CHINESE TROUBLES.

Evening Star, Issue 19020, 15 August 1925, Page 6

CHINESE TROUBLES.

Unthhustixg questions in regard to the latest disorders in China are the extent to which they may have been provoked by new industrial evils and the effect which they are likely to have upon missionary progress, ft has beep tho easiest and the most natural thing for Labor parties throughout the Empire to interpret the whole,, phase of antiforeign hostility as first and foremost a revolt against tho oppression of their own pet ogre, Giant Capitalism, and the conditions of tho “new industrialism” for Chinese workers. Interested parties in China have done their best to encourage that view, for the sake of the support they could hope to gain by it, but there seems little cause for such an explanation of the troubles, industrial grievances, based on the unoonscionablo conditions of work in factories owned by Europeans, were tho ostensible first cause of disorders in Shanghai and elsewhere. That was not tho case, however,, in Canton and the south of China, and there seems no doubt that whore that cause was imputed for disorders it was more a pretext for than an explanation of them. Whatever evils may exist in Europeanowned factories in China—and the evils ajre not denied—there is nothing new in Them for the Ear East. It is absurd to suggest that they have boon introduced there by foreign capitalism. Long hours, for a miserable pittance, with the concomitant of child labor, have been always tho lot of the Chinese industrialist. Modern methods of manufacturing may have made them more intolerable, but the worst conditions are not found in the European factories. Tho industrial conditions in such works in Shanghai, it has been contended, are immeasurably superior to those which have existed or which now exist generally in the vast continent of China, and the European works in other cities compare more than favorably—as they should do—with those under native control. Their conditions are bad from a Western viewpoint, because they have to compete with the establishments which are wholly Chinese, and attempts to get those improved have been hopeless, so far, in the absence of any Chinese Government able to enforce regulations. But there is no reason why they should be a special grievance of the Chinese. ■ A cable message which was published during the week painted a gloomy, not to say a sensational, picture of tho •crisis which has been made for Christianity in China by tho new wave of bitterness against foreigners. Hostility to foreigners has become, in large measure, hostility to their religion, as it was feared that it would do. Students have been deserting the religious schools owing to tho nationalistic and antiforeign agitation, and missionary conferences have been forced to consider whether they should close the schools, made useless by the absence of pupils, or hand them over, together with churches, which have been similarly boycotted, to the native Christians. Reports mads to a missionary conference which has just been held in Washington show the hostility to Christianity which has been aroused amongst large numbers of Chinese to be of the most virulent typo. The “ Jesus doctrine ” and Capitalism (or alternatively “ foreign imperialism ”) have been assailed and denounced in war cries of tho disturbers as if they were inseparable from each other. The influence of the Soviet is most plainly to bo seen in that <dual propaganda. Tho hatred of Christianity with which it would iuflame tho Chinese is the same hatred that it has shown to it in Russia. If the intolerance that has been provoked does not soon die down Chinese Christians may have some hard trials to undergo. Tho opinion was unanimous, however, at the Washington conference of missionaries that Christianity is now much too strongly rooted in China, to bo in any danger of destruction. A Christian Chinese doctor in one of the hospitals in Canton summed up the Situation by saying: “Hero in the .South Chinese Christians have never been tried. In the North Chinese Christians laid down their lives to establish tho Jesus doctrine at tho time of tho reactionary Boxer uprising. Now g, time of testing is at hand. I believe ft will cleanse tho Chinese Church from unfaithful and unworthy members, so that it will emerge from tho period of persecution strengthened and victorious.” The cry of conspirators and fanatics has been raised too late to be as convincing as it might have been to the masses. Christianity in China today is something more than a foreign religion. The native Christians have been encouraged, in recent years, to stand on their own feet as much as possible, tho principle being recognised that it is only by the Chinese themselves that China can be Christiaimed in tho last, or in any but the first, resort. Already, it is stated, they have responded surprisingly to tho trust reposed in them. For them to take over the churches, in many districts, might be the best thing that could happen to •Christianity in China.