CHINA’S TROUBLES.

Evening Star, Issue 18336, 25 July 1923, Page 6

CHINA’S TROUBLES.

A tjmqtte position among nations is held at tho. present time by China, which has neither a Government nor a Parliament that is able to function. Three Ministers, who form tho rump of a Cabinet, issue orders that no one obeys, and Parliament, which never has functioned to much purpose in China, has ceased even to sit in these latest clays, no quorum being available. There is mot much inducement for a politician to go up to Peking to talk when ho is quite likely, it he is rich, to be kidnapped on the way and bo held up to ransom by bandits, and whether he is rich or poor no money can be found to pay his honorarium. It must be dull work, also, making speeches in Parliament when no Government exists to be supported or scarified by them. Tho Chinese remnant of a Government is powerless because it has no funds; ami it has no funds because it is too feeble, as tho constitutional Government was before it, to enforce its authority on tho divided provinces for the collection of such revenues as it would normally command. Tho provinces are little disposed to provide funds for an authority which they despise, and tho moneys that are wrung from them have small chance of getting past their military governors, virtually independent oppressors, whose contentions keep the country in continual turmoil. Tho most pacifist country in the world is in the position of being completely at the mercy of its own militarists. But the financial chaos of China has been aggravated in the last few months by another circumstance. The treaties which were the outcome of the Washington Conference did not guarantee the restoration of the decayed Ilepublic, but they did place a “ nursing ring ” around the country meant to permit it to work out its own future without foreign interference, if it were willing and able to do it. It is not much revenue that tho Chinese Government is allowed to collect for itself at tho best of times. Its main income consists of the surplus money from Customs, salt, and other specified taxes that are collected by representatives of the foreign interests that have sunk money in China. One decision which was magnanimously arrived at in Washington was to allow the Chinese Government (o raise more money by tariff duties. This was to be done by a conference of the Powers, to bo held at Peking three months after tho final exchange of ratifications. Tho conference lias not been held yet, owing to the long delay of franco in ratifying the treaties. A foreign loan to China would bo tho greatest easement of the pcsition; but no foreign loan is likely to be made while the Chinese Government, so far as it exists at all, is unable to control its defiant generals. The position makes an ironic commentary on the claim of a Chinese savant quoted With approval by Professor Ferrcro in an article on tho inter-relations of Europe and Asia which wo referred to the other day. The Chinese critic, who had been educated in Europe, was deeply impressed by tho confusion and divisions of tho Wcsti continent. “It is clear,” ho said, ‘ it if civilisation is to be rescued Europe must find some principle on which to base authority—that is to say, a moral basis for power.” That was only to bo found, he declared, in China. Christianity aimed to secure the moral perfection of the individual, but Confucianism not only made excellent men, it made good citizens. “ Its keystone is the great Code of Hor»r contained in four words, ‘ Ming feu to yi,’ meaning ‘ the great moral valuo of authority.’ Only this code can save Europe from anarchy.” Unhappily it is not saving China. The only authority for which military chiefs and their armies of despoilers have been showing _any sort of regard is their own.