THE REPUBLIC IN COLLISION WITH REALITY: TWO TYPICAL INSTANCES OF
"FOREIGN AGGRESSION"
Such, then, were the internal conditions which the new administration
was called upon to face with the death of Yuan Shih-kai. With very
little money in the National Treasury and with the provinces unable or
unwilling to remit to the capital a single dollar, it was fortunate that
at least one public service, erected under foreign pressure, should be
brilliantly justifying its existence. The Salt Administration,
efficiently reorganized in the space of three years by the great Indian
authority, Sir Richard Dane, was now providing a monthly surplus of
nearly five million dollars; and it was this revenue which kept China
alive during a troubled transitional period when every one was declaring
that she must die. By husbanding this hard cash and mixing it liberally
with paper money, the Central Government has been able since June, 1916,
to meet its current obligations and to keep the general machinery from
breaking down.
But in a country such as China new dangers have to be constantly faced
and smoothed away--the interests of the outer world pressing on the
country and conflicting with the native interest at a myriad points. And
in order to illustrate and make clear the sort of daily exacerbation
which the nation must endure because of the vastness of its territory
and the octopus-hold of the foreigner we give two typical cases of
international trouble which have occurred since Yuan Shih-kai's death.
The first is the well-known Chengchiatun incident which occurred in
Manchuria in August, 1916: the second is the Lao-hsi-kai affair which
took place in Tientsin in November of the same year and created a storm
of rage against France throughout North China which at the moment of
writing has not yet abated.
The facts about the Chengchiatun incident are incredibly simple and
merit being properly told. Chengchiatun is a small Mongol-Manchurian
market-town lying some sixty miles west of the South Manchurian railway
by the ordinary cart-roads, though as the crow flies the distance is
much less. The country round about is "new country," the prefecture in
which Chengchiatun lies being originally purely Mongol territory on
which Chinese squatted in such numbers that it was necessary to erect
the ordinary Chinese civil administration. Thirty or forty miles due
west of the town cultivation practically ceases; and then nothing meets
the eye but the rolling grasslands of Mongolia, with their sparse
encampments of nomad horsemen and shepherds which stretch so
monotonously into the infinities of High Asia.
The region is strategically important because the trade-routes converge
there from the growing marts of the Taonanfu administration, which is
the extreme westernly limit of Chinese authority in the Mongolian
borderland. A rich exchange in hides, furs, skins, cattle and foodstuffs
has given this frontier town from year to year an increasing importance
in the eyes of the Chinese who are fully aware of the dangers of a
laissez aller policy and are determined to protect the rights they have
acquired by pre-emption. The fact that notorious Mongol brigand-chiefs,
such as the famous Babachapu who was allied to the Manchu Restoration
Party and who was said to have been subsidized by the Japanese Military
Party, had been making Chengchiatun one of their objectives, brought
concern early in 1916 to the Moukden Governor, the energetic General
Chang Tso-lin, who in order to cope with the danger promptly established
a military cordon round the district, with a relatively large reserve
based on Chengchiatun, drawn from the 28th Army Division. A certain
amount of desultory fighting months before any one had heard of the town
had given Chengchiatun the odour of the camp; and when in the summer the
Japanese began military manoeuvres in the district with various
scattered detachments, on the excuse that the South Manchuria railway
zone where they alone had the right under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty to
be, was too cramped for field exercises, it became apparent that
dangerous developments might be expected--particularly as a body of
Japanese infantry was billeted right in the centre of the town.
On the 13th August a Japanese civilian at Chengchiatun--there is a small
Japanese trading community there--approached a Chinese boy who was
selling fish. On the boy refusing to sell at the price offered him, the
Japanese caught hold of him and started beating him. A Chinese soldier
of the 28th Division who was passing intervened; and a scuffle commenced
in which other Chinese soldiers joined and which resulted in the
Japanese being severely handled. After the Chinese had left him, the man
betook himself to the nearest Japanese post and reported that he had
been grievously assaulted by Chinese soldiers for no reason whatsoever.
A Japanese gendarme made a preliminary investigation in company with the
man; then returning to the Japanese barracks, declared that he could
find no one in authority; that his attempts at discovering the culprits
had been resisted; and that he must have help. The Japanese officer in
command, who was a captain, detailed a lieutenant and twenty men to
proceed to the Chinese barracks to obtain satisfaction from the Chinese
Commander--using force if necessary. It was precisely in this way that
the play was set in motion.
The detachment marched off to the headquarters of the offending Chinese
detachment, which was billeted in a pawnshop, and tried to force their
way past a sentry who stood his ground, into the inner courtyards. A
long parley ensued with lowered bayonets; and at last on the Chinese
soldier absolutely refusing to give way, the lieutenant gave orders to
cut him down. There appears to be no doubt about these important
facts--that is to say, that the act of war was the deliberate attack by
a Japanese armed detachment on a Chinese sentry who was guarding the
quarters of his Commander.
A frightful scene followed. It appears that scattered groups of Chinese
soldiers, some with their arms, and some without, had collected during
this crisis and point-blank firing at once commenced. The first shots
appear to have been fired--though this was never proved--by a Chinese
régimental groom, who was standing with some horses some distance away
in the gateway of some stabling and who is said to have killed or
wounded the largest number of Japanese. In any case, seven Japanese
soldiers were killed outright, five more mortally wounded and four
severely so, the Chinese themselves losing four killed, besides a number
of wounded. The remnant of the Japanese detachment after this rude
reverse managed to retreat with their wounded officer to their own
barracks where the whole detachment barricaded themselves in, firing for
many hours at everything that moved on the roads though absolutely no
attempt was made by the Chinese soldiery to advance against them.
The sound of this heavy firing, and the wild report that many Japanese
had been killed, had meanwhile spread panic throughout the town, and
there was a general _sauve qui peut_, a terrible retribution being
feared. The local Magistrate finally restored some semblance of order;
and after dark proceeded in person with some notables of the town to the
Japanese barracks to tender his regrets and to arrange for the removal
of the Japanese corpses which were lying just as they had fallen, and
which Chinese custom demanded should be decently cared for, though they
constituted important and irrefragible evidence of the armed invasion
which had been practised. The Japanese Commander, instead of meeting
these conciliatory attempts half-way, thereupon illegally arrested the
Magistrate and locked him up, being impelled to this action by the
general fear among his men that a mass attack would be made in the night
by the Chinese troops in garrison and the whole command wiped out.
Nothing, however, occurred and on the 14th instant the Magistrate was
duly released on his sending for his son to take his place as hostage.
On the 16th the Magistrate had successfully arranged the withdrawal of
all Chinese troops five miles outside the town to prevent further
clashes. On the 15th Japanese cavalry and infantry began to arrive in
large numbers from the South Manchuria railway zone (where they alone
have the Treaty right to be) and the town of Chengchiatun was
arbitrarily placed by them in a state of siege.
Here is the stuff of which the whole incident was made: there is nothing
material beyond the facts stated which illustrate very glaringly the
manner in which a strong Power acts towards a weak one.
Meanwhile the effect in Tokio of these happenings had been electrical.
Relying on the well-known Japanese police axiom, that the man who gets
in his story first is the prosecutor and the accused the guilty party,
irrespective of what the evidence may be, the newspapers all came out
with the same account of a calculated attack by "ferocious Chinese
soldiers" on a Japanese detachment and the general public were asked to
believe that a number of their enlisted nationals had been deliberately
and brutally murdered. It was not, however, until more than a week after
the incident that an official report was published by the Tokio Foreign
Office, when the following garbled account was distributed far and wide
as the Japanese case:--
"When one Kiyokishy Yoshimoto, aged 27, an employé of a Japanese
apothecary at Chengchiatun, was passing the headquarters of the
Chinese troops on the 13th instant, a Chinese soldier stopped him,
and, with some remarks, which were unintelligible to the Japanese,
suddenly struck him on the head. Yoshimoto became enraged, but was
soon surrounded by a large number of Chinese soldiers and others,
who subjected him to all kind of humiliation. As a result of this
lawlessness on the part of the Chinese, the Japanese sustained
injuries in seven or eight places, but somehow he managed to break
away and reach a Japanese police box, where he applied for help. On
receipt of this news, a policeman, named Kowase, hastened to the
spot, but by the time he arrived there all the offenders had fled.
He therefore repaired to the headquarters of the Chinese to lay a
complaint, but the sentry stopped him, and presented a pistol at
him, and under these circumstances he was obliged to apply to the
Japanese Garrison headquarters, where Captain Inone instructed
Lieutenant Matsuo with twenty men to escort the policeman to the
Chinese headquarters. When the party approached the Chinese
headquarters, Chinese troops began to fire, and the policeman and
others were either killed or wounded. Despite the fact that the
Japanese troops retired, the Chinese troops did not give up firing,
but besieged the Japanese garrison, delivering several severe
attacks. Soon after the fighting ceased, the Chinese authorities
visited the Japanese barracks, and expressed the desire that the
affair be settled amicably. It was the original intention of the
Japanese troops to fight it out, but they were completely
outnumbered, and lest the safety of the Japanese residents be
endangered, they stopped fighting. On examination of the dead bodies
of seven Japanese soldiers, who were attacked outside the barracks,
it was discovered that they had been all slain by the Chinese
troops, the bodies bearing marks of violence."
Without entering again into the merits of the case, we would ask those
who are acquainted with recent history whether it is likely that Chinese
soldiers, knowing all the pains and penalties attaching to such action,
would deliberately attack a body of twenty armed Japanese under an
officer as the Japanese official account states? We believe that no
impartial tribunal, investigating the matter on the spot, could fail to
point out the real aggressors and withal lay bare the web of a most
amazing state of affairs. For in order to understand what occurred, on
the 13th August, 1916, it is necessary to turn far away from
Chengchiatun and see what lies behind it all.
At the back of the brain of the Japanese Military Party, which by no
means represents the Japanese nation or the Japanese Government although
it exercises a powerful influence on both, is the fixed idea that South
Manchuria and Inner Mongolia must be turned into a strongly held and
fortified Japanese _enclave_, if the balance of power in Eastern Asia is
to be maintained. Pursuant to this idea, Japanese diplomacy was induced
many months ago to concentrate its efforts on winning--if not
wringing--from Russia the strategically important strip of railway south
of the Sungari River, because (and this should be carefully noted) with
the Sungari as the undisputed dividing-line between the Russian and
Japanese spheres in Manchuria, and with Japanese shallow-draft gun-boats
navigating that waterway and entering the Nonni river, it would be easily
possible for Japan to complete a "Continental quadrilateral" which would
include Korea, South Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, the extreme western
barrier of which would be the new system of Inner Mongolian railways
centring round Taonanfu and terminating at Jehol, for which Japan already
holds the building rights[23]. Policing rights--in the outer zone of this
_enclave_,--with a total exclusion of all Chinese garrisons, is the
preliminary goal towards which the Japanese Military Party has been long
plainly marching; and long before anybody had heard of Chengchiatun, a
scheme of reconnoitring detachments had been put in force to spy out the
land and form working alliances with the Mongol bands in order to harass
and drive away all the representatives of Chinese authority. What
occurred, then, at Chengchiatun might have taken place at any one of
half-a-dozen other places in this vast and little-known region whither
Japanese detachments have silently gone; and if Chinese diplomacy in the
month of August, 1916, was faced with a rude surprise, it was only what
political students had long been expecting. For though Japan should be
the real defender of Chinese liberties, it is a fact that in Chinese
affairs Japanese diplomacy has been too long dictated to by the Military
Party in Tokio and attempts nothing save when violence allows it to tear
from China some fresh portion of her independence.
And here we reach the crux of the matter. One of the little known
peculiarities of the day lies in the fact that Japan is the land of
political inaction _because there is no tradition of action save that
which has been built up by the military and naval chiefs since the
Chinese war of_ 1894-95. Having only visualized the world in
international terms during two short decades, there has been no time for
a proper tradition to be created by the civil government of Japan; and
because there is no such tradition, the island empire of the East has no
true foreign policy and is at the mercy of manufactured crises, being
too often committed to petty adventures which really range her on the
side of those in Europe the Allies have set themselves to destroy. It is
for this reason that the Chinese are consistently treated as though they
were hewers of wood and drawers of water, helots who are occasionally
nattered in the columns of the daily press and yet are secretly looked
upon as men who have been born merely to be cuffed and conquered. The
Moukden Governor, General Chang Tso-lin, discussing the Chengchiatun
affair with the writer, put the matter in a nutshell. Striking the table
he exclaimed: "After all we are not made of wood like this, we too are
flesh and blood and must defend our own people. A dozen times I have
said, 'Let them come and take Manchuria openly if they dare, but let
them cease their childish intrigues.' Why do they not do so? Because
they are not sure they can swallow us--not at all sure. Do you
understand? We are weak, we are stupid, we are divided, but we are
innumerable, and in the end, if they persist, China will burst the
Japanese stomach."
Such passionate periods are all very well, but when it comes to the
sober business of the council chamber it is a regrettable fact that
Chinese, although foreign friends implore them to do so, do not properly
use the many weapons in their armoury. Thus in this particular case,
instead of at once hurrying to Chengchiatun some of the many foreign
advisers who sit kicking their heels in Peking from one end of the year
to the other and who number competent jurisconsults, China did next to
nothing. No proper report was drawn up on the spot; sworn statements
were not gathered, nor were witnesses brought to Peking; and it
therefore happened that when Japan filed her demands for redress, China
had not in her possession anything save an utterly inadequate defence.
Mainly because of this she was forced to agree to forgoing any direct
discussion of the rights and wrongs of the case, proceeding directly to
negotiations based on the various claims which Japan filed and which
were as follows:--
1. Punishment of the General commanding the 28th Division.
2. The dismissal of officers at Chengchiatun responsible for the
occurrence as well as the severe punishment of those who took direct
part in the fracas.
3. Proclamations to be posted ordering all Chinese soldiers and
civilians in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia to refrain
from any act calculated to provoke a breach of the peace with
Japanese soldiers or civilians.
4. China to agree to the stationing of Japanese police officers in
places in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia where their
presence was considered necessary for the protection of Japanese
subjects. China also to agree to the engagement by the officials of
South Manchuria of Japanese police advisers.
_And in addition_:--
1. Chinese troops stationed in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner
Mongolia to employ a certain number of Japanese Military officers as
advisers.
2. Chinese Military Cadet schools to employ a certain number of
Japanese Military officers as instructors.
3. The Military Governor of Moukden to proceed personally to Port
Arthur to the Japanese Military Governor of Kwantung to apologize
for the occurrence and to tender similar personal apologies to the
Japanese Consul General in Moukden.
4. Adequate compensation to be paid by China to the Japanese
sufferers and to the families of those killed.
The merest tyro will see at once that so far from caring very much about
the killing of her soldiery, Japan was bent on utilizing the opportunity
to gain a certain number of new rights and privileges in the zone of
Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia--notably an extension of
her police and military-supervision rights. In spite, however, of the
faulty procedure to which she had consented, China showed considerable
tenacity in the course of negotiations which lasted nearly half a year,
and by the end of January, 1917, had whittled down the question of
Japanese compensation to fairly meagre proportions. To be precise the
two governments agreed to embody by the exchange of Notes the five
following stipulations:--
1. The General commanding the 28th Division to be reprimanded.
2. Officers responsible to be punished according to law. If the law
provides for severe punishment, such punishment will be inflicted.
3. Proclamations to be issued enjoining Chinese soldiers and
civilians in the districts where there is mixed residence to accord
considerate treatment to Japanese soldiers and civilians.
4. The Military Governor of Moukden to send a representative to Port
Arthur to convey his regret when the Military Governor of Kwantung
and Japanese Consul General at Moukden are there together.
5. A solatium of $500 (Five Hundred Dollars) to be given to the
Japanese merchant Yoshimoto.
But though the incident was thus nominally closed, and amicable
relations restored, the most important point--the question of Japanese
police-rights in Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia--was left
precisely where it had been before, the most vigorous Chinese protests
not having induced Japan to abate in the slightest her pretensions.
During previous years a number of Japanese police-stations and
police-boxes had been established in defiance of the local authorities
in these regions, and although China in these negotiations recorded her
strongest possible objection to their presence as being the principal
cause of the continual friction between Chinese and Japanese, Japan
refused to withdraw from her contention that they did not constitute any
extension of the principle of extraterritoriality, and that indeed
Japanese police, distributed at such points as the Japanese consular
authorities considered necessary, must be permanently accepted. Here
then is a matter which will require careful consideration when the
Powers meet to revise their Chinese Treaties as they must revise them
after the world-war; for Japan in Manchuria is fundamentally in no
different a position from England in the Yangtsze Valley and what
applies to one must apply to the other. The new Chinese police which are
being distributed in ever greater numbers throughout China form an
admirable force and are superior to Japanese police in the performance
of nearly all their duties. It is monstrous that Japan, as well as other
Powers, should act in such a reprehensible manner when the Chinese
administration is doing all it can to provide efficient guardians of the
peace.
[Illustration: The Famous or Infamous General Chang-Hsun, the leading
Reactionary in China to-day, who still commands a force of 30,000 men
astride of the Pukow Railway.]
[Illustration: The Bas-relief in a Peking Temple, well illustrating
Indo-Chinese influences.]
The second case was one in which French officialdom by a curious act of
folly gravely alienated Chinese sympathies and gave a powerful weapon to
the German propaganda in China at the end of 1916. The Lao-hsi-kai
dispute, which involved a bare 333 acres of land in Tientsin, has now
taken its place beside the Chengchiatun affair, and has become a leading
case in that great dossier of griefs which many Chinese declare make up
the corpus of Euro-Chinese relations. Here again the facts are
absolutely simple and absolutely undisputed. In 1902 the French consular
authorities in Tientsin filed a request to have their Concession
extended on the ground that they were becoming cramped. The Chinese
authorities, although not wishing to grant the request and indeed
ignoring it for a long time, were finally induced to begin fitful
negotiations; and in October, 1916, after having passed through various
processes of alteration, reduction, and re-statement during the interval
of fourteen years, the issue had been so fined down that a virtual
agreement regarding the administration of the new area had been
reached--an agreement which the Peking Government was prepared to put
into force subject to one reasonable stipulation, that the local
opposition to the new grant of territory which was very real, as Chinese
feel passionately on the subject of the police-control of their
land-acreage, was first overcome. The whole essence or soul of the
disputes lay therein: that the lords of the soil, the people of China,
and in this case more particularly the population of Tientsin, should
accept the decision arrived at which was that a joint Franco-Chinese
administration be established under a Chinese Chairman.
When the terms of this proposed agreement were communicated to the
Tientsin Consulate by the French Legation the arrangement did not please
the French Consul-General, who was under transfer to Shanghai and who
proposed to settle the case to the satisfaction of his nationals before
he left. There is absolutely no dispute about this fact either--namely
that the main pre-occupation of a consular officer, charged primarily
under the Treaties with the simple preservation of law and order among
his nationals, was the closing-up of a vexatious outstanding case, by
force if necessary, before he handed over his office to his successor.
It was with this idea that an ultimatum was drawn up by the French
Consul General and, having been weakly approved by the French Legation,
was handed to the Chinese local authorities. It gave them a time-limit
of twenty-four hours in which to effect the complete police evacuation
of the coveted strip of territory on the ground that the delay in the
signature of a formal Protocol had been wilful and deliberate and had
closed the door to further negotiations; and as no response came at the
end of the time-limit, an open invasion of Chinese territory was
practised by an armed French detachment; nine uniformed Chinese
constables on duty being forcibly removed and locked up in French
barracks and French sentries posted on the disputed boundary.
The result of this misguided action was an enormous Chinese outcry and
the beginning of a boycott of the French in North China,--and this in
the middle of a war when France has acted with inspiring nobility. Some
2,000 native police, servants and employé's promptly deserted the French
Concession _en masse_; popular unions were formed to keep alive
resentment; and although in the end the arrested police were set at
liberty, the friendly intervention of the Allies proved unable to effect
a settlement of the case which at the moment of writing remains
precisely where it was a year ago.[24]
Here you have the matter of foreign interests in China explained in the
sense that they appear to Chinese. It is not too much to say that this
illustration of the deliberate lawlessness, which has too often been
practised in the past by consuls who are simply Justices of the Peace,
would be incredible elsewhere; and yet it is this lawlessness which has
come to be accepted as part and parcel of what is called "policy" in
China because in the fifty years preceding the establishment of the
Republic a weak and effeminate mandarinate consistently sought safety in
surrenders. It is this lawlessness which must at all costs be suppressed
if we are to have a happy future. The Chinese people have so far
contented themselves by pacific retaliation and have not exploded into
rage; but those who see in the gospel of boycott an ugly manifestation
of what lies slumbering should give thanks nightly that they live in a
land where reason is so supreme. Think of what might not happen in China
if the people were not wholly reasonable! Throughout the length and
breadth of the land you have small communities of foreigners, mere drops
in a mighty ocean of four hundred millions, living absolutely secure
although absolutely at the mercy of their huge swarms of neighbours. All
such foreigners--or nearly all--have come to China for purposes of
profit; they depend for their livelihood on co-operation with the
Chinese; and once that co-operation ceases they might as well be dead
and buried for all the good residence will do them. In such
circumstances it would be reasonable to suppose that a certain decency
would inspire their attitude, and that a policy of give-and-take would
always be sedulously practised; and we are happy to say that there is
more of this than there used to be. It is only when incidents such as
the Chengchiatun and Laihsikai affairs occur that the placid population
is stirred to action. Even then, instead of turning and rending the many
little defenceless communities--as European mobs would certainly
do--they simply confine themselves to boycotting the offenders and
hoping that this evidence of their displeasure will finally induce the
world to believe that they are determined to get reasonable treatment.
The Chinese as a people may be very irritating in the slowness with
which they do certain things--though they are as quick in business as
the quickest Anglo-Saxon--but that is no excuse why men who call
themselves superior should treat them with contempt. The Chinese are the
first to acknowledge that it will take them a generation at least to
modernize effectively their country and their government; but they
believe that having erected a Republic and having declared themselves as
disciples of the West they are justified in expecting the same treatment
and consideration which are to be given after the war even to the
smallest and weakest nations of Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Russian diplomats now deny that the Japanese proposals regarding
the cession of the railway south of the Sungari river have ever been
formally agreed to.
[24] A further illustration of the action of French diplomacy in China
has just been provided (April, 1917) in the protest lodged by France
against the building of a railway in Kwangsi Province by American
engineers with American capital--France claiming _exclusive rights_ in
Kwangsi by virtue of a letter sent by the Chinese Minister of Foreign
Affairs to the French Legation in 1914 as settlement for a frontier
dispute in that year. The text of the letter is as follows:
"The dispute that rose in consequence of the disturbance at the border
of Annam and Kwangsi has been examined into by the Joint Committee
detailed by both parties concerned, and a conclusion has been reached to
the effect that all matters relating to the solution of the case would
be carried out in accordance with the request of Your Excellency.
"In order to demonstrate the especially good friendly relations existing
between the two countries, the Republican Government assures Your
Excellency that in case of a railway construction or a mining enterprise
being undertaken in Kwangsi Province in the future, for which foreign
capital is required, France would first be consulted for a loan of the
necessary capital. On such an occasion, the Governor of Kwangsi will
directly negotiate with a French syndicate and report to the
Government."
It is high time that the United States raises the whole question of the
open door in China again, and refuses to tolerate any longer the old
disruptive and dog-in-the-manger policy of the Powers. America is now
happily in a position to inaugurate a new era in the Far East as in the
Far West and to stop exploitation.