CHINA AT THE CONFERENCE
The most difficult problems with which the Conference for the Limitation
of Armament had to deal were those centering about China. We wanted
China to have her own. We wanted her to be let alone, to run her
government to suit herself, to be free from exploitation, duress,
intrigues. As a people we wanted this very much. We came as near being
sentimental over China as one nation can be over another. We like the
Chinese as a people. We would like to see them as sanitary as they are
friendly, as honest as they are industrious, as free from their own
vices as they are from most of ours.
We are more sentimental about them because our own dealings with them
have been on the whole so fair. We are proud of the position we have
taken as a nation toward China and we would like to keep up our record,
justifying the Chinese conviction that we are a disinterested and
reliable friend. Our dealings have been decent—the policy of the Open
Door, the return of a large share of the Boxer indemnity, the protest
that we made in 1915 when we learned of the outrageous twenty-one
demands that Japan had forced from the Peking government: we have prided
ourselves on these things, and when at Paris in 1919 President Wilson
consented to the transfer of the German rights in Shantung to Japan,
there was a chorus of disapproval, and we came to this Conference
resolved that Shantung should be restored to China; moreover, that a
long list of interferences with her freedom of administration should
cease. The disappointment came in finding that what China wanted, and we
wanted her to have, was much more difficult to realize than we had
appreciated, and that in a majority of cases, probably the worst thing
that could happen would be to have her full requests granted.
The primary difficulty in China’s getting what she wanted was that she
has no stable government, nothing upon which she can depend and with
which the nations can deal with any assurance that the engagements that
are entered into will be faithfully carried out. The Conference began
with an exhibit of disorganization in the Peking government which was
most unfortunate—the failure to pay a loan due us at that moment.
Moreover, it soon became a matter of common knowledge at the Conference
that the Peking government was failing to meet all sorts of financial
obligations at home as well as abroad, that it was not paying the
salaries of its officials, its school-teachers. There were delegates in
Washington who, it was claimed, had had no funds from their government
for many months. A greater part of the moneys collected seemed to go
into the pockets of the military chiefs of the provinces, whose leading
occupation was to make life and property unsafe for the rich and to
prevent political conditions becoming settled.
All of this had an important relation to these demands that the Chinese
delegation presented to the Conference. Take the matter of tariff
autonomy—nothing shows better China’s position. She does not and has not
for many years controlled her customs. They are fixed by treaty with the
powers and collected by them. They have been netting her recently but 3½
per cent. on her importations. Moreover, there have been vexatious
discriminations and special taxes which have been both unfair and
humiliating. China came to the Conference begging for freedom from all
these restrictions. She wanted a tariff autonomy like other nations, and
on the face of it what more reasonable request? And yet, after a very
thorough inquiry by a sub-committee of the Conference, headed by
Secretary Underwood, control of her tariff was denied her. To be sure,
some of the worst of the discriminations were cleared up. She was given
a rate which would immediately raise her revenue by some $17,000,000,
and the promise of other changes in the near future which would increase
the amount to something like $156,000,000. It looks small enough!
But why should China’s tariffs remain in the hands of foreigners? Why
should she not be allowed to collect more than an effective 5 per cent.
on her importations, while her exportations to this country, for
instance, are weighted with tariffs all the way from 20 to 100 per
cent.? Why, simply because the committee, after a long study made, as it
declares and as there is no reason to doubt, in a spirit of sympathy and
friendliness, believed that tariff autonomy would be a bad thing for
China herself. When the committee presented its report, Senator
Underwood said: “I am sure this sub-committee and the committee to which
I am now addressing myself would gladly do much more for China if
conditions in China were such that the outside powers felt they could do
so with justice to China herself. I do not think there was any doubt in
the minds of the sub-committee on this question that, if China at
present had the unlimited control of levying taxes at the customs house,
in view of the unsettled conditions now existing in China, it would
probably work in the end to China’s detriment and to the injury of the
world.”
So far as tariff autonomy was concerned, this judgment had to be
accepted. It did not, however, answer the question why China should be
able to collect but 5 per cent. on the machinery we send her, and we
collect 35 to 50 per cent. on her silks. That is, it does not seem that
if the powers believe that it is for the good of China that her duties
should be kept at this low rate they would feel, as a matter of
fairness, that they should grant reciprocity and collect no more on her
goods than she is allowed to collect on theirs.
When you come to the question of extra-territoriality, by which is meant
the establishment and conduct of judicial courts by foreigners in China,
a humiliating condition that dates back almost to the beginning of her
treaty relations with other countries, you find her own delegates asking
no more than that the powers coöperate with China in taking initial
steps toward improving and eventually abolishing the existing system.
There is no real solution of most of the problems which the Chinese
delegation pleaded so eloquently and persistently in Washington to have
solved, except the establishment within the country of a stable,
representative government. That is, if the fine young Chinese that
represented their country want to see their program carried out, they
must go back to China and work within the country to secure order,
education, development of their people along modern lines. There were
too many Chinese at the Washington Conference who had spent the greater
part of their lives in Europe and America and who were actually
unfamiliar with home conditions.
A stable Chinese Republic depends, then, upon long, faithful efforts at
reconstruction as well as upon freeing China from foreign encroachments.
Not a few people came to the Conference believing that the only problem
was to expel the Japanese from Shantung and force her to withdraw her
twenty-one demands. If China had had a strong, united government in the
past there would have been no Japanese now in Shantung, and no
twenty-one demands. Shantung is a spoil of war and under the old code by
which the world has acquired power and possessions “belonged” to Japan.
That is, her claim to it was as valid as the claim of many nations,
ourselves included, to certain territories which we hold without
dispute. Japan pointed out that she had spent blood and treasure for
Shantung, and this is true. And always when in the past men spent blood
and treasure, the world has sanctioned their performance. Japan’s right
to Shantung was questioned now because of the new code we are trying to
put in force. That is, men are trying to prove that it shall be no
longer by blood and treasure that we progress, but by good will, fair
dealing, superior efficiency of mind and hand. The practical question
now seems to be, When is this new code to begin to operate? In 1922, as
Japan wished, or with the first entrance of the foreigner into China, as
radical Chinese wished? And if it is to be adopted, is it to apply only
to China? The code that would sweep Japan entirely out of China would
also sweep us out of the Philippines and Haiti; England out of India and
Egypt. There are strong young nationalist parties to-day in the
Philippines and in Haiti, in India and in Egypt, using the same
arguments that the Chinese delegation used in Washington, that the
foreigners shall go; and in all of these countries as in China to-day,
the reason given by the protecting or invading power, as you choose to
regard it, that they stay, is that their going would be the worst thing
in the world that could happen to the country.
In the case of Shantung and the twenty-one demands, the solution was
going to depend upon how far Japan realized that these “valid” claims of
hers—that is, valid under the old code—were handicaps and not advantages
to her. How far she realized that by attempting to keep them in force
she was going to cripple her own real advancement in China, increase and
prolong the boycott of her goods, and incur the ill will of other
nations, particularly of this nation.
It became clear early in the Washington Conference that we were not
going to help China’s case, or encourage Japan in generous dealing by
continuing to cultivate mistrust and hatred of the Japanese. A
systematic effort to make one nation hate another belongs to the old way
of doing things. Indeed, it has been one of the chief methods by which
we have thought to progress in the world. You built up distrust,
dislike, suspicion, until you had created an enemy in the minds of the
mass of the people so hateful that it became an almost religious duty to
overthrow it. We have had this sort of thing going on in this country in
regard to Japan for years, a calculated, nation-wide, extremely able
effort to make the American people fear and despise the Japanese, to
bring them to a point where they would gladly, as a relief to their
feelings, undertake a war against Japan. I do not know that a sterner
rebuke to the American public—the sterner because unconscious—could have
been given than the remarks of Prince Tokugawa in one of his little
talks before he sailed for home. He was telling how surprised as well as
grateful the Japanese had been at American hospitality, “Because,” he
said, “when we came we feared that the Americans were so hostile to us
that it might be impossible for us to go with safety on the streets.”
Those who know the Orient best all agree that its future peace, and
therefore the future peace of the world, depends largely upon Japan. She
is the one strong, stable, unified nation in the East. She has, it is
true, a powerful militaristic party, but opposed to that is a great
liberal group. Prince Tokugawa, who played so fine a part in his
delegation during the Conference, is a man who has taken keen interest
in labor questions, education of the people, the development of
industry, and has thrown all his great interest against the military
spirit. It is said by those who know much of Japan’s interior workings
that the Empress herself is convinced that either the empire must have a
democratic leadership, a constitutional monarchy with a responsible
cabinet, an army and navy under civil control, or that it will be
overthrown, and that the reason that the young Crown Prince was sent on
his visit to England was that he might have a look at a democratic
monarchy. There are many Japanese saying openly in the press and in
public assemblies that the future of Japan depends upon an entire change
of policy, that the hard dealings in Korea, the wresting of the
twenty-one demands from Peking, the methods in Shantung have all been a
mistake, that Japan must deny them, correct the wrongs done under them
if she is to have the sympathy and enjoy the coöperation of the outside
world. It is most important that the people of the United States
particularly should understand these liberal leanings in Japan, should
give them all the support within their power.
There was much irritation at different times in Washington because the
Japanese delegation insisted on holding up the march of negotiations
until it could hear from Tokyo, and between Tokyo and poor cable
connections the answers were slow in coming. The delegation always
insisted on waiting, however, and in this it was wise. It could go no
further safely than the government at home would back it. If it
attempted to do so, it would mean the final repudiation of the measures
to which it had agreed. Certainly Americans should have understood this.
It might take time for the Japanese to stop at every point in the
negotiations to consult their government, but it was a much safer method
in the long run than making such haste that a situation could arise such
as that between our own delegation and the President of the United
States—the difference in the interpretation of the Four Power Pact, a
difference which no doubt arose from a failure to see that the busy
President did have in his head just what the meaning of the short and
simple document really was. It sometimes pays to make haste slowly.
If the Japanese were cautious in their dealings, haggled over details,
were slow to make concessions which it was likely they intended all the
time to make, gave up nothing until they were sure they would be backed
by the home government, it might be exasperating but it was not
necessarily a proof of intrigue or of a lack of sympathy with the larger
purposes of the Conference. In spite of these methods so irritating to
people whose only thought is to put things through in the shortest time
possible, the Japanese made a better impression on the Conference than
the Chinese, for the simple reason that the one were workers, the other
talkers. More than once in the course of the negotiations it was
necessary to recall the Chinese’s attention to the fact that what was
under discussion was not theories, but conditions. All one’s sympathies
were with the talkers, and all one’s practical sense with the workers.
The nations in adopting the principles that they did in regard to China,
in insuring her a protecting ring within which they promise to see that
she has the chance to develop and maintain effective and stable
government, and to give all nations an equal opportunity of carrying on
commerce and industry with her, are attempting something that has never
before been done in this world—they are insuring a great weak, divided
nation its chance. Never again under the protection adopted, if the
promises made are kept, can anybody chip off a piece of Chinese
territory, secure a monopoly of her resources; never again can there be
in China a Shantung, a Twenty-one demands, a Port Arthur. The pacts and
principles adopted establish over China that “moral trusteeship” of
which Mr. Hughes talks. They put upon all nations agreeing and
particularly upon this nation the obligation to see that this moral
trusteeship is something more than a phrase.
Although the immediate results to China are not as sweeping and generous
as many of her friends desire and many believe would have been possible
and wise, they are substantial. She will control her own post offices
beginning with January, 1923; the correction of the humiliating
extra-territoriality is being undertaken; foreign troops will be
withdrawn; a beginning at least toward tariff autonomy has been made. No
future concessions and agreements will be made by China to other powers
except under an international board of review, the office of which will
be to see that no terms unjust to China or discriminatory in the favor
of any particular outside nation are made. This leaves old commitments
where they are, but it is fair to suppose, if the board does its duty,
that any manifest injustice or flagrant discrimination now existing can
and will be eventually cured.
The Shantung question has been settled—settled in the way that President
Wilson believed at Paris that it finally would be settled—by Japan’s
withdrawing. The real bone of contention between the two countries—the
Tsingtau-Tsinanfu railway—will go back entirely to China within a few
years—five at the shortest, fifteen at the longest—upon terms of payment
and of management which, if painful to both countries—Japan feeling that
she is giving up too much, China that she is getting too little—yet
seemed reasonable and the best that could be done by the American and
British delegation.
With the withdrawal of Japan from Shantung, will go England’s from
Weihaiwei, and probably a little later, France’s from Kwangchow-wan.
As for the twenty-one demands, Japan so thoroughly realized the
discredit they had brought her in the eyes of the liberal world that she
began the discussion upon them by voluntarily withdrawing one whole
section, that which compelled China to employ Japanese advisers in the
military, financial and political departments of her government. She
also declared her intention to give up her preferential rights in
Southern Manchuria and to open to the international consortium the
railway loans in Manchuria and Mongolia which she has been holding as
her exclusive possession. This is going a long way to clear up the
difficulties under the commitments. With this start and with intelligent
international supervision, it ought to be possible in a reasonable time
to free China entirely from whatever is oppressive in the twenty-one
demands.
It is a beginning. If Young China will take hold vigorously now there is
reason to believe that the thongs about her feet will in time be cut.
She has work, long, slow work, before her, but she is assured sympathy
and protection in carrying it on. That is a vastly more important result
than to have been granted all the demands of her eager young democrats
and left alone in the world.
It is the old, old story—nations must climb step by step—they have no
wings.