Lord Beresford’s book, has appointed commercial attachés separate
from the diplomatic and consular bodies to work as specialists and
free lances in China. In contrast with the diplomatic and consular
departments, they are free to use the helpful publicity of the home
newspapers in order to correct and create interest. Canada in a small
way has followed Britain’s example. A consular officer is fixed to his
post on account of his daily relationship with shipping, courts, visits
of nationals, emigration and health inspection. A commercial attaché
has more of a roving and special commission, and it is important in
the nature of his office that his advice should be followed promptly
in China and at home. He is in a position to strike quickly and bring
trade to his flag. He is not necessarily that loathsome being which
flourished in China previous to the Russo-Japanese War, a concession
hunter and a looter of weak countries. His aim is to strengthen weak
countries, as he knows that only a rich and contented people can trade
richly with his flag. The more he is of a scholar, gentleman and
Christian the better, for such a person in the long run makes an ideal
trader and patriot, as the American reformers are insisting. He should
be a statistician, an economist, and also an idealist, so that he may
be able to formulate a policy amid the present confused conditions. He
is not in any sense a historian, for he is not to follow his country.
He is to lead it, and, moreover, he must also sympathize with the
Chinese point of view to a sufficient degree.
Europe and America have been trading in China on an extended scale
since in 1842 the Nanking Treaty opened up Canton and four other ports.
Surprisingly few traders have learned the language. The home-rule
principle has been recognized, and the Chinese have been allowed to run
the trade in their own way on the compradore and shroff system. The
foreign firm takes into its employ at a percentage, with a guaranteed
minimum, a Chinese compradore, who speaks English, and who is bonded
by the Chinese, and the compradore takes into his employ a shroff
cashier, who is bonded to him by Chinese. The compradore pays the wages
of his Chinese staff. The foreigner (Si Yang Jin--West Sea people)
must deal with the Chinese customers only through the compradore, and
the compradore must under no circumstances appeal to the head of the
foreign firm in London, San Francisco, etc. He must deal with the
agent or branch in the China port, in whose office he is located on
the first floor, with a Chinese staff as large as the foreign staff
up-stairs. One who enters the offices of the Pacific Mail, American
(International) Bank, Standard Oil, P. & O., Butterfield and Swire,
Jardine’s, Fearon’s, and other companies in China, might think at
first that the concern was Chinese. No one but Celestials is to be
seen. This system is an approximation of two views. The Chinese might
desire to handle his own trade, in which case the compradore would set
up for himself, and buy sewing-machines, oils, machinery, tobacco,
cotton, etc., direct from the foreign agent at the treaty port, or he
could ignore the foreign agent and send his Chinese buyer across to
San Francisco, or over to London. Or the foreigner might learn the
language, dismiss his compradore, and try to sell direct to the Chinese
consumer and Chinese merchant.
It is a world-trade question, a terrific struggle in economics, this
getting rid of the middleman, the drone, and it is therefore still
an unsettled question in China. The compradore and shroff exist,
although many foreign commercial travelers, especially Germans and
Japanese, are selling direct to the Chinese in small lots. Many of
these compradores have become notable and able men, especially those
employed by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Again, some
compradores have tricked the foreign agent and company with all the
legerdemain of a conjurer. That is, instead of inducing the foreign
agent to bring out large quantities of oil, flour, etc., we shall say,
in time for a high market, the compradore, with his Chinese alliances
(or conspirators, shall we say!) induces the agent to get stocked in
godown when a low market suddenly drops on him. The compradore shifts
and says the market will drop lower still, and the agent authorizes
the compradore to sell quickly. The compradore sells to himself by
dummy, and the oil or flour suddenly rises. The agent is mad clear
through, but if he changed compradores every time this happened he
would change so frequently that his concern would lose prestige with
the Chinese. The Chinese compradore will bleed you, but he will not
knowingly bleed you to death. Of all ornithologists of trade, he does
not believe in killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. He only
plucks the goose occasionally! I have heard tales which, if they are
true, would indicate that the Chinese compradore is not alone expert
in legerdemain, but that the foreign agent sometimes “stands in” with
him. There certainly are some mountain palaces and a princely ménage on
the hills of the sumptuous Far East that the savings from an agent’s
salary, or an unexpected legacy never bought. In trade and in politics,
as well as in religion, “by their fruits ye shall know” compradores,
agents, and every one else!
Successful companies operating in China, with foreign managers and with
the majority stock in foreign hands, but using Chinese money also, are
the following incorporated or joint-stock registered companies:
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (British and German).
Indo-China Steam Navigation (British).
Peking Syndicate (British), Shansi and Honan anthracite coal.
Anglo-French Syndicate (Yunnan mines).
Anglo-French Land Investment Company.
Hongkong Land Investment Company.
Hongkong and Whompoa Dock Company.
Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Dock Company.
Green Island Cement Company (Hongkong and Macao).
Société Anonyme du Luhan (Belgian), s. e. Shansi coal.
Tientsin Land Investment Company.
Tientsin Gas and Electric Company.
Tientsin Water-works.
Hongkong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company.
Hongkong Cotton Company.
Hongkong Rope Company.
Hongkong Dairy Company.
Chinese Engineering and Mining Company (British), Kaiping coal mines.
The immense Taikoo Company (Butterfield & Swire), operating docks,
shipyards, sugar refineries, steamship lines, etc.; China Sugar
Refinery; Bank of Australia; Eastern and Australia Cable Company, etc.,
are owned mainly by British capitalists, who operate an extensive
apprentice system or school in maintaining their personnel in the
Far East. The Banque l’Indo-China is, of course, mainly French, as
is the Anglo-French Syndicate. The Russo-Asiatique Banque is French
and Russian. The Cathay Trust Company is British and Chinese. The
Shell Transport (oil and shipping) is Dutch, largely. Humphreys’ Land
Company is British, mainly. There are scores of rubber companies whose
plantations are in Malaysia, but whose shares are actively dealt in by
the Chinese and foreigners of Shanghai, Hongkong and Tientsin. Large
department stores of Hongkong and Shanghai are incorporated, and their
shares are actively dealt in. I refer to Lane-Crawford, Watson, Central
Stores, Weeks, Moultrie, Hall & Holtz, etc.
The largest foreign commission houses, banks and agencies, with offices
in the various treaty ports, are the following:
United States Steel Products Export Company (American).
Standard Oil Company (American).
American Tobacco Company.
Singer Sewing-Machine Company (American).
International Banking Company (American).
Yokohama Specie Bank (Japanese).
Deutsche-Asiatique Bank (German).
Mitsui & Co. (Japanese), Fushun coal, machinery, cotton, etc.
Mitsu Bishi (ship-building at Nagasaki).
Kawasaki Dock Company (ship-building at Dairen).
American Trading Company.
Sassoon & Co. (German).
Reiss & Co. (British).
Melchers & Co. (German), machinery, shipping, etc.
Arnhold, Karberg & Co. (German).
Henley’s Telegraph Works (British).
Shewan, Tomes & Co. (British and American).
Fearon, Daniel & Co. (American).
Andersen, Meyer & Co. (German).
Carlowitz & Co. (German), smelting, matting, machinery, etc.
J. G. White & Co. (American), engineering.
Punchard, Lowther (British), engineering.
Pearson (British), engineering.
Tsingtau Dock Company (German), ship-building.
Rose, Downs & Thomson (British), oil, machinery.
Priestman Brothers (British), dredgers, excavators.
Indo-China Cement Company at Haiphong (French).
Bohler Brothers (British), hardware.
Siemssen & Co. (German).
Kelly, Walsh & Co., Brewer & Co., _North China Herald_ (British),
publishers and booksellers.
Brunner Brothers (German), gas lighting.
Hohenzollern Company (German), locomotives.
Konigs Company (German), bridges.
Reinecker Company (German), machinery, tools.
Hurst-Nelson Company (British), railway equipment.
Glasgow Rolling Stock Company.
Mellowes & Co. (British), station roofs.
Hunt & Co. (British), machine shops.
Leeds Forge Company (British), steel cars.
Cassella & Co. (British), engineering instruments.
Tangye & Co. (British), oil engines.
Yorkshire Copper Works, Union Electric Company (British), electric
plants.
Wilkinson-Heywood Company (British), paint.
Dudgeon, Ltd. (British), excavators.
Waygood & Co. (British), elevators.
Nasymth Wilson Company (British), locomotives.
Vickers, Ltd. (British), railway equipment.
Hawthorne-Leslie Company (British), mining equipment.
Arts and Crafts Company (British), decorators.
Sun Life of Canada, insurance.
Royce, Ltd. (British), cranes.
Herring, Hall, Marvin (American), safes.
The Mutual Life Insurance Company, of New York, opened a branch in
Hongkong in 1903, but it was closed in 1904, insurance companies
preferring, as a rule, to act through general commission houses at
present.
Foreign firms advertise in Chinese almanacs, which circulate in immense
numbers throughout the land. An example is _Hallock’s Miscellany_,
printed in a scholarly manner by the American Presbyterian Mission
Press, 18 Peking Road, Shanghai. The Chinese editions of the Hongkong
and Shanghai papers are excellent mediums, if one is not on the ground.
Chinese travelers arrive at a station hours before the departure of
a train, and foreign firms find it advantageous to display their
cartoons and advertising in Chinese at railway stations. Even if some
of the Chinese can not read, they become familiar with the “chop” or
cartoon, which accordingly is more important than in any land, and
should therefore be registered with the foreign consul and the Chinese
taotai. The Asiatic Petroleum Company, of London, (Dutch-British),
uses a cartoon of three square oil tins, with a tin lamp flaming on
the top. The Standard Oil Company uses a picture of the hand lamp and
some paraffin candles. Scott’s Emulsion Company shows the familiar
codfish on the back of the man. Green Island Cement Company shows
the famous mountain island of Macao’s inner harbor, with the cement
chimneys at its foot. Barnard & Leas Company, of Moline, Illinois, use
a picture of their grain sifter. Mousin et Cie, of Frankfort on Main,
use a picture of a rose spray and a Chinese man and woman. The New
Home Sewing-Machines use a picture of the machine and a greyhound. The
Victor Talking Machines show the well-known fox-terrier listening to
“His Master’s Voice”. Many of the firms draw attention by quoting an
epigrammatic gem of Chinese wisdom. The Singer Sewing-Machine insists
that the Chinese shall become familiar with the English letters and
not the Chinese letters in the bridge of their machine, and they have
had wide success. The Wheeler & Wilson Sewing-Machine Company shows
Gabriel blowing his horn, or the spirit of reform telling China to wake
up! The Longines Watch Company, of Paris, uses a Chinese lily in a
vase and a winged hour-glass. The Chinese are becoming large buyers of
time-keepers, and these trade-marks are most important. Several suits
over trade-marks on watches have appeared in the courts of Hongkong.
The Taussig Soap Company, of Vienna, uses a man-headed bird, which
appeals to the humorous Chinese, whose hobgoblins are legion.
The get-equipped-quick advertising correspondence schools are
teaching advertising pupils in America to change their advertisements
constantly. This will not do in China. Nothing pays like a known
“chop”, rigidly adhered to for decades. The Chinese will have nothing
else than their favorite cartoon, or “chop” on cotton bolt, flour
bag and everything else. “Once a customer always a customer” is truer
in China than anywhere else in the world, but it is harder there than
anywhere else to get that customer the necessary “once”, as he has
probably linked up with a “chop” that preceded yours. The Harrison
Knitting Machine Company, of Manchester, England, merely show cuts of
their machines, and a competitor could do the same, and thus confuse
the Chinese. Staedtler, the pencil manufacturer of Nuremberg, shows the
man in the moon and a cock. J. H. Birch, of Library Street, Burlington,
New Jersey, shows merely cuts of his rickshaws, which compete with the
Japanese vehicle. The whisky houses of Britain cease neither day nor
night in the attempt to give China something Occidental to take the
place of the debarred opium. They try to adopt different shaped bottles
to distinguish their goods, and some double bottles are now blown
almost in the shape of the whisky’s “W”. The Burnese Alps Milk Company,
of Stalden, has adopted a mother Teddy bear, giving a baby bear forced
lactary injections. Nestle’s Milk Company, of Vevay, shows the “cow
that jumped over the moon”. Aquarius Water Company shows a Chinese boy
bearing a tray with the aerated water. Pathe’s French Films show the
crowing cock. The United States Steel Products Export Company use the
crouching tiger. Swift’s Hams show “S” in a diamond. Clarke’s Manila
Coffee uses a volcano of coffee beans in imitation of Mayon volcano in
the Philippines. The Chee Hsin Cement Company, of Tangshan, Pechili
province, has a pony whose fiery breath has set the sun on fire. This
is the weird mythological style of “chop” with which the poetical
Chinese are familiar and which they like.
The Chinese are a race who have nearly as much imagination as the
Greeks. The Hupeh Cement Works, of Tayeh, use a seventeen-storied
pagoda, which is supposed to represent a very fine product, as pagodas
tower only thirteen stories at the highest. The Indo-China Cement
Company uses the well-known dragon of the Manchus, which tosses three
medals in the air. The British-American Tobacco Company advertises a
nautch girl pulling portiéres apart, a “chop” which is a little more
luxuriously Mohammedan than staid China cares for. Veluvine Protective
Paint has adopted a crouching bulldog. Isuan Aerated Waters, of the
Philippines, use a hand pouring a bottle that fills a glass. The Toyo
Kisen Kaisha uses a red circle in a white fan on a blue flag. Flags are
becoming popular chops. Shields are also used by the British and the
Spanish, but they are rather intricate for the Chinese to understand.
There is not much competition yet, and most of the foreign firms, in
their desire to educate the Chinese, are merely using photographs of
their machinery and product, but as soon as John Chinaman has to choose
between two dynamos, two gas engines, two pumps, etc., each of them
must use a “chop” or trade-mark, just as the oil, the flour, the ham,
the cement bag, the bolt of cotton, etc., have now to be chopped to
maintain their position on the slogan popular throughout Canada and
Britain of “what we have we hold.”
The treaty ports of China, such as Shanghai, Tientsin, Hongkong, etc.,
show that almost every form of business is incorporated. Doctors and
dentists form companies, and bring out juniors under indenture. The
share list shows active trading in the following companies among
others: railway, steamship, rubber, banks; marine, life and fire
insurance; oil, refineries, sugar, mining, engineering and contracting,
ship-building, car building; docks, wharves and warehouse (godown);
lands, hotels, clubs, buildings, cotton mills and plantations, cement,
power, light, water, trams, millinery, telephone, telegraph, cable,
tailors, dairy farm, abattoir, soda water, distilleries, flour mills,
iron mills, gas, electricity, druggist, newspaper, booksellers,
conservancy, athletic clubs, race course, import and export firms,
jewelers, silk filatures, tea farms, matting factories and plantations,
furniture factories, etc. I know of no place where the craze of men
to get rich faster than savings will accumulate is indicated more
than at Shanghai, Hongkong and Singapore. The bund of Shanghai is as
speculatively feverous as Wall Street.
British Hongkong, like China, holds that all land is crown or state
land, and therefore leases are granted instead of fee-simple deeds,
American style. The British government has gone extensively into the
land business at Hongkong, leveling many terraces, filling many valleys
in the mountains, and reclaiming from the sea vast areas at West Point
and East Point, Hongkong, and at Yaumati, Kowloon and Hunghom on
the mainland section of the hilly colony. Leases for these valuable
sites are then put up at auction, bringing about twice the rental
that obtains in Brooklyn or Jersey City, or the outlying districts
of London. In the same way the foreign concession municipalities of
Shanghai, Tientsin, Fuchau, Amoy, Hankau, Newchwang, Harbin, etc.,
prepare land for long leases. These will in time all be strenuous
questions with the new republican government of China. When the
foreigner gave up the extraterritorial right in Japan, the Japanese
never again permitted him to own land, unless he became a Japanese
citizen. Many land companies, subletting long leaseholds, have been
formed in all the treaty ports where there are foreign concessions.
I do not believe that republican China desires to acquire these
leaseholds for many years, and if she did she would purchase them. The
foreign navies would see to that.
VI
RAILWAYS IN CHINA
In the third book of _Paradise Lost_, Milton humorously discussed
transportation in China as follows:
“On the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light,”
but the matter has now reached a development worthy of being discussed
seriously.
China had in 1912 about 5,500 miles of railway in operation, new main
lines having been built from Tientsin to Nanking (Pukow) by German
and British contractors, and from Nanking to Shanghai by British
contractors, so that it is now possible to take cars at Shanghai and
go through to Calais, France, by rail. Branch lines connect the German
colony of Kiaochou and Chifu with this Tientsin trunk railway, so
that a German may go straight through from his Crown colony in cars
to Berlin. Before long, when the Canton-Hankau section is completed,
Hongkong’s colonial secretary will be able to leave Government House,
facing the wonderful Botanical Garden on the hill of Hongkong, take
a chair down to the Star Ferry Wharf, cross the mile of harbor, then
take his railway carriage and be whisked through to Downing Street,
London, to take his orders from the secretary of state for the Crown
colonies, with only one ferriage, that from Calais to Dover. Not only
a northern railway route is available, but a southern railway route
will soon be open. When the easy section through Persia, and the short
railway from Yunnan City through Mung Ting pass connects with Mandalay,
it will be possible for the colonial secretary of Indo-China to leave
the palatial Palais at Hanoi and entrain at the Tonquin Railway Gare
on the palm-lined boulevard, going straight through to the Ministré
on the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, via Hyderabad, Teheran, Constantinople
and the Gates of the Danube, all the way without seeing salt water.
Likewise the governor of Singapore will soon be able to entrain
opposite Government House for Calais and London, and cross the teeming
continents, passing through the site of the Garden of Eden, on his
way to Downing Street to consult with his chief. He can also pick up
his traveled friend (since the _entente cordiale_), the Gouverneur at
L’Hotel du Gouverneur, Saigon, and drop him at the Gare du Nord, Paris,
on his way to the departments on the left bank of the Seine.
The Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo railway, built by the British and Chinese
Corporation, and by the Chinese themselves, will soon be completed. The
Peking-Kalgan railway (the route for the tombs of the Ming emperors)
has been finely built by China’s leading engineer, Jeme Tien Yao
(educated at Yale, 1883) and this road will some day, with Russian and
French help, break across Gobi Desert to Kaikhta and Irkutsk, flanking
two thousand miles of Manchurian railway, and saving all that distance
in reaching Europe from Shanghai. The Kaifong-Singan railway will
soon be ready. It is planned to open a new port at Haochow, where the
Yellow River (Hoang Ho) used to meet the Yellow Sea, and to run the
railway through to Kaifong, Singan, Lanchow (in Kansu province) and on
to the historic Tarim valley, and Kashgar, opening up Turkestan. It
is also proposed to open a new port at ice-free Hunshan on the Ginmen
River, D’Anville Gulf, Sea of Japan, where China owns a narrow neck of
land running between Northern Korea and the Vladivostok district of
Siberia. From Hunshan a road would be run to Kirin, two hundred miles
over difficult forest-covered country. From Kirin China has independent
lines running between the Russian and Japanese lines. Hunshan would be
an excellent port whence to attack commercially the two rich northern
provinces of Manchuria. The road planned by America from Chin Wang Tao
to Tsitsikar and Aigun is possibly more of a postponed than a dead road
despite Russia and Japan.
The roads from Hankau north to Mukden have paid heavy dividends and
helped the imperial exchequer during the revolution of 1911. These
roads have been hindered neither by difficult construction, nor by
obstacles to traffic such as the likin tax system, which has cursed the
free trade and transportation of the southern part of the country. The
Hanyang iron mills can supply rails at one-third the American cost,
viz., nine dollars as compared with twenty-eight dollars per ton, so
that China can afford to build four miles of railway to America’s one
mile, and reduce rates accordingly because of the lower capital cost.
The cars can be erected at Hongkong in the south, Hankau in the center,
and at Tongshan in the north of China. The locomotives and trucks
will be imported from America, Germany and England. The necessary
coast railway from Hongkong to Ningpo has only been constructed in
the neighborhood of Amoy. Something has been done on the railways
from Hongkong to Yunnan City, and from Hongkong to Chungking, and
from Yunnan to Chungking. American engineers have made the surveys.
The railway along the ancient Ta Peh Lu (Great North Road) post road
from Chingtu to Singan has not yet been begun. A road, too, will break
across west from Chingtu to the Tibet gateway at Tachien. Mention
should be made of the railway from Kidalova, following the north bank
of the Amur to Blagovestchensk and Khabarovka, which Russia is building
so as to have an all-Russian railway to Vladivostok. This railway
is under way, although the debt of the Russo-Japan War has almost
destroyed Russian railway building, and postponed Russia’s commercial
(and other?) attack in India’s direction. Had it not been for that
debt, Russia might to-day be striking for railway entrance to Peking,
to Hankau, to Herat and Constantinople, as so many of the British
imperialists like Kipling and Sir Gilbert Parker fear.