BOOKSELLER CHAOS IN CHINA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 27 July 1925, Page 7

BOOKSELLER

CHAOS IN CHINA.

mSOHDEIt. AND MISliiU

ANTI-FOE EIGN MO YEMENT

A graphic* pen picture of the turbulent conditions in Chinn is drawn by the Rev. .1!. Burgoync Chapman, principal of tlie Central Cliina Teacher's College, Wuchang. deferring to his letters of August, 1920, and December, 1922. in wliicii ho ha t [ touched on the political happenings of recent years, the writer •says: “1l is grievous to note how little, in all these years, the political situation has changed in its essentials of division. disorder, and misery, though tin* detailed changes have been complicated and so bewildering in their rapidity that every year in this country emphasises one's ignorance of what has passed before one’s eyes, and the danger of forecasts.. One is always driven back to the heart of the evil to ex-

plain the situation to which ;,o kindly

and able a people ns the Chinese have come—the replacing of a knowledge of God th e Gather of all men by the doctrine of the self-centred ‘superior man,' and the clustering of all the deepest

moral convictions round the false centre of ‘Hsiao,’ i.e., lilial piety and devotion to the family and the coin. Hence politics becomes a tangle of sell, interest, and (more subtly specious), group-selfishness, each successive climb,ng group of officials feeling the moral compulsion of rewarding relations, friends, and party at the expense ol the State. So Government corruption and incessant needless civil warfare become indistinguishable from the brigandage. great and petty, which result from the ruin and despair so caused. •‘As 1 write, the situation is Mexican ; the man who last bribed his way to the Presidential chair is deposed and in prison ; a dictator is precariously in the saddle at Pekin (although he may

may not b 0 by the time this i s printed); all power is in the hands of the independent ‘war lords' in the various

provinces or groups of provinces, or sec. jtions of provinces, save where bandit chiefs contest their authority. Meanwhile, such politicians as have not fled for refuge with their spoils to foreign countries or foreign concessions; are gathering like vultures at Pekin, spinning fresh elaborate constitutions and schemes of reconstruction, the sincere and -well-intentioned among them be-

ing impotent. Only one province is free from the poppy, and this opium production is increasing, and often compelled by the military authorities to provide a basis for levies. Now, as the season has come for spring flowers to open, and soldiers to shed their padded garments, everyone is expecting the really big war gam 0 to begin all over again.

“And yet the country ‘carries on.’ n the more settled spots schools and nisinesses are conducted and trade has

increased. Most amazing is it to record that very great progress has been made in educational thought and organisation. The intellectual activity

and literary output of universities, like those of Pekin and Nanking, remind one of Oxford or Paris, or an Italian

city in the stormy days of the revival of learning, with all its ferment, disorder. and hope. Meanwhilefi as Dr. Hodgkin has already stated, one marvels at the way in which the mass of

the people continue to keep on at daily task in circumstances which might be expected completely to demoralise them.

“As for General Feng, apart from his incorruptible sincerity, his quite unprecedented personal care and discipline of his soldiers, and his employing them as far as possible on constructive social tasks, 1 hope that the Church abroad will not expect any specially ‘Christian’ action from this Christian general, in the profession in which he rinds himself, and entangled

in the web of such baffling circumstances. To do this would be as dangerous an error as when certain enthusiasts advertised Dr. Sun as a Christian patriot years ago. in the dearth of great men Dr. Sun stood out as an idealist of unselfish sincerity, who would, however, use any means and any men to attain his object. He constructed nothing, and was simply, with the best motives, spreading domestic. irreconcilability and foreign hatred when he died. H e made revolution a habit, with ruinous results to Canton, still terrorised by his ‘Red’ army. One cannot help feeling that his death removes the most uncanny and unaccountably destructive element in the situation. He everywhere encouraged Russian agents and Bolshevik propaganda against the ‘wicked capitalist Powers’ and the ‘unequal treaties.’ “Partly through Bolshevik influence, partly owing to the recent visits to China of Bertrand Russell (Of my own college at Cambridge) and John Dewey, who mobilised the secularist influence in education of the many Chinese graduates of Teachers’ College. Col-

unibia (again my own alma mater), tho anti-foreign movement is in most.eases also anti-religions, and, therefore, antiChristian. and i s directed first against Christian schools. .Many of ns feel that this is our opportunity even more than our danger. Persecution never iiltimateiy damaged what is true „in Christianity. It should he remarked here that, so far, this attack is almost solely a student movement, and the more substantial elements of the population are standing- apart from it, and, for instance, sending more of their sons to Christian schools' than ever before.”