CHINA'S AWAKENING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13708, 26 March 1908, Page 6

CHINA'S AWAKENING.

A SILENT REVOLUTION.

EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES,

A MISSIONARY'S IMPRESSIONS. [Hv tixk(;k.u'H. —own cohresjpond'JNl'.] Wellington", Wednesday. Tjik Rev. T. Howard Smith, who has been working in I'ekin for the past 10 years, under the, London Missionary Society, arrived in Wellington, via Sydney, to-day, on, furlough. In an interview Mr. Smith gave an in!cresting account of the startling developments that have taken place in China during the last few years. Wonderful changes have occurred, ho said, surpassing even the wildest dreams. One could never have credited seven years ago that things which are now happening in China could come to pass. A great part of the country was then hermetically sealed to European influences. Now it is open from end to end, and there arc endless opportunities for missionary work. The education movement, which was inaugurated and is being carried out by the Government, was referred to by Mr. Smith as one aspect, of silent revolution. Primary and secondary schools are being established in nearly every town and village, where European appliances are used and European subjects taught, High schools have been established in the largest centres, and the Chinese linpyial University in Pekin has been placed on a new and more satisfactory basis, with a staff composed of foreign professors and Chinese professors, who have been educated abroad. Mr. Smith thinks that the acute sense of their weakness, which was borne in upon the Chinese people by the events of 1900, when the allied armies occupied Pekin, and camped under the very walls of the Imperial Palace, is responsible for the new awakening. "CHINA FOR THE CHINESE," The Chinese are strongly determined to preserve their country for themselves, if possible, and they are anxious to increase their strength by Western methods, in order that they may be able to protect their nationality against possible Western aggression. The redoubtable Empress-Dowager has changed her attitude completely on these matters, and has herself issued some of the very edicts, whose announcement by the Emperor a few years ago caused her to banish him from his home. Mr. k'mith went through the famous siege of Pekin in ,1900, when all the Europeans in Uie capital were reported to have been cruelly massacred. The watchword, -China for the Chinese," which was emphasised a few years ago by the boycott of American goods, actuated more recently the great opposition which was raised to the construction by Anglo-Chinese and German syndicates of a new railway from Tientsin to the Yangtse Valley. The outcry was successful in. preventing the granting of a full concession to the Europeans, and all that the syndicates will do now is to lend the money for the ranway, whose construction and control are both to be in the hands of the Chinese themselves. A UNIQUE NEWSPAPER. At the present time there are something like 2000 Chinese newspapers, and China has one journal which is possibly unique in the world—a daily paper containing foreign and other intelligence which is printed specially for women. The position of women in China is generally degrading, but there are,a number of Manchu and other Women who can read a little, and this paper in printed in simple Mandarin for their benefit. Moreover, it has an increasing circulation. Another Chinese paper is very ablv edited by a Chinese lady of foreign education, who writes articles against, footbinding, opium smoking, and other evils. In some of their chapels the missionaries explain the contents of the newspapers to the people, and the Government has opened public halls for the same purpose. The Empress-Dowager and some of the ducal families have established schools for Chinese women and girls at which Western subjects, such as geography, mathematics, and physical drill, are taught, and one of the conditions of entrance is that if a girl's feet are bound she must unbind them.

MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE. The work of the missionaries, which was formerly strictly tabooed, has advanced by leaps and bounds in spite of the disabilities from which it has had to suffer. Mr. Smith supposes that there is not a field in any part of China in which there ate not unique opportunities of a great extension of the work. In Pekin the street-preaching chapels, which are open from noon till live p.m., are generally crowded with listeners during those hours. The attitude of the officials towards the missionaries has improved considerably since an Imperial edict was promulgated that the well-being of the foreigners is to be safeguarded, and many of the official classes are most cordial in their dealings with the missionary workers. The system of companion in mission work, Mr. Smith stated, has been developed in Pekin. The London Missionary Society, the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the American Board of Missions, American Presbyterian, and American Methodists are working in unisona system which prevents overlapping among them. They control a medical college, theological college, and arts college in Pekin, and an arts college at Tung .low. It was probably the knowledge of the excellent medical work carried on for 40 years by the London Missionary Society which induced the Dowager Empress to contribute about £1500 towards the establishment of the Union Medical College in Pekin and appoint a special representative to open this institution on her behalf. She has also granted a privilege not enjoyed by any other educational establishment in the Empire that is not purely Chinese in according Government recognition to the degrees of the mission colleges. The in-fluence-of these institutions is likely to be especially valuable, in counteracting the strong nationalistic tendency which is now strongly evident, in China, and which is encouraged by the Japanese. CHINA AND JAPAN. As regards the present attitude of China to Japan, Mr. Smith states that the Chinese ate quite ready to take till that, their island neighbours can give them, but they tire not without, suspicion of the Japanese. There are about 15,000 Chinese students in Tokio at the present time, and a great many of them are gaining revolutionary ideas of an anti-dynastic character. These have been spread by Pekin students who have returned from Japan, and have been the cause of some anxiety to the Chinese authorities, who are distrustful of too large an increase of Jananese influence.