he declares that in a European sense China has made greater progress
these last ten years than in the preceding ten centuries. The
criticism one hears most often now is, not that the popular leaders
are too conservative, but that they are if, anything, too radical; are
moving, not too slowly, but too rapidly.
Instead of the old charge that China is unwilling to learn what the
West has to teach, I now hear foreigners complain that a little
contact with Europe and America gives a leader {103} undue influence.
"Let an official take a trip abroad and for six months after his
return he is the most respected authority in the empire." Instead of
English missionaries worrying over China's slavery to the opium habit,
we now have English officials embarrassed because China's too rapid
breaking loose from opium threatens heavy deficits in Indian revenues.
Instead of the old extreme "states' rights" attitude on the part of
the provinces, as illustrated by the refusal of the others to aid
Manchuria and Chihli in the war with Japan, the beginnings of an
intense nationalism are now very clearly in evidence. Even Confucius
no longer looks backward. A young friend of mine who is a descendant
of the Sage (of the seventy-fifth generation) speaks English fluently
and is getting a thoroughly modern education, while Duke Kung, who
inherits the title in the Confucian line, is patron of a government
school which gives especial attention to English and other modern
branches--by his direction. Significant, too, is the fact that the
ancient examination halls in Peking to which students have come from
all parts of the empire, the most learned classical scholars among
them rewarded with the highest offices, have now been torn down, and
where these buildings once stood Chinese masons and carpenters are
fashioning the building that is to house China's first national
parliament--unless the parliament comes before this building can be
made ready.
And so it goes. When a man wakes up, he does not wake up in a part of
his body only, he wakes up all over. So it seems with Cathay. The more
serious problem now is not to get her moving, but to keep her from
moving too rapidly. In his Civic Forum address in New York three years
ago, Wu Ting Fang quoted Wen Hsiang's saying, "When China wakes up,
she will move like an avalanche." A movement with the power of an
avalanche needs very careful guidance.
The one question about which every Chinese reformer's heart is now
aflame is that of an early parliament. By the imperial decree of 1908
a parliament and a constitution were {104} promised within nine years.
At that time there was little demand for a parliament, but with the
organization of the Provincial Assemblies in the fall of 1909 the
people were given an opportunity to confer together and were also
given a taste of power. For the first time, too, they seem to have
realized suddenly the serious plight of the empire and the fact that
since the deaths of the late Emperor and Empress Dowager, and the
dismissal of Yuan Shih-Kai by the Prince Regent acting for the infant
Emperor, the Peking government is without a strong leader.
Consequently the demand for a hastened parliament has grown too
powerful to be resisted. True, when the delegates from all the
Provincial Assemblies voiced this demand to the Prince Regent last
spring his reply was the Edict of May 29, declaring that the programme
outlined by their late Majesties, like the laws of the Medes and
Persians, could not be changed. Furthermore, the Throne remarked
significantly: "Let no more petitions or memorials upon this subject
be presented to Us; Our mind is made up."
Unfortunately for the peace of the Regent, however, John Chinaman is
absurdly and obnoxiously persistent on occasion. If you will not heed
other appeals, he may commit suicide on your doorstep, and then you
are bewitched for the rest of your days, to say nothing of your
nights. The talk of an earlier parliament would not down even at the
bidding of the Dragon Throne. Quietly unmanageable delegations waited
upon viceroys and compelled these high officials to petition for a
reopening of the question. Down in Kiang Su a scholar cut off his left
arm and with the red blood wrote his appeal. In Union Medical
Hospital, here in Peking, as I write this, a group of students are
recovering from self-inflicted wounds made in the same cause. Going to
the Prince Regent's, they were told that the Prince could not see
them. "Very well," they declared, "we shall sit here till he does." At
length the Prince sent word that, though he could not receive them, he
would consider their petition, and the students then sliced the {107}
living flesh from their arms and thighs as evidence of their
earnestness, coloring their petition with their blood.
{105}
[Illustration: PU YI, THE SON OF HEAVEN AND EMPEROR OF THE MIDDLE
KINGDOM.]
The baby sovereign of one of the vastest and oldest of empires is
shown here in the lap of his father. Prince Chun, the Regent.
{106}
[Illustration: HOW CHINA IS DEALING WITH OPIUM-INTEMPERANCE.]
Burning a pile of pipes of reformed smokers at Hankow. The amazing
success of China's crusade to free her people from the opium curse
may be justly reckoned one of the greatest moral achievements in
history--a challenge to our Western world.
{107 continued}
At this period of our drama there came upon the stage a new actor, at
first little heeded, but quickly becoming the dominating figure--the
Tzucheng Yuan, or National Assembly. This body, consisting of 100
nobles and men of wealth or scholarship appointed by the Throne, and
100 selected members of Provincial Assemblies approved by the
viceroys, was expected to prove a mere echo of the royal wishes. "It
is evident that the government is to have a docile and submissive
assembly. Mediocrity is the chief characteristic of the members
chosen." So wrote one of the best informed Americans in China, some
weeks before it assembled, October 3. Reuter's press agent in Peking
predicted through his papers that a few pious resolutions would
represent the sum total of the Assembly's labors.
And yet the first day that these two gentlemen went with me to look in
on the Assembly we found it coolly demanding that the Grand Council,
or imperial cabinet, be summoned before it to explain an alleged
breach of the rights of Provincial Assemblies!
From the very beginning the course of this National Assembly in
steadily gathering unexpected power to itself has reminded me of the
old States-General in France in the days just before the Revolution,
and I could not help looking for Danton and Robespierre among the
fiery orators in gown and queue on this occasion. Significantly, too,
I now hear on the authority of an eminent scholar that Carlyle's great
masterpiece is the most popular work of historical literature ever
translated into Chinese. May it teach them some lessons of restraint
as well as of aggressiveness!
Be that as it may, the Assembly has proved untamable in its demands
for an early parliament, not even the hundred government members
standing up against the imperious pressure of public opinion. In late
October the Assembly {108} unanimously petitioned the Throne to hasten the
programme of constitutional government. The day this petition was
presented it was currently rumored in Peking that unless the Prince
Regent should yield the people would refuse to pay taxes. But he
yielded. The trouble now is that he did not yield enough to satisfy
the public, and there is every indication that he will have to yield
again, in spite of the alleged unalterableness of the present plan,
which allows a parliament in 1913 instead of in 1916, as originally
promised. A parliament within eighteen months seems a safe prediction
as I write this.
It also seems safe to prophesy that the powers of the parliament will
be wisely used. In local affairs the Chinese practically established
the rule of the people centuries before any European nation adopted
the idea. Nominally, the local magistrate has had almost arbitrary
power, but practically the control has been in the hands of the
village elders. When they have met and decided on a policy, the
magistrate has not dared run counter to it. In much the same fashion,
governors and viceroys of provinces have been controlled and kept in
check. Thus centuries of practical self-government in local affairs
have given the Chinese excellent preparation for the new departure in
national affairs. What is proposed is not a new power for the people
but only an enlargement or extension of powers they already exercise.
Parliamentary government is the one great accomplishment the Chinese
people are now interested in, because they propose to make it the tool
with which to work out the other Herculean tasks that await them.
Happy are they in that they may set about these tasks inspired by the
self-confidence begotten of one of the greatest moral achievements of
modern times. I refer, of course, to the almost marvellous success of
their anti-opium crusade which I have already discussed.
Mr. Frederick Ward, who has just returned from a visit to many
provinces, finding in all the same surprising success {109} in enforcing
anti-opium regulations, declares: "It is the miracle of the Middle
Kingdom and a lesson for the world."'
China's next great task is the education of her people, and the remedy
for pessimism here is to compare her present condition, not with that
of other nations, but with her own condition ten years ago. A reported
school attendance of less than one million (780,325 to be exact) in a
population of 400,000,000 does not look encouraging, but when we
compare these figures with the statistics of attendance a few years
ago there is unmistakable evidence of progress. In the metropolitan
province of Chihli, for example, I find that there are now more
teachers in government schools than there were pupils six years ago,
and the total attendance has grown from 8000 to 214,637!
Even if China had not established a single additional school, however,
or increased the school attendance by even a percentage fraction, her
educational progress these last ten years would yet be monumental. For
as different as the East is from the West, so different, in literal
fact, are her educational ideals at the present time as compared with
her educational ideals a decade ago. At one fell blow (by the Edict of
1905) the old exclusively classical and literary system of education
was swept away, made sacred though it was by the traditions of
unnumbered centuries. Unfortunately the work of putting the new
policies into effect was entrusted to the slow and bungling hands of
the old literati; but this was a necessary stroke of policy, for
without their support the new movement would have been hopelessly
balked.
The old education taught nothing of science, nothing of history or
geography outside of China, nothing of mathematics in its higher
branches. Its main object was to enable the scholar to write a learned
essay or a faultless poem, its main use to enable him by these means
to get office. Under the old system the Chinese boy learned a thousand
characters before he learned their meaning; after this he took up a
book {110} containing a list of all the surnames in the empire, and the
"Trimetrical Classics," consisting of proverbs and historical
statements with each sentence in three characters. Now he is taught in
much the same way as the Western boy. The old training developed the
powers of memory; the new training the powers of reasoning. The old
education enabled the pupil to frame exquisite sentences; the new
gives him a working knowledge of the world. The old looked inward to
China and backward to her past; the new looks outward to other
countries and forward to China's future. The old was meant to develop
a few scholarly officials; the new, to develop many useful citizens.
"Even our students who go abroad," as a Peking official said to me,
"illustrate the new tendencies. Formerly they preferred to study law
or politics; now they take up engineering or mining."
A consideration of Chinese education, however brief, would not be fair
without mention of the crushing handicap under which her people labor
and must always labor so long as the language remains as it is
to-day--without an alphabet--separate and arbitrary characters to be
learned for each and every word in the language. This means an
absolute waste of at least five years in the pupil's school life,
except in so far as memorizing the characters counts as
memory-training, and five years make up the bulk of the average
student's school days in any country. If it were not for this handicap
and the serious difficulty of finding teachers enough for present
needs, it would be impossible to set limits to the educational advance
of the next twenty years.
The school and the teacher have always been held in the highest esteem
in China. Her only aristocracy has been an aristocracy, not of wealth,
but of scholarship; her romance has been, not that of the poor boy who
became rich, but of the poor boy who found a way to get an education
and became distinguished in public service. Under the old system, if
the son of a hard-working family became noted for aptness in the {111}
village school, if the schoolmaster marked him for a boy of unusual
promise, the rest of the family, with a devotion beautiful to see,
would sacrifice their own pleasure for his advancement. He would be
put into long robes and allowed to give himself up wholly to learning,
while parents, brothers, and sisters found inspiration for their own
harder labors in the thought of the bright future that awaited him.
The difficulty is that education has been regarded as the privilege of
a gifted few, not as the right of all. In a land where scholarship has
been held in such high favor, however, once let the school doors open
to everybody and there is little doubt that China will eventually
acquire the strength more essential than armies or battleships: the
power which only an educated common people can give.
China's next great purpose is to develop an efficient army. "Might is
right" is the English proverb that I have found more often on the
tongues of the new school of Chinese than any other; and we must
confess that other nations seem to have tried hard enough to make her
accept the principle. In the old days there was a saying, "Better have
no son than one who is a soldier." To-day its new foreign-drilled army
of 150,000 to 200,000 men is the boast of the Middle Kingdom, and the
army is said to be the most honestly administered department of the
government. In sharp contrast to the old contempt for the soldier, I
now find one of the ablest journals in the empire (the Shanghai
_National Review_) protesting that interest in military training is
now becoming too intense: "Scarce a school of any pretensions but has
its military drill, extending in some instances as far as equipment
with modern rifles and regular range practice, and we regret to notice
that some of the mission schools have so far forgotten themselves as
to pander to this militarist spirit."
It has often been said, of course, that the Chinese will not make good
soldiers, but whether this has been proved is open to question.
Certainly, in view of their wretchedly inferior {112} equipment, their
failure to distinguish themselves in the war with Japan cannot be
regarded as conclusive. Take, for example, this description by an
eye-witness:
"Every tenth man [among the Chinese soldiers] had a great silk
banner, but few were armed with modern weapons. Those who had rifles
and modern weapons at all had them of all makes; so cartridges of
twenty different sorts and sizes were huddled together without any
attempt at classification, and in one open space all sorts were
heaped on the ground, and the soldiers were fitting them to their
arms, sometimes trying eight or ten before finding one to fit the
weapon, throwing the rejected ones back into the heap."
No sort of efficiency on the part of the rank and file could have
atoned for such criminal indifference to equipment on the part of the
officers. It seems to be the opinion of the military authorities with
whom I have talked that the Chinese army is now better manned than
officered. "Wherever there has been a breach of discipline, I have
found it the officers' fault," an American soldier told me.
The annexation of Korea, once China's vassal, by Japan, and that
country's steadily tightening grip on Manchuria have doubtless
quickened China's desire for military strength. Moreover, she wishes
to grow strong enough to denounce the treaties by which opium is even
now forced upon her against her will, and by which she is forced to
keep her tariff duty on foreign goods averaging 5 per cent., alike on
luxuries and necessities.
The fifth among China's Herculean labors is the cleansing of her
Augean stables, and by this I can mean nothing else than the abolition
of the system of "squeeze," or graft, on the part of her officials. In
fact, no other reform can be complete until this is accomplished. The
bulk of every officer's receipts comes not from his salary, which is
as a rule absurdly small, but from "squeezes"--fees which every man
who has dealings with him must pay. In most cases, of course, these
fees have been determined in a general way by long usage, but their
acceptance opens the way for innumerable abuses. High {113} offices are
auctioned off. When I was in Manchuria it was currently reported that
the Governor of Kirin had paid one hundred thousand taels for his
office. When I was in New-chwang the Viceroy of Manchuria had just
enriched himself to the extent of several thousand taels by a visit to
that port. The men who had had favors from him or had favors to ask
left "presents" of a rather substantial character when they called. I
learn from an excellent authority that when an electric lighting
contract was let for Hankow or its suburbs a short time ago the
officials provided a squeeze for themselves of 10 per cent., but that
the Nanking officials, in arranging for electric lights there, didn't
even seem to care whether the plant worked at all or not: they were
anxious only to make a contract which would net them 35 per cent, of
the gross amount! Under such circumstances it is not surprising to
learn that many an office involving the handling of government
revenues has its price as definitely known as the price of stocks or
bonds.
In private business the Chinese have a reputation for honesty which
almost any other nation might envy. With their quickened spirit of
patriotism they will doubtless see to it that their public business is
relieved of the shameless disgrace that the "squeeze system" now
attaches to it.
These are some of the big new tasks to which awakened China is
addressing herself. Of course, the continued development of her
railways is no less important than any other matter I have mentioned,
but railway building cannot be regarded as one of China's really new
tasks. For years she has been alive to the importance of uniting the
people of the different provinces by means of more railways, more
telegraph lines, and better postal service. The increase in number of
pieces of mail handled from 20,000,000 pieces in 1902 to 306,000,000
in the last fiscal year bears eloquent testimony alike to the progress
of the post office and to the growing intelligence of the people. By
telegraph the people of remotest Cathay now make their wishes known to
the Son of Heaven and the {114} Tzucheng Yuan; it was by telephone
that this Tzucheng Yuan, or National Assembly, requested the Grand
Council of the Dragon Empire to appear before it on the day of my
first visit. The slow and stately camel caravans still come down from
Mongolia to Peking--I have seen them wind their serpentine length
through the gates of the Great Wall at Nankou as they have been doing
for centuries past--but no longer do they bring the latest news from
the tribes about Desert Gobi. Across 3500 miles of its barren wastes
an undaunted telegraph line now "hums the songs of the glad parts of
the earth."
It is no longer worth while to speculate upon the probability of a new
China; the question now is as to how the new China is going to affect
the United States and the rest of the world. From our Pacific Coast,
China is our next-door neighbor, and vastly nearer in fact than any
map has ever indicated. Even New York City is now nearer to Shanghai
and Hong Kong, in point of ease of access, than she was to Chicago a
century ago. How Japan's awakening has increased that country's
foreign trade all the world knows--and China has eight times the
population of Japan proper, and twenty-eight times the area, with
almost fabulously valuable natural resources as yet untouched! Some
one has said that to raise the Chinese standard of living to that of
our own people would be (from the standpoint of markets) equivalent to
the creation of four Americas. The importance of bringing about closer
commercial relations between the United States and the Middle Kingdom
can hardly be overestimated.
It is to be hoped, however, that in our desire to cultivate China's
friendship we shall not go to the length of changing our policy of
excluding Asiatic immigration. To the thoughtful student it must be
plain that in the end such a change would lead only to disastrous
reaction. At the same time we might well effect a change in our
methods of enforcing that policy. There is nothing else on land or sea
that the Celestial so much dreads as to "lose face," to be humiliated,
and it {115} is the humiliation that attaches to the exclusion policy
rather than the policy itself that is the great stumbling-block in the
way of thorough cordial relations with America. You wouldn't so much
object to having the servant at the door report his master not at home
to visitors, but you would object to having the door slammed in your
face; and John Chinaman is just about as human as the rest of us.
Moreover, our own friendliness for John should lead us to adopt the
more courteous of these two methods. Why should not our next exclusion
law, therefore, be based upon the idea of reciprocity, and provide
that there shall be admitted into America any year only so many
Chinese laborers as there were American laborers admitted into China
the preceding year?
Finally, it must always be remembered that the awakening of China is a
matter far more profound than any statistics of exports or imports or
railway lines or industrial development. The Dragon Empire cannot
become (as she will) one of the mightiest Powers of the earth, her
four hundred million people cannot be brought (as they will be
brought) into the full current of the world's activities, without
profoundly influencing all future civilization. For its own sake
Christendom should seize quickly the opportunity offered by the
present period of flux and change to help mold the new force that it
must henceforth forever reckon with. "The remedy for the yellow peril,
whatever that may be," as Mr. Roosevelt said while President, "is not
the repression of life, but the cultivation and direction of life."
The school, the mission, the newspaper--these are the agencies that
should be used. Japan has thousands of teachers in China and scores of
newspapers, but no other nation is adequately active. The present
kindly feeling for America guarantees an especially cordial reception
for American teachers, ministers, and writers, and those who feel the
call to lands other than their own cannot find a more promising field
than China.
Peking, China.
{116}
XII
A TRIP INTO RURAL CHINA
I can't get over (and I hope I never shall) my boyish interest in the
great strange animals that walk along behind the steam piano in the
circus parades. And the animals that I like to see most, I believe,
are the elephants and the camels. The elephant has about him such
quiet, titanic, unboasting strength, such ponderous and sleepy-eyed
majesty, as to excite my admiration, but the camel has almost an equal
place in my interest and esteem.