought it safer to give the

reformers no help.

There now began, from 1898, a thoroughly reactionary rule of the dowager

empress. But China's general situation permitted no breathing-space. In

1900 came the so-called Boxer Rising, a new popular movement against the

gentry and the Manchus similar to the many that had preceded it. The

Peking government succeeded, however, in negotiations that brought the

movement into the service of the government and directed it against the

foreigners. This removed the danger to the government and at the same

time helped it against the hated foreigners. But incidents resulted

which the Peking government had not anticipated. An international army

was sent to China, and marched from Tientsin against Peking, to liberate

the besieged European legations and to punish the government. The

Europeans captured Peking (1900); the dowager empress and her prisoner,

the emperor, had to flee; some of the palaces were looted. The peace

treaty that followed exacted further concessions from China to the

Europeans and enormous war indemnities, the payment of which continued

into the 1940's, though most of the states placed the money at China's

disposal for educational purposes. When in 1902 the dowager empress

returned to Peking and put the emperor back into his palace-prison, she

was forced by what had happened to realize that at all events a certain

measure of reform was necessary. The reforms, however, which she

decreed, mainly in 1904, were very modest and were never fully carried

out. They were only intended to make an impression on the outer world

and to appease the continually growing body of supporters of the reform

party, especially numerous in South China. The south remained,

nevertheless, a focus of hostility to the Manchus. After his failure in

1898, K'ang Yo-wei went to Europe, and no longer played any important

political part. His place was soon taken by a young Chinese physician

who had been living abroad, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), who turned the

reform party into a middle-class revolutionary party.

12 _End of the dynasty_

Meanwhile the dowager empress held her own. General Yuean Shih-k'ai, who

had played so dubious a part in 1898, was not impeccably loyal to her,

and remained unreliable. He was beyond challenge the strongest man in

the country, for he possessed the only modern army; but he was still

biding his time.

In 1908 the dowager empress fell ill; she was seventy-four years old.

When she felt that her end was near, she seems to have had the captive

emperor Te Tsung assassinated (at 5 p.m. on November 14th); she herself

died next day (November 15th, 2 p.m.): she was evidently determined that

this man, whom she had ill-treated and oppressed all his life, should

not regain independence. As Te Tsung had no children, she nominated on

the day of her death the two-year-old prince P'u Yi as emperor (reign

name Hsuean-t'ung, 1909-1911).

The fact that another child was to reign and a new regency to act for

him, together with all the failures in home and foreign policy, brought

further strength to the revolutionary party. The government believed

that it could only maintain itself if it allowed Yuean Shih-k'ai, the

commander of the modern troops, to come to power. The chief regent,

however, worked against Yuean Shih-k'ai and dismissed him at the

beginning of 1909; Yuean's supporters remained at their posts. Yuean

himself now entered into relations with the revolutionaries, whose

centre was Canton, and whose undisputed leader was now Sun Yat-sen. At

this time Sun and his supporters had already made attempts at

revolution, but without success, as his following was as yet too small.

It consisted mainly of young intellectuals who had been educated in

Europe and America; the great mass of the Chinese people remained

unconvinced: the common people could not understand the new ideals, and

the middle class did not entirely trust the young intellectuals.

The state of China in 1911 was as lamentable as could be: the European

states, Russia, America, and Japan regarded China as a field for their

own plans, and in their calculations paid scarcely any attention to the

Chinese government. Foreign capital was penetrating everywhere in the

form of loans or railway and other enterprises. If it had not been for

the mutual rivalries of the powers, China would long ago have been

annexed by one of them. The government needed a great deal of money for

the payment of the war indemnities, and for carrying out the few reforms

at last decided on. In order to get money from the provinces, it had to

permit the viceroys even more freedom than they already possessed. The

result was a spectacle altogether resembling that of the end of the

T'ang dynasty, about A.D. 900: the various governors were trying to make

themselves independent. In addition to this there was the revolutionary

movement in the south.

The government made some concession to the progressives, by providing

the first beginnings of parliamentary rule. In 1910 a national assembly

was convoked. It had a Lower House with representatives of the provinces

(provincial diets were also set up), and an Upper House, in which sat

representatives of the imperial house, the nobility, the gentry, and

also the protectorates. The members of the Upper House were all

nominated by the regent. It very soon proved that the members of the

Lower House, mainly representatives of the provincial gentry, had a much

more practical outlook than the routineers of Peking. Thus the Lower

House grew in importance, a fact which, of course, brought grist to the

mills of the revolutionary movement.

In 1910 the first risings directed actually against the regency took

place, in the province of Hunan. In 1911 the "railway disturbances"

broke out in western China as a reply of the railway shareholders in the

province of Szechwan to the government decree of nationalization of all

the railways. The modernist students, most of whom were sons of

merchants who owned railway shares, supported the movement, and the

government was unable to control them. At the same time a great

anti-Manchu revolution began in Wuch'ang, one of the cities of which

Wuhan, on the Yangtze, now consists. The revolution was the result of

government action against a group of terrorists. Its leader was an

officer named Li Yuean-hung. The Manchus soon had some success in this

quarter, but the other provincial governors now rose in rapid

succession, repudiated the Manchus, and declared themselves independent.

Most of the Manchu garrisons in the provinces were murdered. The

governors remained at the head of their troops in their provinces, and

for the moment made common cause with the revolutionaries, from whom

they meant to break free at the first opportunity. The Manchus

themselves failed at first to realize the gravity of the revolutionary

movement; they then fell into panic-stricken desperation. As a last

resource, Yuean Shih-k'ai was recalled (November 10th, 1911) and made

prime minister.

Yuean's excellent troops were loyal to his person, and he could have made

use of them in fighting on behalf of the dynasty. But a victory would

have brought no personal gain to him; for his personal plans he

considered that the anti-Manchu side provided the springboard he needed.

The revolutionaries, for their part, had no choice but to win over Yuean

Shih-k'ai for the sake of his troops, since they were not themselves

strong enough to get rid of the Manchus, or even to wrest concessions

from them, so long as the Manchus were defended by Yuean's army. Thus

Yuean and the revolutionaries were forced into each other's arms. He then

began negotiations with them, explaining to the imperial house that the

dynasty could only be saved by concessions. The revolutionaries--apart

from their desire to neutralize the prime minister and general, if not

to bring him over to their side--were also readier than ever to

negotiate, because they were short of money and unable to obtain loans

from abroad, and because they could not themselves gain control of the

individual governors. The negotiations, which had been carried on at

Shanghai, were broken off on December 18th, 1911, because the

revolutionaries demanded a republic, but the imperial house was only

ready to grant a constitutional monarchy.

Meanwhile the revolutionaries set up a provisional government at Nanking

(December 29th, 1911), with Sun Yat-sen as president and Li Yuean-hung as

vice-president. Yuean Shih-k'ai now declared to the imperial house that

the monarchy could no longer be defended, as his troops were too

unreliable, and he induced the Manchu government to issue an edict on

February 12th, 1912, in which they renounced the throne of China and

declared the Republic to be the constitutional form of state. The young

emperor of the Hsuean-t'ung period, after the Japanese conquest of

Manchuria in 1931, was installed there. He was, however, entirely

without power during the melancholy years of his nominal rule, which

lasted until 1945.

In 1912 the Manchu dynasty came in reality to its end. On the news of

the abdication of the imperial house, Sun Yat-sen resigned in Nanking,

and recommended Yuean Shih-k'ai as president.

Chapter Eleven

THE REPUBLIC (1912-1948)

1 _Social and intellectual position_

In order to understand the period that now followed, let us first

consider the social and intellectual position in China in the period

between 1911 and 1927. The Manchu dynasty was no longer there, nor were

there any remaining real supporters of the old dynasty. The gentry,

however, still existed. Alongside it was a still numerically small

middle class, with little political education or enlightenment.

The political interests of these two groups were obviously in conflict.

But after 1912 there had been big changes. The gentry were largely in a

process of decomposition. They still possessed the basis of their

existence, their land, but the land was falling in value, as there were

now other opportunities of capital investment, such as export-import,

shareholding in foreign enterprises, or industrial undertakings. It is

important to note, however, that there was not much fluid capital at

their disposal. In addition to this, cheaper rice and other foodstuffs

were streaming from abroad into China, bringing the prices for Chinese

foodstuffs down to the world market prices, another painful business

blow to the gentry. Silk had to meet the competition of Japanese silk

and especially of rayon; the Chinese silk was of very unequal quality

and sold with difficulty. On the other hand, through the influence of

the Western capitalistic system, which was penetrating more and more

into China, land itself became "capital", an object of speculation for

people with capital; its value no longer depended entirely on the rents

it could yield but, under certain circumstances, on quite other

things--the construction of railways or public buildings, and so on.

These changes impoverished and demoralized the gentry, who in the course

of the past century had grown fewer in number. The gentry were not in a

position to take part fully in the capitalist manipulations, because

they had never possessed much capital; their wealth had lain entirely

in their land, and the income from their rents was consumed quite

unproductively in luxurious living.

Moreover, the class solidarity of the gentry was dissolving. In the

past, politics had been carried on by cliques of gentry families, with

the emperor at their head as an unchangeable institution. This edifice

had now lost its summit; the struggles between cliques still went on,

but entirely without the control which the emperor's power had after all

exercised, as a sort of regulative element in the play of forces among

the gentry. The arena for this competition had been the court. After the

destruction of the arena, the field of play lost its boundaries: the

struggles between cliques no longer had a definite objective; the only

objective left was the maintenance or securing of any and every hold on

power. Under the new conditions cliques or individuals among the gentry

could only ally themselves with the possessors of military power, the

generals or governors. In this last stage the struggle between rival

groups turned into a rivalry between individuals. Family ties began to

weaken and other ties, such as between school mates, or origin from the

same village or town, became more important than they had been before.

For the securing of the aim in view any means were considered

justifiable. Never was there such bribery and corruption among the

officials as in the years after 1912. This period, until 1927, may

therefore be described as a period of dissolution and destruction of the

social system of the gentry.

Over against this dying class of the gentry stood, broadly speaking, a

tripartite opposition. To begin with, there was the new middle class,

divided and without clear political ideas; anti-dynastic of course, but

undecided especially as to the attitude it should adopt towards the

peasants who, to this day, form over 80 per cent of the Chinese

population. The middle class consisted mainly of traders and bankers,

whose aim was the introduction of Western capitalism in association with

foreign powers. There were also young students who were often the sons

of old gentry families and had been sent abroad for study with grants

given them by their friends and relatives in the government; or sons of

businessmen sent away by their fathers. These students not always

accepted the ideas of their fathers; they were influenced by the

ideologies of the West, Marxist or non-Marxist, and often created clubs

or groups in the University cities of Europe or the United States. Such

groups of people who had studied together or passed the exams together,

had already begun to play a role in politics in the nineteenth century.

Now, the influence of such organizations of usually informal character

increased. Against the returned students who often had difficulties in

adjustment, stood the students at Chinese Universities, especially the

National University in Peking (Peita). They represented people of the

same origin, but of the lower strata of the gentry or of business; they

were more nationalistic and politically active and often less influenced

by Western ideologies.

In the second place, there was a relatively very small genuine

proletariat, the product of the first activities of big capitalists in

China, found mainly in Shanghai. Thirdly and finally, there was a

gigantic peasantry, uninterested in politics and uneducated, but ready

to give unthinking allegiance to anyone who promised to make an end of

the intolerable conditions in the matter of rents and taxes, conditions

that were growing steadily worse with the decay of the gentry. These

peasants were thinking of popular risings on the pattern of all the

risings in the history of China--attacks on the towns and the killing of

the hated landowners, officials, and money-lenders, that is to say of

the gentry.

Such was the picture of the middle class and those who were ready to

support it, a group with widely divergent interests, held together only

by its opposition to the gentry system and the monarchy. It could not

but be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve political

success with such a group. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the "Father of the

Republic", accordingly laid down three stages of progress in his many

works, of which the best-known are _San-min chu-i_, ("The Three

Principles of the People"), and _Chien-kuo fang-lueeh_ ("Plans for the

Building up of the Realm"). The three phases of development through

which republican China was to pass were: the phase of struggle against

the old system, the phase of educative rule, and the phase of truly

democratic government. The phase of educative rule was to be a sort of

authoritarian system with a democratic content, under which the people

should be familiarized with democracy and enabled to grow politically

ripe for true democracy.

Difficult as was the internal situation from the social point of view,

it was no less difficult in economic respects. China had recognized that

she must at least adopt Western technical and industrial progress in

order to continue to exist as an independent state. But the building up

of industry demanded large sums of money. The existing Chinese banks

were quite incapable of providing the capital needed; but the acceptance

of capital from abroad led at once, every time, to further political

capitulations. The gentry, who had no cash worth mention, were violently

opposed to the capitalization of their properties, and were in favour of

continuing as far as possible to work the soil in the old style. Quite

apart from all this, all over the country there were generals who had

come from the ranks of the gentry, and who collected the whole of the

financial resources of their region for the support of their private

armies. Investors had little confidence in the republican government so

long as they could not tell whether the government would decide in

favour of its right or of its left wing.

No less complicated was the intellectual situation at this time.

Confucianism, and the whole of the old culture and morality bound up

with it, was unacceptable to the middle-class element. In the first

place, Confucianism rejected the principle, required at least in theory

by the middle class, of the equality of all people; secondly, the

Confucian great-family system was irreconcilable with middle-class

individualism, quite apart from the fact that the Confucian form of

state could only be a monarchy. Every attempt to bolster up Confucianism

in practice or theory was bound to fail and did fail. Even the gentry

could scarcely offer any real defence of the Confucian system any

longer. With Confucianism went the moral standards especially of the

upper classes of society. Taoism was out of the question as a

substitute, because of its anarchistic and egocentric character.

Consequently, in these years, part of the gentry turned to Buddhism and

part to Christianity. Some of the middle class who had come under

European influence also turned to Christianity, regarding it as a part

of the European civilization they had to adopt. Others adhered to modern

philosophic systems such as pragmatism and positivism. Marxist doctrines

spread rapidly.

Education was secularized. Great efforts were made to develop modern

schools, though the work of development was continually hindered by the

incessant political unrest. Only at the universities, which became foci

of republican and progressive opinion, was any positive achievement

possible. Many students and professors were active in politics,

organizing demonstrations and strikes. They pursued a strong national

policy, often also socialistic. At the same time real scientific work

was done; many young scholars of outstanding ability were trained at the

Chinese universities, often better than the students who went abroad.

There is a permanent disagreement between these two groups of young men

with a modern education: the students who return from abroad claim to be

better educated, but in reality they often have only a very superficial

knowledge of things modern and none at all of China, her history, and

her special circumstances. The students of the Chinese universities have

been much better instructed in all the things that concern China, and

most of them are in no way behind the returned students in the modern

sciences. They are therefore a much more serviceable element.

The intellectual modernization of China goes under the name of the

"Movement of May Fourth", because on May 4th, 1919, students of the

National University in Peking demonstrated against the government and

their pro-Japanese adherents. When the police attacked the students and

jailed some, more demonstrations and student strikes and finally a

general boycott of Japanese imports were the consequence. In these

protest actions, professors such as Ts'ai Yuean-p'ei, later president of

the Academia Sinica (died 1940), took an active part. The forces which

had now been mobilized, rallied around the journal "New Youth" (_Hsin

Ch'ing-nien_), created in 1915 by Ch'en Tu-hsiu. The journal was

progressive, against the monarchy, Confucius, and the old traditions.

Ch'en Tu-hsiu who put himself strongly behind the students, was more

radical than other contributors but at first favoured Western democracy

and Western science; he was influenced mainly by John Dewey who was

guest professor in Peking in 1919-20. Similarly tending towards

liberalism in politics and Dewey's ideas in the field of philosophy were

others, mainly Hu Shih. Finally, some reformers criticized

conservativism purely on the basis of Chinese thought. Hu Shih (born

1892) gained greatest acclaim by his proposal for a "literary

revolution", published in the "New Youth" in 1917. This revolution was

the logically necessary application of the political revolution to the

field of education. The new "vernacular" took place of the old

"classical" literary language. The language of the classical works is so

remote from the language of daily life that no uneducated person can

understand it. A command of it requires a full knowledge of all the

ancient literature, entailing decades of study. The gentry had

elaborated this style of speech for themselves and their dependants; it

was their monopoly; nobody who did not belong to the gentry and had not

attended its schools could take part in literary or in administrative

life. The literary revolution introduced the language of daily life, the

language of the people, into literature: newspapers, novels, scientific

treatises, translations, appeared in the vernacular, and could thus be

understood by anyone who could read and write, even if he had no

Confucianist education.

It may be said that the literary revolution has achieved its main

objects. As a consequence of it, a great quantity of new literature has

been published. Not only is every important new book that appears in the

West published in translation within a few months, but modern novels and

short stories and poems have been written, some of them of high literary

value.

At the same time as this revolution there took place another fundamental

change in the language. It was necessary to take over a vast number of

new scientific and technical terms. As Chinese, owing to the character

of its script, is unable to write foreign words accurately and can do no

more than provide a rather rough paraphrase, the practice was started of

expressing new ideas by newly formed native words. Thus modern Chinese

has very few foreign words, and yet it has all the new ideas. For

example, a telegram is a "lightning-letter"; a wireless telegram is a

"not-have-wire-lightning-communication"; a fountain-pen is a

"self-flow-ink-water-brush"; a typewriter is a "strike-letter-machine".

Most of these neologisms are similar in the modern languages of China

and Japan.

There had been several proposals in recent decades to do away with the

Chinese characters and to introduce an alphabet in their place. They

have all proved to be unsatisfactory so far, because the character of

the Chinese language, as it is at this moment, is unsuited to an

alphabetical script. They would also destroy China's cultural unity:

there are many dialects in China that differ so greatly from each other

that, for instance, a man from Canton cannot understand a man from

Shanghai. If Chinese were written with letters, the result would be a

Canton literature and another literature confined to Shanghai, and China

would break up into a number of areas with different languages. The old

Chinese writing is independent of pronunciation. A Cantonese and a

Pekinger can read each other's newspapers without difficulty. They

pronounce the words quite differently, but the meaning is unaltered.

Even a Japanese can understand a Chinese newspaper without special study

of Chinese, and a Chinese with a little preparation can read a Japanese

newspaper without understanding a single word of Japanese.

The aim of modern education in China is to work towards the

establishment of "High Chinese", the former official (Mandarin)

language, throughout the country, and to set limits to the use of the

various dialects. Once this has been done, it will be possible to

proceed to a radical reform of the script without running the risk of

political separatist movements, which are always liable to spring up,

and also without leading, through the adoption of various dialects as

the basis of separate literatures, to the break-up of China's cultural

unity. In the last years, the unification of the spoken language has

made great progress. Yet, alphabetic script is used only in cases in

which illiterate adults have to be enabled in a short time to read very

simple informations. More attention is given to a simplification of the

script as it is; Japanese had started this some forty years earlier.

Unfortunately, the new Chinese abbreviated forms of characters are not

always identical with long-established Japanese forms, and are not

developed in such a systematic form as would make learning of Chinese

characters easier.

2 _First period of the Republic: The warlords_

The situation of the Republic after its foundation was far from hopeful.

Republican feeling existed only among the very small groups of students

who had modern education, and a few traders, in other words, among the

"middle class". And even in the revolutionary party to which these

groups belonged there were the most various conceptions of the form of

republican state to be aimed at. The left wing of the party, mainly

intellectuals and manual workers, had in view more or less vague

socialistic institutions; the liberals, for instance the traders,

thought of a liberal democracy, more or less on the American pattern;

and the nationalists merely wanted the removal of the alien Manchu rule.

The three groups had come together for the practical reason that only so

could they get rid of the dynasty. They gave unreserved allegiance to

Sun Yat-sen as their leader. He succeeded in mobilizing the enthusiasm

of continually widening circles for action, not only by the integrity of

his aims but also because he was able to present the new socialistic

ideology in an alluring form. The anti-republican gentry, however, whose

power was not yet entirely broken, took a stand against the party. The

generals who had gone over to the republicans had not the slightest

intention of founding a republic, but only wanted to get rid of the rule

of the Manchus and to step into their place. This was true also of Yuean

Shih-k'ai, who in his heart was entirely on the side of the gentry,

although the European press especially had always energetically defended

him. In character and capacity he stood far above the other generals,

but he was no republican.

Thus the first period of the Republic, until 1927, was marked by

incessant attempts by individual generals to make themselves

independent. The Government could not depend on its soldiers, and so was

impotent. The first risings of military units began at the outset of

1912. The governors and generals who wanted to make themselves

independent sabotaged every decree of the central government; especially

they sent it no money from the provinces and also refused to give their

assent to foreign loans. The province of Canton, the actual birthplace

of the republican movement and the focus of radicalism, declared itself

in 1912 an independent republic.

Within the Peking government matters soon came to a climax. Yuean

Shih-k'ai and his supporters represented the conservative view, with the

unexpressed but obvious aim of setting up a new imperial house and

continuing the old gentry system. Most of the members of the parliament

came, however, from the middle class and were opposed to any reaction of

this sort. One of their leaders was murdered, and the blame was thrown

upon Yuean Shih-k'ai; there then came, in the middle of 1912, a new

revolution, in which the radicals made themselves independent and tried

to gain control of South China. But Yuean Shih-k'ai commanded better

troops and won the day. At the end of October 1912 he was elected,

against the opposition, as president of China, and the new state was

recognized by foreign countries.

China's internal difficulties reacted on the border states, in which the

European powers were keenly interested. The powers considered that the

time had come to begin the definitive partition of China. Thus there

were long negotiations and also hostilities between China and Tibet,

which was supported by Great Britain. The British demanded the complete

separation of Tibet from China, but the Chinese rejected this (1912);

the rejection was supported by a boycott of British goods. In the end

the Tibet question was left undecided. Tibet remained until recent years

a Chinese dependency with a good deal of internal freedom. The Second

World War and the Chinese retreat into the interior brought many Chinese

settlers into Eastern Tibet which was then separated from Tibet proper

and made a Chinese province (Hsi-k'ang) in which the native Khamba will

soon be a minority. The communist regime soon after its establishment

conquered Tibet (1950) and has tried to change the character of its

society and its system of government which lead to the unsuccessful

attempt of the Tibetans to throw off Chinese rule (1959) and the flight

of the Dalai Lama to India. The construction of highways, air and

missile bases and military occupation have thus tied Tibet closer to

China than ever since early Manchu times.

In Outer Mongolia Russian interests predominated. In 1911 there were

diplomatic incidents in connection with the Mongolian question. At the

end of 1911 the Hutuktu of Urga declared himself independent, and the

Chinese were expelled from the country. A secret treaty was concluded in

1912 with Russia, under which Russia recognized the independence of

Outer Mongolia, but was accorded an important part as adviser and helper

in the development of the country. In 1913 a Russo-Chinese treaty was

concluded, under which the autonomy of Outer Mongolia was recognized,

but Mongolia became a part of the Chinese realm. After the Russian

revolution had begun, revolution was carried also into Mongolia. The

country suffered all the horrors of the struggles between White Russians

(General Ungern-Sternberg) and the Reds; there were also Chinese

attempts at intervention, though without success, until in the end

Mongolia became a Soviet Republic. As such she is closely associated

with Soviet Russia. China, however, did not quickly recognize Mongolia's

independence, and in his work _China's Destiny_ (1944) Chiang Kai-shek

insisted that China's aim remained the recovery of the frontiers of

1840, which means among other things the recovery of Outer Mongolia. In

spite of this, after the Second World War Chiang Kai-shek had to

renounce _de jure_ all rights in Outer Mongolia. Inner Mongolia was

always united to China much more closely; only for a time during the war

with Japan did the Japanese maintain there a puppet government. The

disappearance of this government went almost unnoticed.

At the time when Russian penetration into Mongolia began, Japan had

entered upon a similar course in Manchuria, which she regarded as her

"sphere of influence". On the outbreak of the first world war Japan

occupied the former German-leased territory of Tsingtao, at the

extremity of the province of Shantung, and from that point she occupied

the railways of the province. Her plan was to make the whole province a

protectorate; Shantung is rich in coal and especially in metals. Japan's

plans were revealed in the notorious "Twenty-one Demands" (1915).

Against the furious opposition especially of the students of Peking,

Yuean Shih-k'ai's government accepted the greater part of these demands.

In negotiations with Great Britain, in which Japan took advantage of the

British commitments in Europe, Japan had to be conceded the predominant

position in the Far East.

Meanwhile Yuean Shih-k'ai had made all preparations for turning the

Republic once more into an empire, in which he would be emperor; the

empire was to be based once more on the gentry group. In 1914 he secured

an amendment of the Constitution under which the governing power was to

be entirely in the hands of the president; at the end of 1914 he secured

his appointment as president for life, and at the end of 1915 he induced

the parliament to resolve that he should become emperor.

This naturally aroused the resentment of the republicans, but it also

annoyed the generals belonging to the gentry, who had had the same

ambition. Thus there were disturbances, especially in the south, where

Sun Yat-sen with his followers agitated for a democratic republic. The

foreign powers recognized that a divided China would be much easier to

penetrate and annex than a united China, and accordingly opposed Yuean

Shih-k'ai. Before he could ascend the throne, he died suddenly--and

this terminated the first attempt to re-establish monarchy.

Yuean was succeeded as president by Li Yuean-hung. Meanwhile five

provinces had declared themselves independent. Foreign pressure on China

steadily grew. She was forced to declare war on Germany, and though this

made no practical difference to the war, it enabled the European powers

to penetrate further into China. Difficulties grew to such an extent in

1917 that a dictatorship was set up and soon after came an interlude,

the recall of the Manchus and the reinstatement of the deposed emperor

(July 1st-8th, 1917).

This led to various risings of generals, each aiming simply at the

satisfaction of his thirst for personal power. Ultimately the victorious

group of generals, headed by Tuan Ch'i-jui, secured the election of Feng

Kuo-chang in place of the retiring president. Feng was succeeded at the

end of 1918 by Hsue Shih-ch'ang, who held office until 1922. Hsue, as a

former ward of the emperor, was a typical representative of the gentry,

and was opposed to all republican reforms.

The south held aloof from these northern governments. In Canton an

opposition government was set up, formed mainly of followers of Sun

Yat-sen; the Peking government was unable to remove the Canton

government. But the Peking government and its president scarcely counted

any longer even in the north. All that counted were the generals, the

most prominent of whom were: (1) Chang Tso-lin, who had control of

Manchuria and had made certain terms with Japan, but who was ultimately

murdered by the Japanese (1928); (2) Wu P'ei-fu, who held North China;

(3) the so-called "Christian general", Feng Yue-hsiang, and (4) Ts'ao

K'un, who became president in 1923.

At the end of the first world war Japan had a hold over China amounting

almost to military control of the country. China did not sign the Treaty

of Versailles, because she considered that she had been duped by Japan,

since Japan had driven the Germans out of China but had not returned the

liberated territory to the Chinese. In 1921 peace was concluded with

Germany, the German privileges being abolished. The same applied to

Austria. Russia, immediately after the setting up of the Soviet

government, had renounced all her rights under the Capitulations. This

was the first step in the gradual rescinding of the Capitulations; the

last of them went only in 1943, as a consequence of the difficult

situation of the Europeans and Americans in the Pacific produced by the

Second World War.

At the end of the first world war the foreign powers revised their

attitude towards China. The idea of territorial partitioning of the

country was replaced by an attempt at financial exploitation; military

friction between the Western powers and Japan was in this way to be

minimized. Financial control was to be exercised by an international

banking consortium (1920). It was necessary for political reasons that

this committee should be joined by Japan. After her Twenty-one Demands,

however, Japan was hated throughout China. During the world war she had

given loans to the various governments and rebels, and in this way had

secured one privilege after another. Consequently China declined the

banking consortium. She tried to secure capital from her own resources;

but in the existing political situation and the acute economic

depression internal loans had no success.

In an agreement between the United States and Japan in 1917, the United

States, in consequence of the war, had had to give their assent to

special rights for Japan in China. After the war the international

conference at Washington (November 1921-February 1922) tried to set

narrower limits to Japan's influence over China, and also to

re-determine the relative strength in the Pacific of the four great

powers (America, Britain, France, Japan). After the failure of the

banking plan this was the last means of preventing military conflicts

between the powers in the Far East. This brought some relief to China,

as Japan had to yield for the time to the pressure of the western

powers.

The years that followed until 1927 were those of the complete collapse

of the political power of the Peking government--years of entire

dissolution. In the south Sun Yat-sen had been elected generalissimo in

1921. In 1924 he was re-elected with a mandate for a campaign against

the north. In 1924 there also met in Canton the first general congress

of the Kuomintang ("People's Party"). The Kuomintang (in 1929 it had

653,000 members, or roughly 0.15 per cent of the population) is the

continuation of the Komingtang ("Revolutionary Party") founded by Sun

Yat-sen, which as a middle-class party had worked for the removal of the

dynasty. The new Kuomintang was more socialistic, as is shown by its

admission of Communists and the stress laid upon land reform.

At the end of 1924 Sun Yat-sen with some of his followers went to

Peking, to discuss the possibility of a reunion between north and south

on the basis of the programme of the People's Party. There, however, he

died at the beginning of 1925, before any definite results had been

attained; there was no prospect of achieving anything by the

negotiations, and the south broke them off. But the death of Sun Yat-sen

had been followed after a time by tension within the party between its

right and left wings. The southern government had invited a number of

Russian advisers in 1923 to assist in building up the administration,

civil and military, and on their advice the system of government had

been reorganized on lines similar to those of the soviet and commissar

system. This change had been advocated by an old friend of Sun Yat-sen,

Chiang Kai-shek, who later married Sun's sister-in-law. Chiang Kai-shek,

who was born in 1886, was the head of the military academy at Whampoa,

near Canton, where Russian instructors were at work. The new system was

approved by Sun Yat-sen's successor, Hu Han-min (who died in 1936), in

his capacity of party leader. It was opposed by the elements of the

right, who at first had little influence. Chiang Kai-shek soon became

one of the principal leaders of the south, as he had command of the

efficient troops of Canton, who had been organized by the Russians.

The People's Party of the south and its governments, at that time fairly

radical in politics, were disliked by the foreign powers; only Japan

supported them for a time, owing to the anti-British feeling of the

South Chinese and in order to further her purpose of maintaining

disunion in China. The first serious collision with the outer world came

on May 30th, 1925, when British soldiers shot at a crowd demonstrating

in Shanghai. This produced a widespread boycott of British goods in

Canton and in British Hong Kong, inflicting a great loss on British

trade with China and bringing considerable advantages in consequence to

Japanese trade and shipping: from the time of this boycott began the

Japanese grip on Chinese coastwise shipping.

The second party congress was held in Canton in 1926. Chiang Kai-shek

already played a prominent part. The People's Party, under Chiang

Kai-shek and with the support of the communists, began the great

campaign against the north. At first it had good success: the various

provincial governors and generals and the Peking government were played

off against each other, and in a short time one leader after another was

defeated. The Yangtze was reached, and in 1926 the southern government

moved to Hankow. All over the southern provinces there now came a

genuine rising of the masses of the people, mainly the result of

communist propaganda and of the government's promise to give land to the

peasants, to set limits to the big estates, and to bring order into the

taxation. In spite of its communist element, at the beginning of 1927

the southern government was essentially one of the middle class and the

peasantry, with a socialistic tendency.

3 _Second period of the Republic: Nationalist China_

With the continued success of the northern campaign, and with Chiang

Kai-shek's southern army at the gates of Shanghai (March 21st, 1927), a

decision had to be taken. Should the left wing be allowed to gain the

upper hand, and the great capitalists of Shanghai be expropriated as it

was proposed to expropriate the gentry? Or should the right wing

prevail, an alliance be concluded with the capitalists, and limits be

set to the expropriation of landed estates? Chiang Kai-shek, through his

marriage with Sun Yat-sen's wife's sister, had become allied with one of

the greatest banking families. In the days of the siege of Shanghai

Chiang, together with his closest colleagues (with the exception of Hu

Han-min and Wang Chying-wei, a leader who will be mentioned later),

decided on the second alternative. Shanghai came into his hands without

a struggle, and the capital of the Shanghai financiers, and soon foreign

capital as well, was placed at his disposal, so that he was able to pay

his troops and finance his administration. At the same time the Russian

advisers were dismissed or executed.

The decision arrived at by Chiang Kai-shek and his friends did not

remain unopposed, and he parted from the "left group" (1927) which

formed a rival government in Hankow, while Chiang Kai-shek made Nanking

the seat of his government (April 1927). In that year Chiang not only

concluded peace with the financiers and industrialists, but also a sort

of "armistice" with the landowning gentry. "Land reform" still stood on

the party programme, but nothing was done, and in this way the

confidence and cooperation of large sections of the gentry was secured.

The choice of Nanking as the new capital pleased both the industrialists

and the agrarians: the great bulk of China's young industries lay in the

Yangtze region, and that region was still the principal one for

agricultural produce; the landowners of the region were also in a better

position with the great market of the capital in their neighbourhood.

Meanwhile the Nanking government had succeeded in carrying its dealings

with the northern generals to a point at which they were largely

out-manoeuvred and became ready for some sort of collaboration (1928).

There were now four supreme commanders--Chiang Kai-shek, Feng Yue-hsiang

(the "Christian general"), Yen Hsi-shan, the governor of Shansi, and the

Muslim Li Chung-yen. Naturally this was not a permanent solution; not

only did Chiang Kai-shek's three rivals try to free themselves from his

ever-growing influence and to gain full power themselves, but various

groups under military leadership rose again and again, even in the home

of the Republic, Canton itself. These struggles, which were carried on

more by means of diplomacy and bribery than at arms, lasted until 1936.

Chiang Kai-shek, as by far the most skilful player in this game, and at

the same time the man who had the support of the foreign governments

and of the financiers of Shanghai, gained the victory. China became

unified under his dictatorship.

As early as 1928, when there seemed a possibility of uniting China, with

the exception of Manchuria, which was dominated by Japan, and when the

European powers began more and more to support Chiang Kai-shek, Japan

felt that her interests in North China were threatened, and landed

troops in Shantung. There was hard fighting on May 3rd, 1928. General

Chang Tso-lin, in Manchuria, who was allied to Japan, endeavoured to

secure a cessation of hostilities, but he fell victim to a Japanese

assassin; his place was taken by his son, Chang Hsueeh-liang, who pursued

an anti-Japanese policy. The Japanese recognized, however, that in view

of the international situation the time had not yet come for

intervention in North China. In 1929 they withdrew their troops and

concentrated instead on their plans for Manchuria.

Until the time of the "Manchurian incident" (1931), the Nanking

government steadily grew in strength. It gained the confidence of the

western powers, who proposed to make use of it in opposition to Japan's

policy of expansion in the Pacific sphere. On the strength of this

favourable situation in its foreign relations, the Nanking government

succeeded in getting rid of one after another of the Capitulations.

Above all, the administration of the "Maritime Customs", that is to say

of the collection of duties on imports and exports, was brought under

the control of the Chinese government: until then it had been under

foreign control. Now that China could act with more freedom in the

matter of tariffs, the government had greater financial resources, and

through this and other measures it became financially more independent

of the provinces. It succeeded in building up a small but modern army,

loyal to the government and superior to the still existing provincial

armies. This army gained its military experience in skirmishes with the

Communists and the remaining generals.

It is true that when in 1931 the Japanese occupied Manchuria, Nanking

was helpless, since Manchuria was only loosely associated with Nanking,

and its governor, Chang Hsueeh-liang, had tried to remain independent of

it. Thus Manchuria was lost almost without a blow. On the other hand,

the fighting with Japan that broke out soon afterwards in Shanghai

brought credit to the young Nanking army, though owing to its numerical

inferiority it was unsuccessful. China protested to the League of

Nations against its loss of Manchuria. The League sent a commission (the

Lytton Commission), which condemned Japan's action, but nothing further

happened, and China indignantly broke away from her association with

the Western powers (1932-1933). In view of the tense European situation

(the beginning of the Hitler era in Germany, and the Italian plans of

expansion), the Western powers did not want to fight Japan on China's

behalf, and without that nothing more could be done. They pursued,

indeed, a policy of playing off Japan against China, in order to keep

those two powers occupied with each other, and so to divert Japan from

Indo-China and the Pacific.

China had thus to be prepared for being involved one day in a great war

with Japan. Chiang Kai-shek wanted to postpone war as long as possible.

He wanted time to establish his power more thoroughly within the

country, and to strengthen his army. In regard to external relations,

the great powers would have to decide their attitude sooner or later.

America could not be expected to take up a clear attitude: she was for

peace and commerce, and she made greater profits out of her relations

with Japan than with China; she sent supplies to both (until 1941). On

the other hand, Britain and France were more and more turning away from

Japan, and Russo-Japanese relations were at all times tense. Japan tried

to emerge from her isolation by joining the "axis powers", Germany and

Italy (1936); but it was still doubtful whether the Western powers would

proceed with Russia, and therefore against Japan, or with the Axis, and

therefore in alliance with Japan.

Japan for her part considered that if she was to raise the standard of

living of her large population and to remain a world power, she must

bring into being her "Greater East Asia", so as to have the needed raw

material sources and export markets in the event of a collision with the

Western powers; in addition to this, she needed a security girdle as

extensive as possible in case of a conflict with Russia. In any case,

"Greater East Asia" must be secured before the European conflict should

break out.

4 _The Sino-Japanese war_ (1937-1945)

Accordingly, from 1933 onward Japan followed up her conquest of

Manchuria by bringing her influence to bear in Inner Mongolia and in

North China. She succeeded first, by means of an immense system of

smuggling, currency manipulation, and propaganda, in bringing a number

of Mongol princes over to her side, and then (at the end of 1935) in

establishing a semi-dependent government in North China. Chiang Kai-shek

took no action.

The signal for the outbreak of war was an "incident" by the Marco Polo

Bridge, south of Peking (July 7th, 1937). The Japanese government

profited by a quite unimportant incident, undoubtedly provoked by the

Japanese, in order to extend its dominion a little further. China still

hesitated; there were negotiations. Japan brought up reinforcements and

put forward demands which China could not be expected to be ready to

fulfil. Japan then occupied Peking and Tientsin and wide regions between

them and south of them. The Chinese soldiers stationed there withdrew

almost without striking a blow, but formed up again and began to offer

resistance. In order to facilitate the planned occupation of North

China, including the province of Shantung, Japan decided on a

diversionary campaign against Shanghai. The Nanking government sent its

best troops to the new front, and held it for nearly three months

against superior forces; but meanwhile the Japanese steadily advanced in

North China. On November 9th Nanking fell into their hands. By the

beginning of January 1938, the province of Shantung had also been

conquered.

Chiang Kai-shek and his government fled to Ch'ung-k'ing (Chungking), the

most important commercial and financial centre of the interior after

Hankow, which was soon threatened by the Japanese fleet. By means of a

number of landings the Japanese soon conquered the whole coast of China,

so cutting off all supplies to the country; against hard fighting in

some places they pushed inland along the railways and conquered the

whole eastern half of China, the richest and most highly developed part

of the country. Chiang Kai-shek had the support only of the

agriculturally rich province of Szechwan, and of the scarcely developed

provinces surrounding it. Here there was as yet no industry. Everything

in the way of machinery and supplies that could be transported from the

hastily dismantled factories was carried westwards. Students and

professors went west with all the contents of their universities, and

worked on in small villages under very difficult conditions--one of the

most memorable achievements of this war for China. But all this was by

no means enough for waging a defensive war against Japan. Even the

famous Burma Road could not save China.

By 1940-1941 Japan had attained her war aim: China was no longer a

dangerous adversary. She was still able to engage in small-scale

fighting, but could no longer secure any decisive result. Puppet

governments were set up in Peking, Canton, and Nanking, and the Japanese

waited for these governments gradually to induce supporters of Chiang

Kai-shek to come over to their side. Most was expected of Wang

Ching-wei, who headed the new Nanking government. He was one of the

oldest followers of Sun Yat-sen, and was regarded as a democrat. In

1925, after Sun Yat-sen's death, he had been for a time the head of the

Nanking government, and for a short time in 1930 he had led a government

in Peking that was opposed to Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorship. Beyond any

question Wang still had many followers, including some in the highest

circles at Chungking, men of eastern China who considered that

collaboration with Japan, especially in the economic field, offered good

prospects. Japan paid lip service to this policy: there was talk of

sister peoples, which could help each other and supply each other's

needs. There was propaganda for a new "Greater East Asian" philosophy,

_Wang-tao_, in accordance with which all the peoples of the East could

live together in peace under a thinly disguised dictatorship. What

actually happened was that everywhere Japanese capitalists established

themselves in the former Chinese industrial plants, bought up land and

securities, and exploited the country for the conduct of their war.

After the great initial successes of Hitlerite Germany in 1939-1941,

Japan became convinced that the time had come for a decisive blow

against the positions of the Western European powers and the United

States in the Far East. Lightning blows were struck at Hong Kong and

Singapore, at French Indo-China, and at the Netherlands East Indies. The

American navy seemed to have been eliminated by the attack on Pearl

Harbour, and one group of islands after another fell into the hands of

the Japanese. Japan was at the gates of India and Australia. Russia was

carrying on a desperate defensive struggle against the Axis, and there

was no reason to expect any intervention from her in the Far East.

Greater East Asia seemed assured against every danger.

The situation of Chiang Kai-shek's Chungking government seemed hopeless.

Even the Burma Road was cut, and supplies could only be sent by air;

there was shortage of everything. With immense energy small industries

were begun all over western China, often organized as co-operatives;

roads and railways were built--but with such resources would it ever be

possible to throw the Japanese into the sea? Everything depended on

holding out until a new page was turned in Europe. Infinitely slow

seemed the progress of the first gleams of hope--the steady front in

Burma, the reconquest of the first groups of inlands; the first bomb

attacks on Japan itself. Even in May, 1945, with the war ended in

Europe, there seemed no sign of its ending in the Far East. Then came

the atom bomb, bringing the collapse of Japan; the Japanese armies

receded from China, and suddenly China was free, mistress once more in

her own country as she had not been for decades.

Chapter Twelve

PRESENT-DAY CHINA