THE CROSSROADS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19700, 4 August 1938, Page 18

THE CROSSROADS

CHINA'S LONG HISTORY ANCIENT CIVILISATION MENACED BY INVADERS ADDRESS BY .MISSIONARY “The greatest obstacle to the emergence of a strong and united China has been aggression from Japan. In eight years following the establishment of the National People’s Party Government in Nanking by Chiang Kai-Shek, in 1927, that Government did wonders in bringing order out. of chaos. To-day China is, as Chiang Kai-Shek has himself said, at the crossroads of history,” stated Mr. J. S. Muir, speaking last evening before a gathering sponsored by the Gisborne Young Business Men's Club, at which a large number of Rotary Club members were guests. The speaker, a member of the China Inland Mission, prefaced, his remarks upon the history of China and her present position by references to the organisation of which he is a member. The China Inland Mission, he stated, was founded in 18G5 by James Hudson Taylor, M.D.. and to-day ranked among its active workers 1300 people, a substantial proportion of whom were engaged now in bringing succour to the homeless and the wounded in China’s struggle against the invaders. The mission, he said, was interdeI nominational and international, and operated in 18 provinces of China, with 339 mission centres, 300 schools, and 10 hospitals. Its adherents among the Chinese now numbered 80,000. Restrictions on Missionaries According to the policy laid down by its founder, the China Inland Mission does not make appeals for assistance, nor authorise collections on its behalf. It is supported entirely by voluntary donations, and in 70 years £7,000,000 has been forthcoming in this way. The founder’s object was to avoid side-tracking funds which ordinarily would go to other missions, and workers in the mission held no fixed salaries, their emoluments being decided by the division of funds in hand from time to time. Members of the mission are not allowed to own property outside the treaty ports, or to carry arms, or to appeal to Chinese or British authorities in times of trouble. Thus they carry their lives in their hands when they go into the interior, for in addition to the ordinary hazards of travel there are the perils of brigandage, still very real in the remoter parts. Yet despite their lack of protection, the mission has achieved very substantial results in its service to the people, and it is possible to live for years, as Mr. Muir has done, 2000 miles from the coast, without molestation. Nevertheless, there is a martyrs’ roll of 74 China Inland Mission workers, including 58 who lost their lives in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The two latest to sacrifice their lives were John. Stam and his wife, who were beheaded by Communists some years ago in the Anhwei province. Still a Land of Mystery ‘‘China is still a land of mystery to most of the other nations of the world,” Mr. Muir continued. ‘'Travellers were turned away from her borders for centuries, and only since .1800 has there been any real intercourse with the western nations. A country of over 4,300,000 square miles, China is half as large again as the United States, and has a population of 485,000,000. Its name derives from that of the Tsin, a feudal state which flourished for 740 years from 897 B.C. 1 “The China of ancient history hau faced the north and north-west, ( whence invasions and migrations had , come; to-day she is facing the Pacific. About 4000 years ago the ancestors of . the present Chinese entered the | country through Central Asia, their , origin being deductible from the fact ! that in 1920 an ancient tomb opened by the great earthquake revealed earthenware pots of Babylonian types, proving the relation of the Chinese 1 with the people of the Euphrates 1 basin.” Murks of Civilised Man Her creative period was (he sixth ( century 8.C.. continued Mr. Muir, and ! , if civilisation meant arts, science and invention, China had all those while , our own forefathers were living in : caves and eating their loud uncooked. , Complete houses, cooked foods, land tillage, cotton-spinning and cloth

manufactures, and the use of herbal medicines were known to the old Chinese civilisation, and widely practiced, while music, pottery art, and astronomy were among the pursuits of the intellectuals, hundreds and sometimes thousands of years before culture became general in Europe. Paper was made about 95 A.D. in China, whereas it was not until the early sixteenth century that it was used hi Europe. The oldest newspaper in the world was the Chinese court gazette, established in the Tang dynasty (018-907 A.D.) and blockprinting was used first in China in 868 A.D.

In 1807, when Robert Morrison landed in Canton, the Chinese Empire was powerful and self-sufficient, and reciprocated but little the Western nations’ desire for trade intercourse. This incompatibility of outlook was changed to some degree by the opium war of 1840, which opened five ports to the Westerns. From that time onward, China’s history was one of continued aggression and attrition by the newcomers, who forced one privilege after another from the reluctant Empire. Fall of the Tsing; Dynasty The Tsing dynasty thus faced the twentieth century badly shaken, and with two revolutionary movements afoot in the south. The death of the Empress-Dowager in 1908, and the succession of a two-year-old boy to the Throne, with his father as Regent, precipitated trouble, and in October, 1911, the revolution started in earnest with an attack on Hankow. The rotten edifice of the Tsing dynasty crumbled without a semblance of resistance, in the words of one of the leading Chinese spokesmen, and there was ushered in a period of Republican Government torn by party jealousies and the wars of reactionary lords of provinces. Then in 1927 came Chiang Kai-Shek’s march on Nanking, and the establishment of the Nationalist Government. Reconstruction Halted The achievements in the line of reconstruction and progress were indisputable, said Mr. Muir, discussing the Nationalist Government’s record prior to the Japanese invasion. It had been possible to travel by train frorp Hongkong to European capitals, while the chief cities were linked by efficient air lines, and the postal service was remarkable for its extent and reliability, in the circumstances. Broadcasting services, the demolition of squalid blocks of old houses to make handsome up-to-date shopping areas, and other signs of advancement had been plentiful. Now again the progress of the country was hold up by war and invasion. Marshal Chiang Kai-Shek had said that China would fight while an inch of territory remained, and a single Chinese to defend it. Japan had advanced far into the country on the railways, but five miles on either side of the lines was all the invaders could claim to control. Only 20 miles outside Pekin, irregular Chinese troops held the western hills, and between the two principal linos of the Japanese advance lay two self-contained Soviet states. To the eyes of the European, the success of the Japanese touched only the fringe of China, though they might appear to be striking at her very heart.