each province, is theoretically composed of a large number of native
Chinese. The army is made up mainly of officers. The higher officials
of the Green Banner acquire the pay, commissary, and weapon-allotments
of their nominal armies, and pad the rolls with the names of coolies
who come out for the annual review in return for the small portion of
their nominal wage which must be spent to keep face.
To expect these men to get out and fight is obviously more than they
bargained for. The Green Banner can deliver about the same relative
number of actual soldiers per unit of population that a Mississippi
backwoods county polls for the Republican party. The most that can be
said for the Green Banner is that it has a list of men’s names from
which a certain number of real recruits might be obtained.
The military organization of even the best regular troops is feeble.
Constant word reaches the press of soldiers revolting for lack of
pay. In one such instance nine hundred men near the Manchuria border
mutinied and were put down with difficulty, tying up the caravans for
some time. Aside from questions of discipline, and considering number
only, it is doubtful if, in the whole empire of four hundred million
people, one hundred thousand decently armed and drilled troops could be
gathered, in an extremity, for defensive purposes.
Drilled and armed men in whatever numbers are, however, but one
element of a country’s defensive power. Organization, transportation,
commissary, and supply are factors of hardly less importance. The
troops that get there are the ones which count, and even a Chinese army
marches on its belly. Russia’s defective transport, to mention but one
case, undoubtedly decided both the Crimean and the Japanese wars. The
question of territorial defense is one of several dimensions, first of
which is how soon could a given force, with its necessary commissary
and ammunition-supply, be disposed along the various lines of possible
attack.
Making the round of the Chinese Empire, it is apparent that Tibet and
Mongolia, for all the resistance that could be made, might be taken by
England and Russia respectively whenever they were minded to cross the
border. The Chinese could throw out barring columns no further westward
than Sze-chuan, no further northward than the Great Wall.
On the frontier of Corea, the Yalu River formerly defined the first
line of defense. But this frontier has been moved westward by the
Japanese, so that it would be a political impossibility to put men
there even were it practically possible. The present line would of
necessity be between Shan-hai-kwan and Yung-ping. Perhaps withdrawals
from the northern provinces, the viceroys permitting, might admit
massing here fifty thousand troops. But this, as well as any other
possible line, is entirely unfortified, giving hardly more advantages
to the repelling than to the attacking forces. There would be no second
line of defense, nothing to fall back upon but the old Tatar Wall of
Peking. Beyond this fifty thousand any quota brought from the south
would consume a very considerable time, probably a month, even allowing
that their semi-independent viceroys did not discreetly hold off
altogether.
Further east, at Shan-tung, Germany’s railway pierces to the heart
of the Confucian province; while from the Chinese military centre in
Chi-li there is no corresponding railroad, Chinese-manned, giving them
access, were it necessary to repel aggression. The Anamese railways
afford the French means of bringing up troops, where China could
assemble an army only after weeks of marching. The Burmese frontier of
Britain’s dominion is similarly vantaged.
The German _Land-Wehr_, while the first armies go to the front, may
be called out and mobilized, until the whole manhood of the nation
is in arms. Such a body is nonexistent in the Celestial Empire. Like
her own lichee nut, once the frail shell of her resistance is broken,
the meat is ready for the eating. Considered solely from the military
standpoint, aside from reform as such, China is as supine as a huge
helpless jelly-fish, with disconnected nerve-ganglia, and not even the
rudiments of a backbone.
For the first requirements of national defense, what is necessary? For
the north there should be a thoroughly drilled and equipped regular
army of at least one hundred and fifty thousand men, with capacity for
rapid concentration in the neighborhood of Peking. For the south a
standing army of at least fifty thousand men. An intermediate army of
fifty thousand more should be available near Hankow, capable of being
thrown either way. The Peking-Hankow railway line must have strategic
branches to Canton, Shanghai, Yun-nan, and Shan-tung. These must be
controlled not by foreigners but by Chinese. There must exist a reserve
of, say, five hundred thousand men, at least partially drilled, from
which to draw reinforcements. There must be arsenals able to make all
the weapons and ammunition for these forces, since foreign nations
will continue to command the sea. The sums needed to realize such a
programme must be available, and China must possess the organization
and fiscal system for the conduct of a war. From this summary it may
be seen that adequate defense requires a measure of increase in her
efficiency that is revolutionary. The demand which such measures would
make upon any nation is stupendous. How much more would it exact of
China, where for its accomplishment every single factor must overthrow
the ideas, the principles, the very morals evolved through centuries in
the most conservative race of the globe!
At the outset, for the personnel of such a regular army, two
hundred and fifty thousand adults must be transformed from stolid,
superstitious field-tillers and coolies, never of combative spirit,
into courageous, disciplined fighting men. Can this be done? Some,
eminently qualified to judge, answer that it can; but Chinese history
has not for several thousand years furnished many glorious annals.
Where a stark fight is recorded, as at Albazin, or against the Mongol
khans in the sixteenth century, the warriors have been Manchus rather
than Chinese. Whenever an aggressive nation, be it Hiung-nu or Khitan,
Mongol or Manchu, British or Japanese, has gone against the genuine
Chinaman, the latter has invariably submitted. It is only when his
subjugators, absorbed into the swarming mass of conquered, have
degenerated, that the native has been able to rise and drive out
his enfeebled oppressor. The Chinese have conquered by time and their
birth-rate.
[Illustration: PEKING Where the Allies’ main assault was made]
On the other hand, the Chinaman has qualities which, translated into
military virtues, should theoretically give him a great initial
advantage over any other race. He is comparatively without nerves;
he can hold a gun without a tremor for what to a Westerner is an
inconceivably long time; he has good eyes and a strong sight; he can be
victualed on a few handfuls of rice; he is entirely indifferent as to
where or how he lodges; he is sober and reliable; he is a big-bodied
man, stronger even, perhaps, than the Japanese; he is docile, obedient,
and susceptible to discipline. Indeed, in all that concerns his
physical qualities and certain moral superiorities, one could not
ask for better raw material. When well led he has at times done very
creditably. A generation of such leadership as Yuan Shi Kai’s would do
not a little toward bringing out what there is latent in this people.
If in the army organization the gap between what is and what should
be is so great, how much wider is it in the government organization
needed to finance reform. The revenues of China are some $100,000,000.
About $36,000,000 are allotted to military purposes. When from this
has been deducted the eighteen million-odd which go to the generals
of the Red and Green Banners, there is left, theoretically, about
$18,000,000 for the real army. Actually there is efficiently applied
probably not over $10,000,000. The regular army of Japan--two hundred
and twenty-five thousand--takes $40,000,000 effectively expended. China
must begin from the very bottom, whereas Japan is simply carrying
along. A judicious total expenditure of at least $50,000,000 is needed
for China’s army. With the additional railway and arsenal programme,
and other concomitant work, the demands over and above present outlays
would reach around $110,000,000. Add this to the present budget, less
the well-spent ten millions, and there is to be reckoned a total budget
of at least $200,000,000.
Could China raise such a defense-fund on top of her present
hundred-million-dollar budget? Could she cut down on present expenses
to help it out? The latter might be considered. Theoretically the
wasted army money of the present budget might be saved and applied.
Practically the vested interests in the graft are so important as to
make it of infinite difficulty. The mere beginning of sinecure-cutting
cost the Emperor the actuality of his throne and nearly his head.
The list shows other items of expenditure which cannot be materially
economized. The large and growing sum which goes to repay interest,
foreign loans, and indemnities, cannot be touched, nor can the
$16,000,000 sent to the provinces for their local expenditures.
The $8,000,000 for the Peking salaries and palace expenses is
a fixture. The modest and well-administered $3,000,000 of the
customs expenditures, covering about all the public works that China
undertakes,--the lighthouse and coast-patrol allowances, the mails, the
interpreters’ school,--this cannot be pared. The needed money must come
if at all by increase of the receipts. One is driven irresistibly back
to the Government’s taxing capacity.
The physical possibility of such taxation undoubtedly exists. The per
capita revenue which the Government receives from its four hundred
million subjects is but twenty-five cents. The American per capita
revenue is eight dollars, the Japanese five dollars, the Russian twelve
dollars, the Indian--perhaps in conditions the closest parallel to the
Chinese--one dollar and a quarter. An extra twenty-five cents would
raise the Chinese Government well above all financial difficulties, and
still leave the rate far below that of the other great nations of the
world.
Looking at the actual mechanism for revenue collection, one is met by
difficulties which have rooted themselves deeply into the system. One
cannot squeeze any larger proportion of the needed sum than the present
$25,000,000 from the Imperial Maritime Customs. Tariff-rates are
fixed by treaty, and the collections, under English direction, are as
efficient as they can become. The likin duties on freight during inland
transit are such a plague to commerce that, far from being increased,
they should be swept away altogether as one of the earliest of reform
measures. This $14,000,000 is produced at so heavy a price of fettered
and thwarted commerce that added tariff would but aggravate the
strangulation without materially increasing income. The opium revenue
of $5,000,000 is likewise an item which, for the best interests of
China, should disappear from a reformed budget, and the “foreign dirt”
from the Celestial domain. In any event opium cannot be made much more
productive.
After these eliminations there are left items which bring in
$56,000,000. The sources consist principally of the land-tax, the
grain-tribute, native customs, and the salt gabelle. The returns from
these factors would require to be nearly trebled, if they were relied
upon to make up the bulk of the needed total.
The method of collection is a further check to greater income. The
existing machinery of fiscal administration operates, roughly,
as follows: When the funds begin to run short for the usual
expense-accounts, the various executive boards apply to the Board
of Revenue. The latter makes a glorified guess at the sum which,
considering harvests, rebellions, and other elements, each province
might be able to pay. It is thereupon put to the provincial officials,
consisting usually of a viceroy, a governor, a treasurer, and a
judge, to supply something approximating this sum. The provincial
syndicate, through the medium of various intermediate officials,
such as the _tao-tai_ and the _fu_-prefect, whose powers are nebulous
and overlapping, call upon the eighty-odd county magistrates for an
estimated share. The magistrates, _shien-kwan_, called colloquially
“father and mother officials,” whose varied functions include rendering
justice, keeping the jail, leading the religious processions, and
collecting the taxes, send out each his hundred henchmen to get the
actual money or grain. Of this hierarchy of officials not one has
a salary which would keep his establishment going for a month. Of
necessity the laborer must draw his own hire first from the harvest.
Under such a satrap system, by the grace of human nature, each official
takes what the traffic will bear, letting pass to the man higher up
enough to conciliate his claim and to keep face with Peking. If the
penalties which follow deficient generosity to a superior define
the maximum contribution, the minimum is fixed by the famine or the
rebellion point. With this method in vogue, it is not unreasonable to
assume that the amounts gathered in the first instance are about as
great as can be wrung from the people. An increase of the Government’s
receipts would have to come through shaking down the office-holders for
a larger share of their pickings. Such a revenue as a real reform would
demand must despoil of vested rights in his livelihood every mandarin,
viceroy, _tao-tai_, _fu_-prefect, magistrate, and petty publican in
the empire. It might be practicable to commute the likin, or inland
octroi dues, for fixed sums by agreement with the _hongs_, or merchant
associations. This was done in Li Hung Chang’s province, Kwang-tung,
where $2,750,000 was paid in order to get rid of likin dues which
netted only $670,000. Enough might be raised by this means to pay the
officials at just rates. Then honest collections might reasonably be
demanded, and a beginning be made of fiscal reform. But it is apparent
from these outlines how long a way China has to travel before her
capacity for self-defense is a reality.
The facts are now being comprehended by all classes. From the coast
cities, a growing number of young Chinese have been sent to study
abroad, mainly in Japan--as many as fifteen thousand in 1907.
Returning, these so-called “students” have become the leaders in
the boycotts against the United States and Japan. They have engaged
actively in propaganda of a patriotic nature, and, more constructively,
have translated into their mother tongue hundreds of books on history,
economics, and law, including the whole Japanese code, Herbert Spencer,
Huxley, Voltaire, Montesquieu, the “Contrat Social” of Rousseau, the
works of Henry George and Karl Marx, and many others of the same
general nature.
These movements show a widespread public opinion friendly to Chinese
regeneration. Various administrative measures have been inaugurated
which are yet more promising.
The old method of dividing the Peking Bureau into provincial
departments, and letting each of these care for every sort of business
from its special province, has been altered. Instead of a bureau having
general charge over the salt-tax, the customs, and the appointments
of each province, there have been organized ten departments, dealing
each with its specialty throughout the entire realm. The five
recently-created bureaus--Agriculture, Works and Commerce, Police
and Constabulary, Post-Office and Education--tell by their names the
centralizing purpose of the new régime. Formerly five hundred clerks
attended a department, with office-hours from eleven A.M. to two
P.M. including lunch, smoking-time, and due intervals for examining
peddlers’ wares. Now a much reduced force is employed, with actual
working-hours generally from nine A.M. to four P.M. The foot-binding of
children has been prohibited; pressure has been put upon the officials
who smoke opium to abandon it, under penalty of dismissal from the
service; classical essays as a civil-service examination subject are
being given up, and the education of the Chinese youths abroad is being
encouraged. A large number of Japanese officers have been engaged to
train the khaki-clad and well-armed Chinese regulars, who have shown
excellent aptitude. The Government has bought back practically all
foreign railroad concessions, and all the valuable mining concessions
except the Kai-ping coal-fields.
Even representative government is well under way. The Dowager Empress’s
edict of August 27, 1908, by which a nine-year period was set for
the devolution of legislative powers to provincial assemblies and
a national senate has been justified by remarkable success. The
local legislatures, elected under carefully restricted suffrage
qualifications, have grappled earnestly with the economic problems
of the districts. The senate, of thirty-two members, selected by the
Prince Regent from an elected body, has not yet had time to show
results, but the calibre of the men in it is encouraging.
China is making a real effort to get abreast of the times. But never
was a nation brought more directly before the judgment-bar on the plain
test of character. Upon the capacity of the race for private sacrifice
and public honesty rests primarily her salvation. Whether China can
or cannot rise to the task depends upon her own manhood, and no one
can be prophet of the issue; for all estimate of Chinese character is
perplexed by that curious Eastern subtlety of contradictions which
baffle understanding.
The inability of the Chinese to keep fingers out of the public till
is proverbial; yet the very high standard of business integrity is
universally conceded.
[Illustration: SUMMER PALACE OF THE EMPEROR]
The quality of Chinese honesty is attributed by some to the local
idea of good form, and the obvious mercantile maxim that future
credit depends upon present performance. Bourse operators may be
scrupulously exact as to obligations which the mere lifting of a
finger imposes, while engaged in campaigns diverting to their private
speculations the funds of a chain of banks, or looting the values from
the minority owners of a street-railway.
Chinese business integrity is said to be due to the fact that her
merchants are of the upper class; cowardice in war, to the fact that
her soldiers are of the lowest caste. In Japan the condition is exactly
reversed: hence the prowess of her Samurai, and the peccability of her
clerks--such that Japanese bankers employ Chinamen to handle their
money.
Since the Japanese have built up an effective public administration, it
is fair to give the Chinese the benefit of faith, and to assume that in
time they too will rally to the task, and make a modern state.
With this should come the Trans-Mongolia Railway: opening to the
plainsmen of Central Asia a prospect of civilization and advance.
Equally or more important, looking at things broadly, it would give to
the world the best of the great Asian trade-routes. Examine a globe
and see what, in the shortening of distance, this land-route to Peking
signifies. Note the enormous circumnavigations that must be made in
going around by India and Suez, and measure then the direct overland
route by the Urga Post-Road and the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The bulky freight from the Asian Coast to western Europe will still
pay tribute to the sea. To compete with vessel-transportation, which
carries a ton from Shanghai to London for seven dollars, the railroads
over the 7283 miles from Vladivostok to Paris would have to make a
rail-rate of one tenth of a cent per ton-mile; this is impossible when
one remembers the average American rate of eight tenths of a cent. But
North China, all North Asia, and Europe west of Moscow, are within the
railway radius of an Urga-Peking line.
From interior China may be drawn the goods for half a continent. The
tea-freight which Russia receives over the long sea-trip to Odessa, or
by the trans-shipped Vladivostok route, can be loaded then at Kalgan on
the car that goes to Moscow. By it the silks of the Tien-tsin merchants
may be rolled through into the freight-yards of St. Petersburg, and
the timberless cities of interior China may build with the wood of
the Yakutski Oblast forests. By it the dwellers in the valley of the
Hoang-ho, “China’s Sorrow,” may be nourished in their need with the
wheat of the Angara Valley; the Manchu mandarins may be clad in the
furs from the Yenesei; the ploughshares tempered in Petrovski Zavod
break the ancient soil of the Chi-li Province; the silver of the Altai
Mountains make the bangles that deck the anklets of the purdah women.
For America the road will open a commercial highway into the very heart
of a new and expanding empire. American rails may carry American
cars,--those ever moving shuttles which weave the woof of trade.
American woolens and felts may protect the Siberians against their
Arctic cold, American machinery mine and refine their gold. New England
cottons, utilizing the Panama Canal, may clothe the myriad coolies
of interior China. Here is the mail-route of ten days from Paris to
Peking, against the thirty-five days needed by the fastest ships. Here
is the quickest passenger-route from London to Yokohama. All these
potentialities lie as the fallow heritage of the Urga Road, if beyond
Kalgan it is given its avenues to China and the sea. It is civilization
that must profit when the equilibrium of the East is restored, and over
the old Urga Road China is relinked to the West by the trains of the
great Asian Railway.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
[Illustration: ASIA]
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.