FOREIGNERS IN CHINA
Would it not seem strange if certain foreign countries owned and
governed parts of New York, Washington, St. Louis, and others of our
large cities? Yet that is exactly the condition in China. Not only does
England own the island of Hong Kong and a portion of the neighboring
mainland, but the best parts of nearly all important Chinese ports
belong to Japan, Great Britain, France, Italy, and other European
countries. These foreign colonies in China are called “concessions,”
because they were conceded by the old Chinese government, sometimes
after wars between the foreign countries and China. Most of them were
merely leased for a long term of years, rather than given. But they are
really foreign colonies within China.
China did not want to open her doors to the West any more than Japan or
Korea did. The Chinese thought all other peoples were barbarians; and
they still do, to a large extent—just as we still sometimes call them
heathen. So the emperors decided that it would be better if their people
did not come into contact any more than necessary with the rude traders
and seamen from the outside world. To begin with, therefore, the Chinese
quite willingly allowed the foreigners to build up ports and cities on
certain bits of Chinese territory turned over to the outsiders.
Foreigners Make Many Improvements
Many of the pieces of land leased to the foreign governments were so
poor that the Chinese officials must have snickered to themselves when
they gave them to the despised “barbarians.” Where the great modern
foreign part of Shanghai now is there was little more than a swamp. The
pretty little foreign business and residential island of Shameen in
Canton was a patch of sand in the river, covered with water at high tide
and with garbage or refuse at low tide. So it was with most of what have
now become the most modern parts of many Chinese cities. In the
beginning the Chinese thought they were holding the “barbarians” back by
letting them live only on such pieces of ground. But now, seeing how
much better off the foreigners are under their own laws in cities they
have built for themselves, many Chinese wish that the concessions
belonged to China.
There is at least one very good argument in their favor. If a Chinese
politician or general or thief or murderer gets into one of the foreign
concessions, the Chinese government cannot do anything to him. If he
puts his stolen money into one of the foreign banks in a concession, the
Chinese from whom he stole it cannot get it back. We naturally would not
like it if France or England or China or any other country protected our
criminals in certain parts of our own cities. So we are rather glad the
United States has no concessions in China, except that Americans help to
govern the part of Shanghai known as the International Settlement.
Foreigners Have Their Own Laws
After the World War Germany and Austria and Russia lost their
concessions in China, and also the privilege of trying their own people
in China under their own laws. But if an American were to rob or kill a
Chinese, or anyone else, in any part of China, he could not be tried by
a Chinese judge according to Chinese laws and be shut up in a Chinese
prison if he were found guilty. All the Chinese could do to him would be
to arrest him and take him to the nearest American consul. If he were
charged with only a small crime, the consul himself could try him. If it
were something important he would have to be taken before the regular
American court in Shanghai presided over by a judge appointed by the
President in Washington. He would be tried by American laws, and if he
were found guilty he would be sent to an American prison, perhaps in the
Philippines.
Strangely enough, the Chinese themselves wanted the foreigners to have
this privilege of extraterritoriality (as it is called), just as they
wanted them to take the concessions. They did not care for the bother of
trying to make the rough seamen and other “barbarians” who came to their
ports behave themselves. They preferred that the “barbarians’” own
governments should attend to such matters. It was much as if the boys of
one school had gone to another school to play football. Naturally the
teachers of the “home” school would rather have the visiting teachers
look after the conduct of their own pupils.
But in time the Chinese discovered that this privilege of not being
subject to the laws and officials of China was an advantage to the
foreigners in the country, just as the concessions were. From every
country go out bad as well as good men, and some foreigners took
advantage of the situation to do things in China which they should not
have done. Then consuls and judges have sometimes seemed too lenient in
dealing with their countrymen. Besides, the Chinese say that it is not
fair to a great nation like theirs to allow other peoples to have such
privileges. It makes China “lose face.”
Yet even now the people of fourteen different nationalities, all
European except ourselves and the Japanese, have extraterritoriality in
China. Russians and Germans and Austrians, however, can be tried in
Chinese courts and sent to Chinese prisons. Up in Manchuria I saw more
than two hundred Russian prisoners in a Chinese penitentiary, and at
least one of them was afterward executed. There were two or three
Germans in prison in Peking, and a few in other parts of the country.
Now many of the Chinese are demanding that all foreign nations give up
legal privileges, as well as concessions. But foreign governments say
that it would not be fair to their people living in China to do this
until Chinese courts become less corrupt and more independent of local
dictators, and until Chinese prisons are improved.
Thousands of Foreigners in China
You would probably be surprised, as we were, to find how many foreigners
live in China. There are thousands of Americans, to say nothing of all
the other nationalities. Perhaps half of these are business men, many of
them living in Shanghai. Some of them are interested in the Chinese
people, but too many are interested only in the money they can make out
of them. When they leave their offices they go to their own clubs or
parks or golf-links, where no Chinese are admitted except as servants.
Many of them never learn to speak Chinese, even though they live in
China half their lives. In fact some who were born there cannot do so.
They talk to their servants and clerks and rickshaw-men in
pidgin-English, which is a dreadful “language” made up of Chinese
sentences translated into words that are really not English at all.
“Master no wantchee catchee sampan chop chop” is the way they would say,
“I do not wish to take the boat yet.”
If any of you ever go out to China to represent an American company I
hope you will not look down upon the Chinese as some business men do.
Parts of China are made as ugly by advertising billboards as many of our
own roads and railroads are at home. Some foreign companies even paint
their advertisements on temples and city walls. When they receive such
treatment, it is no wonder that the Chinese occasionally call us
_Yang-gwei-tze_ or _Fang-gwy-lo_, that is, “foreign devils.”
Many Mission Schools
There are at least ten thousand foreign missionaries in China, more of
them Americans than of any other one nationality. They learn Chinese,
study Chinese history, and take much interest in the people. Chinese
temples are everywhere, but there are now many churches also. I do not
remember a single large city anywhere in China that has not at least one
church and a foreign missionary or two. Some have many more than that.
Great establishments, such as schools, hospitals, and universities, have
been built by foreigners in Peking and in nearly all the provincial
capitals. Hard-working American and British and other men and women go
about the country holding services in the villages and curing sick
people.
[Illustration:
High school girls who are attending an American mission school in
Shantung Province. They are not allowed to have bound feet.
]
In the olden days missionaries suffered hardships in China. They lived
in miserable Chinese mud-brick houses and ate poor native food. Often
they caught dreadful diseases and sometimes they were mobbed and even
killed. But now nearly all of them live as comfortably as they could at
home. They build good foreign houses, eat their own kind of food, and
have more servants than they could possibly have in the United States.
Of course some things are not so pleasant as they are at home, but
others are more so. Missionaries living far back in the interior still
sometimes have to rough it. I spent two days with a French priest who
had lived all alone in a miserable little Chinese city for twenty-five
years. He had never been back to France and expected to die at his post.
Most Protestant missionaries go home for a year every seven years, and
they usually have their families with them.
Although foreign missionaries have been working among the Chinese for
nearly a hundred years there are by no means as many Chinese Christians
as there are Chinese Mohammedans. Yet it must be very interesting work
to be a missionary in China. A doctor or a teacher, especially, should
get great satisfaction out of helping the Chinese, for in some things
they are not yet able to help themselves.
Many Chinese are now objecting to mission schools. They say that every
country should control its own schools. They believe the children will
lose their patriotism for China and become attached to the countries
their missionary teachers come from. They ask us if we would like it if
Chinese started schools for American boys and girls in the United States
and tried to make them Buddhists or Confucianists. However, China
herself has not yet built enough schools for all her children.
There are Chinese Christians who wish to establish a Chinese Church
also, and quite a number of missionaries agree with them. They say that
they should pay their own way in religious matters as well as in any
other. They cannot see any good reason why they should be divided as
Methodists, Presbyterians, and so forth just because Christians in
America and Europe are so divided. The time may perhaps come when nearly
all Chinese Christians will join together to form a true Chinese Church.