HOW CHINA ADVANCES.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXVI, Issue 13433, 21 July 1911, Page 4

HOW CHINA ADVANCES.

Seventeen years in China, doing the work of the Inland Mission, have convinced Mr H. Curtis, who has recently arrived in New Zealand, that the “awakening” of the Celestial Umpire is not the rapid, seven-leagued-striding thing that it is generally represented to be. China inland, he told a representative of the Sydney Telegraph, is the same as it was a thousand years ago. The modernisation of China applies only to the coastal provinces, and even then not in the enormous degree that it is sometimes represented to exist. It is clearly obvious, says the missioner, that in dealing with the teeming millions progress must be slow. “It i« really only when you go to some great college or university that you find the modernisation and intellectual uplift that is usually associated with Chinese development to-day. We are doing great educational work there, no doubt; wo are building a university that will be second only in the Umpire; but you scarcely see any result inland.” Mr Curtis is associated with the Inland Mission, which was about the first institution of its kind in Western China, Since then other missions have started, and a large number of Canadian Methodists are at present making their way there. Though they all work hard, Christianisation is slow—very slow, though in the opinion of Mr Curtis, it is sure. He says that in Japan it has undergone fearful mutilation, and is considerably mixed up with Buddhism. Even in China the ceremonial of the Homan Catholic religion tends in that direction. Ceremonials appeal to the Chinese, and the mission adapts itself as much as pos.-ible to Chinese ideas and thoughts, and introduces forms that arc almost parallel to Buddhism. Protestant missioners, on the other hand, have to effect a clean broach. “The Chinese has to absolutely change, and if a man is not prepared to let his heathenism go in toto it means that, it will possibly be years before von really convince him and get him to think your way.” Mr Curtis believes that in the majority of cases the slower the progress, the surer it is, and he says that statement applies alike to the Christianisation and modernisation of China, Education in the Chinese schools is just about as shallow as it can be. Too often the teachers are men who have had a year or two. or even a few months, in Japan. Of the teachers schooled in the Christian colleges Mr Curt’s savs that thev are the finest in Chb’a. Tho trouble is that so many of the Chinese teachers lack practical knowledge, and they have no idea of discipline in their schools. Frequently the pupils control the master, and practically dictate to the examinations that are to he set them. Speaking of the revolutionary ideas, of which so much has been said and written, Mr Curtis says: "These ideas are confined to the coastal provinces. All the awakening as you understand it, touches only the

fringe of China. Of course, there is talk of those things in inland towns, and one sees pouters depicting China’s grievances, and calling on the people to rise against the .oreigniT and so forth, hut it is not a fraction of what one. finds in coastal produces, The average Chinese inland aie a ijiiiet, peaceful, industrious pe<;plc, steady •is they have been through centuries, [hero is nothing anti-foreign about their working classes. The anti-foreign business irises among disappointed scholars, for an education that tarns oat merely B.A.’s and M.A.’s and does not give men up-to-date practical scientific knowledge, is a hinIranec to any country.