CHINA'S DIFFICULTIES

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 150, 22 December 1922, Page 21

CHINA'S DIFFICULTIES

.'i The Problem of China." By the Hon. Bertrand Russell. George Allen and Unwin, London."

" The difficulties which have arisen between us during the last hundred years have been the result of mutual misunderstanding," was the truly gentlemanly way the late Li Hung-Chang explained^—some twenty-five year? ago— the difficulties that had arisen from time to iirns between Chinese and the nations of the West. So far as Great Britain's relations with China are concerned, they go back to the charter of Charles 1.,' under which Captain Weddell traded successfully, when a commercial mission in Queen Elizabeth's time had failed, and little or nothing was done to open up trade in the interim. British and French, Swedish and Danish, traders were to be seen in Canton in the reign of George 11., but the real beginnings of British influence in China, as it is understood to-day, were in the early ■forties, 'and with the cession of the island of Hongkong in 1843. . The history before that, and for many , years afterwards, was due, as Li Hung-Chang had admitted, to mutual misunderstanding. Shut up and absolutely self-contained and self-supporting for centuries, China could not in tho early days of intercourse with foreigners understand that there could be any greater land, or a more powerful than the Middle Kingdom. It really wonted very much to be left alon«. If Lord Macartney in 1791 was not prepared to do obeisance of the, kotow to the Emperor, who would not for a moment make a similar gesture before a portrait of George 111., then it was no use prolonging the meeting; so that mission came to' nought, through mutual misunderstanding, the Emperor of that day, Ch'ilenlung, not being able to imagine a greater monarch, or, indeed, one so puissant as himself,, and Lord Macartney, Veing unable to accept any want of deference shown to his King. The difficulty of the occi-. dental understanding the Chinese and of their beisg utterly at a loss to accept his attitude towards them culminated in tha famous scramble for concessions and the " spheres of influence " of the later 'nineties.. The Chinese had their eyes oponed when the Germans seized Kiachow and planted themselves in the rich province of Shantung, a province 1 peopled by a -sturdy, industrious, and enterpraing race. Out of that grevt the Boxer rising, with all its : horrors, traceable ,<to that was the siege of the Legations at Pekin; attributable to that was the series of massacres of missioriarr ies, men and women, and the children of missionaries in Shansi—one of the most shocking incidents in ths history of ihe "relations of the Chinese with the peoples of the West. The story is told of an American concession hunter who: went t» Pekin to consult high officials there with refereence to a railway or similar work. He met them, but not alone. There were present representatives of almost 'all the other Powers. A laTge map of China lay on the table. " I will do this work hure," said the American, pointing to a red spot on the map. "I am sorry," spoke up the agent of John Bull, " but the red purt of China belongs to Great Britain. " We'Jl sink our money over here, then," affirmed the Yankee, indicating a splotch, of blue. But another foreign gentleman objected. " The blue section of the map," he sai3. "is' German." So it went. This section of'the map was Japanese; that was pre-empted by some other Power. Knafiy, his patience exhausted, the American turned to the Chinese officials and asked: -' Where the hell is China, anyway?" It is this aspect of affairs with which Mr. Bussell has most-to do in his " Problem of China." He was sometime professor of philosophy in the Government University of Pekin, and was able while there to learn at first hand from students and the most educated and travelled Chinese how they regard the solution of that " problem." Apparently they sometimes ask themselves the question, as it was put by the American in the above story. Mr. Russell, in, his opening chapter, quite rightly shows how fallacious it is to use such phrases as "the Break-up of China," or " China in Docay." China is not breaking up, old. as it is—the oldest surviving civilisation in the world to-day; and the first impression one newly arrived in the country receives—an impression that is never effaced by the length of cf residence—is that China is in anything but a state of decay. On the contrary, it is very much alive. An intelligent, hardworking, courteous, and, above all, a prolific people as the Chinese .are cannot be said to be in decay. Internal warfare, floods, famines, and pestilences may sweep thousauds of the Chinese away like chaff in a breeze, and yet there seems to be no difference made in the population. Even inthemost sparsely peopled regions a crowd can aW'ays be mustered in a moment; as for the cities, the inhabitants seem as numerous in them as mites in, an old cheese. Many of the .social experiments of the West to-day, and some of. those that are only talked about as " advanced," and .for the future, have long ago been tried out in China, and where found wanting have been scrapped.. Trades unionism, for instance, is centuries old in China, and it is flourishng yet. Sabotage is a recognised Chinese practice, so is the boycott. To describe China as part of tho "Unchangeable East" would be incorrect, showing ignorance of its most • recent history. Serious as the clashes between North and South are today, they were never so devastating as the Taiping Rising, which began in 1850 and lasted till 18^4. There has been much bloodshed associated with the overthrow of the Manchns and the setting up of the present Republic, but all that was as a very small side-sNw in comparison with the Taiping Rising. Like many another observant traveller in China, Mr. Russell was greatly impressed by the marvellous recuperative power of China. It has led him to prophesy in this book that "all the world will be vitally affected by the development of Chinese affairs, which may well prove a decisive factor for good or evil,, during the next two centuries^" Why he fixes tho time at two hundred years is not quite, clear, but this much is true, that it' was for 274 years that the Mongols (founded by the famous, or infamous, Kublai Khan, of Coleridge) wielded power in China, going down before the "Pure," or Ming, dynasty, who themselves were vanquished by the Manchus, in 1644 A.D., and it was 267 years afterwards that the Manchus were themselves- overthrown in the patriotic revolution of 1911. Incidentally, the queue, imposed by tho Manchus as a badge of servitude, disappeared then in China and from. Chinese polls the world over, and the ordinary occidental haircut T.ook .its place- And yet, if there was one thing a Chinaman was prond of it was his queue; nevertheless he sheared it off in. a moment, a style of. hairdressing that he h:j stubbornly adhered to for over two centuries. One of the "reforms" that the unfortunate Emperor Kuang-su endeavoured to institute was

the cutting off of the queue, and another was the adoption >of European clothing. His modernity cost ! ira his power, for, seeing how things were going, the old Empress-dowager had the Emperor's advisers in this matter beheaded, and assumed the reins of power in her own hands. But to-day the socalled "unchanging Chinaman" disports the yellow boot, the joyous sock, tho chromatic necktie of the West, and at official functions appears in the faultless-ly-cut frock coat and glossy silk hat of occidental, usage. , China and the Chinese are, both of them, exceedingly puzzling to the West, because of the want of mutual understanding to which Li .Hung-chang referred. There are no more inconsistent people (in our Western eyes) than the. Chinese, who will richly endow a temple (as they have done at Soochow) ■ for the keeping of poor farmers' buffaloes from starving, and to prevent the destruction of stray dogs, and at the same time make no protest against the perfectlyhorrible manner in which ponies may be worked with running sores and lame, even in the city of Soochow itself. The Chinese merchant as a class is honesty personified, and yet petty cheating and "squeeze," exactions, bribes, gifts, "cumshaws and presents" are submitted to without demur. It is-very doubtful, as Mr; Russell says it is, if the Chinese way of life is as beautiful as he sees it. Thai is a matter of opinion. Theoretically .it is; practically thero. is very much room for improvement. Mr. Russell foresees a leavening of the Chinese, people by Western learning. Would they be happier? He thinks it would accomplish the very opposite, They need the scientific knowledge of the West, and for the rest %y have long applied much. that the West is only now beginning to understand. They have what we have not—instinctive happiness, or the joy of life. This is the most important and widespread of popular goods, lost by the West, Mr. Russell holds, "through industrialism ' and the high pressure at which most of us live." Ho adds: "Its commonness in China, is-'a strong reason for thinking well of- Chin,ese civilisation.'/ The happiness of" the Chinese, ho thinks, lies in theii ignoring what we call "progress and efficiency." From this view it might be inferred that the Chinese in China'are *not "up to date," as it is called. That is not so, as anyone familiar with Chinese enterprise in the East knows very well. The real weakness of the Chinese for the past century and more, and the most serious obstacle in their way to the place they deserve among the great nations is unaoundness of moral fibre on the part of their officials, in the past, and possibly under the conditions of a. republic The "system" was bad under the Manchus in the last century; there is little or nothing said by Mr. Russell that it is bettei now; nor does he show very clearly how this moral fibre is to be "strengthened. He does not go into ecstacies over the self-sacrificing and absolutely disinterested - labours in behalf of the Chinese by many missionaries, nor does he give to the late Sir Robert Hart all.the credit to.which he was entitled in his endeavours to keep China morally "straight." Mr. Russell is a Socialist, and sees things in China as they would appear to a. Socialist; but he has written a most informative book, and his- lucid style is not the least' of its attractive qualities.