his own land? I quote the following from the Hongkong _Telegraph_
of September 1, 1911: “At 6.00 P. M., on August 25, a German in the
employ of a British company, and an Italian priest went into a shop at
Shek Ki (near Canton). The German, who disliked the demeanor of the
shop employé, dealt the man a nasty cut on the head. The foreigners
afterward left the shop and went to a money changer’s. As the changer
was slow, the German snatched a lamp from a table, and smashed it on
the ground. The German assaulted two chair coolies. A riot developed.
The two foreigners rushed into the dwelling of a missionary lady
doctor.” Such abuse as this leads to international troubles, and the
consuls at the ports, to whom the patient Chinese turn over foreign
offenders, should be more severe than they are. These foreign offenders
should really be brought back to the village where they create a
disturbance, and in the presence of the consul, and Chinese taotais
and mandarins, should pay to the headman of the village sufficient
damages. Then the Chinese would know that the foreigner is sincere in
his legal measures. Thoughtless or drunken action, like that of the
German, often leads to missionary and other riots before the resentment
of the indignant natives cools. One brutal fool of this kind, _violens
in vino_, can place at jeopardy the lives of thousands of foreigners
and the peace of the nations. We must scrupulously show China that
we are sincere. She has some cause to feel that when we established
our extraterritorial courts we meant to cheat her of justice. We
shall later hear from Wu Ting Fang on this subject, as he is making a
specialty of codifying the laws.
The British government introduced to the foreign office (Tsung Li Yamen
and Wai Wu Pu) for many years, Sir Walter Hillier, as adviser, but
since his appointment was to a degree forced he had less influence than
in the case of the voluntary appointments of the Americans, Dennison
and Stevens, as advisers in the foreign offices of Japan and Korea,
respectively. The four-nations bankers will have foreign advisers on
the Chinese Finance and Foreign Boards, and great tact and patience
with China’s difficulties will at all times be required.
Long before the revolution, as well as after it, the masses of the
Chinese had commenced to think of national and international politics.
Whenever missionaries opened new “tan” (preaching or “talk” halls,
as the Chinese call churches) the auditors listened respectfully for
a while to the “doctrine” or “tao” (way). When the missionary came
down from the platform, and joined the audience on the benches for a
familiar “tan” (chat), religious subjects were not the first spoken of,
the following questioning being common:
“Our first question is, what is your name, age and number of children?”
“Did you come from your country by railway or steamship?”
“How far is it and what was the cost?”
“What is your real business outside of your kindly avocation of
achieving merit by temporarily talking about Jesus?”
“How long have you been in this province of China?”
“Were your clothes made in a China port, or in America, and at what
cost?”
“You do not shave your head and face or change your outer clothes
often, so we suppose you do not bathe often.”
“What do you think of this talk of republics, foreign loans,
centralized government, armies and railways?”
There is no sycamore tree for Zacchæus to climb; he must come down.
They know you are peaceful as an amateur, but they insist on your
professional opinion, and they believe your profession is something
more practical than talking religion. Are you a doctor, a government
employé, a farmer, a soldier, a spy, an artisan, a merchant? If so, you
must know about these practical things, and can answer the questions
propounded.
The emigration treaties now stand in almost a humorous attitude in
one respect. To save Japan’s “face” (the Oriental idiom for pride),
Japan is granted permission to land coolies, but Japan by a secret
postscriptum agrees not to let her coolies make the slightest use of
this permission, as she has room for them in Korea, Manchuria, the
navy, etc., at present. China is not permitted to land her coolies, but
land some of them she does by the “underground”, which runs via Canada,
Mexico, Central America, Cuba, etc. Our Pacific coast is correct,
notwithstanding the exigencies of diplomacy, that she can not and will
not absorb Oriental labor, any more than we foist Occidental labor
on the Orient. The Pacific coast is quite consistent for the “square
deal”, though it took her some time to trust the signing of the 1911
Japan Treaty, the immigration clause of which it is secretly understood
is not to be taken advantage of. America can not welcome too many
Chinese students and travelers, and a certain number of specialized
merchants, agriculturalists, agents, artisans and artists, whom we can
well accept as our tutors in their specialties.
On the subject of Asiatic immigration, the authority on American
naval and foreign affairs, Admiral Mahan, writes as follows: “A large
preponderance of Asiatics in a given region is a real annexation, more
effective than the political annexations against which the Monroe
doctrine was formulated. Free Asiatic immigration to the Pacific
coast in its present condition of sparse population would mean
Asiatic occupation--Asia colonized in America. This the United States
government can not accept because of the violent resistance of the
Pacific states, if for no other reason.”
In a former book I have recommended the immigration of a number of
Chinese into the Philippines. The Straits Settlements cover only a
small area. Their population is 300,000 Malays, who are akin to the
Filipino. Four hundred thousand Chinese were brought in, and the
little colony in 1911 exported $200,000,000 of tin and other products.
Sir Frank Swettenham, the famous governor of the settlement in its
formative period up to 1904, says of the Chinese: “The industrial
development of the country is entirely due to the Chinese. They are the
only people in the peninsula who can be depended upon. They tolerate
no interruptions in the performance of their daily labor, and save
their money to make prudent investments. Without the Chinese nothing
would have been done in the Malay states. No progress would have been
made, and the enormous natural resources of the country would still be
lying dormant.” A remarkable instance of the orderliness of the Chinese
was exhibited in the deportation in 1908 of 60,000 Chinese emigrants
from the Transvaal gold mines to China. Such a body of any other
labor would have shown many signs of rebellion against their removal
from the scenes to which they had grown attached, and where they were
prospering, and against the hot journey of 8,000 miles, made the more
unpleasant because of the crowded quarters on shipboard. No friction or
disturbance marked this unusual industrial event. Coolies though they
were, they kept their word like statesmen, and said: “We promised the
colony that we would only substitute black labor for four years, and as
the blacks now are ready to return to the field, we are going.”
The nations should get together, and permit China to levy a provisional
import duty of twelve per cent. instead of five per cent., and not
keep her government helpless because of starvation. If she had an
army and navy like Japan, she would not need to ask the permission of
others to allow her own government to live. Advice should be given
to her, as in the Mackay Treaty, to strike away the inter-provincial
and inter-district fetters of likin (transit taxes) and export tax,
by which method the provinces raise much of their revenue; and the
government should divide up the customs receipts between the provinces,
or permit the provinces to keep all their land tax.
France, which owns the only railway to Yunnan at present, is imposing
an unjust transit tax of ten per cent. on American, British and German
goods, shipped from Hongkong to Yunnan, or vice versa, and which must
cross French China. Canada in the same situation bids for American
freights by making no transit tax, and indeed quoting lower freight
rates; this is intelligent modernism. China and the three commercial
nations should have this Indo-Chinese tax removed, and demand equal
rates on French railways. This rate equalization is what America has
demanded of Japan and Russia on railways in Manchuria. It is the same
thing that Germany, at the point of the _Panther’s_ cannon, demanded of
France in the Agadir incident in Morocco. In other words, the “square
deal”, and it must be put in effect, say the Chinese people and the
nations which advocate the “open door”.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The Gothic type of architecture introduced by the French; the
Catholic cathedral on Caine Road, on the slope of Hongkong.
Chinese contractors erect these buildings.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Nan-Tang cathedral (French) towering over native roofs at Canton.
Up to the revolution, this offended the feng-shui superstition of
old China, and was a constant source of difficulty.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Cement hill roads, South China, Kwangtung province. Bamboo
water-buckets. Note luxuriant vegetation, in a moist hot climate;
fern, rubber, tamarind, banyan, mulberry trees.
]
The political economists of Japan are beginning to denounce the
exportation of coal, and recommend the reservation of the fields as a
war supply. The proposition is to use foreign coal in manufacturing.
Accordingly, measures have been taken to develop the Manchurian,
Korean, Saghalien and Formosan fields, as well as purchasing from the
rich Chinese supplies. This conservation method will certainly be
followed by Australia, England, Germany and America, as the years go
by. The export of coal is not a benefit; it is an impoverishment. The
Japanese make into briquettes the anthracite coal of Ping Yang, Korea,
so as to produce a smokeless navy coal.
An interesting aftermath of the Boxer massacres in 1900 was the strange
disappearance of the Manchu prince, Liang Chow, who was condemned to
be strangled in private with the silver cord, which two unseen friends
were to tighten behind two holes bored in a wall. Prince Liang fled
to America, where he became a pauper, and was buried in the Alamosa,
Colorado, cemetery. At the request of the Manchu throne his body was
exhumed on November 25, 1910, and started on its way to China to the
tombs of the Manchu emperors west of Peking (not the Ming tombs, which
are northwest). A splendid, dragon-gilded coffin was furnished, and
the Manchus sent magnificent mandarin robes, a yellow jacket, peacock
feather and pearl button of honor. The Chinese whom Prince Liang found
in America were not Manchus, but republican Cantonese of southern
Kwangtung province.
Hongkong, the dean of foreign settlements, Shanghai, Tientsin,
Singapore, Hankau, Harbin, etc., all have volunteer military companies
and inter-port rifle matches. Every man in a settlement can be
impressed for the protection of life and property. All these uniformed
companies have seen hard active service in the taking of Kowloon,
the various riots at Shanghai, the Peking Relief Expedition and the
revolution which broke out at Hankau in October, 1911. The companies
cover infantry, machine and field gun, bicycle and garrison corps
trained in the use of cannon. Hongkong’s uniformed contingent at
King George’s coronation in London attracted much attention for the
smartness of their swinging march. “We didn’t think the jaded tropics
could turn out such ambition,” was the remark of many onlookers.
The English historian, Creasy, who lived in the Far East, in writing
his book, _Decisive Battles of the World_, as early as 1852 recognized
the importance of America’s mission across the Pacific. These are his
words: “The conquests of China and Japan by the fleets and armies
of the United States are events which many now living are likely to
witness. Compared with the magnitude of such changes in the dominion
of the old world, the certain ascendancy of the Anglo-Americans over
central and southern America seems a matter of secondary importance.”
If we change Creasy’s favorite idea of physical conquest to that of
moral, educational and commercial, with physical power only as an
auxiliary in the case of the heinous jealousy of those not concerned,
we shall agree with him as to America’s advance across the Pacific.
It was nevertheless a wonderful prophecy, made as long ago as 1852,
when the tide of America’s western advance, with the exception of one
meager settlement, had not yet risen over the Rockies. All the Chinese
leaders, republican and conservative, look for the growing evidence
of America’s interests across the Pacific, and American affairs and
history are keenly studied.
Some of the Chinese proverbs on international politics are the
following:
“He who doesn’t follow up his words with deeds is no more terrible than
the wind on painted water.”
“If you have to guess at roads, the middle one will average up best.”
“Go slow; only the turtle is equipped to draw his head in suddenly.”
“Don’t cross a river with your feet in two boats.”
XI
CHINESE INTERNAL POLITICS
Almost the oldest book in China, the _Chou Li_, provided for village
management at the same time that sacrifices were instituted, thousands
of years before the Christian era. The oldest man of the clan-village,
bearing the title of “hsiang lao” (village old-one) takes charge at
a salary of about one hundred and fifty dollars a year, and hires
say twenty police in the smaller villages. This “hsiang lao”, when
necessary, deals with the district “siunkian”, who is the government’s
lowest mandarin. The people express their views in an open “hsiang”
meeting, which is the same as the old town meeting of New England, on
which present democratic institutions in America are based; an “open
primary”, for that matter.
In the guild councils of the cities, the more experienced tradesmen
have had political experience in their dealings with the “taotai”,
a higher class of mandarin. From “hsiang” and guild meetings, the
next step was to send delegates to viceroys, or even delegates to the
Board of Censors at Peking, accusing viceroys. China, therefore, had
some experience in politics before the reformers of 1898 induced the
impressionable young Emperor Kwang Hsu to issue his famous edicts,
which started a wave that rolled on, lifting provincial assemblies,
parliaments, and revolutionists into view; and the wave is rolling
onward still. Kwang Hsu as early as 1891 issued an edict praising
and protecting missionaries. He was never permitted to travel, but
learned from books, brought to him by Kang Yu Wei and the other new
spirits, what was going on in the outside world. In 1894 Kwang Hsu sent
to the American Bible Society at Peking a request for copies of the
two Testaments, “such as are sold to THE PEOPLE”. His immortal edicts
began to appear in the Peking _Gazette_ on June 23, 1898, and ended in
September of that year, when he was imprisoned by the empress dowager
and Yuan Shih Kai. During the issuance of the edicts the dowager was
at the summer palace, eight miles northwest of Peking, where she was
preparing her reactionary plans. The edicts covered the following:
1. New learning for much of the old classical essays. This
reform is in force.
2. Modern army, navy, railways, telephone, telegraph. The slow
progress of the Lu-Han (Peking to Hankau) Railway was commented
on. These reforms are under way, and full of promise.
3. Publicity of national and provincial figures of receipt
and expenditure; i. e., a budget. This reform was instituted
by the National Assembly in 1911, and will be adopted by the
republicans.
4. All citizens to have the privilege of memorializing the
Throne independent of the Censor Board.
5. Extension of mail service. This is being brought about by
the extension of the railway service, and the government taking
over private post routes of guilds.
6. Prince Ching to secure assistance from foreigners in
establishing a national university, with branches in provincial
capitals. Departments of universities at Peking, Canton,
Shanghai, Nanking, Paoting, Tientsin, Hankau, etc., have been
established. The English universities, acting under the
suggestions of Sir Robert Hart and Lord Cecil, will assist,
as will also America. This is secular education. The mission
schools are, of course, extending to many new cities.
Let us step into one of the meetings of the first partially formed
Parliament, which opened in 1910. We would call it a Senate. They
called it Tzu Cheng Yuan; that is, Property Laws Assembly, or Taxing
Assembly. The Parliament buildings at Peking, not being completed,
the Congress met in the law hall of the Peking University. This hall
is a two-story western style building, the only Chinese feature being
the heavy tiled roof. The windows are square and have modern sashes.
The door is Roman and not Chinese in curve. The Lower House was not
yet formed. In the front row of two hundred members were Mongol
princes, Manchu princes, viceroys, governors, mandarins, appointed
by the Crown, and farther back were men sent up by the provincial
assemblies. The great Prince Pu Lun of the royal blood, whom I had
the pleasure of meeting at Hongkong, and who was commissioner to the
St. Louis Exposition in 1904, most affable, stout and progressive,
opens the assembly with bland dignity. Shen Chia Pan, the temporary
vice-president, sits on his left. The debate at once opens like the
small fire of machine guns. It takes up appeals by the provincial
assemblies on the actions of the provincial governors. Education,
foreign loans, provincial versus nationalized railways, pensions to
Manchus, suppression of opium, acts of departmental secretariates,
the leakage in tax collection, the corruption of courts, the police
to serve the people and not against the people, high tax rate
against the poor and low tax rate against the rich, taxation without
representation, foreign aggression in Manchuria and Turkestan,
insults to the flag abroad, nepotism, etc., are discussed, and the
secretariates have a lively time defending themselves from the
critical, eloquent pure Chinese Cantonese; the independent Hunanese
who have many Cromwells among them, and who are foremost for running
Chinese mines and railways without foreign money; the tradition-loving
Szechuen men; the literati and capitalists from Kiangsu; the traveled
bankers from Shansi province; the cosmopolitan men from the imperial
province of Pechili and Shangtung; the rough-rider Mongols from far
west Shensi and Kansu provinces; and the Patrick Henrys from turbulent
Fukien province. The Throne is compelled to promise a Lower House in
1913 instead of 1915, and at last, in its edict, gives all credit
to the crushed reformer, Emperor Kwang Hsu, who learned reform from
the Bible and other western books surreptitiously introduced despite
the eunuch spies of the reactionary Empress Dowager Tse Hsi. This
preliminary Senate stormily sends a suggestion to the oligarchic Grand
Council of the Regent that reform shall be evidenced by the regent and
the infant Emperor Pu Yi having their queues cut off. Thus the spirited
debate rolled back and forth between the old Grand Council and the new
Congress or Parliament, until the guns of the impatient revolution
thundered at Hankau, like Cromwell on the doors of the Long Parliament.
Confucius himself was a politician. He lived in an age of able prime
ministers of some ten highly civilized, equal states, fighting
generally by diplomacy for mastery, on the pretext of the right to
monopolize the succession to perform the sacred rites of the parent
Chou state, which alone was weak. These prime ministers were all abler
men than were the titular rulers of the states. Confucius studied
diplomacy in the writings of Kwan Tsz, premier-philosopher of the
adjoining Tsi state. Kwan Tsz’ writings are sometimes published with
Lao Tsz’ works, but should not be confounded with them. Confucius was
also influenced by his friend, the great diplomat, Shuh Hiang, prime
minister of the Tsin state, which was situated far to the northwest of
his native state of Lu; also by the very able minister Tsz Chan of the
state of Cheng, which lay west of Lu. He had to keep his wits awake
to save the small and weaker Lu state from succumbing to the policies
of the ambitious Yen Tsz, prime minister of the Tsi state, which was
situated immediately north of Lu, and from falling before the intrigue
of Kupeh Yu, prime minister of Wei state, lying to the northwest.
This last state afforded Confucius a long exile, when his vicious,
ungrateful, new prince hounded him for fourteen years by an ancient
system of “Black List” out of his positions with some thirty states,
content neither to use his eminent services, nor to let him live that
other states might avail of them. He knew too much about law-breaking
by those who occupied the “seats of the mighty”; and “such men are
dangerous”! Devoted as they are to the study of Confucius’ life, the
Chinese thereby imbibed politics.
History throws light on some of the insidiousness of ancient
Chinese intrigue. As long ago as 626 B. C. the ruler of the Chinese
principality of Ts’in, which state was oppressed by the manly Tartars,
sent to the Tartar chief two companies of singing girls “that he might
be too weak to ride the saddle at the head of his cavalry”. In 486
B. C. the prince of Tsi state, lying to the north of Lu state, sent
to the prince of Lu state, Confucius’ master, a company of singing
girls to ensnare manliness in the lap of debauchery, with the result
that Confucius in disgust left the service of his prince and became a
hounded exile, laughed out of his court by the powerful who for the
time were above the law. Where have been that most venerable family on
earth, the Kungs of Shangtung province, who have lived at Kufu near
Yenchow, in all the recent turbulence in China? We have heard of Manchu
princes, of leaders of the Chinese like Kang and Sun, Yuan, General Li,
and Wu Ting Fang; of descendants of the old Ming emperors, etc., but
why have not the lineal descendants of Confucius put forward a man able
to handle politics, war and literature as did their great ancestor?
What an opportunity they have had recently. What an opportunity they
have yet to put forward a man for the presidency, whom all China and
all the world will be delighted to accept if he is only one-twentieth
as able as his immortal ancestor.
The secret society, too, has played a great part in internal politics.
It is not so necessary now as it was. The pitiless publicity of
a democracy or constitutional monarchy makes secret duplicity
unnecessary. The Kao Ming Tang was Yuan Shih Kai’s and Prince
Ching’s society. At the other extreme was the Kao-lao-Hwei and other
anti-Manchu secret societies. It was the union of the Triad secret
society with the Taiping rebels that made that revolution powerful
enough to spread from Canton to Nanking. In the Boxer days of 1900 the
Buddhist secret society, Tsai Li Hwei, extended its scope to cover
the new movement. Their watchword was: “Store grain for war; collect
forage; revolt”. The Sia Hwei (reform association), Tung Men Hwei
(sworn brother), and other secret societies established in China and
throughout the world by Sun Yat Sen, had much to do with the successful
preliminary work that made the revolution possible.
The old lines of political demarcation are passing away, and new lines
will be drawn in some instances. The powerful viceroys of the fourteen
main provinces were located and named as follows:
“Viceroy of Pechili” province, at Tientsin.
“Viceroy of Shen Kan” (i. e. Shensi and Kansu provinces), at Singan.
“Viceroy of Kiangnan” (i. e. Kiangsu, Nganhwei and Kiangsi provinces),
at Nanking.
“Viceroy of Hu Kwang”, or “Viceroy of Liang Hu” (i. e. Hunan and Hupeh
provinces), at Wuchang.
“Viceroy of Min Che” (i. e. Chekiang and Fukien provinces), at Fuchau.
“Viceroy of Liang Kwang” (i. e. Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces), at
Canton.
“Viceroy of Yun Kwei” (i. e. Yunnan and Kweichou provinces), at Yunnan.