THE FUTURE OF CHINA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19980, 23 December 1926, Page 19

THE FUTURE OF CHINA.

PROFESSOR J. MACMILLAN BROWN’S PESSIMISM. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — I have every respect for Professor Macmillan Brown, but I think ho is wrong regarding the future of China. To base an opinion on what he saw and heard during a short visit to Shanghai and Hongkong is unwise. This is specially so when the foreign residents of these places are “seeing red." His visit 17 years ago to “practically ; every corner of China' 1 (a somewhat big | order, seeing that China is as big as Ausi tralia). would not help him much in valuing evidence gathered in Hongkong and Shanghai to-day. Wo are told he then 1 made up his mind' that “China was not a unity, but n congeries of races and languages.” I have been in intimide touch with China for over 25 years, and I submit that no groat nation on earth is so i much a unity as is China. The written : language is the same all over China, so that the literate can road the same books. ; magazines, 'and papers and the literate are I the influential people in China. Mandarin is i the spoken language of about three fourths 1 of the people. 'There are dialectic differences I even between one district and the next, but j some three hundred millions can understand j each other’s speech. Mandarin is taught in schools everywhere. Cntil a few years ago northern speakers I-- ’ m be interpreted i when addressing a cultured Cantonese | audience, but now such interpretation is I unnecessary. Then the four hundred mil- | lions—at least most of them —are racially I akin, and where this is not so they have j still come under the same cultural and traditional Tiliuencos. The religion of China, whether in its Confucian, Taoist, or 1 Buddhist dress, is remarkably _ similar at I heart. The British Empire might bo far ; more justly described as “a congeries of ; races and languages" than China, i The idea of unification by “a dynasty, i often foreign, with a strong army,” is I somewhat misleading Chinn has been under I two foreign dynasties, the Mongols and the Manchns. These foreigners not only respected Chinese language, culture, and religion, but actually in these respects became largely Chinese. Their strong armies would never have held the nation together unless they had adopted tin’s wise course of working along the line of natural cohesion. Professor Brown’s conclusions about Bolshevist aggression are also open to criticism. He says their first aim is to disintegrate China, and the second to annihilate re ligion. If this is true, they have taken on a big programme, and are going about it in a strange way. Politically. China was disintegrated enough before Russian influence was evident. No such great body of people, most of them illiterate and all unprepared for self-government, could change front an absolute monarchy to a democracy without passing through a novice-' of political chaos. The Nationalist armies, under Soviet military advisors, seem at the moment to be nearer securing the unification of the nation than has been the case since the founding of the Republic. Then the fact that mis sionaries suffer in the present disorder is no proof that it is specially anti-religious. It would be most surprising if they did not suffer. They are the only foreigners allowed by law to reside and hold property outside of the treatv n-" 1 Their responsibility for shepherding groups of Chinese churches, running schools and hospitals, far from the shelter of foreign gunboats, lays thorn open to grave risks at a time of civil ; war. The passports issued by the Chinese ; authorities to missionaries travelling in the | interior bear the statement that they ; guarantee no protection in a region dis ; tnrbed by war. I am no friend of Soviet propaganda. It ] is an extremely dangerous influence in j China. But its power may easily be both i over-rated or under-rated. There are two ! facts to which most foreign residents in • Chinese treaty ports and in Hongkong seem blind, and I judge Professor Brown has been following these blind guides. The first is that there would have been a Nationalist movement in China if Russia had sent no emissaries there, and that Nationalist awakening would have expressed itself in an attempt to deliver their country from foreign control. China has a perfect right to be mistress in her own house, and the treaties with foreign nations which hinder being so are unjust and rightly resented. The second is that Russia has won her present position of influence in China because she returned the Boxer indemnity to China, sacrificed her extraterritorial privileges, and approached China on a basis of friendly equality. Any other nation meeting China on the same footing would have boon welcomed in tho same way Russia has the advantage of geographical proximity. If our British Government had freely made the same overtures to Chinn 10 years ago as she is making under pressure to-day I do not believe Soviet Russia would have had a chance in China. In a recent number of the Nineteenth Century and After a writer on China says: “The European press in China has little to say of any value on what is happening there; for, without exception, European newspapers in China purvey news for small audiences whose outlook is entirely bounded by the treaty ports, and by the necessity for making money under the deplorable conditions which prevail beyond that area ” The evidence on which Professor Brown bases his conclusions seems to me of this treaty port variety.

Regarding Japan, 1 believe the Japanese authorities have got past any idea of trying to control China by force. They doubtless do desire to exploit it, but they now know the attainment of this desire will not come by bullying but by friendly reciprocity. The incident on the Shanghai bund is worthless as evidence of anything except it be the flimsy nature of even a professor’s arguments. That the laughter of Chinese coolies looking at two bronze Hons should moan “That animal is played out” is possible, but the possibility has many alternatives. The coolie may have been amused at the striking dissimilarity between tho British idea of the king of beasts- and that familiar to them in their temple figures.— I am, etc., George 11. M‘Nedr.