CHINA AND THE CHINESE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1510, 7 February 1901, Page 50

CHINA AND THE CHINESE.

A CHAT WITH A MISSIONARY

From what Mrs Stott, just returned from Inland China, told a “Times 55 reporter on the 31st, Sir Robert Hart has sounder reasons than is generally supposed for his predictions as to the possibilities awaiting the development of the Chinese and their adoption of Western civilisation. For over thirty years Mrs Stott has lived in close intimacy with the natives in the city of Wenchow, Inland China. <r The more you know of the Chinese,” said she, “the more you admire them. They are a splendid race. Staunch, gritty, keenly intelligent, and full of backbone, they are capable of great development. Like the Russian people, that development has been checked by interested ruling parties. The mandarin class who are tho immediate masters of the masses, simply live on bribery and corruption. They are a mighty stumbling block, but the people are eminently peaceable and naturally of contented minds. They will walk round an obstacle rather than attempt to remove it.

“The Dowager-Empress, while a woman of masculine understanding and singularly magnetic, is wedded to the old regime. The young Emperor, on the other hand, has progressive tendenc’es. Even through the apparently impenetrable seclusion in which he resides, something of modern progressive ideas has filtered. Quite recently, to the consternation of the conservative old Chinese gossips, be issued a ukase ordering the foundation of schools throughout the Empire, in which foreign arts and sciences should he taught. Even into the sacred city the scream of the railway engine has penetrated and roused into activity a naturally good but purposely stunted intellect.

“But the young Emperor had counted without his host. In a cold fury of

resentment the Empress—who never forgets her charming manners —took advantage of the smouldering Boxer movement, fanned its fitful energies with the skill of an old tactician, ana set the country in a blaso against foreigners and their new-fangled notions. For a time .she triumphed, but, as we know f the day of reckoning arrived. There may bo little hope from the Emperor, but the Native Advance Party in China is o, party with, high aims and unflinching courage. The long unseen and siie"t contest waged between that party and the mandarin class —the iron-fisted feu dal lords of China—will sooner or later break out into open rupture—to which there can be but one ending,. The mandarins must go, in the nature of things. After that we shall see what we shad see—well, the deluge fair Robert talks oi perhaps.”