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F. W. WILLIAMS

PROFESSOR OF MODERN ORIENTAL HISTORY, YALE UNIVERSITY

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HE consideration uppermost in the mind of a student of the world's welfare contemplating the present situation in Eastern

Asia, is the influence of China's undoing upon the entire body of civilized peoples. The vastness of the prize at stake, when compared with any region heretofore coming within reach of European arms, is enough to make one open one's eyes and renew acquaintance with a map of the globe. The whole continent of Africa is not so rich, at least in available assets; even India is not so valuable a property as China, estimated from the standpoint of labor producing population or of natural resources. It would be an impertinence in a periodical of discussion and criticism to set forth in due array a statistical account of China's wealth in climate, soil, minerals, and material for manufacture. Great as is its reputation it appears to be actually underestimated. But the statement may be made that in accessibility and variety, in extent of fertile territory, in waterways, and in robust and industrious inhabitants she probably surpasses any land of similar area in the world. Thus far these resources have been developed principally on the surface of the ground and to a comparatively small degree in its depths. The application of machines and methods perfectly familiar to operatives on the other side of the globe will enormously enhance the productivity and the earning capacity of the country. The task of development would be physically easy; it has only to be undertaken.

The temptation is an extraordinary one. Even the moral theorist, who plays a more prominent rôle in this age of Christendom than ever before, sees good excuse for a partition of the spoil among the militant nations of the West, who have, since the invention of the steam engine and the breech-loader, subjected and controlled about one third of the world's population and rather more than one half its land area. Were Europe now under a Roman emperor or in process of forming her states as in the recent past, there is little reason to doubt what would have been the policy which Rome or any strong nation would have pursued in view of the opportunity for conquest and possession.

The "entente cordiale" between the European states engendered while the Peking legations were besieged, has languished under the long strain of diplomatic negotiations, in which, while no adequate reparation

Copyright, 1904, Frederick A. Richardson, all rights reserved.

from China has been secured, it became abundantly evident that in Europe the political equilibrium was too delicate to endure a division or adjustment by her statesmen of this huge derelict among nations. China henceforth may be badgered and punished, as Turkey has been for two centuries, but like Turkey she will escape demolition because of the jealousies among her would-be destroyers. There is no longer, it would appear, any serious danger of the partition of China. Like the giant of Grecian fable, her strength comes from mother earth, so that repeated falls only render her stronger, and since Europe can produce no Hercules sufficient for the great work of the monster's overthrow, Antæus must go on living.

There remains, therefore, one question as to whether he is to be allowed to go on living in the old way,—whether, after successfully defying the European powers, China will be able to resume the dearest prerogative of her past autonomy, the attitude and policy of a hermit nation. If the economic processes, which are the main agents in causing China's transfer from mediævalism to modern conditions, are rightly estimated, it is impossible to imagine success in her desire for retrogression. She is coerced, by forces more powerful even than the fleets and armies of a united Europe, to change her ways and become partner in a world that seems suddenly to have grown too small to permit any members of the human family to neglect the common interest. Whatever the issue, whether she dies, like ancient Egypt in her river valley, or is broken and dispersed like ancient Babylonia, or survives like old Rome to improve the world through institutions preserved and extended by her children, it is safe to assume that the China of the past is undone forever, that in the future she must be fashioned anew.

The impotency of the governments of the major European states to materially influence her regeneration may, perhaps, be made evident by some study of the characteristics of the Chinese people. Let us, as Westerners, cherish no illusions in this matter, but confess at the outset that with the best intentions imaginable the white race can effect nothing for China's upbuilding through direct interference, while by a policy of persistent intermeddling or armed occupation, vexatious calamities. become inevitable. There used to be in New England country villages a generation of physicians who were wise only because they understood their limitations. "Let nature have her way," they said in cases when, nowadays, the surgeon comes by rail from afar to sacrifice the patient (perhaps) in an operation required to support a favorite hypothesis. It is not proper to say, in view of the evidence before us, either that we understand the complaint of this sick man of Further Asia, or can pre

dict his recovery, but the one chance of safe and happy issue out of all his afflictions is to let his Chinese nature take its course and regenerate in its own queer but effective way. While it is still physically possible for Europe to use the surgeon's knife and partition China, the operation would be difficult and perilous in the extreme, and certain to involve disaster. Whatever difficulties attend the adoption of the so-called "open door" policy, they at least admit of adjustment if Europeans are willing to act together in reasonable good faith. The opposite scheme of parcelling out China into spheres of influence deliberately courts future trouble by ignoring the fundamental traits of human nature. Its effect on the Chinese people would be to exasperate a populace hitherto suspicious of but not hostile to foreigners; it would foment rebellion as foreign conquest has in the past, paralyze efforts toward honest and economical administration, and rob the territorial possessor of all commercial profit and reward. On Europeans the influence of such acquisitions might be different in the case of each nation. England would perhaps take on the added burden with no illusions as to its prospective benefit to her empire, but who can doubt that on the continent the new gains would excite such hunger for other men's possessions as even the nineteenth century did not know, or that the "spheres" would presently become permanent protectorates with Russian, German, or French institutions and ideas, instead of furthering the development of a common, homogeneous Chinese culture as in the past? It may be, indeed, that China would perish rather than succumb, and that after centuries of tumult and punishment she might be annihilated as was the whole of North Africa, once the richest portion of the Mediterranean basin. Or she might survive the shock of wars, as did Western Asia after the crusades, to imperil Christendom for centuries by the outpouring of hate thereby engendered.

Happily there are grounds for hope that an enlightened Europe will refuse both horns of this ugly dilemma by abstaining hereafter from armed aggression. Here, too, the Boxers were in some sense the victors, -not in their insane ambition to frighten foreigners out of the country, but rather in convincing them that under certain circumstances the Chinaman will fight so desperately as to make it inexpedient to oppose his multitudinous array by force of arms. It remains for us to inquire how, under these ungrateful influences, the Chinese Empire may be renovated by the ferment of its own latent energies, and attain a place among the nations of the earth commensurate with its size and worthy of its ancient dignity and traditions.

Any estimate of national character is at best approximate. No

foreigner in a strange country can fully understand, no native can explain, those psychical phenomena that in their subtle complexity are exhibited, perhaps, to both alike. The mistake is often made of trying to interpret them either by strictly intellectual symptoms, the literature or religious institutions of a race, or by personal observation of the common people. Neither measure is by itself quite trustworthy. A literature is,—if it is anything worth the name, the best thought of the race, its aspirations, not its achievement; on the other hand, by study of living individuals alone we lose sight of the type, which is the expression not of one but of many. These are mere commonplaces if applied to the peoples of the West, whose intrinsic divergencies we recognize, but it is curious how uncritical we become of those who advertise their knowledge of the East. Where is the arbiter before whose opinion we must bow in deciding upon the relative merits of opposing civilizations ?

In examining the difficult problem of Chinese nature, which is the great factor in devising a basis for future settlement, four elemental qualities may be observed as the chief obstacles in the way of China's readjustment to entirely changed conditions, conservatism, conceit, ignorance, and superstition. Milleniums of isolation and the unchanging habit of supercilious disregard for inferior neighbors which this has engendered have in a measure ossified the body of Chinese ideas, so that it has become passive and immobile to a degree scarcely recognized in the West. Confucius has been set forth as the type and agent of this conservatism, which is comprehended both in his admiration of "the ancients" and in his doctrine of the mean. He gave stability to his countrymen at a critical period by holding up for imitation the paternal absolutism of a primitive society and by preaching moderation. But Confucius was not a conservative after the manner of his commentators. He was a reformer and a protestant against the misgovernment of his times. He was in his fashion a socialist, condemning capitalists and the non-productive classes, believing in the nationalization of land, and desiring every household to own at least a pig and five hens. There is reason to believe, indeed, that current traditions of the extreme conservatism of the sage are due to interpolations of subsequent ages when tyranny had perfected its machinery of rule. This is a cardinal thesis of the exiled reformer, Kang Yu-wei; and if he can convince his contemporaries that Confucius recognized the necessity of social and political changes to meet altered circumstances, we shall behold a profound revolution in this most steadfast of countries. Such a conversion is not impossible. It is one of the effects of long repression under theories of moderation carried to extremes, that the reaction when it arrives is cyclonic in intensity.

Even the massive conservatism and respect for the dead which characterized the ancient Egyptians did not prevent their learning the lesson of progress from time to time during their long existence as a cultured and powerful nation; and China is less narrow than the Nile valley. We must remember, nevertheless, that though not unsusceptible to change the Chinaman is definitely and implacably hostile to the foreign ruler, distinctly preferring bad government by one of his kind to good government by Europeans. He may like one foreigner better than another; he may even go abroad for a time to live in alien lands; but he will never be content at home unless ruled by a Chinaman or by one who has become Chinese. So far he may be called patriotic.

The obstacle presented by Chinese self-esteem to national regeneration is more formidable than their maintenance of old ideals. Theirs is a race which has made a virtue of conceit, which teaches in every printed page the doctrine that China is the earth, that beyond that privileged land there are only barbarism, misery, and ignorance, which professes the profoundest contempt for everything bearing the name of foreign, a contempt only equaled by the hatred which it is a religious duty to exhibit when a foreigner suggests improvements. The attitude is childish and pitiful, but it is very natural. It is shown in high life by attempts to claim Chinese invention not only in the earliest use of gunpowder and the compass but in steam and electricity, chemistry and the other sciences. "Now," observes Admiral Peng Yu-lin in his book, “China's Indulgence Toward Foreigners," "these intelligent Western scholars took this teaching and developed it, but own they cannot surpass what is recorded in Chinese books. Chinese scholars, however, unacquainted with their own philosophers of yore, are foolish enough when they see some strange thing used by foreigners to think it new * It is the Chinese who most excels in these skilful things after all, only he does not care for them." In low life the exhibition of this spirit is rather finer because simpler and more monumental. The story is told that when, after years of stubborn opposition, the telegraph was at last brought to Tientsin, a native there, pointing to the poles and wires, asked an American missionary, "Have you this useful Chinese thing, the electric telegraph, in your country?” Probably every foreigner in China understanding the language could match this tale. Conceit is very troublesome to daily intercourse, but China has so long abandoned herself to the lethargy not of senility but of long custom and self-content that the habits of her mature years are hard to reform. It is chiefly stimulated in the upper class by jealousy of foreigners, who are suspected, not unreasonably, perhaps, of wishing to relieve the mandarins of their peculiar privileges. To this opposition of

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