Occidental Interpretations Of The Far Eastern Problem

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THE NORMAN WAIT HARRIS
MEMORIAL FOUNDATION

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS
OF THE FAR EASTERN PROBLEM

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED
TORONTO

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON

THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENPAI

THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY
SHANGHAI

OCCIDENTAL INTER-
PRETATIONS OF THE
FAR EASTERN PROBLEM

[Lectures on the Harris Foundation 1925]

By
H. G. W. WOODHEAD, C.B.E.

*n> *

Editor of "The Peking and Tientsin Times/* and of
"The China Year Book"

JULEAN ARNOLD

American Commercial Attache* at Peking, China

HENRY KITTREDGE NORTON

Author of "The Far Eastern Republic of Siberia"

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO ILLINOIS

COPYRIGHT 1926 BY
THE UNIVERSITY ov CHICAGO

All Rights Reserved

Published January 1926

Composed and Printed By

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

PREFACE

The Harris Foundation Lectures at the Uni-
versity of Chicago have been made possible
through the generosity of the heirs of Norman
Wait Harris and Emma Gale Harris, who donated
to the University a fund to be known as "The
Norman Wait Harris Memorial Foundation" on
January 27, 1923. The letter of gift contains the
following statement:

It is apparent that a knowledge of world-affairs was never
of more importance to Americans than today. The spirit of
distrust which pervades the Old World is not without its
effect upon our own country. How to combat this disintegrat-
ing tendency is a problem worthy of the most serious thought.
Perhaps one of the best methods is the promotion of a better
understanding of other nations through wisely directed
educational effort.

The purpose of the Foundation shall be the promotion
of a better understanding on the part of American citizens of
the other peoples of the world, thus establishing a basis for
improved international relations and a more enlightened
world-order. The aim shall always be to give accurate
information, not to propagate opinion.

In fulfilment of this object a First Institute
was held at the University of Chicago in the sum-
mer of 1924, and the public lectures delivered by

PREFACE

the foreign scholars invited to the Institute were
published: Germany in Transition > by Herbert
Kraus; The Stabilization of Europe ', by Charles De
Visscher; and The Occident and the Orient^ by Sir
Valentine Chirol.

For the Second Institute, held in the summer of
1925, the topic selected for discussion was the Far
East., and again the public lectures delivered as
part of the work of the Institute are published in
essentially their original form. This volume, en-
titled Occidental Interpretations of the Far Eastern
Problem, gives the lectures of Mr. H. G. W. Wood-
head, C.B.E., an Englishman of twenty years'
residence in China where he was editor of the
Peking and Tientsin Times and of the China Year
Book; of Mr. Julean Arnold, American Consul or
Commercial Attach^ in China since 1902, and
editor of the Commercial Year Book of China; and
of Mr. H. K. Norton, author of The Far Eastern
Republic of Siberia. A second volume, Oriental
Interpretations of the Far Eastern Problem, contains
the lectures of Count Michimasa Soyeshima, grad-
uate of Cambridge University, England, and form-
er member of the House of Peers of Japan; and
of Dr. P. W. Kuo, President of Southeastern Uni-
versity, Nanking, China.

August i, 1925

C*** 11
Vlll J|

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA i

By H. G. W. Woodhead

I. THE CHINESE REPUBLIC 3

II. PRESENT STATE OF CHINA 49

III. EXTRATERRITORIALITY 81

IV. CHINA'S FOREIGN RELATIONS 129

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES . 177

By Julean Arnold

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST 201

By Henry Kittredge Norton

APPENDIX

LEADING STATESMEN OF MODERN CHINA .... 233

INDEX 249 .

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

By H. G. W. WOODHEAD

I

THE CHINESE REPUBLIC

I have been asked to give you in my first lecture
a survey of the history of the Chinese Republic. It
must, if compressed into a single lecture, neces-
sarily be brief, and in some respects inadequate.

The Revolution as a result of which China was
transformed from an absolute monarchy to a nom-
inal republic broke out in the autumn of 1911,
but to understand why it occurred, and why it was
successful, it is necessary to refer briefly to the
events of the previous thirteen years.

The Emperor Kwang Hsu succeeded to the
throne on the death of T'ung Chih, in January,
1875, at the age of five. For the first few years of
his reign the regency was in the hands of the late
Emperor's mother, and the Dowager Empress Tzu
An. The latter died in 1881, leaving the sole
regency in the masterful hands of Tzu Hsi, thence-
forward known as the Empress Dowager. She
ruled autocratically until 1889 when she, nomi-
nally at any rate, went into retirement, though
actually retaining by roundabout methods the
power of appointing and dismissing the highest
officials in the government. The war with Japan

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

(1894-95), resulting in disaster and humiliation for
China, aroused widespread discontent, which was
intensified by Russia's occupation of Port Arthur
and the grant of territorial leases to Germany,
Great Britain, and France, in 1897-98.

Some of the ablest officials of the empire recog-
nized the necessity of wholesale reform if China was
to retain her national independence. The Emperor
himself was converted to this point of view. His
tutor, Weng Tung-ho, and other progressive offi-
cials around him were responsible for bringing to
his attention a Cantonese reformer, K'ang Yu-wei,
who was born in 1858, and who, though he had
never left China, had been deeply impressed by the
achievements of Peter the Great and the awaken-
ing of Japan. K'ang Yu-wei, according to his own
statements of what occurred, was only once re-
ceived in audience by the Emperor. 1 But he made
a deep impression, and between June n and
September 16, 1898, at his instigation the Emperor
promulgated some scores of reform decrees, aiming
at the reorganization of the administration, fi-
nances, education, army, public justice, and the
development of railways and mines. 2 The first re-
form decrees caused alarm among the conservative

1 China Mail, Oct. 7, 1898.

2 J. 0. P. Bland and E. Backhouse, China under the Empress
Dowager, chap. xiii.

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

elements, Chinese and Manchu, and the Empress
Dowager, though at first not openly opposing the
Emperor, adopted precautions which were later to
frustrate all his efforts. As early as June 12 she
arranged for the appointment of Jung Lu, a Man-
chu and a staunch adherent of hers, to the vice-
royalty of Chihli, thus securing control over the
modern-trained troops in that province.

K'ang Yu-wei was convinced that the only
hope for China was the introduction of a constitu-
tional monarchy. It is noteworthy that it was
at this the reform period that Chang Chih-
tung, one of the ablest and most influential of
China's viceroys, published a work entitled Learn y
which sold by the millions, and the object of which
was to bring about reforms from above also, instead
of awaiting a revolution from below. He did not
believe that a republic was practicable, propheti-
cally stating that, with unrestrained liberty

the scholar would always sit at meat, the farmer would pay
no taxes, the merchant would garner unbounded wealth, the
workman would strike for higher wages, the proletariat would
plunder and rob, the son would disobey the father, the stu-
dent would not follow the teacher, the wife would not obey
the husband, the low would not defer to the high, the strong
would oppress the weak, and mankind would soon be anni-
hilated. 1

1 Morse, International Relations^ III, 136-37.

Isl

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

In regard to the Emperor's reform decrees
Morse states:

Provided that reform was to begin at the top and not at
the foundation, no fault can be found with this list of reforms.
Every one was sound, every one struck at a manifest evil, and
every one was capable of being carried into effect; but the
whole structure of reform by Decree was a pyramid standing
on its apex. 1

The opposition of the conservative elements
convinced the Emperor that the success of his
program must depend upon military support. It is
alleged that he sought the assistance of Yuan
Shih-kai, then judicial commissioner of Chihli, who
had in 1895 been appointed director general of
army reorganization, and directed him to assassi-
nate Jung Lu at Tientsin, lead the modern army to
the capital, and imprison the Empress Dowager.
According to this version, Yuan Shih-kai im-
mediately proceeded to Tientsin and revealed the
Emperor's plans to Jung Lu, who hurried to the
capital and told the Empress Dowager what was
afoot, with the result that a countercoup was ar-
ranged, and the Emperor, while on the way to per-
form some sacrificial rites, was suddenly seized and
carried off to the ocean palace, where he remained
a close prisoner for the greater part of the rest of

1 Morse, op. cit., p. 139.

16]

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

his life. 1 Yuan's own version of the incident is that
he was requested by certain reformers to assassi-
nate Jung Lu, but that they were unable to produce
the Emperor's authority, nor did His Majesty even
refer to the matter at a subsequent private audi-
ence. When he arrived in Tientsin, however, he was
immediately taxed by Jung Lu with having come
down for the purpose of assassinating him. 2 The
fact remains that the Emperor attributed the
humiliations of his later years to Yuan Shih-kai,
and is reported, on his deathbed, to have ordered
his execution. 3

The reform movement was temporarily crushed,
the reformers were scattered or executed, and re-
action won the day, with its aftermath of the
Boxer madness of 1900. The drastic action of the
foreign powers, however, convinced even the Em-
press Dowager that reform or a semblance of re-
form was necessary if the dynasty was to retain its
position, and between 1901 and 1905 attempts were
made to introduce many of the reforms promul-
gated in 1898. A commission to study constitu-
tional methods was sent abroad in 1905, and re-
ported in 1907. In 1908 a nine-year program of

1 Bland and Backhouse, op. ctt. t pp. 202 ff.

2 Percy H. B. Kent, The Passing of the Manchus, p. 19.

3 Bland and Backhouse, op. >., p. 460.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

constitutional preparation was promulgated, to
culminate, in 1916-17, in the issue of constitutional
laws and elections to the upper and lower houses of
the legislature. It is noteworthy that it was estimat-
ed that during the seventh year (1914-15) i per cent
and during the ninth year (1916-17) 5 per cent
of the population should be able to read and
write. 1

The Empress Dowager and the Emperor
Kwang Hsu both died in November, 1908, and
the Emperor's nephew, P'u Yi, ascended the throne
under the title of Hsuan Tung, with his father as
regent. He was then a boy of three years of age.

Although the regent had been abroad he was
sent to Berlin to apologize for the murder of the
German minister in Peking, after the Boxer out-
break he failed completely to appreciate the signs
of the times, and instead of pushing forward the
program of reform made concessions to public
opinion only when public clamor assumed danger-
ous proportions. He dismissed, and but for foreign
representations, would probably have executed,
Yuan Shih-kai. He affronted public opinion by ap-
pointing his own relatives and other Manchus
many of them notoriously corrupt to the highest
offices in the government. And such concessions as

1 China Year Book (1912-), chap, xxi; ibid. (1925), pp. 615 fF.
C8I

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

he made under pressure from the people were gen-
erally stultified by the manner in which they were
granted. The new provincial assemblies, which met
for the first time in 1909, gave a tremendous im-
petus to the agitation for an earlier grant of con-
stitutional government, and eventually resulted in
an acceleration of the reform program, it being an-
nounced that the national Parliament would be
convened in 1913 instead of in 1917. The demand
that the Grand Council should be replaced by a
cabinet was also conceded, but Prince Ching, an
elderly Manchu clansman, with an unsavory repu-
tation, was appointed the first premier, and the
presidents of the boards of interior, navy, finance,
agriculture, industries and commerce, war, justice,
colonies, and the general staff and advisory council
were all Manchus. 1

In so far, however, as the Revolution can be
attributed to a single cause, it was due to the
government's attempts at centralization. Although
the Manchu emperor was an absolute monarch, in
whose hands rested the appointment of officials
throughout the country, in actual practice the
provinces enjoyed a large measure of independence.
In 1911 the central government concluded two
large gold loans with foreign-banking groups, the

1 Li Un-bing, Outlines of Chinese History, p. 631.
19!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

first of which was to be used for the reorganization
of China's currency and the second for railway
construction. The Hukuang Railway loan of six
million pounds sterling was to be expended on
the construction of trunk railways from Hankow
to Szechwan and Hankow to Canton. Both in
Szechwan and Kwangtung, however, provincial
companies had been spasmodically engaged in
railway construction. They had raised, and for the
most part wasted, enormous sums, but this did
not prevent them from opposing bitterly a transac-
tion which aimed at nationalizing China's trunk
railways and bringing them all under the control of
the central government. What was unquestion-
ably, from the national point of view, a sound pro-
ject led to open defiance of the government, and
eventually to revolution.

There had been revolutionary outbreaks in
Canton in April, 1911. The signature of the Hu-
kuang Railway contract was followed by a general
strike, which developed into a revolt, in Szechwan.
The viceroy's yamen at Chengtu was attacked on
September 7, and the entire province may be said
to have been in revolt when, on October 9, a bomb
explosion in the Russian concession at Hankow, in
Hupeh province, became the signal for a general
uprising. This bomb explosion was accidental. The

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

premises were raided, and found to contain revolu-
tionary flags and literature (including, it is said,
a list of disaffected officers and men in the local
military forces) and explosives. Knowing the fate
that awaited them if they remained inactive, the
revolutionaries took immediate action. A number
of troops mutinied, and occupied the gates of
Wuchang on the night of October 10. The Manchu
viceroy and the local military commander had to
take refuge on a warship. The revolution which
was to result in the overthrow of the dynasty had
begun. None of the local revolutionaries, however,
was anxious to assume the leadership, which was
forced upon Li Yuan-hung, a cavalry colonel on
the viceroy's staff. He had not been a member of
the revolutionary party, but accepted command,
and retained it until the actual control of the move-
ment passed into the hands of the revolutionary
committee at Shanghai. Hanyang and Hankow
were occupied on the eleventh and twelfth of
October, respectively.

It is unnecessary to dwell at length upon the
course of the Revolution, and I propose here only
to mention its salient features. When it broke out,
some thirty thousand of China's modern-trained
troops had just been assembled at Yungpingfu in
Chihli for the autumn maneuvers. The maneuvers

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

were immediately canceled, and most of the troops
were dispatched to Hankow by rail. On October
14, the Prince Regent, by this time thoroughly
alarmed at the course of events, recalled Yuan
Shih~kai, who was still in retirement in his native
province, and appointed him viceroy of the Huku-
ang provinces (Hupeh and Hunan) and generalis-
simo of the naval and military forces. Yuan Shih-
kai was by no means eager to accept this appoint-
ment, pleading that his leg an affection which had
been the pretext for his dismissal in 1909 had not
yet healed, and it was only after he had been given
more extensive powers, and peremptorily urged to
disregard his illness, that he accepted the appoint-
ment. Had he really had his heart in the cause, and
been adequately financed, there is little doubt that
he could have suppressed the revolt before it at-
tained serious proportions. For Hankow and Han-
yang were reoccupied without great difficulty by
the end of November, rendering Wuchang, the
revolutionary headquarters, untenable, and induc-
ing the revolutionaries to sue for peace. Yuan
Shih-kai showed no eagerness to exploit these suc-
cesses, and agreed to an armistice on December 3.
He had returned to Peking as premier on Novem-
ber 13, to find that the regent had agreed to a new
constitution adopted by the national assembly at

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

the end of October. 1 On December 6 his old enemy,
the Prince Regent, resigned, and Yuan Shih-kai
was supreme. The issue then became one of wheth-
er China should retain the monarchy in any form
or become a republic. Yuan Shih-kai personally
favored a constitutional monarchy, but, as events
proved, was not prepared to fight for this solution
if another could be found which left him in supreme
control, and made reasonable provision for the im-
perial family.

At the beginning of December the revolution-
ists were divided roughly into two camps the
Wuchang group, led by Li Yuan-hung, and the
Shanghai Committee, whose spokesmen were Wu
Ting-fang and Wen Tsung-yao, and which issued a
flood of plausible manifestoes, compiled by foreign
sympathizers. Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who has been de-
scribed as the "Father of the Revolution," was in
Europe when the Wuchang outbreak occurred, and
did not reach Shanghai until December 25, a week
after the Peace Conference had opened in that
city. Three days later he was "elected" president
of the republic by the revolutionary council at
Nanking. He assumed office on January I, 1912.

The part that Dr. Sun played in the Revolu-
tion has formed a subject of considerable contro-

1 China Year Book (1925), p. 6a8.

{13!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

versy ever since. He had been a notorious revolu-
tionary agitator during the greater part of his life,
having organized and participated in a number of
abortive attacks upon the Canton authorities in
his earlier years. But he would probably have re-
mained unknown to foreigners but for the notoriety
he gained by being kidnapped outside the Chinese
legation in London, by orders of the Chinese
minister, in October, 1896. It had been intended
to ship him to China as a lunatic, and once there
he would have been put to death. But he managed
to communicate with Dr. (now Sir) James Cantlie,
his old teacher, who informed the British Foreign
Office, which secured his release. He remained
abroad, constantly agitating, until the outbreak of
the Revolution, and arrived in China when all the
fighting was over. One of the men most competent
to speak about his r61e in the Revolution is Gen-
eral (now Former President) Li Yuan-hung, who
had this to say to a foreign-newspaper correspond-
ent in July, 1913:

The world has a false idea about Sun Yat-sen. He had
nothing to do with the actual work of overthrowing the
monarchy. The Revolution was finished when he reached
China. I hardly heard of him except in a vague and general
way, and did not know his political views, except that I had
heard of his agitation. So far as I had thought about him at
all, I had regarded him as a visionary. He arrived at Shanghai

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

at a moment when the Southern, or Republican, party had
decided that some kind of government should nominally be
formed with the capital at Nanking. This was done for moral
effect in China and abroad. None of the real leaders of the
Revolution, for various reasons, desired to take the position of
provisional president, which we felt would be of short dura-
tion. Sun Yat-sen, from being out of China for so long, was
not associated with any faction here, his name was known
abroad, and he seemed to suit the occasion. If he ever pro-
vided any tangible aid to the real Revolution I did not know
of it. His repute is largely founded on fiction. 1

When the Republican cabinet was formed at
Nanking, Li Yuan-hung was ignored. The revolu-
tionaries were uncompromising in their insistence
upon the abdication of the Manchus, whose diffi-
culties were increasing, owing to their lack of funds
and the lukewarmness of their supporters. The
Gordian knot was cut by Yuan Shih-kai, who,
when he found that Sun Yat-sen was prepared to
resign in his favor, and that the Republicans were
willing to grant liberal terms to the imperial house,
prompted his military subordinates, headed by
Tuan Chi-jui, to address telegraphic memorials to
the throne urging abdication. 3 The abdication
edicts, drafted on February 3, were actually pro-
mulgated on February 13, 1912,3 simultaneously

1 China Press y July 22, 1913.

2 China Year Book (1913), p. 480.
*Ibid. y pp. 481-83.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

with the terms of favorable treatment, under which
the Emperor was to retain his title, his property,
and the privileges of a foreign sovereign, and re-
ceive a pension of four million taeh per annum. 1 It
was intended that he should remove from Peking
to the summer palace, a few miles outside the city,
but for one reason or another this plan was never
carried out. It is noteworthy that the abdication
edicts invested Yuan Shih-kai with full powers to
organize a provisional Republican government.

Dr. Sun resigned from the presidency on Feb-
ruary 14, and Yuan Shih-kai was unanimously
elected president by the Nanking National Coun-
cil on February 15, but that body at the same time
voted in favor of transferring the capital from Pe-
king to Nanking. Li Yuan-hung was unanimously
elected vice-president on February 20. A deputa-
tion proceeded to Peking to invite Yuan Shih-kai
to visit Nanking to take the oath of office, but a
mutiny of the Third Division, possibly instigated
for this very purpose, resulted in the abandonment
of the project of transferring the capital. The Nan-
king delegates themselves had to seek refuge in
the legation quarter during the mutiny. Though
unanimously elected provisional president, Yuan
Shih-kai was by no means unanimously trusted by

1 China Year Book (1913), p. 484* and ibid, (1925), p. 632.

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

the Nanking Council, which was composed of dele-
gates appointed by the various Republican military
governors, or tutuhs y and it proceeded, early in
March, to draft and adopt a provisional constitu-
tion, 1 the main purpose of which was to limit the
president's powers. Even before the transfer of the
Council to Peking toward the end of April, friction
had occurred between it and the president over the
allocation of cabinet posts, the Tungmenghui, or
revolutionary party, desiring that their nominees
should receive the portfolios of war and finance.
To this arrangement President Yuan absolutely re-
fused to agree, nominating his trusted lieuten-
ant, Tuan Chi-jui, to the ministry of war, and
Hsiung Hsi-ling, a Hunanese Republican, who was
not, however, a member of the Tungmenghui, as
minister of finance.

The transformation of China from an absolute
monarchy to a nominal republic was effected with
remarkably little bloodshed and material damage.
There were local massacres of Manchus notably
at Sianfu in Shensi and a few foreigners were
killed in various centers. But both sides manifested
an earnest desire to avoid giving the foreign powers
any pretext for interference. Most of Hankow was
burned down by the imperialist forces, and there

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

was, of course, a great deal of incendiarism and
looting in various centers in which there was fight-
ing or rioting.

China became a republic two years before the
date on which, according to the nine-year pro-
gram of constitutional reform, I per cent of the
population should have been able to read and
write. In other words, the percentage of illiteracy
was about 99.* And it should be emphasized that
the republic came into being, not as a result of an
overwhelming military victory of the revolutionary
forces, but rather as the result of a compromise
which left the executive power in the hands of one
who had little sympathy with, or understanding of,
the principles of modern democratic government,
but who had a strong military following.

Yuan Shih-kai assumed office as provisional
president with certain manifest advantages. He
had the reputation of being a capable and progres-
sive official. He stood high in the estimation of
foreigners with the possible exception of the Jap-
anese, with whom he had come into conflict in
Korea as a result of his friendly attitude during
the Boxer upheaval. He had the loyal support of
the generals and most of the officers of the modern

1 China Year Book (1925), pp. 616-17.

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

army, whose organization and training had been
carried out under his personal supervision. He
knew his countrymen and how to deal with them.
And he had, as it proved, a loyal colleague in
General Li Yuan-hung, who remained at Wuchang
and did his utmost to maintain order in the Yang-
tze. On the other hand, he was from the outset dis-
trusted by the Republicans, whose main strength
came from the south.

The two problems requiring most urgent atten-
tion were disbandment and finance. Mushroom
armies which had sprung up all over the country
during the Revolution, for the most part undisci-
plined and unpaid, constituted a serious danger to
public peace. Excepting the customs administra-
tion which, being under foreign control, remained
intact throughout the upheaval, all sources of
revenue had been appropriated by the provinces.
The central government was unable to meet its
foreign obligations, or to raise the revenue nec-
essary for its own maintenance. The Republican
government approached the Peking representatives
of the quadruple group (composed of American,
British, French, and German financiers) within a
few days of abdication, and as early as February 28
the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation,

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

on behalf of the group, advanced two million taels
to the government at Nanking. 1 Negotiations then
proceeded for a comprehensive reorganization
loan, which were making some headway when it
was discovered that, notwithstanding the fact that
the option to make further advances had been
granted to the quadruple group, a loan for one
million sterling with the option of taking up an-
other nine millions had been concluded with a
Belgian syndicate on March 15. Negotiations with
the quadruple group were thereupon broken off, to
be renewed in May, interrupted again in June, and
not to be consummated until April 26, 1913, by
which time the American bankers had withdrawn
and Japanese and Russian interests were admitted.
The stumbling-block was the demand of the
bankers, with the support of their respective gov-
ernments, for foreign supervision of the expendi-
ture of the proceeds, and of the collection of the
revenues pledged as security. Supervision in any
form was repulsive to Yuan Shih-kai who would
have liked to expend the money as he thought fit,
and equally repugnant to the Republicans, who
regarded it as an infringement of China's sovereign
rights. The loan amounted to twenty-five millions

1 For details of Loan Negotiations, see China Year Book (1913),
pp. 348 ff., and ibid. (1914), PP- 379 ff -

!*>!

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

sterling, of which three millions were earmarked for
disbandment expenses. The loan agreement 1 fur-
ther stipulated that a foreign associate chief in-
spector, with a number of foreign district in-
spectors, was to be appointed to the salt adminis-
tration, whose revenues were pledged as security,
and that foreign advisers were to be employed in
the Audit Department and the Bureau of National
Loans.

Meanwhile there had been frequent collisions
between Yuan Shih-kai and the National Council,
since the removal of the latter to Peking, as well as
a number of cabinet changes. Sun Yat-sen, who
had propounded a visionary scheme for the con-
struction of seventy-five thousand miles of railways
within ten years, at a cost of six hundred millions
sterling, 2 was placated for the moment with the
post of director of the National Railway Corpora-
tion, with headquarters at Shanghai, whose duty
was to be the negotiation of railway loans with for-
eign financiers. Other fantastic proposals he put
forward about this time included a project for
raising an army of five million men to conquer
Russia, who had availed herself of China's difficul-
ties to initiate an aggressive policy in outer Mon-
golia. He also proposed the issue of unlimited,

1 Ibid., pp. 387 ff. 2 Ibid. (1913), p. 187.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

unsecured, and inconvertible paper currency, to
meet China's financial difficulties.

Elections for the new bicameral legislature took
place in December, 1912, and January, 1913. Ten
senators were to be elected by each provisional
assembly, in addition to fifty-four representing the
outer dependencies, the Central Education Society,
and Chinese residing abroad. The country was to
return one member for each eight hundred thousand
of the population to the House of Representatives,
by means of a complicated system of double elec-
tion, for which the necessary organization did not
exist. The result was that the House of Repre-
sentatives contained a number of professional
agitators and demagogues, who had bribed or
bluffed their way into the legislature. The Tung-
menghui had, in 1912, combined with four other
Republican parties to form the Kuomintang, which
was the strongest individual party in both houses,
claiming 123 out of 274 senators and 269 out of 596
representatives. Sung Chiao-jen, the parliamen-
tary leader of the party, was murdered, in circum-
stances which threw suspicion on the Minister of
the Interior, on the eve of his departure from
Shanghai, on March 21, 1913, and Parliament
therefore met in an electrical atmosphere on April
8, intimating that the presence of Yuan Shih-kai to

1*2]

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

perform the opening ceremony would be unwel-
come, and refusing to permit the reading of his
inaugural message.

The conclusion of the reorganization loan, with-
out referring it to Parliament a course which
Yuan Shih-kai maintained was justified by the fact
that its main provisions had been approved by the
National Council in the preceding December 1 led
to a fresh crisis, and relations between the Presi-
dent and legislature grew steadily worse. Parlia-
ment discredited itself to a very large extent by the
numerous disorderly scenes which occurred in both
houses. By July the attitude of some of the Kuo~
mintang tutuhs in the southern provinces had be-
come so defiant that Yuan Shih-kai felt compelled
to order their removal., a step which was the signal
for a rising which spread down the Yangtze Valley
and to Canton, and became known as the Second
Revolution. Chang Hsun, the doughty old warrior
who had defended Nanking in 1911, and subse-
quently withdrawn his army virtually intact across
the river to Pukow, was intrusted with the re-
capture of Nanking, which he effected without
much difficulty. And elsewhere the northern forces
were uniformly victorious. The rebellion was
crushed, Sun Yat-sen and other Kuomintang lead-

1 China Year Book (1914), p. 379.
1*3 1

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

ers were stripped of all their offices, proscribed, and
fled abroad. And Parliament, chastened by this
manifestation of Yuan Shih-kai's strength, meekly
adopted the new presidential election law, 1 and
elected him formal president in time to be inaugu-
rated on the second anniversary of the Revolution,
October 10, 1913, by which date recognition of the
republic had been accorded by all the powers. Li
Yuan-hung was elected vice-president.

The Kuomintang hoped to regain by the new
constitution what they had lost as the result of the
summer revolt. Yuan Shih-kai, however, was de-
termined not to submit to parliamentary control,
and invited the opinions of the provincial mili-
tarists on the completed draft. They, of course,
supported him, and in some cases demanded the
dissolution of Parliament. On November 4 the
Kuomintang was proscribed as a seditious organ-
ization, and all members of the party in the legis-
lature were unseated, and ordered to be sent away
from the capital. Parliament, unable to secure a
quorum in their absence, languished, inactive, un-
til its formal dissolution in January, 1914. Legisla-
tive functions were thereupon intrusted to a nomi-
nated council of state, which drafted a constitution
more in accordance with Yuan Shih-kai's ideas, 2

1 China Year Book (1925), p. 657. * Ibid., pp. 665 ff.

1 2 4 I

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

increasing the presidential term from five to ten
years, and virtually leaving it to the President to
secure his own re-election or the election of his own
nominee.

The Great War, which broke out in August,

1914, for the time being absorbed attention in
Europe and America. China was brought into its
orbit by the joint Anglo-Japanese attack upon
Tsingtao, which, with the Shantung Railway, re-
mained in Japanese hands until after the Washing-
ton Conference. Except America, which for the
moment was not prepared to go farther than pro-
testing, and issuing warnings, none of the powers
was willing to incur Japanese hostility by interfer-
ing with her activities in China which, early in

1915, assumed a most menacing form. The noto-
rious Twenty-one Demands, 1 delivered in January,
if acceded to in toto> would have had the effect oi
converting China into a Japanese protectorate.
Yuan Shih-kai was powerless in face of the Jap-
anese ultimatum of May 7, I9I5, 2 by means of
which all but Group 5 of Japan's demands were
enforced.

It had been obvious for some time that Yuan
Shih-kai was working for a monarchical restoration.
He had revived the state worship of heaven and
bid. (1921). *IMd.

l*Sl

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

Confucius in 1914, at the ceremonies connected
with which he attired himself in robes similar to
those worn by former emperors. And in the sum-
mer of 1915 a movement was started for the con-
version of the republic into a monarchy, with Yuan
Shih-kai as emperor. The campaign was arranged
from Peking^ the various provincial authorities re-
ceiving secret instructions to petition the President
to ascend the throne. Arrangements were also
made for a packed citizens' conference, which was
to memoralize to the same effect. The Japanese,
however, had not forgotten their old grudge against
Yuan Shih-kai, and at the instance of the Japanese
government joint representations against the pro-
posed change were made by the British, Russian,
and Japanese ministers. Yuan's campaign man-
agers responded by staging demonstrations in
favor of the monarchy in the provinces. The date
for the coronation and the ceremonies to be em-
ployed in connection therewith were actually pro-
mulgated when on December 25, Tsai Ao, a Re-
publican leader, hoisted the standard of revolt in
Yunnan. The movement rapidly spread, until
practically the whole of Southern and Western
China was in rebellion. Moreover, Yuan's military
lieutenants, who had given him unflinching support
as president, were not prepared to fight to make

f 26 3

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

him emperor. The situation became so grave that
the coronation was postponed, and, eventually, the
monarchical project was abandoned. But the south
was not to be placated by this volte face ', and the
crisis was only solved by Yuan Shih-kai's death on
June 6, 1916.

He was succeeded as president, as provided by
the Nanking constitution and the Presidential
Election Law of 1913, by General Li Yuan-hung,
the vice-president, who at once reconvened the old
Parliament. Feng Kuo-chang, one of Yuan's lieu-
tenants, was elected vice-president, but remained
at Nanking. Tuan Chi-jui, who had also been asso-
ciated with Yuan Shih-kai in the training of the
new army, and was minister of war in the first Re-
publican cabinet, became premier. Thus the domi-
nation of the Peiyang party (so called since it was
composed of officers of the Peiyang army) was
assured, although its chief was dead. Dissensions,
however, soon occurred which were to produce
serious consequences in later years. The Peiyang
party split into two factions, one of which, led by
the vice-president, General Feng Kuo-chang (and
after his death by Tsao Kun), became known as
the Chihli party, and the other, led by Tuan Chi-
jui, as the Anhwei, and subsequently, the Anfu
party.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

America early in 1917 broke off diplomatic
relations with the Central Powers, and invited
China to follow suit, which she did. The same in-
vitation was repeated when the United States de-
clared war. President Li Yuan-hung was opposed
to war, fearing that it would strengthen the hands
of the militarists. Japan, who had formerly vetoed
China's intervention on the side of the Allies, sup-
ported it on this occasion after extracting from
Britain, France, Italy, and Russia a secret under-
taking to support her claims in Shantung and the
North Pacific at the Peace Conference. 1 Tuan Chi-
jui, the premier, favored war, as also did the major-
ity of the northern Tuchuns. Parliament was not
averse from hostilities but wished to take the entire
credit for declaring war. Friction between Presi-
dent and Premier increased until the latter was dis-
missed, whereupon his military supporters rallied
to his aid, and united in denouncing Parliament
and demanding its dissolution, the draft of the con-
stitution being made the pretext for this action. At
this juncture, General Chang Hsun, of Nanking
fame, offered to mediate, and was invited to Peking
by the President. He came up to the capital with
his pigtailed army, and immediately insisted upon
the dissolution of Parliament, to which President

1 China Year Book (1921).

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

Li Yuan-hung had to agree. In August, 1917, Gen-
eral Chang Hsun effected a sudden coup, replacing
the Manchu emperor, who was still in residence in
the imperial palace, on the throne, and proclaim-
ing the overthrow of the republic. Chang Hsun
maintained to the end of his life that this coup was
effected with the knowledge and approval of his
fellow-militarists.

Tuan Chi-jui immediately took the field against
the monarchist leader, and after some hesitation
Tsao Kun and the other northern Tuchuns rallied
to his aid. The monarchy was overthrown within a
fortnight, and General Chang Hsun had to seek
refuge in the Dutch legation.

As soon as news of the restoration reached the
south, preparations were made for a so-called
"punitive expedition." The southerners were not
placated by Tuan Chi-jui's prompt action, but re-
mained sullen and defiant. President Li Yuan-
hung, who had also taken refuge in the legation
quarter, refused to reassume the presidency after
Chang Hsun's discomfiture, and was succeeded by
General Feng Kuo-chang, the vice-president. Tuan
Chi-jui once more became premier, but it was the
dissensions between him and his following and the
new president that led to a split in the Peiyang
party. During 1918, Tuan, as leader of the Anfu

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

party, attained the height of his power, and his
subordinates abused it to indulge in an orgy of
borrowing from Japan, participation in the Great
War being used as the pretext for large arms deals
(on credit) with, and loans from, the Japanese. Be-
tween January and December, 1918, about 250,-
000,000 yen were borrowed from Japan. Tuan Chi-
jui and his fellow-Tuchuns organized a so-called
"Tuchuns' parliament," composed of their own
nominees, many of whom would never have dared
to show their faces in the provinces they professed
to represent, and this body was induced to elect
Hsu Shih-ch'ang, a sworn brother of Yuan Shih-kai
and his Secretary of State, as president of the re-
public, in place of Feng Kuo-chang. The south-
erners refused to recognize the Tuchuns' parlia-
ment or the new President, and attempted to or-
ganize a so-called "constitutional government" in
Canton, with the support of two or three hundred
members of the old Parliament.

The new President was in favor of reunification
by peaceful means, but his peace mandates were
ignored. In December the principal powers joined
in making strong representations to China against
perpetuating internal strife, as a result of which a
domestic peace conference was convened in Shang-
hai, early in 1919. It proved fruitless, however, and

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

the Chinese delegation at Versailles contained dele-
gates from the Canton as well as the Peking gov-
ernment. Japan's pretensions at Versailles aroused
a wave of indignation throughout the country. The
Peking students got out of hand, attacked and
assaulted the most notorious of the so-called "na-
tional traitors" or pro-Japanese officials, and drove
them into retirement. Public opinion in China
compelled the Chinese delegation to refuse to sign
a treaty recognizing Japan's claims in Shantung.
The intervention of students of all ages and both
sexes in domestic politics and foreign affairs dates
from this time, and has since manifested itself in
many undesirable ways.

The quarrel between the Anfu and the Chihli
leaders came to a head in 1920. To consolidate
their position in the north, the Anfu leaders en-
deavored to dislodge all militarists who were not
in sympathy with them, and especially Tsao Kun,
the Chihli Tuchun. Wu Pei-fu, his subordinate,
brought his troops north from Hunan to aid his
chief, and after a futile attempt at mediation by
the Manchurian Tuchun, Chang Tso-lin, there was
no alternative to war. The Chihli leaders unques-
tionably had public opinion behind them when
they demanded the dismissal of "Little Hsu,"
commander of the Anfu forces, and one of the

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

most notorious of the pro-Japanese officials. "Little
Hsu" (Hsu Shu-tseng) was dismissed by the Presi-
dent, whereupon Tuan Chi-jui retaliated by de-
manding the censure of Tsao Kun and the dis-
missal of Wu Pei-fu. To this, also, the President
weakly agreed. Thereupon Tsao Kun, egged on by
his strong-willed subordinate, accepted the chal-
lenge. War broke out around the capital, and Wu
Pei-fu's army emerged victorious. The Anfu party
went to pieces. All of its leaders except Tuan Chi-
jui, to whom none of the Chihli party and its allies
displayed any particular animosity, sought refuge
in the Japanese legation. Chang Tso-lin brought
an army inside the great wall, arriving after the real
fighting was over, and at once conferred with Tsao
Kun in regard to the exploitation of their victory.
From this period dates the animosity between
Chang Tso-lin and Wu Pei-fu which was to produce
two more civil wars. I saw Chang Tso-lin shortly
after his arrival in Tienstin, and although all the
fighting had been done by troops under Wu Pei-
fu's leadership and the victory was his, the Man-
churian Tuchun spoke slightingly of him, and de-
clared that as a subordinate military commander
General Wu had no right to interfere in politics.
A marriage between the families of Tsao Kun and
Chang Tso-lin was supposed to set a seal upon their

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

friendship, and the two war-lords proceeded to
Peking together to instal a government of their own
selection. Meanwhile, as the result of a civil war in
the south, Sun Yat-sen, who had been living and
intriguing in the French concession in Shanghai,
returned to Canton to organize another revolution-
ary government. He denounced Chang Tso-lin and
Tsao Kun, repudiated the authority of Peking, and
had himself elected president of the republic by a
parliamentary rump, in April, 1921. There was
constant friction over cabinet appointments in
Peking during this year, and in December Chang
Tso-lin revisited Peking, and in complete disre-
gard of the wishes of Tsao Kun and Wu Pei-fu in-
stalled Liang Shih-yi, who had been responsible for
financing Yuan Shih-kai's monarchical campaign,
as premier. Tsao Kun ostensibly remained indiffer-
ent, but Wu Pei-fu publicly denounced Liang Shih-
yi and demanded his dismissal. The Premier then
went upon sick-leave, refusing to resign his post
unless he were publicly whitewashed by the Presi-
dent.

In April, 1922, Chang Tso-lin announced his in-
tention of suppressing Wu Pei-fu. His armies in
and around Peking were heavily reinforced, and
General Wu advanced to the attack at the end of
that month. Tsao Kun sat on the fence but allowed

(33l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

General Wu Pei-fu to use his troops, and the Chris-
tian general (Feng Yu-hsiang) also came to his
assistance from Shensi, suppressing a revolt in
Honan on the way, and reaching the vicinity of
Peking with his Eleventh Division in time for the
decisive battle. After a number of reverses., Gen-
eral Wu Pei-fu won a decisive victory by an out-
flanking movement south of Peking, and the
Manchurian army retreated down the railway,
with considerable loss, eventually making a stand
at Shanhaikuan, on the Chihli-Manchurian fron-
tier, whence the Chihli forces were unable to dis-
lodge it. After several weeks of indecisive fight-
ing a truce was arranged, by which each army
withdrew some distance from its side of the great
wall. Chang Tso-lin returned to Mukden, where
he proclaimed his independence of the central
government, and concentrated his efforts upon
reorganizing his army.

President Hsu Shih-chang, whose conduct
throughout the crisis had been contemptible, re-
signed on June 2, 1922, and the victors then applied
pressure to General Li Yuan-hung, to induce him
to reassume the presidency. This he did with the
utmost reluctance, and only after receiving uncon-
ditional pledges of support from Tsao Kun and Wu
Pei-fu, and issuing a flaming denunciation of the

I34l

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

Tuchun system. He endeavored to induce Wu Pei-
fu to accept office as minister of war, but the latter
absolutely declined this post, professing that he
was a military man who could not participate in
politics, and returning to his headquarters at
Loyang, in Honan, to reorganize his army. From
Loyang, however, he bombarded the central gov-
ernment with protests and advice.

President Li Yuan-hung reconvened the old
Parliament on August i. A few days later Dr. Sun
Yat-sen, whose rule in Canton had been becoming
more unpopular daily, escaped from that city in a
British gunboat, and returned to Shanghai. The
new cabinet was composed mainly of American and
British-educated Chinese, who it was expected,
would thus be given a chance of showing what they
could do. But a conspiracy was already in the mak-
ing to dislodge President Li and to secure the eleva-
tion of Tsao Kun to the presidency. The first blow
was struck toward the end of the year by the arrest,
on what proved to be trumped-up charges, of the
Minister of Finance, a distinguished lawyer who
had been educated in England. He was kept in cus-
tody for several months, and his colleagues in the
cabinet naturally refused to remain in office. Gen-
eral Chang Shao-tseng, who had been minister of
war, was thereupon appointed premier, over a

1 35 I

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

cabinet composed, for the most part, of Tsao Run's
adherents.

Parliament was regularly subsidized from Pao-
tingfu, Tsao Kun's headquarters, to agitate against
President Li, whose downfall was eventually
brought about by the action of the Christian gen-
eral. This militarist had been transferred from
Honan to Peking. He insisted, early in June, 1923,
upon the appointment of his own nominee to the
post of chief of the Peking Octroi,, the receipts from
which were earmarked for the expenses of the Presi-
dent's palace, and when the President refused to
make this appointment, General Feng's troops and
bodies of police and gendarmes demonstrated be-
fore his palace and demanded their arrears of pay.
The cabinet resigned, ostensibly because of the
President's refusal to appoint General Feng's
nominee, and it was impossible for the President to
secure the services of another ministry. His tele-
grams and correspondence were held up by the
ministry of communications, and, on June 12, the
Christian general and General Wang Huai-ching,
who between them controlled all the troops in and
around Peking, submitted their resignations. Nu-
merous highly placed officials called upon the
President, and urged him to resign. He was power-
less under the circumstances. His valedictory man-

1361

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

dates were held up by the government printing-
office. President Li left for Tientsin on June 13,
1923, but on his arrival there his train was sur-
rounded by the Chihli governor's troops, and he
was held a prisoner until he had handed over the
presidential seals. The way was now open for the
election of Tsao Kun.

Parliament accepted President Li's resignation
by a standing vote, not daring to put it to the
ballot, and in the absence of a legal quorum. Dur-
ing the next few weeks Tsao Kun's campaign man-
agers were busy bargaining with the parliamen-
tarians for their votes, and eventually it was ar-
ranged that those who supported his candidature
were to receive five thousand dollars apiece, double
that sum being paid to the "whips" and certain
favored legislators. The election took place on
October 5, and President Tsao Kun assumed office
on the tenth of that month, securing the recogni-
tion of the foreign ministers in Peking by a piece of
barefaced trickery in connection with the Lin-
cheng outrage. A struggle for the premiership en-
sued between the speaker of the House of Repre-
sentatives, who had been one of the most active of
Tsao Kun's supporters, and Kao Ling-wei, who
had been minister of interior in the Chang Shao-
tseng cabinet. It was not until January, 1924, that

!37l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

a new premier, Mr. Sun Pao-ch'i, an elderly official
with no political affiliations, who had been minister
to France in 1902, was appointed. During the six
months he was in office Mr. Sun found the situation
hopeless, owing to cabinet dissensions on the gold-
franc controversy with France. His colleagues had
been selected for him by the clique surrounding the
President, and were neither loyal nor helpful. On
his resignation on July 2, Dr. W. W. Yen was nomi-
nated premier, but no action was taken on this
nomination until September n, 1924, when the
country was once more in the throes of civil war.
The conflict on this occasion started in mid-
China. To understand its origin it is necessary to
retrace our steps for a few minutes and describe
the military situation. While Tsao Kun had been
scheming for and securing the presidency, Wu Pei-
fu had been endeavoring to consolidate the military
position of the Chihli party. His own or allied
armies had gained control over the provinces of
Szechwan, Hunan, and Fukien. Thus the Chihli
party dominated all the provinces north of the
Yangtze, except Manchuria, as well as Fukien,
Kiangsi, Hupeh, and portions of Kwangsi and
Kweichow. After the civil war of 1920 all the Anfu
officials in the provinces were driven out of office
with the exception of the Tuchun of Chekiang,

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

who not only retained control over that province
but also over Shanghai., the commercial metropolis
of China, which is situated in the province of
Kiangsu. Although Shanghai owes its prosperity
mainly to the existence of the international settle-
ment and the French concession, which are under
foreign control, it and its vicinity are the center of
opium-smuggling at the mouth of the Yangtze,
huge sums being made annually by the Chinese
officials who connive at this traffic. The Kiangsu
Tuchun, who was an adherent of Wu Pei-fu's, had
several times been on the verge of attempting to
reoccupy Shanghai, but had previously desisted,
owing to popular opposition to civil war in this
neighborhood. On this occasion the admission of
troops defeated by Wu Pei-fu's subordinate in
Fukien into Chekiang was made the pretext for
hostilities. Every well-informed person in China
knew that if hostilities started in Kiangsu they
must spread to the north. The Chekiang Tuchun
was eventually defeated, Shanghai being occupied
by the Kiangsu forces in the middle of October.

In the meantime, Chang Tso-lin had thrown
down the gauntlet to President Tsao Kun and Wu
Pei-fu, denouncing the "wicked regime" for which
they were responsible, and declaring that he felt it
his bounden duty to "rid the country of the peo-

1391

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

pie's traitors." The rival armies were concentrated
over a wide front, extending from Jehol to the sea,
near Shanhaikuan. On the Chihli side, Wu Pei-fu
was in supreme command, the third army under
the Christian general being stationed on the ex-
treme left of the line, and Wu Pei-fu himself super-
intending operations on the coast. The Manchuri-
an army gained some initial successes in the center,
and made some progress on the coast, but the issue
still hung in the balance when, on October 23,
Feng Yu-hsiang suddenly occupied the capital
with his army, imprisoned the President, proscribed
several of the cabinet ministers, and proclaimed his
desire for peace. Wu Pei-fu was quite unprepared
for this betrayal. He was making desperate efforts
to consolidate his front on the coast when the news
reached him, but immediately returned to Tientsin
with a few hundred men, intending there to await
reinforcements from Kiangsu and Shantung for an
attempt to recover the capital. The Shantung Tu-
chun, however, cut the railway on the northern and
southern boundaries of the province, rendering the
movement of troops by rail impossible, and Wu
Pei-fu, on hearing that his army at Shanhaikuan
had gone to pieces, had to escape by sea, making his
way back to Honan via the Yangtze, and, when
compelled to leave there by an attack from Shensi,

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

withdrawing to Hupeh, and eventually to Yochow,
in Hunan, where he at present remains.

The Christian general formed a provisional gov-
ernment in Peking, which proceeded summarily to
eject the Manchu Emperor from his palace, and to
take over its contents under the pretense of inven-
torying them, and deciding which was national and
which was Manchu property. There is reason to
fear that much of the palace treasure has since been
removed and surreptitiously disposed of. The for-
mer Emperor himself told me that this was so, and
that he had refused even to be represented on the
so-called "inventory commission." His ejection
from the palace, and the substitution for the favor-
able treatment of 1912 of a new agreement 1 under
which the Emperor's status and privileges were
abolished, was, of course, a gross breach of faith,
and was so described by Tang Shao-yi, who had
been the imperial delegate at the 1912 Peace Con-
ference, and first premier of the republic. The Em-
peror took refuge in the Japanese legation, and
eventually escaped to the Japanese concession in
Tientsin.

At the outset of the civil war in the north,
Chang Tso-lin, the Manchurian war-lord, had an-
nounced his intention of installing Tuan Chi-jui,

1 China Year Book (1925), p. 844.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

the former leader of the Anfu party who had since
been living in retirement at Tientsin as chief execu-
tive. And after a conference at Tientsin, whither
Chang Tso-lin had hurried with a large force after
Wu Pei~fu's army had been defeated, attended by
Tuan Chi-jui, Chang Tso-lin, and the Christian
general, Marshal Tuan proceeded to Peking to
assume office as the provisional chief executive. He
convened a so-called "reorganization conference/'
which sat for several months, and accomplished
nothing. He reinstated a number of the former
Anfu politicians, and gave the defeated Chekiang
Tuchun his revenge by sending him down to
Kiangsu at the head of a Manchurian army, to
eject his former adversary and to assume office as
tupari) or "director of military affairs." It is note-
worthy that on this occasion Shanghai was in-
cluded in the Kiangsu, and not the Chekiang, ad-
ministration.

While the rival war-lords had been settling their
quarrels in the field in the north, Sun Yat-sen's
hold upon Canton was rapidly weakening. He had
entered into close relations with the bolsheviks dur-
ing the year, and initiated a reign of terror over
the merchant classes, who resented his arbitrary
measures of taxation and confiscation. A cadet
academy, staffed by bolshevik instructors, was

(42!

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

founded at Canton, and a so-called Red Army was
organized to overawe the merchants, who had a
volunteer organization for their own protection.
Matters came to a head in October when Sun Yat-
sen ordered the suppression of the Merchant vol-
unteers by force, and loosed his Red Army upon the
city. Heavy artillery was used in the most thickly
populated part of the city, some four hundred
buildings were burned down, many others were
looted, and the volunteers were defeated and dis-
persed, with heavy loss of life.

On the outbreak of the civil war in the north,
Dr. Sun had joined in the chorus of denunciation
of the Chihli party, and announced his intention of
leading a punitive army against it. Like his pre-
vious punitive expeditions, this one also fizzled out.
And toward the end of the year Dr. Sun's own posi-
tion in Canton was so precarious that he welcomed
the invitation to proceed north to confer with the
triumvirate in control of Peking. He proceeded by
steamer to Shanghai, and thence, via Japan, to
Tientsin, taking advantage of every opportunity en
route to denounce the imperialistic powers and to
demand the cancellation of the so-called "unequal
treaties" and the abolition of the foreign conces-
sions. At Tientsin he remained for several weeks in
the Japanese concession, and it became known that

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

he was seriously ill, supposedly from an abscess on
the liver. However, he proceeded to Peking on
December 31, and inspired the Kuomintang to boy-
cott the Reorganization Conference, demanding in
its stead a people's conference. An exploratory op-
eration on January 26 revealed that the disease
from which he was suffering was malignant cancer,
and he lingered on in the Rockefeller Hospital until
a few days before his death, when he was removed
to a private residence, in order, apparently, that
the Kuomintang extremists might insure the issue
of a political testament in accordance with their
own views. He died on March 12, leaving, it is
alleged, directions that he was to be embalmed
like his friend Lenin, and a message of affection to
the Moscow government.

Since Dr. Sun's death there has been a quiet but
persistent struggle between Chang Tso-lin and
Feng Yu-hsiang (the Christian general) for the
mastery of North China, Though the latter has
received arms and other assistance from the bol-
sheviks, he has had, gradually, to yield to the
pressure continuously applied by the Manchurian
war-lord. His troops have evacuated the Chihli
province, and are now removing from Peking to
Kalgan, leaving Chang Tso-lin supreme in the
metropolitan province, Shantung, Anhwei, and

I 44 I

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

Kiangsu, in addition to Manchuria. With his army
at Peking and astride the northern sector of the
Peking-Hankow Railway, Chang Tso-lin also iso-
lates General Feng from his former allies in Honan.
It seems inevitable that there will be a conflict,
sooner or later, between Chang Tso-lin and the
Christian general, though the latter has so far
avoided hostilities by yielding to all of Chang's
demands.

In the middle Yangtze province the actual
power is still retained by Wu Pei-fu's former sup-
porters, who, though they profess allegiance to the
chief executive, may at any time find themselves
strong enough to defy Peking, unless Chang Tso-
lin and Wu Pei-fu come to terms. In Western
China (Szechwan), another of Wu Pei-fu's allies is
fighting, with hopeful prospects, for control. In
South China a Yunnanese expedition is advancing
on Canton, where fighting has already broken out
between Dr. Sun's Yunnanese forces and the
Kwangtung troops.

I have dealt only with the political history of
China, and with that mainly in so far as the central
government has been concerned. It would be im-
possible here to list all of the provincial and inter-
provincial civil wars that have occurred since the
establishment of the republic. I may, however,

145!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

summarize what has occurred by saying that dur-
ing the first phase of the republic (1912-16) Yuan
Shih-kai was in control of a more or less united
country, with the Kuomintang in opposition. Dur-
ing the second phase (1916-20), the north was con-
trolled by a pro-Japanese military faction led by
Marshal Tuan Chi-jui, while the southern and
southwestern provinces were intermittently in re-
volt. The next phase (1920-22) saw North China
under the domination of the Chihli and Fengtien
(or Manchurian) militarists, and the south still
defiant. From 1922-24, Manchuria, as well as cer-
tain of the Southern provinces, was independent,
while the Chihli party, under Wu Pei-fu's leader-
ship, was attempting to reunite the country by
force. Finally, today we have Chang Tso-lin su-
preme in Manchuria and the northern-coast prov-
inces, and dominating the capital, with Japanese
approval, if not actual support; Feng Yu-hsiang,
in spite of bolshevik assistance, rapidly losing his
hold; the middle Yangtze and Szechwan controlled
by Wu Pei-fu's associates; and a struggle proceed-
ing in South China between the Kuomintang ex-
tremists of bolshevik affiliations, on the one hand,
and Tang Chi-yao, who claims the position of, but
is not recognized as, the Kuomintang generalissimo,
on the other. Only one province has escaped the

146 I

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

miseries and vicissitudes of civil war since 1912,
and that is Shansi, which has become known as the
"model province/' under the administration of Yen
Hsi-shan. He has managed to keep out of all the
civil wars that have raged around him, to keep his
province more or less free from opium and morphia,
and to maintain order, develop education, con-
struct roads, and give the people over whom he
rules the blessings of peace.

In conclusion, I must emphasize that no real
question of principle has been involved in any of
the numerous civil wars with which China has been
afflicted since the overthrow of the monarchy.
They have all been sordid struggles for power by
militarists and politicians. On each occasion, of
course, the rivals have issued high-sounding mani-
festoes, none of them being more vociferous in his
noble protestations than Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Yet the
latter, during his last term in power in Canton
maintained himself by fomenting class-warfare,
and by the support of Hunanese and Yunnanese
mercenaries and local troops who were permitted
to finance themselves by gambling, brothel, and
opium monopolies. China is not and never has
been a republic. I doubt whether she will be one
in the generally accepted sense of the word during
this or the next generation.

(471

II

PRESENT STATE OF CHINA

China is today attracting world-wide attention,
in consequence of the disorders which have been
taking place throughout the country during the
past month. To understand these disorders fore-
seen and predicted by many of us who make a
study of conditions in that country on the spot
it is necessary to have a clear idea of what has hap-
pened since in February, 19125 China became, in
name at any rate, a republic. In my first lecture
I gave an outline of the history of the so-called
Republic. You will also doubtless hear from other
speakers in the course of these meetings of the
progress that China has been making during the
past thirteen or fourteen years. I shall, for the
moment, introduce you to the darker side of the
picture. In doing so I should like to disclaim any
hostility toward China or the Chinese. What I
shall tell you is told merely in the interests of
truth, and in the belief that the truth must be
known if the present troubles are to be clearly
understood.

In the first place China has never been and

f49l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

during the next thirty or forty years is unlikely to
be a republic, in the generally accepted sense of
the word. That is to say, she is not a state in which
the sovereign power rests in the whole body of the
people and is exercised by representatives elected
by them. Why this is so will be easier to under-
stand when I tell you that the program of con-
stitutional reform adopted by the Manchu dynasty
in 1908 did not anticipate that more than I per
cent of the population would be able to read and
write by 1914-15, or more than 5 per cent by 1917.
It is true that the number of schools and colleges,
and of students attending them, has increased from
about one-and-a-half millions in 1912 to over six-
and-a-half millions in 1923. But it is estimated to-
day that from 80 to 90 per cent of the Chinese are
illiterate. Mr. James Yen, who has devoted his
life to the mass-education movement, in a recent
pamphlet, states:

Eighty per cent of China's 400,000,000 cannot read or
write. Millions upon millions have not the least idea whether
their country is a monarchy or a democracy. Can such people
form intelligent public opinion, or exercise any real control
over the affairs of the nation ? Do we have to go far to find
out why the corrupt practices of the officials and militarists
go unchecked? Or why the suffering, poverty, and lawless-
ness among the people steadily increase before our very
eyes?

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

The late president, Tsao Kun, was elected to
office by the expenditure of about fifteen million
dollars, extorted from the people, upon bribing the
parliamentarians. The present government is of a
provisional character only, presided over by a
notoriously pro-Japanese militarist, who has been
put into office as provisional chief executive by the
northern militarists. The latter do not even pre-
tend to obey his orders now that he has accepted
the empty title.

Ever since the death of Yuan Shih-kai in 1916
China has been in a ferment. There has hardly
been a week when a civil war has not been in prog-
ress in some part of the country. At no time has
the nation possessed a government capable of en-
forcing obedience outside of the walls of Peking.
The actual power has remained in the hands of
rival militarists, who have raised enormous armies
which owe allegiance to them, and not to the gov-
ernment, and are supported by wholesale extor-
tions from the people. In 1912 China had 240,000
soldiers in modern formations and about 280,000
old-style troops, a total of more than 500,000. To-
day she is afflicted with some twenty-five inde-
pendent armies, totaling nearly one-and-a-half mil-
lion men, not one of which is under the orders of
the central government. The strongest militarist at

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

the moment is Chang Tso-lin, the Manchurian
war-lord, who has upward of 270,000 troops spread
over Manchuria, Chihli, Shantung, Anhwei and
Kiangsu. In one province alone Szechwan there
are 114,000 men under arms. Wars are constantly
being fought to establish the mastery of this or that
militarist over a certain province, or over the cen-
tral government. The administration is completely
overridden by the militarists, who impose what-
ever taxes they fancy, and occupy and ruin the
railways. In many cases it is difficult to distinguish
between troops and brigands. The people often
prefer the latter.

Financially, China is bankrupt at the moment.
In 1912 her total national debt was about fifteen
hundred million dollars; today it is about twenty-
four hundred million. That in itself would not be
a very serious matter as it amounts only to a per
capita debt of about three dollars gold per head.
But whereas, in 1912, revenue and expenditure ap-
proximately balanced at four hundred and fifty
million dollars, today it is estimated that the annu-
al deficit amounts to that sum. All revenues other
than the customs revenues, which are administered
by a foreign staff", are liable to seizure by the mili-
tarists and provincial authorities. Nearly 50 per
cent of the salt revenues, which are also under

15*1

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

foreign supervision, were misappropriated last
year, and only a minute percentage of other na-
tional revenues, such as the wine and tobacco taxes
and the stamp taxes, ever reaches the national
treasury. Numerous foreign loans are now in de-
fault. The administration leads a hand-to-mouth
existence, raising loans on the estimated customs
and salt surpluses years ahead.

I shall deal with the administration of justice in
a subsequent lecture. It will suffice here to men-
tion that China is far and away the largest opium-
producer in the world, her output being estimated
at about eight times that of the whole of the rest
of the world, although the law prohibits the culti-
vation, transportation, smoking, or sale of opium.
That will show the extent to which the laws of the
country are enforced.

Optimistic views ajre sometimes based upon
China's trade returns. If one takes the figures for
1903, 1913, and 1923, it certainly appears that the
volume of trade doubled in the first decade, and
was nearly doubled again in the second, the figures
being:

Taels

I93 561,319,602

1913 i>5>7 2 3>85i

I >7* 6 > 782,369

!53l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

It is a mistake, however, to assume that the
volume of China's foreign trade has shown a sub-
stantial increase of late. The most recent customs
returns show that if the values of China's imports
and exports in 1923 are recalculated at the 1913
values, the increase in the volume of trade during
the past decade amounts to less than 15 per cent.
It is surprising that there should have been any
increase at all, when one remembers the difficul-
ties and risks under which trade has been con-
ducted.

It is generally admitted that China's most press-
ing need is the development of her communica-
tions, especially railways. In 1912, 5,822 miles had
been completed, and 2,205 were under construc-
tion. In 1924, only 7,691 miles had been completed,
and construction was at a standstill, except on the
Lunghai line. Railways would, if properly man-
aged, be a golden investment in China. Under fav-
orable conditions they have been operated at a ra-
tio of expenditure to revenue of a little over 30 per
cent. But the railways are rapidly being reduced to
ruin by the militarists, who seize locomotives and
rolling stock indiscriminately, and appropriate
practically all the railway revenues to their own
use. The Tientsin JPukow Railway, which connects
North China with the Yangtze, some years ago

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

ordered and obtained, but has not yet paid for, a
number of sumptuous cars for the daily Blue Ex-
press. During the civil war of last autumn, these
cars were seized and carried off to other lines by
various military commanders who took a fancy to
them, and some of them have since been seen in
Honan, with chimneys projecting from the roofs,
in use as portable military barracks.

When I left Tientsin at the end of May, before
the present trouble had begun, the railway was
only able to run a train on alternate days, and it
was frequently from twenty-four to forty hours
late, on a twenty-four-hour journey, owing to mili-
tary interference with the operation of the line.
The only railways now in a satisfactory condition
are those owned by foreigners the South Man-
churian Railway in Manchuria, under Japanese
control, and the Yunnan Railway, which is under
French control. It seems to be only a question of
time before the entire railway system of China
breaks down.

The currency situation today is amazing. The
attempt to issue standard subsidiary coinage, ex-
changeable at face value, has failed, owing to the
use of the mints in the provinces, by the militarists,
for revenue purposes. Copper coins have depre-
ciated from 123 to the dollar in December, 1912,

155!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

to 206.4 to t^ 6 dollar in December, 1924, and these
are still the coins of the masses.

I will now turn to the present disturbances and
the events immediately leading up to them. The
present disturbances in China are to be attributed
mainly to the universal discontent caused by near-
ly ten years of misrule and civil war. China has
never been united, administratively or politically,
since the death of Yuan Shih-kaL She has been
preyed upon by rival militarists and self-seeking
politicians, who have cared nothing for the welfare
of the people, and regarded commerce as permis-
sible only in so far as it yields them the revenues re-
quired to maintain their ill-disciplined armies. It is
not surprising that a people whose territory has
been ravaged by civil wars, the sufferings from
which have been aggravated by flood and drought,
and by the oppression of the militarists in power,
should be seething with discontent, and ready,
without analysis or discrimination, to accept any
propaganda, however pernicious, that pretends to
reveal the cause of these evils. The Chinese are an
easily excitable but generally docile people. They
will tolerate from their own officials oppression and
misrule which would make any Westerner see red.
But it is easy today, as it has been in the past, to
divert attention from the shortcomings of their

156}

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

own oppressors to fancied grievances against for-
eign nations. They appear to have no political dis-
crimination where foreigners are concerned. The
Boxer outbreak was a manifestation of discontent
against the Manchu regime which was diverted
into an anti-foreign movement. And the present
trouble is similar in that respect, though fresh ele-
ments have been introduced since 1900.

I was at home in England when the students
first became really active in Peking during the
Versailles conference, attacked the residences of the
pro-Japanese ministers, and so humiliated them
that they had to resign. At first I was tempted to
regard it as a good sign that public opinion in
China had found some champions to challenge the
subservience of the Peking government to Japan.
But I had reason to change this view when I re-
turned to Tientsin and found what the students,
flushed with their initial success, were actually do-
ing. They had decreed an anti-Japanese boycott in
Tientsin and other cities which they were enforcing
by methods which would not be tolerated by any
self-respecting government. They forced their way
into Chinese shops and offices to search for goods
of Japanese manufacture, which they confiscated
or burnt if discovered, in addition to fining the
merchants, and in some cases parading them under

f57l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

humiliating conditions through the streets and
even arresting and detaining them at their head-
quarters. The Chinese officials seldom interfered
unless attacks were made upon their residences or
yamens. Then police or soldiers would be employed
to disperse the rioters, and I have had a young
Chinese in my office quivering with indignation at
what he called "a massacre/' when the Chihli gov-
ernor's bodyguard had forcibly repelled an attempt
to break into the civil governor's yamen*

Since 1919 the students have become more and
more insubordinate and lawless. They have formed
their own unions., which include in their member-
ship boys and girls in their early teens; they have
persistently engaged in demonstrations, some of a
political, others of an anti-foreign character. They
have terrorized their teachers, who are generally
driven out of office if they attempt to maintain
discipline or even the recognized standard of ex-
aminations, and have browbeaten whole communi-
ties into submission to their orders, however ab-
surd. Only a few months ago a handful of students
in Foochow, a city of nearly seven hundred and
fifty thousand, decreed that no imported fish might
be consumed, for fear it might come from Japan,
and applied this restriction to American and
Canadian herrings, for which there was a large

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

local demand, actually visiting and in some cases
seriously assaulting dealers who handled these
herrings. Five dealers were stabbed. When the
local American Consul protested the movement be-
came anti-foreign. Students attending mission
schools were threatened with assault, and their
parents were bombarded with threatening letters.
As usual, the local authorities did nothing for sev-
eral weeks, though the identity of the ringleaders
of this agitation was well known, and they were a
mere handful, a dozen or so immature youths.

It is to be regretted that some missionary
schools and colleges, instead of putting their foot
down on student lawlessness and insubordination,
have actually encouraged these activities, and per-
mitted their students to join the unions, hold meet-
ings on the premises, and forsake their studies in
order to participate in parades and riots whenever
they fancied. It is true that the Roman Catholic
institutions, and a number of British and American
colleges, refused to allow their students to join the
unions, and dealt severely with all outbreaks of in-
subordination, but their efforts were offset to a con-
siderable extent by the laxity in other missionary
institutions. The government universities, col-
leges, and schools have become hotbeds of sedition
and bolshevism, and I shall later give you details of

I59l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS,

the kind of thing that is tolerated even in the
capital of China.

The students have been encouraged in lawless-
ness by the soviet envoys in Peking, and by their
subordinates. A. A. Joffe, the first bolshevik envoy
to reach Peking whither he came from Berlin,
after being expelled for participation in the Sparta-
cist outbreak immediately got in touch with the
faculty of the Peking Government University,
whose Chancellor gave a reception in his honor in
August, 1922, in the course of which he stated:
"Russia furnished a good example to China, which
thinks it advisable to learn the lessons of the
Russian Revolution, which started also as a po-
litical movement, but later assumed the nature of
a social revolution." Encouraged by his reception,
Joffe made a number of speeches at various func-
tions given by him, or arranged in his honor, at
which he denounced the other powers as aggres-
sive, imperialistic, and capitalistic. It is much
easier to attribute the sufferings of the Chinese
people during the past ten years to these causes
than to admit the truth, which is that most of their
misery has been due to the action of a noisy minor-
ity in foisting upon China a system of government
for which she was not ready, which the vast major-
ity of her people do not yet understand, and which^

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

as long as the hearts of the people remain un-
changed, could only have the effect of leaving them
at the mercy of men more unscrupulous, more cor-
rupt, and more intolerant of criticism or opposition
than the worst officials of the Manchu regime. Dr.
Sun Yat-sen was one of the noisiest and most mis-
chievous of this minority.

When Joffe reached China, Sun Yat-sen was
suffering one of his periodical eclipses, and was re-
siding in the French concession at Shanghai, under
foreign-police protection. He had escaped from
Canton in a British gunboat the same month that
Joffe reached Peking, and was visited by the latter
in January, 1923, this probably being the first oc-
casion on which he got into direct touch with the
bolsheviks. They subsequently issued a joint state-
ment, in which they professed to share the view
that "the Communistic order, or even the Soviet
system, cannot actually be introduced into China,
because there do not exist here the conditions for
the successful establishment of either Communism
or Sovietism."

Joffe failed in his mission, and was supplanted
by a bigger man in the soviet hierarchy, Karahan,
who reached Peking in September, 1923. Sun Yat-
sen had returned to Canton, to head another revolu-
tionary administration, earlier in the year. At the

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

first public function in his honor Karahan made a
deliberate attack upon the United States., whose
conduct his host Dr. C. T. Wang, who had been
appointed to negotiate with him, had extolled, de-
nouncing America's signature of the Lincheng note,
which claimed an indemnity for and precautions
against a repetition of a serious bandit outrage.
Since than Karahan has hardly allowed a week to
pass without some attack upon America, Britain,
France, or Japan, individually or jointly; while the
official Russian news agency, which deluges the
Chinese press with bolshevik propaganda, has co-
operated in sowing poison in Chinese minds, in
spite of the recognition of the soviet government
by Great Britain, and the former's solemn under-
taking to abstain from propaganda hostile to
British interests in the Far East. When there was
a hitch in negotiations, a few weeks before the
actual signature Karahan appealed to the Chinese
educationalists and students to support him, while
his emissary in Canton, then in open revolt against
Peking, invited Sun Y at-sen, and through him the
Kuomintang, "to take notice of the seriousness of
the situation," and to judge for himself whether the
cabinet was justified in rejecting the agreement as
drafted. Karahan redoubled his efforts after the sig-
nature of the Sino-Russian Treaty of May 31, 1924.

{6*1

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

I cannot here do more than refer very briefly to
Karahan's attempts to incite the Chinese to re-
pudiate their treaties, and to rise against the
foreigners. Within a few days of the signature of
the May agreement, at a demonstration organized
to celebrate its conclusion, Karahan was inviting
his audience, composed mainly of students and
political agitators, "to take by force from all the
imperialistic powers" what the soviet government
"gave you of its own free will," assuring them that
the soviet government would "fight for a further
development of our relations, and the national
liberation of the people of China, which must be-
come as free as the Russian people." A day or two
later, at the national university, he was telling his
audience:

The greatest woe and misfortune of the Chinese people,
that which makes it suffer and keeps your great nation in a
position almost of a semi-colonial country let me be frank
with you are the treaties which exist between China and the
imperialistic foreign powers. These treaties have fettered your
national liberty, happiness and welfare.

And he proceeded to urge his audience to engage in
"the bloody struggle for national freedom and
liberation from imperialism."

At a banquet given by Karahan on November
7 and attended by the members of the provisional

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

government, a number of prominent militarists and
officials, and numerous parliamentarians, pro-
fessors, and journalists, he said:

I was glad when I saw this morning the statement of
the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs who spoke quite
naturally in cateful terms of the revision of Treaties with
foreign powers as being in the order of the day. Now, as I
am not the Foreign Minister of the Republic of China, I
may be permitted to say more definitely that those Treaties
should not only be revised; they ought to be torn asunder,
abolished, because they strangle China and because China
cannot live under them.

But ridiculous though it may appear to intelli-
gent people, the most glaring example of soviet sup-
port of the spirit of Boxerism is to be found in an
incident which occurred in Peking in April of last
year. On April 7 a Chinese soldier, belonging to the
bodyguard of the Minister of War, was found
wandering about on the southern section of the city
wall, which is within the legation quarter, and from
which Chinese are excluded. He was taken to the
police station in the quarter where this was ex-
plained to him, and would immediately have been
released had he not boasted that he intended to re-
turn to the wall forthwith. Accordingly he was sent
to the nearest Chinese police station, which notified
the legation authorities next day that he had been
given four hundred blows, and confined to bar-

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

racks. Three days later he was at large again, and
committed three successive assaults upon for-
eigners an American, an Italian, and a Briton,
The first two were assaulted on a Chinese thorough-
fare in full view of the Chinese police, who made no
attempt to interfere. The British subject was sav-
agely attacked on the wall, retaliated with his fists,
and after a fierce struggle with the police, who had
to obtain assistance, the man was again lodged
in the legation-quarter police station. He was
probably deranged, and had assurances been given
that precautions would be taken to prevent a repe-
tition of these assaults, nothing more would have
been heard of the matter. But the soviet leaders
chose to exploit this wretched soldier as a champion
of anti-imperialism. Mass meetings were held in
Peking at which the trial of the Briton who had
been assaulted was demanded, and Trotzky de-
voted his May Day speech in Moscow to cham-
pioning the cause of this soldier. He addressed a
message to the soldier telling him "in the name of
us all" that "the proletariat of Moscow is with you

heart and soul The brotherhood of nations

is no vain principle with us." And he returned to
the charge in another oration, a month or two
later. The incident is so ridiculous that it would be
unworthy of mention except as showing the un-

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

scrupulous exploitation by the bolsheviks even of
unprovoked assaults upon innocent foreigners.

How far is the present trouble in China due to
bolshevik instigation ? We have certain facts which
throw considerable light upon this question. In the
first place, soon after his return to Canton in 1923
Sun Yat-sen seems to have gone over body and
soul to the bolsheviks, though, as I have men-
tioned, the joint statement which he issued with
Joffe in January of that year expressed the view
that bolshevism was unsuited to China. He became
beside himself with rage with the treaty powers
because, at the end of 1923, they refused to allow
him, while retaining a precarious hold upon Can-
ton, to seize the customs house, disintegrate the
customs service, and use at his own sweet will
revenues which form the security of foreign loans
and indemnity payments. He maintained himself
in power by mercenary troops imported from Hu-
nan and Yunnan and supported by gambling,
opium, and brothel monopolies which he granted to
them to exploit. He incited the proletariat against
the merchant and capitalist classes, and after tax-
ing the latter beyond endurance, ordered their
bloody repression for attempting to organize in
self-defense, some hundreds being killed and num-
bers of buildings looted or burnt. The only for-

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

eigners with whom he maintained cordial relations
were bolsheviks. A special soviet envoy was con-
stantly at his side, and participated in the meetings
of the Ktiomintang Committee. A cadet academy,
staffed by bolshevik instructors, was established
near Canton. A local Red Army was organized and
used to overawe the merchants; and the arrival of
a soviet sloop and the anniversary of the soviet
revolution were the occasions for elaborate official
celebrations. Before leaving Canton for the north
he announced his intention of securing the aboli-
tion of unequal treaties, and extraterritoriality. A
Shanghai paper, which suggested that his presence
in the foreign settlement would be unwelcome,
roused him to fury. All foreign settlements and
concessions must forthwith be abolished, although
he had been glad enough to seek shelter in them in
previous years. In Japan, which he visited en
route, he concentrated his hatred upon the British,
to whom he had twice owed his life. In Peking, his
only conspicuous callers were Karahan and Boro-
din. He cut himself off completely from the mod-
erate elements of the Kuomintang during his last
weeks. What purported to be his last message was
addressed to his "dear comrades" in Moscow, with
whom he instructed the Kuomintang to "keep
in constant touch," and he is said to have ex-
it 6?!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

pressed a wish to be embalmed like his friend,
Lenin.

Was the Kuomintang subsidized by the soviet ?
Of this there is no direct proof, but very strong
suspicion. Ma Soo, formerly Sun Yat-sen's agent
in the United States, in an address at Shanghai
on December 12, shortly after his return from the
States and following the submission of his resigna-
tion, stated:

Since returning to China I have become aware of the
communistic propaganda which the soviet has been and is
spreading in this country, and as a result I felt it incumbent
upon me to warn the students of the dangers which lurk in
the new and strange "isms' ' of Moscow. The worst phase of
soviet propaganda in China is the use of Russian gold for the
accomplishment of its purposes. I have positive proof of the
use of soviet money in the Chinese schools among the students
and teachers, and, probably worse to relate, I also have proof
of its being used to influence the Chinese Press.

Mr. Feng Shih-yu, another old member of the
Kuomintangj in an interview on January 3 stated:

If the Moscow bolsheviks stop their subsidy today, all the
so-called Chinese communists will discard their communist

label tomorrow The so-called Chinese communists are

in a decided minority, although well-organized as compared
with other parties. They are principally drawn from the ranks
of students, university professors, and disgruntled politicians,
and their principal object is to obtain money from the
Russians. I have no knowledge of the exact amount which

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

the bolsheviks spend annually on propaganda in this country,
but it must be a tremendously large one, as in Canton alone
they have already spent $ 2,000,000.

Police raids upon Shanghai University early
this year revealed the fact that it was a hotbed of
Bolshevism, and considerable seditious literature
was confiscated; more, however, was found during
a raid which took place at the beginning of June.

The extent to which the students have got out
of hand may be best realized if I give you a brief
account of what occurred in Peking in May. * May 7
is the anniversary of the Japanese ultimatum of
1915, and the students make a habit of observing it
as a national humiliation day, parading the streets
and making anti-Japanese speeches. The Minister
of Education on this occasion gave orders that gov-
ernment schools and colleges were not to have a
holiday on that date, but were to remain at work.
Student demonstrations, however, were held in
defiance of his orders, and the demonstrators made
the Minister of Education the object of their ani-
mosity. Failing to find him at the ministry of edu-
cation, they proceeded to his private residence,
which they broke into, smashing up or destroying
everything it contained. There was a scuffle with
the police, as a result of which several students
were reported to have been injured, and one was

69!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

alleged to have died. During the following week
the students continued to demonstrate, parading
the streets and demanding the execution of the
Minister of Justice and the Superintendent of
Police. A mandate was issued in strong terms de-
nouncing their interference in politics, but in spite
of this negotiations were opened between the police
and the educationalists,, as a result of which it was
announced that a compromise had been effected
under which the police authorities would apologize
for inflicting injuries upon the students, and con-
sider claims for compensation, while the students
would express regret for the destruction of the
Minister's private property. Not unnaturally, the
Minister immediately tendered his resignation.

But this was not by any means the only example
of insubordination. There was about the same time
an agitation at the Russian Language School,
which is managed by the Chinese Foreign Office,
the students deciding to rid themselves of the
gentleman who had been their principal for four
years, because they did not consider him sufficient-
ly influential to secure them lucrative positions.
He was compelled to resign, and a new principal
was appointed, who suspended studies for ten days
in order to reorganize the school. When it reas-
sembled the students found that with the approval

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

of the ministry for foreign affairs he had issued a
series of regulations which, among other things,
prohibited students from participating in political
demonstrations. The students thereupon decided
that he, too, must go. He was driven off the school
premises, and the students proceeded in a body
to the WaichiaopUy to demand his immediate dis-
missal.

The Higher Normal School for Girls, also dis-
tinguished itself. On May 7, the principal, an
American-educated woman, Miss Yang, had un-
wisely granted permission to the students to hold a
meeting in the school auditorium to discuss the
Twenty-one Demands, and to invite a number of
radical speakers to address them. When she rose
to open the meeting she was howled down. The
students then met and decreed her expulsion, and
have since locked her out of the building. In the
Franco-Chinese school in the western hills, near
Peking, there has also been trouble. The principal,
a well-known Chinese scholar who was educated in
France, incurred the animosity of the students by
refusing to accede to their demand for the abolition
of monthly examinations. Thereupon they de-
nounced him as a poor administrator, and have
since been agitating for his dismissal.

I have told you these facts about student activi-

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

ties because they throw considerable light upon
what has recently occurred in Shanghai,, where the
trouble really started with the shooting of several
riotous students by the police. But I must, before
coming to that, briefly refer to what had preceded
this incident. In February last there was a series of
strikes in the Japanese cotton mills in Shanghai.
The circumstances under which they occurred were
extremely suspicious. In the first place, the mills
first affected were those belonging to the Naigai
Wata Kaisha. This company has ten mills in
Shanghai, and three in Tsingtao. The general man-
ager, Mr. Okada, has the reputation of being one
of the most advanced of the large employers of
labor in Shanghai. He served on the recent Child
Labor Commission in that city, which recommend-
ed local legislation to prevent the exploitation of
child labor under inhuman or insanitary conditions.
But even before this Commission met he had taken
the lead in welfare work, providing elementary
schools for the children of his employees, as well as
hospital and other facilities. His record makes it
difficult to believe that the alleged grievances of
the strikers ill treatment by Japanese foreman
were well founded, or, if well founded, would not
have been redressed immediately if brought to his
notice. Attacks were made upon the Naigai Wata

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

mills, resulting in considerable damage to their
plant and serious injury to a number of Japanese.
Students of both sexes participated in these demon-
strations, and were active in circulating inflamma-
tory literature but the real leadership of the strike
never appears to have been revealed. It spread to
other Japanese mills in Shanghai, and then to
Tsingtao, where, during May, the strikers actually
occupied some of the mills and were only dislodged
by Chinese gendarmes after a regular battle, in
which two workers were killed and about a dozen
wounded.

The Shanghai strike appeared to have been set-
tled without any concession on the part of the em-
ployers, other than an undertaking to see that there
was no ill treatment of the workers, at the end of
February. But more trouble broke out in the
middle of May, in the course of which a number of
strikers made an attack upon a Japanese mill,
broke through the cordon of Japanese employees
that had been drawn up to protect the property,
and, it is alleged, started breaking up the machin-
ery. Firearms were used by the Japanese, resulting
in the death of one of the assailants. Police and
volunteers had to be called out, and the mob dis-
persed only after the former had fired over their
heads. The students then assumed control of the

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

situation, organizing demonstrations against the
Japanese, demanding punishment of the Japanese
who had shot the worker, and arranging processions
through the settlement. Shanghai is a foreign set-
tlement, governed by an International Municipal
Council, of which an American attorney is chair-
man today. It has been the consistent policy of the
Council during the past years of unrest to exclude
Shanghai from the vortex of Chinese militarism
and politics. Armed Chinese are not permitted
within the settlement, nor are political demon-
strations of any kind permitted. A few weeks be-
fore the shooting incident at the Japanese mill,
permission for a women's political demonstration
in the settlement had been refused. During the
civil wars of this and last year, police, volunteers,
and landing parties from foreign warships have
kept armed Chinese troops, no matter to what fac-
tion they belonged, outside the settlement. On
December 1 6 last, a deputation from the Chinese
Chambers of Commerce and the Chinese Rate-
payers' Association visited the municipal offices to
present the volunteers with mementos of Chinese
gratitude for the services rendered in maintaining
order during the fighting round Shanghai in
September and October.

The students, however, have become accus-

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

tomed to defying their own authorities, and doubt-
less thought they could to the same in Shanghai,
and on Saturday, May 30, arranged for simul-
taneous meetings in the streets to protest against
the killing of a Chinese workman by the Japanese.
That afternoon they occupied the main thorough-
fare of the settlement, waving anti-foreign flags,
and making anti-Japanese speeches. Some of the
speakers were arrested, and the crowds were repeat-
edly ordered to disperse but took no notice. Large
crowds of demonstrators followed the arrested men
to the police station. The demonstrators later at-
tacked the police, and attempted to disarm them.
The arrest of these assailants led to further dis-
turbance and more assaults on the police, culminat-
ing in an attack upon the police station, accom-
panied by shouts of "Kill the foreigners!" and at-
tempts to wrench away the arms of the police on
duty. Eventually, the inspector in charge gave the
order to fire, which was obeyed, resulting in the
killing of four men outright and the wounding of
a number of others. This affray became the pretext
for a general strike in Shanghai and anti-foreign
demonstrations throughout the country. The cen-
tral government, instead of attempting to repress
these disorders, took the side of the students, and,
without awaiting detailed reports, demanded the

l75l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

release of the arrested students and the punishment
of the police.

If one cannot adduce definite proof that the mill
strikes in Shanghai and Tsingtao were instigated
by soviet agents, one can fairly assume that they
have since been exploited to foment anti-foreign
feeling^ by Karahan and his agents. The shooting
of riotous students has been represented as another
act of oppression by the imperialistic powers. It is
no^ perhaps, surprising that a nation seething with
discontent should credit the statements incessantly
dinned into its ears by soviet agents and their
Chinese hirelings, that their woes are due to "im-
perialism." I do not think that communism has
made much headway among the merchant and
farming class in China, or even that the immature
students who give it lip-service fully understand
what it means. But other features of bolshevism
such as class warfare, anarchy, and xenophobia
have taken root, and it is difficult to say where the
mischief will end. The secretary of the Shanghai
Municipal Council has publicly stated that as the
result of police raids it has been definitely estab-
lished that the Russian bolshevik authorities in
Shanghai have been supplying funds, and in other
ways encouraging the activities of the Chinese
students. Quantities of communistic and anti-for-

{76!

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

eign literature, as well as correspondence with for-
eign communist organizations, were seized in a raid
on Shanghai University. Karahan, the soviet en-
voy, sent an official expression of sympathy to the
Chinese government in connection with the Shang-
hai incidents.

A deplorable feature of the whole business is the
contemptible attitude of a considerable section of
the Japanese press. The whole trouble originated,
as I have shown, in an anti-Japanese movement.
The police acted only in the interests of order, and
the fact that the inspector in charge and the
European constables involved were British was
accidental. The bulk of the foreign police in Shang-
hai are and always have been British, since the
establishment of the municipality. The Japanese
papers I have referred to, however, are endeavoring
to incite the Chinese against the British, and the
British only, as responsible for the present trouble.
It was against the British that Sun Yat-sen di-
rected most of his venom. And there is no doubt
that the soviet regard British influence as the most
important factor in the maintenance of order in the
Far East, and are therefore concentrating upon
undermining it. The soviet press, which has been
propagating in favor of American recognition, has
commended America's attitude toward the recent

177!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

disturbances, and denounced that of Great Britain.
And the anti-foreign movement in China, for the
time being seems to be directed mainly against
Great Britain and Japan.

I do not think that you will resent my being
quite frank on this occasion, and drawing attention
to the criminal recklessness displayed by certain
missionary institutions in connection with the pres-
ent disturbances. Yenching University, in Peking,
within a day or two of the news of the first Shang-
hai disturbances reaching the capital, and several
days before the official police version of what had
occurred could possibly have been received, issued
a statement in the name of the university deploring
the action of the police in killing unarmed students.
As an English paper printed in Peking said at the
time: "What the student body just at the present
moment needs is not encouragement to prejudge
issues or to adopt inflammatory methods, but wise
restraint and guidance."

Even more deplorable, in my opinion, was what
happened at Canton, after the attack upon Sha-
meen by the Chinese, instigated by the Russian-
trained cadets. This attack took place on June 23,
by which time every well-informed foreigner in
China must have been aware that the life of every
white man and white woman in China who was not

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

under armed protection was in peril. Yet on the
evening of the affray, and admittedly without any
investigation and relying upon the statements of
students who were not in a position to see what oc-
curred, a so-called report was issued over the signa-
tures of the vice-president of the Canton Christian
College, and signed by the Chinese members of the
faculty, stating that the trouble had been started
by foreigners in Shameen firing upon a Chinese pro-
cession. Dr. Baxter, the vice-president, three days
later retracted this allegation, admitting that his
signature had been appended without his having
any knowledge of the correctness of the report,
other than the statements of Chinese members of
the staff who were not in a position to see how the
trouble started. I am not, I think, exaggerating in
describing such reckless and irresponsible state-
ments as criminal, under present conditions. I may
add that forty of the leading American business
men at Hongkong have publicly denounced the
action of the faculty and students of this college in
publishing erroneous statements about the Sha-
meen incident. But it is unlikely that Dr. Baxter's
belated retraction will ever be reproduced by the
Chinese press.

I may say in conclusion that the situation that
has arisen in connection with the Shanghai riots is

C?9l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

one which demands close co-operation on the part
of all the treaty powers, and especially of America
and Great Britain. It is the traditional Chinese
policy to work for dissensions among the powers,
and this is also the aim of the Soviets. If British
influence in China can be undermined., it means
goodbye to all rights now enjoyed by the foreign
communities in that country. And the interests of
all powers which simply seek to develop their com-
merce in China by legitimate methods are identical.
If one suffers all will suffer. This is not an issue be-
tween Britain and China, or Japan and China, but
between Western civilization and anarchy. And it
must depend on the outcome of this crisis whether
foreigners can continue to pursue their legitimate
avocations in China, in the enjoyment of reason-
able security for their persons, their property, and
their trade.

Ill

EXTRATERRITORIALITY

I shall not deter you very long today with the
history of extraterritoriality, but shall pass on as
rapidly as possible to the practical aspects of a
problem which is now exercising the minds of so
many Chinese and foreigners who reside in Chinese
territory. Extraterritoriality has been defined as
"an exemption from the operation of local law,
granted either by usage or by treaty, on account
of the differences in law, custom, and social habits
of civilized nations from those of uncivilized na-
tions." 1 In Europe and the Near East it has been
known for many centuries, but has arisen from
usage rather than treaty rights. In China it is
based entirely upon treaties. You will find in
Morse's International Relations of the Chinese Em-
fire and in Wellington Koo's The Status of Aliens
in China accounts of its origin from the foreign and
the Chinese points of view, respectively. You will
be convinced by the former that it was an essential
condition of foreign residence and trade in China.
You will be asked to believe by the latter that it

1 Moore 3 International Law, XI, 593.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

originated in the contumacy and lawlessness of
British and other foreign adventurers, who "early
began to withdraw themselves, by open defiance,
from the operation of local laws." The reasons
given by foreign authorities for its introduction in
China are numerous, but I will confine myself to a
few.

First, I would place the attitude of the Chinese
official toward foreigners during the early days of
foreign intercourse. To the Chinese the foreigner
was a barbarian, to be treated "like beasts, and not

ruled on the same principles as citizens

Therefore to rule barbarians by misrule is the true
and best way of ruling them/' 1 Foreigners, there-
fore, were restricted to trading at a single port,
Canton, and with an officially recognized monop-
oly, known as the "co-Hong." In Canton they
were permitted to reside only in the factory dis-
trict, a confined space on the river front. They
were not permitted to engage Chinese servants
(though this rule was generally relaxed), to bring
women or arms into the factories, to use sedan
chairs, or to enter into any direct relations with the
local Chinese officials. They were not allowed to
row for pleasure on the river, or to enter the city,
and only on three days per month were they per-

1 Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, I, 111-12.
82]

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

mitted, under the escort of an interpreter, to take
the air at the flower gardens on the other side of
the river. They had to return to Macao after each
trading season. 1 They were held collectively re-
sponsible for the misdeeds of individuals. And the
local Chinese authorities would not recognize, or
have any dealings with, foreign officials intrusted
with the protection of their interests.

Secondly, I would place the difference between
Chinese and foreign law, especially in relation to
homicide. Except that decapitation was the pun-
ishment for murder and strangulation for man-
slaughter, there was no distinction between the two
offenses. A typical instance is that of the gunner of
the country ship "Lady Hughes," who was ac-
cused of causing the death of a Chinese by firing a
saluting gun, in November, 1784* His surrender to
the local authorities was immediately demanded,
and when it was refused the supercargo of the ship
was arrested and carried off into the city as a
hostage. Eventually the gunner was surrendered,
and on January 8, 1875, was strangled under orders
from Peking, which must have been sent before
there had been a semblance of a trial. When
Chinese writers refer to British contumacy and
lawlessness, it seems pertinent to point out that in

1 Morse, op. cit., I, 69-71. 3 Ibid., p. 102.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

the century preceding 1833 not more than a half-
dozen cases have been recorded in which homicide
was alleged against British subjects/ including
several which were obviously accidental.

Third, there was the Chinese doctrine of collec-
tive responsibility. Again and again all commerce
was stopped, and foreigners were subjected to all
kinds of restraints and indignities, because of the
alleged misconduct of one or more of their number.
As the East India Company's Select Committee re-
corded in one case, in which an attempt was made
to hold it responsible for a fracas between British
Bluejackets and Chinese villagers:

Thus we see our situation clearly made responsible for
the acts of between two and three thousand individuals who
are daily coming in contact with the lowest of the Chinese,
and are exposed to assaults so wanton, and often so barbarous,
as well as to robberies so extensive, that self-defence imposes
upon them the necessity of attacking their assailants in a
manner from whence death must ensue. A great and impor-
tant commerce is instantly suspended, whole fleets at times
detained, ourselves liable to seizure, and to be the medium of
surrendering a man to death whose crime is only self-defence
or obedience to orders, or else to lend ourselves to the most
detestable falsehoods, in order to support a fabricated state-
ment which may save the credit of the officers of the Chinese
Government. 2

1 C. L. Hsia, Studies in Chinese Diplomatic History, p. 6.

2 Morse, op. cit. y p. 106 n.

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

As early as 1833 the British Parliament passed
an Act to Regulate the Trade to China and India/
which included provision for the establishment of a
court of justice with criminal and admiralty juris-
diction, but it was not until the conclusion of the
so-called Opium War that Britain's extraterritorial
rights were recognized by China. I say so-called
Opium War because, as a matter of fact, from the
British point of view it was no more an opium war
than the American Revolution was a tea war. 2 To
the Chinese it appeared that the seizure of opium
was the casus belli. To the British, however, it was
essentially a war over questions of the status of
British subjects and officers. Lord Palmerston's
dispatches make it clear that the British govern-
ment would not have complained, if the

Government of China, after giving due notice of its altered
intentions [regarding opium] had proceeded to exclude the
law of the Empire, and had seized and confiscated all the

opium they could find within Chinese territory But it

determined to seize peaceable British merchants, instead of
seizing the contraband opium; to punish the innocent for the
guilty, and to make the sufferings of the former the means of
compulsion upon the latter; and it also resolved to force the
British Superintendent, who is an officer of the British Crown,

1 Koo, Status of Aliens in China, pp. 95, 599.
3 John Quincy Adams, quoted by Morse, op. cit. y I, pp. 254 n.,
177.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

to become an instrument in the hands of the Chinese Authori-
ties, for carrying into execution the Laws of China, with which
he had nothing to do. 1

I might add, in passing, that in those days Ameri-
can vessels enjoyed the monopoly of transporting
Turkish opium to China/ that among the seizures
at Canton in 1839 were fifteen hundred chests from
Russell and Company, 3 an American firm; that
although the British government considered legal-
ization of the opium trade the only practical meas-
ure, it did not force this upon the Chinese govern-
ment after the victorious war of 1840-42; and that
when the opium trade was eventually legalized in
1858,4 it was with the support if not at the in-
stance of the American plenipotentiary.

The Treaty of Nanking of 1842 did not itself
concede extraterritorial rights, but the general
regulations attached to that treaty provided:

Regarding the punishment of English criminals, the
English Government will enact the laws necessary to attain
that end, and the Consul will be empowered to put them into
force; and regarding the punishment of Chinese criminals,
these will be tried and punished by their own laws, in the way
provided for by the correspondence which took place at Nan-
king after the concluding of peace. 5

1 Morse, op. cit. y I, 623. 3 Ibid.,, p. 218.

3 Ibid.) p. 207. 4 lbid.> p. 554.

5 Koo, op. cit. 3 p. 134.

186}

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

The treaty did, however, provide for the ces-
sion of Hongkong, and the opening of five ports
Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai
to British trade. It is noteworthy that Sir Henry
Pottinger, the British envoy who negotiated that
treaty, was instructed constantly to bear in mind
that "we seek for no exclusive advantages, and
demand nothing that we shall not willingly see en-
joyed by the subjects of all other states." 1

The American envoy, Caleb Gushing, who
reached China in March, 1844, with instructions to
negotiate a treaty that was just, with no unfair ad-
vantage on either side, learning what the British
had done, and having actual proof of what sub-
mission to Chinese jurisdiction might involve as the
result of some American citizens firing on a mob in
self-defense, 2 secured a definite grant of criminal
jurisdiction over American citizens in Article XXI
of the Treaty of Wanghia. The extraterritorial
rights of the treaty powers were more clearly de-
fined in subsequent treaties, from only one of
which, the Chefoo agreement of September, 1876,
between Britain and China, need I quote here:

SECTION IL (ii) The British Treaty of 1858, Article
XVI, lays down that "Chinese subjects who may be guilty of
any criminal act towards British subjects shall be arrested

1 Morse, op. cit 3 p. 663. a Ibid n p. 327.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

and punished by the Chinese authorities, according to the
laws of China.

"British subjects who may commit any crime in China
shall be tried and punished by the Consul, or any other
public functionary authorised thereto, according to the laws
of Great Britain.

"Justice shall be equitably and impartially administered
on both sides."

The words "functionary authorised thereto" are trans-
lated in the Chinese text "British Government/*

In order to secure the fulfilment of its treaty obligations,
the British Government has established a Supreme Court at
Shanghai, with a special code of rules, which it is now about
to revise. The Chinese Government has established at
Shanghai, a Mixed Court; but the officer presiding over it,
either from lack of power or dread of unpopularity, constantly
fails to enforce his judgments.

It is now understood that the Tsungli yamen will write
a circular to the Legations, inviting Foreign Representatives
at once to consider with the Tsungli yamen> the measures
needed for the more effective administration of justice at the
ports open to foreign trade.

(iii) It is agreed that, whenever a crime is committed
affecting the person or property of a British subject, whether
in the interior or at the open ports, the British Minister shall
be free to send officers to the spot to be present at the investi-
gation.

To the prevention of misunderstanding, on this point, Sir
Thomas Wade will write a note to the above effect, to which
the Tsungli yamen will reply, affirming that this is the course
of proceeding to be adhered to for the time to come.

{881

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

It is further understood that so long as the laws of the
two countries differ from each other, there can be but one
principle to guide judicial proceedings in mixed cases in China,
namely, that the case is to be tried by the official of the de-
fendant's nationality, the official of the plaintiff's nationality
merely attending to watch the proceedings in the interests of
justice. If the officer so attending be dissatisfied with the
proceedings, it will be in his power to protest against them in
detail. The law administered will be the law of the nationality
of the officer trying the case. This is the meaning of the words
hui t'ung, indicating combined action in judicial proceedings
in Article XVI of the Treaty of Tientsin; and this is the
course to be respectively followed by the officers of either
nationality.

As a consequence of extraterritoriality, there-
fore, a Chinese or American or any other national
who charges a British subject with any crime, or
wishes to sue him for any civil cause, must institute
proceedings before a British court. The latter,
however, cannot, in a civil suit, entertain a counter-
claim against a national of another state; nor has it
any authority, other than that accorded by cour-
tesy, over non-British witnesses. It is easy to un-
derstand that complications may arise in which
three or more parties of different nationalities may
be involved, requiring decision by three or more
different tribunals. Moreover, it not infrequently
happens that persons of different nationalities are
implicated in the same crime, in which case sepa-

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

rate trials must take place under their respective
laws in the courts exercising jurisdiction.

I shall now briefly describe the situation today.
The so-called "treaty powers," either under defi-
nite treaty stipulations or by virtue of ^most-
favoured nation treatment/' still enjoy extraterri-
torial privileges to the exclusion of Chinese juris-
diction. These governments are Belgium, Brazil,
Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan,
Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Portugal,
Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.
Austria-Hungary and Germany 1 lost their extra-
territorial rights as a result of the abrogation of
their treaties with China, following the latter's
participation in the Great War. Russians were de-
prived of extraterritorial rights by a presidential
mandate suspending recognition of the tsarist
minister and consuls, promulgated on September

23, I920. 2

British jurisdiction is exercised, in minor crimi-
nal and civil cases in the outports, by consular
officers, and in Shanghai by an assistant judge and
police magistrate. Serious criminal charges, and
civil cases in which serious issues are involved, are

1 China Year Book (1921-22), p. 739, and ibid. (1925), pp. 783,

785.

' Ibid. (1921-22), p. 626.

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

heard by the Supreme Court sitting in Shanghai or
elsewhere with appeal to the full court and eventu-
ally to the Privy Council. American jurisdiction is
exercised locally by American consular officers, and
in important cases, civil and criminal, by the
United States Court for China, which was estab-
lished by an act of Congress on June 30, 1906. The
French and Japanese have judicial officials in
China. In the case of other treaty powers, jurisdic-
tion is exercised by their consular officials, usually
with right of appeal to some home tribunal.

A curious feature is the Shanghai mixed court. 1
The international settlement at Shanghai was an
area set apart for foreign residence and trade, and
consists to-day of the former British and American
settlements and an extension thereto, administered
by the International Foreign Municipal Council.
There was an influx of Chinese refugees during the
Taiping rebellion, and the Chinese population has
since increased until it numbers nearly one million.
There were obvious difficulties in the way of permit-
ting a purely Chinese court to function in a foreign-
administered settlement, and at first jurisdiction
was exercised by the British consul-general. In
1864 a so-called "mixed court" was established,

1 For fuller information on the mixed court, see Kotener, Shang-
hai, Its Mixed Court and Council, 1925.

{9*1

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

presided over by a deputy of the Shanghai magis-
trate, with a foreign assessor on the bench in cases
in which foreign or municipal interests were in-
volved. The history of the development of the
mixed court would take too long in the telling, and
I can only say here that its authority gradually in-
creased, in spite of Chinese opposition and obstruc-
tion, until 1911, when the outbreak of the Revolu-
tion compelled the treaty-power consuls to take
over control of the tribunal. It is today staffed by
magistrates whose appointment is subject to the
approval of the foreign consuls, and who sit in
rotation with foreign assessors, the records being
kept by the municipal police. Prisoners sentenced
to imprisonment serve their term in jails controlled
by the Municipal Council. Criminals sentenced to
capital punishment are sent to the Chinese city
authorities to be executed. The mixed court prob-
ably handles a greater volume of business, civil and
criminal, than any other tribunal in the world. Its
jurisdiction now extends to Germans, Russians,
and other non-treaty-power nationals in Shanghai.
The Chinese now claim that the mixed court should
become a purely Chinese institution, instead of, as
today, remaining under consular and municipal
control.

Before dealing in some detail with the objec-

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

tions to the abolition of extraterritoriality, I pro-
pose to refer briefly to some of the arguments
against its perpetuation. In the first place, it is
argued, and quite correctly, that it constitutes an
infringement of China's sovereign rights and inde-
pendence. Second, it leads to a multiplicity of
jurisdictions, as I have already mentioned; the ap-
plication of different laws, even where the same
issues are involved; and uncertainty as to the issue
of any particular case. But the main objection to
its perpetuation, and the one most difficult to
answer, is its abuse chiefly by governments which
have infinitesimal or at least insignificant inter-
ests in China. The worst offenders have been the
Spanish, Cuban, Brazilian, and other South Ameri-
can consulates. The Spanish consulate of recent
years appears to have made a specialty of extend-
ing its protection, on the flimsiest of pretexts, to
Chinese who desire to evade the jurisdiction of
their own authorities. Its latest performance has
been to claim jurisdiction over a Jew born of Turk-
ish parents in India, who repudiated his British na-
tionality some years ago, sought French protection
as a Turk, and now claims that he has become en-
titled to Spanish protection as the result of an
ordinance restoring Spanish nationality .to Sephar-
dic Jews who like to avail themselves of it. The

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

Brazilian consulate seems to exist solely for the
purpose of extending its protection over public
gaming establishments, which are at present func-
tioning under Brazilian protection in Shanghai and
Tientsin. The Cuban consulate used to exist for the
same end. The scandal of foreign protection of
Chinese attained such proportions that at the An-
nual Conference of British Chambers of Commerce
in 1921 a resolution was adopted unanimously
which read:

That this Conference deprecates the growing tendency of
certain foreign Consulates in China to afford protection to
Chinese by process of naturalization or other means, as it is
notorious that in the majority of cases the applicants for
naturalization are not actuated by any desire to leave their
own country to take up their residence in a foreign state, but
take this simple means of evading their just obligations and
liabilities and escaping from the jurisdiction to which they
would otherwise be amenable.

It is only fair to say that the Spanish Consul.,
who was the most notorious offender, was dismiss-
ed, and the naturalization certificates issued by him
were cancelled. But other consuls, notably those of
Portugal, and more recently, of Chile, have also
been offenders.

Finally, there is the objection that as long as
extraterritoriality prevails it is impossible for the
Chinese government to throw open the whole

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

country to foreign trade. The necessity of sending
for trial every foreigner entitled to extraterritorial-
ity who commits the most trivial offense to the
nearest treaty port at which one of his consular
officers functions is cited as an insuperable obstacle
to permitting foreign residence trade outside the
fifty treaty and open ports. To this day foreigners
are not entitled by treaty to reside in Peking for
business purposes, or to own or lease business
premises elsewhere than in the open ports.

I now turn to the problem of abolishing extra-
territoriality, and to the objections of such aboli-
tion. Grand Secretary Wensiang in 1 869 said to the
British minister, Sir R. Alcock: "Do away with
your extraterritoriality clause, and merchant and
missionary may settle anywhere and everywhere;
but retain it, and we must do our best to confine
you and our trouble to the treaty ports. " Extra-
territoriality has always been resented by patriotic
Chinese, but it was not until the signature of the
Anglo-Chinese Commerical Treaty of 1902 that
any definite stipulation was made regarding its
abolition. Article XIII reads:

China having expressed a strong desire to reform her
judicial system and to bring it into accord with that of
Western nations. Great Britain agrees to give every assistance
to such reform, and she will also be prepared to relinquish her

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

extraterritorial rights when she is satisfied that the state of
the Chinese laws, the arrangements for their administration,
and other considerations, warrant her in so doing.

Great Britain had relinquished extraterritorial
rights in Japan three years previously; similar pro-
visions appeared in the American and Japanese
commercial treaties of 19033 while Sweden, in the
Commercial Treaty of 1908, agreed to relinquish
consular jurisdiction "as soon as all other powers
have agreed to relinquish their extraterritorial
rights." The last treaty signed by China in which
extraterritorial rights were conceded was that with
Switzerland^ signed in Tokio, in June, 1918. In
treaties since signed with Bolivia, Persia, Germany,
and soviet Russia, China has retained jurisdiction
over their nationals.

China's first formal claim for the abolition of
extraterritoriality was presented in 1919 at the
Peace Conference at Versailles. It was included in
the "Questions for Readjustment Submitted by
China to the Peace Conference,'* 1 which, among
other things, demanded the renunciation of spheres
of influence or of interest, the withdrawal of foreign
troops from China and of foreign wireless stations
and post-offices, the relinquishments of leased terri-
tories, the restoration of foreign settlements and

1 For full text, see China Year Book (1921-22), pp. 719 ff.

196!

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

concessions, and tariff autonomy. Some of the ob-
jections I have already mentioned were set forth,
and it was urged that China now had a national
constitution, prescribing, among other things, the
separation of government powers, and assuring to
the people their inviolable fundamental rights of
life and property, and guaranteeing the complete
independence and ample protection of judicial
officers and their entire freedom from interference
on the part of the executive or legislative powers;
that China had prepared a number of codes, some
of which were provisionally enforced, and which
had been carefully adapted from those of the most
advanced nations; that new courts and procurator-
ates of various kinds had been established, and
that in view of the "satisfactory result China has
already obtained, and the progress she has been
making from day to day in the domain of legislative
and judicial reforms, consular jurisdiction should
be abolished by the end of 1924." This question
was not taken up at Versailles but was again raised
at the Washington Conference, and supported by
much the same arguments, in 1921. In this in-
stance the Chinese delegation had not the audacity
to name a date for its abolition, but asked the
powers to agree to relinquish their extraterritorial
rights in China at the end of a definite period.

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

The Washington Conference adopted a resolu-
tion 1 which, after reciting the provisions of the
commercial treaties of 1902 and 1903 and express-
ing sympathy with China's aspirations, provided
for the establishment of an International Com-
mission, to which each of the signatories should ap-
point one member

to inquire into the present practice of extraterritorial juris-
diction in China, and into the laws and the judicial system and
the methods of judicial administration of China, with a view
to reporting to the governments of the several powers above
named their findings in fact in regard to these matters, and
their recommendations as to such means as they may find
suitable to improve the existing conditions of the administra-
tion of justice in China, and to assist and further the efforts of
the Chinese government to effect such legislation and judicial
reforms as would warrant the several powers in relinquishing
either progressively or otherwise, their respective rights of
extraterritoriality.

This Commission was to be constituted within
three months after the adjournment of the Confer-
ence, and to submit its findings and recommenda-
tions within one year from its first meeting. Each
of the powers reserved the right to accept all or
any portion of its recommendations, and China re-
served the right to a seat on the Commission, and
undertook to afford it every possible facility for the

1 China Year Book (192.4), p. 1164.
1983

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

successful accomplishment of its tasks. The Com-
mission should have met on or before May 6, 1922,
but in the meantime China was involved in another
civil war, and since then she has made repeated re-
quests for a postponement.

It will be remembered that Great Britain,
America., and Japan, in 1902 and 1903, undertook
to relinquish their extraterritorial rights when
satisfied that (i) the state of the Chinese laws, (2)
the arrangements for their administration, and (3)
"other considerations" warranted them in so doing.

Now a Law Codification Commission has been
at work since 1914, in collaboration with the minis-
try of justice, and since the Washington Conference
a Commission on Extraterritoriality has also been
organized to prepare for a visit to the International
Commission. With the assistance of French and
Japanese experts a number of new codes have been
drafted, of which the Criminal Code, 1 the Code of
Criminal Procedure, 2 and the Civil Procedure Code
have, after several revisions, been promulgated.
English translations of these codes are now avail-
able. A number of other new laws criminal; com-
mercial; mining; trade-mark 3 and copyright; labor;
and regulations relating to courts, procedure, and

1 China Year Book (1921-22), pp. 372 ff.

4 Ibid. (1924), pp. 267 ff. 3 Hid. (1925), p. 816.

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

prisons have also been promulgated. Mr. Es-
carra, French adviser to the ministry of justice, is
my authority for the statement that

apart from a few special texts, the provisions of which are
often very poor from the technical point of view, the civil
codification remains in its infancy. Several years, at least, are
required to provide China with a body of civil and commercial
laws exhaustive enough to meet the needs of the foreigners.
Till then, should the training and good will of the judges be
out of discussion, nothing can be said about a proper ad-
ministration of justice. 1

He mentions that in 1920., when a crisis in the
piece-goods trade occurred at Shanghai, resulting
in numerous bankruptcies among the Chinese, it
was impossible for the mixed court "to deal with
the Chinese law on the matter, because the latter
had been regarded as repealed by a decision of the
Supreme Court" and "a special procedure of wind-
ing up" had to be devised. 2

M. Georges Padoux, a distinguished French-
man, who is a member of the Commission on
Extraterritoriality, more recently wrote:

The present administration of civil and penal justice in
China affords a striking illustration of the difficulties attend-
ing the application of legislative provisions which are not in
harmony with the customs and prevalent ideas of the popula-

1 Escarra, The Extraterritoriality Problem, p. 20.
#</., p. 1 6.

fiooj

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

tion. In civil matters, the law in force is mostly the Ta Ching
Lu Li, many parts of which have become practically obsolete.
The Judges of the Supreme Court have to display a great deal
of ingenuity in order to adapt these old rules to the needs of
contemporary China, and to the evolution which takes place
now in the organization of the Chinese family. The adapta-
tion sometimes goes so far as almost entirely to set aside the
old rule (see the recently published summaries of Judgments
of the Supreme Court). In penal matters a new Code has
been enacted in 1912, but it is far ahead of the social conditions
of a large part of the territory. It is not applied in the remote
corners of most of the Provinces, and it is sometimes ignored
even in Peking. During the last few years, for instance, it
has been a common practice to order by Presidential mandate
the confiscation of the property of overthrown political lead-
ers, although general confiscation has been expressly abolished
by the Penal Code. 1

The fundamental law of the republic is, or
should be, the constitution. No one knows which
of the various constitutions which have been pro-
mulgated from time to time is at present supposed
to be in force, though that, perhaps, is not a matter
of very great importance, as at no time during the
history of the republic has any constitution been
more than a scrap of paper.

There are two other features of China's laws to
which I must direct your attention. The first is the
immunity of the civil officials from the ordinary

1 Chinese Social and Political Science Review (April, 1925), p. 360.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

courts of the land. There is a special court, known
as the "administrative court/' whose duties are "to
try all illegal acts of public officials with the excep-
tion of cases expressly placed by law under the
jurisdiction of other organs." 1 An attempt is thus
made to apply the French system of droit adminis-
tratif, but without the safeguard of the tribunal of
conflicts, whose duty it is to decide which cases
come within the scope of the administrative court.
Moreover, the administrative court is expressly
prohibited from entertaining claims for damages. 2
The plain tiff can only ask for rescission of the ruling
of an official, or such modification thereof as the
court may consider equitable. It is not the custom
to accept oral testimony, but to try each case on
written arguments. A civil official charged with a
criminal offense is supposed to be brought before
the ordinary court, but this is seldom done if he is
a man of any status, immunity being conferred by
extending the definition of what constitutes an "ad-
ministrative act." It is not, therefore, possible to
secure redress in the usual way for the wrongdo-
ings of civil officials. Second, there is the peculiar
status of the military man in China. Soldiers, from

1 China Year Book (1925), pp. 609 ff.

2 Law on Administrative Cases^ Art. 3. (China Year Book [1925],
p. 611.)

I 102]

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

the lowest to the highest ranks, who commit
offenses against the Military Penal Ordinance, the
Criminal Code, the Police Regulations, or any
other law for which punishment is provided, are
tried, not by the ordinary courts, but by a court-
martial. Any claim against them for damages must
also be tried by a court-martial. There are at pres-
ent nearly one-and-a-half million men under arms
in China, and they are the most notorious breakers
of the laws of the republic. Yet a civilian plaintiff or
complainant can only secure the trial of a military
man as an act of grace on the part of his superior
or commanding officer. The proceedings, if al-
lowed, are heard in camera, no lawyer being al-
lowed to the plaintiff, no access to the record of
testimony being permitted, and the decision of the
court being subject to confirmation or annulment
by the officer who authorizes the convening of the
court-martial. Many Chinese officials, occupying
what we should regard as civil posts, have military
titles, and are thus removed from the jurisdiction
of the civil courts and the administrative court.

I now turn to the actual administration of the
law in China. It is a sweeping but nevertheless ac-
curate statement, that under existing conditions
no attempt is, or can be made, to enforce the laws
of the republic. The Law Codification Commission

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

may work overtime compiling new codes, some of
which are not altogether unsatisfactory, but even
in Peking itself the courts are unable to enforce
them. China has had three constitutions since the
establishment of the republic. No one can say defi-
nitely which of them is supposed to be in force at
the moment, as the present government does not
even claim to be constitutional. But at no time
have the rights and privileges which these con-
stitutions are supposed to guarantee to her citizens
been aught but a myth. The most glaring example
of the wholesale violation of the law is to be found
in the present position of opium. The Criminal
Code promulgated in March, 1910, and amended in
December, 1914, contains a whole chapter 1 de-
voted to penalties for cultivating, smoking, traf-
ficking in, or transporting opium. Yet it is con-
servatively estimated that in 1923 China produced
between thirteen and fourteen thousand tons of
opium, more than twelve times as much as India,
and nearly eight times as much as the whole of
the rest of the world (India included). 2 And in
most provinces this opium was produced, sold, and
smoked, not against, but in accordance with, the
orders of the local officials, chiefly the militarists,

1 China Year Book (1921-22), p. 404.

2 Ibid. (1924), chap. xix.

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

who derived the bulk of the revenues for the
support of their overgrown armies from this
source.

I shall now give you a series of cases, a few
among those which have come to my notice, in
order that you may have some idea of the manner
in which Chinese laws are actually administered.
The first is the Tientsin land case. There lives in
Tientsin a wealthy family, known as the Chang
family, which had inherited a quantity of property
from the father, the late Chang Yen-mao. This
property had been acquired by purchase between
the years 1898 and 1904. Last year the Chang
brothers were told by the Police Commissioner of
the province, a most powerful official, that he
would like to acquire a large tract of their land,
at a nominal price. This land happened to be mort-
gaged to a French bank, and the brothers refused
to sell it below the ordinary market price. A few
days later the elder brother was practically kid-
napped from a restaurant in the ex-German con-
cession, in Tientsin, taken down to the police head-
quarters in the city, and there detained until he
had, under duress, signed a document, a facsimile
of which is in my possession, to the effect that
"with the desire to assist and promote the develop-
ment of the municipality in the city" he would sell

1 105 1

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

his land "at a price which the police authorities
might consider reasonable." This undertaking he
repudiated after his release,, and the Police Com-
missioner thereupon took possession of his land,
and charged him with claiming ownership on forged
title deeds. The Chang brothers then had to leave
Tientsin to escape arrest. What is their remedy?
They cannot sue the Police Commissioner in an
ordinary court, as he is an official and not amenable
to its jurisdiction. They cannot take proceedings
in the administrative court, because he holds the
rank of a general in the Chinese army. And if they
were able to induce the higher military authorities
to convene a court-martial which is extremely un-
likely they would not be permitted to be repre-
sented by a lawyer, to examine or cross-examine
witnesses, or to see the record, while all the pro-
ceedings would be held in camera. They have
therefore been unable to obtain any redress for
what, on the face of it, appears a most glaring out-
rage on the part of a high official.

Another very interesting case was the Tientsin
cotton case. Tientsin is the center of a large export
trade in raw cotton. It has been the custom locally
for years past to contract forward in July and
August, when some idea of the extent of the crops
can be obtained, for cotton to be delivered in

fio6l

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

October, November, and December. There were
good cotton crops in 1923, and forward contracts
at 23-28 taels per picul were made by foreign ex-
porters for some 250,000 piculs. Then came the
Japanese earthquake, with the destruction of large
quantities of cotton and cotton goods in Japan, with
the result that there was a sudden and unexpected
demand for cotton in that country. The price
soared from 23 to 28 taels to 43 taels. The deal-
ers repudiated nearly all their forward contracts
in order to take advantage of the Japanese demand,
and resorted to every conceivable form of trickery
to get their cotton through Tientsin without de-
livering it to the original buyers. The Civil Gover-
nor, Police Commissioner, and Chinese Chamber
of Commerce were appealed to for aid in preventing
this wholesale fraud. But the Police Commissioner
maintained that the best he could do would be to
secure 50 per cent of the cotton contracted for. The
Civil Governor declared that forward purchase of
cotton was an illegal gambling transaction. The
foreign buyers, who naturally sustained heavy loss
from their failure to meet their own obligations in
Japan and America, then endeavored to sue the
defaulting dealers. Writs were applied for, through
the foreign consulates, in the ordinary way, but the
Chinese courts refused even to serve them, and to

1 107 ]

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

this day no proceedings have been permitted
against the defaulters.

The case of Colonel Chen is another good ex-
ample. On February I, 1924, when the afternoon
express train from Peking was about to leave Feng-
tai, about seven miles from the capital, a passenger
car, which had come through from the Peking-
Hankow Railway., carrying one of the President's
concubines with a military escort, suddenly ap-
peared, and it was demanded that it should be
coupled on to the express. The latter was already
carrying its full load, and the couplings of the
special car were not of the type required by the
regulations for a passenger express, so the demand
was refused by the British traffic inspector. There-
upon one of the military escort drew a pistol and
pointed it at his head, and the inspector had to
agree to couple on the car. There was some mis-
understanding at this point, the train moving
farther up the platform, presumably to make room
for shunting the car into position. Thereupon,
under instructions from their superior officer, the
military escort set upon Mr. Bessell, knocked him
down, struck him with a pistol, and brutally kicked
him. The train then went on its way with the car
attached, and Colonel Chen, the concubine's broth-
er, who was in charge of the escort, proceeded

f io8l

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

to Taku. Mr. Bessell was seriously injured, and
had to undergo two operations. A strong protest,
with a demand for the trial of the officer in charge
of the escort, was made by the British legation.
Mr. Bessell was a servant of the Chinese govern-
ment who had been assaulted in the execution of
his duty, and while endeavoring to carry out the
government's railway regulations, and one would
naturally have expected the government to take
prompt action. Instead, it resorted to every form
of mendacity and procrastination to shield the cul-
prits. It was pretended, at first, that Colonel Chen
was at Wuchang, in mid-China, and that the
Hupeh Tuchun had been instructed to deal with
him. Although the fact that he was at Taku, with-
in a few miles of Tientsin, could no longer be con-
cealed, it was not until February 25, after repeated
evasions, that action was taken. On that date the
chief judge of the military court of the ministry of
war, the chief of the medical department of the
same ministry, and a personal representative of the
President proceeded to Taku, where they inter-
viewed Colonel Chen without the presence of any
of the witnesses to the assault, reported that he was
too ill to be moved, and subsequently announced
that he had been sentenced to "twenty-eight days
detention in his own quarter/' This farcical deci-

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

sion the British government refused to recognize,
demanding the formal trial of Colonel Chen, in the
presence of a British official, in accordance with
the treaties. The Chinese argued that the treaties
did not provide for the presence of a foreign official
at a court-martial upon a military offender, and de-
layed and prevaricated, and it was not until June
3, 123 days after the assault, that Colonel Chen
was actually brought up for trial. I heard some
details of that trial subsequently from Mr. Bessell.
He was, of course, not permitted to be represented
legally. He was still suffering from the injuries he
had received, and was unable to stand for more
than a few minutes. But the military court an-
nounced that it could not accept testimony unless
the witness stood up to give it, and Mr. Bessell
therefore had to give his evidence fragmentarily,
retiring to rest whenever the pain of standing be-
came unendurable. The officer who ordered his as-
sault on February i was in uniform, and wore a
mustache. The officer who appeared as Colonel
Chen on this occasion was in mufti, and without a
mustache. Mr. Bessell had seen him only for a few
moments in the twilight, four months previously,
and was therefore unable to make positive identi-
fication. So Colonel Chen, who had been found
guilty at the farcical inquiry of February 25, was

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

acquitted on this occasion, scapegoats being made
of the soldiers and a subordinate officer who were
alleged to have participated in the assault.

I wish to mention here again the case of the
soldier on the wall. The legation quarter in Peking
is surrounded on three sides by loopholed walls, and
on the south by a section of the main wall of the
city, which has been repaired, fortified, and in-
corporated in the defenses of the quarter, and is not
permitted to be used by Chinese. On April 10,
1924, the legation-quarter police found a Chinese
soldier belonging to the bodyguard of the Minister
of War wandering about on the wall, told him he
was not permitted there, and asked him to come
to the police station. There he would have been
discharged without further trouble had he not an-
nounced his intention of returning to the wall as
soon as released. Accordingly, he was sent to the
nearest Chinese police station, whence a report was
subsequently received that he had been given four
hundred blows (although corporal punishment is
supposed to be illegal) and confined to barracks for
several weeks. Three days later he reappeared in
the streets of Peking, and committed a series of
assaults upon foreigners. He assaulted in succes-
sion, and without provocation, an American, an
Italian, and a British subject. The American was

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

assaulted in one of the main streets of the city, but
as the assailant was a soldier, the Chinese police,
who witnessed the occurrence, made no attempt to
interfere. After assaulting the Italian, also without
molestation, he again mounted the legation section
of the wall, and committed a savage assault upon a
British subject who was walking there. He was ar-
rested, after a violent struggle, by the legation
police, assisted by a number of coolies whom they
summoned to their assistance, and taken to the
legation-quarter police station, where he was de-
tained, the Chinese authorities being notified of
what had occurred. On this occasion the apparent-
ly demented soldier found himself a national hero.
The wildest stories regarding his treatment ap-
peared in the Chinese press, and it was actually
demanded that the British subject, who had struck
back when attacked, should be charged with as-
sault. Mass meetings were held in Peking at which
the recall of the British Minister was demanded,
and Trotzky sent messages of sympathy to the
victim of "foreign imperialism," and addressed
noisy meetings at Moscow which passed resolu-
tions of sympathy with the soldier. Eventually,
under pressure from the legations concerned, the
man was brought up for trial, but to avoid the
presence of foreign officials at another court-m ar-

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

tial, he was first dismissed from the army, and
handed over to a civil magistrate, who sentenced
him to a term of imprisonment. He should prob-
ably have been sent to a lunatic asylum, and I only
cite this case as throwing light on Chinese mental-
ity where foreigners are victims of outrages.

As a final instance of the immunity of the
militarist from the law of the land, I may refer
briefly to the case of the Christian general, Feng
Yu-hsiang. He had been invited, on February 16,
1924, to dine with the American minister, Dr.
Schurman. The regulations of the legation quarter,
which is administered and policed under the orders
of the diplomatic body, prohibit motor cars from
entering the quarter at excessive speed, with
blinding headlights, or with armed escorts on the
footboards. All these regulations were violated by
the Christian general on the night in question, and
after wild blowing of police whistles his car was
eventually compelled to pull up by a policeman
who stood directly in its path. The Christian gen-
eral thereupon alighted in a fury, struck the police-
man, took away his baton, and, according to the
statements of the police and an eyewitness, ordered
his escort to kill the policeman, and he would be
responsible. Fortunately, this order, if actually
given, was disobeyed. The car then proceeded on

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

its way to the American legation, two more police-
man being struck with the captured baton, en
route. Needless to say, no redress was given, nor
apology offered, by the perpetrator of this assault.
I have in my possession notes of two cases in
which German doctors in Tientsin were defendants
in criminal charges, which throw considerable light
upon the treatment to which foreigners deprived of
their extraterritorial rights are now subjected. In
the first case, the doctor was charged, under Article
326 of the Chinese Criminal Code, with causing the
death of a boy-patient upon whom he had per-
formed an operation. The article in question reads:

Whoever fails to give the necessary attention to his occu-
pation and in consequence causes death or injury to any per-
son shall be punished with imprisonment for a period not
severer than the fourth degree (i.e., more than one year, but
less than three years] or detention, or fine of not more than
two thousand yuan [dollars].

The operation which was the basis of this charge
was performed on the neck of the patient, under an
anesthetic, on June 3, 1922. The patient died dur-
ing the operation, and the doctor testified that the
amount of chloroform used was very small; that it
was quite fresh, having been purchased the day
before; and that the heart of the patient was prob-
ably too weak to support an anesthetic, though this

I "4 I

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

weakness was not apparent in the examination
that took place previous to its administration. He
ascribed the death to one of those rare cases of in-
ability to support chloroform, which should be con-
sidered a misfortune for which no one was to blame.
On the death being reported, the Chinese coroner
made an examination. This functionary was a
barber who in China comes from the lowest class
without any scientific training. He made a
superficial examination of the body, declared that
the boy was dead, and that he had died not from
the operation, but from the anesthetic which was
what the doctor had told him. The doctor was then
charged before the local court, which gave judg-
ment on July 6, condemning the accused to a fine of
two thousand yuan (the maximum) for a violation
of Article 326.

An appeal was taken to the higher provincial
court, which on September 28, 1922, gave a judg-
ment upholding the decision of the local court. The
case was then carried to the Taliyuano^ or Supreme
Court, in Peking, which, on December 14, ordered
a retrial. This took place in the higher provincial
court, which on April 3 again found the accused
guilty, but lowered the fine to one thousand yuan.
The case was again appealed to the Supreme Court,
which, on August 9, 1923, dismissed the second

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

judgment of the provincial court, and ordered yet
another trial. The third judgment of the provincial
court was delivered on May 12, 1924, the accused
once more being condemned to a fine of one thou-
sand yuan. The Supreme Court on October 27
ordered yet another trial, and on January 21 of
this year the case against the accused was with-
drawn by virtue of the general amnesty proclaimed
by the provisional chief executive. It is under-
stood, however, that a civil action for damages is
still pending. During the trials of this case, facts,
the opinions of the complainants, and arguments
were inextricably mixed up by the court. Much of
the evidence offered by the defendant was refused.
The report of the coroner, who as already stated had
no scientific experience, and made no attempt to
perform an autopsy, was accepted as definite evi-
dence, although it contained a quantity of super-
stitious nonsense. Expert evidence from competent
medical men was rejected. In the higher court the
cause of the death and the blame for bringing it
about were treated as one and the same thing, the
onus of proving that there had been no negligence
being placed on the accused. In the sixth judg-
ment (May, 1924), the court refused to take into
consideration evidence favorable to the accused,
and the coroner's report was again made use of,

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

though its introduction had been one of the reasons
of the Supreme Court for ordering a retrial. As fur-
ther evidence of the accused's guilt, the relatives on
this occasion stated that they had not been willing
that chloroform should be used. The Supreme
Court in its final judgment held that there was no
proof of the lack of consent of the relatives.

The other case was similar in the course it ran,
but even more glaring in its continuous miscar-
riages of justice. For in this case the woman who
died had been successfully operated upon and had
made satisfactory progress for seven days, when a
friend called upon her and violently upbraided her
for undergoing the operation. There was, accord-
ing to the evidence, a heated quarrel, as a result of
which the patient's heart collapsed, and though
every effort was made to undo the mischief, she be-
came weaker and weaker, and died the following
afternoon. In this instance the original penalty of
two thousand yuan was imposed at successive re-
trials, until the case was terminated by the amnes-
ty. And it is alleged that the accused was found
guilty mainly as a result of a mistranslation of the
evidence of a foreign medical practitioner. The evi-
dence of the quarrel which caused the patient's col-
lapse was ignored.

It is not surprising, I think, that one of these

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

German doctors, who was in attendance on Dr. Sun
Yat-sen during his stay in Tientsin, told me that
under no circumstances would he undertake a seri-
ous operation on any prominent Chinese. These
cases are also of interest as revealing the reluctance
or inability of the Supreme Court finally to quash a
case in which injustice has been done, and the man-
ner in which provincial courts ignore the rulings of
the Supreme Court as to what evidence can be
admitted.

I might go on here to quote some ridiculous in-
stances which followed the assumption of juris-
diction over the Russians in Manchuria,, where a
man charged with breaking a window found that
he had been tried for murdering "Mr. Window";
where complainants sometimes found that they
had been mistaken for the accused,, and sentenced
accordingly, and on one occasion, at least, judg-
ment was given in a civil case against one of the
witnesses, the judge remarking, when this was
brought to his attention, that "the court knew
what it was doing." I have time, however, only to
cite one case in which Russians are involved, which
will show how hollow are China's pretensions that
the judiciary is independent and free from all inter-
ference on the part of the executive or legislative
powers.

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

After the failure of the Koltchak regime in
Siberia, the Chinese government reached an agree-
ment with the Russo-Asiatic Bank regarding the
operation of the Chinese Eastern Railway, then vir-
tually bankrupt, as a result of which it was to be
controlled by a board consisting of five Chinese and
three Russian members. Following this agreement,
B. V. Ostroumov, an engineer of considerable ex-
perience, who had been concerned in the construc-
tion of the Siberian, South Siberian, and Bokhara
railways, was appointed general manager. With
the approval and authority of the board, he intro-
duced reforms which had the result of converting
the railway from a virtually bankrupt concern into
a paying enterprise, with trains and rolling stock
excelled by few other railways in any part of the
world. Ostroumov was no politician, and was not
in sympathy with bolshevism, and accordingly in-
curred the animosity of the Soviets, who were only
biding their time to revenge themselves upon him.
On May 31, 1924, China signed an agreement with
soviet Russia, under which she recognized the Rus-
sian government, and agreed to the control of the
Chinese Eastern Railway by a Board of Directors,
composed of five Chinese and five Russians,
nominated by their respective governments. This
agreement Chang Tso-lin refused to recognize, with

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

the result that it was inoperative in Manchuria,
and over the Chinese Eastern Railway. During the
civil war of the autumn of 1924, however, Chang
Tso-lin realized that the Soviets might make them-
selves troublesome in his rear, and accordingly he
entered into a separate agreement, on much the
same terms as that signed in Peking. This agree-
ment was signed at Mukden, on September 20.
On October 3, Ostroumov was summarily dismis-
sed from his position, arrested, and placed in soli-
tary confinement; the same treatment was meted
out to Gondatti, chief of the land department of
the railway. No charge whatsoever was preferred
against either of them, although the Chinese
Criminal Procedure Code prescribes that no person
may be arrested without a charge being formu-
lated. Ostroumov was questioned from time to
time by the public prosecutor, who pretended that
he had been arrested to save his extradition to
Russia. I cannot enter into the numerous viola-
tions of the Code of Criminal Procedure that have
been perpetrated since his arrest. It was not until
December 20 that he was summoned before the
examining magistrate and told the nature of the
charges against him. These charges related to
transactions which had been inquired into, and
sanctioned by, the old Board of Directors (which

I IOQ J

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

had a majority of Chinese) , and their refutation re-
quired access to numerous documents in the rail-
way company's archives. This access Ostroumov
has been consistently denied, though on several
occasions the Judge has undertaken to secure and
produce the documents required a promise he has
never fulfilled. Ostroumov, a man certified to be in
a dangerous state of health, has been kept in soli-
tary confinement, and treated little differently
from a condemned criminal, ever since October 3.
The general amnesty which, as promulgated, un-
questionably applied to his and Gondatti's cases
although they asked not for pardon but for justice
has been overruled by the Manchurian authori-
ties, who calmly altered it to suit their own ends.
Successive judges have been intrusted with the con-
duct of the case, and have pleaded illness, obtained
a transfer elsewhere, or resigned. Bail, which
would have been forthcoming to the extent of
hundreds of thousands of dollars, if necessary, has
been refused. And I understand that an appeal to
the soviet Ambassador, who is unquestionably re-
sponsible for this travesty of justice, met with the
curt response that he would intercede for Ostrou-
mov only if he undertook to stand his trial in
Moscow for offenses, be it noted, which are al-
leged to have been committed outside of Russian

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

jurisdiction., during a period when the soviet gov-
ernment was not recognized by China, and under
orders of a Sino-Russian directorate. At the first
public hearing of the Ostroumov case, on June 4,
a telegram was introduced by the accused, pur-
porting to have been sent by the Chinese president
of the railway board,, ordering his colleagues to see
that evidence incriminating Ostroumov was pro-
cured "so as not to cause protests from diplomatic
circles/'

I may sum up the present condition of the ad-
ministration of justice in China by saying that if
the rule of law is understood to mean, as Dicey
says, that "no man can be lawfully made to suffer,
except for a distinct breach of a law established in
the ordinary manner, before the ordinary courts,"
and that "no man is above the law/' it is non-
existent in China. The provincial courts are, for
the most part, under the control of the militarists
in power in the particular locality. Peking will
issue a trade-mark law, prescribing the levy of sub-
stantial fees for the protection of trade-marks
throughout China; Canton will retort with a trade-
mark law of its own, which prescribes local registra-
tion and payment of fees to secure protection with-
in its jurisdiction. Peking will order the establish-
ment of certain courts of justice, which the Gover-

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

nor of Chekiang will abolish a few months later
because he does not approve of them. 1 All the lead-
ing authorities agree that far from the state of
Chinese laws, and the arrangements for their ad-
ministration having improved of late, there has
been serious retrogression.

Indeed, so far as the control by the central government
of China of the courts in the provinces is concerned, the situa-
tion is not as satisfactory under the Republic as it was under
the Empire. 2

Although circumstances have not altered except for the
worse, the extraterritoriality problem enters upon a new phase

with the decision now reached Now and for a remote

future, abolition of extraterritorial jurisdiction is out of the
question. 3

Save that the necessity to the Chinese people of European
and American commodities has immeasurably increased, there
is little, if any, improvement in the situation at the present
time [compared with that in i84o]. 4

The law to the contrary notwithstanding, tor-
ture is still in general use in Chinese tribunals. As
a Chinese official put it, in attempting to justify the

1 Willoughby, Foreign Rights and Interests in China, p. 69.
3 Ibid. 3 p. 69. (Dr. Willoughby was legal adviser to the republic,
1916-17.)

3 Escarra, oj>. cit., pp. I and 18. (Mr. Escarra is legal adviser to
the Chinese government.)

4 Sir Havilland de Sausmarez, chief judge, British Supreme
Court, Shanghai, 1905-21, in a lecture at King's College, April, 1925.

f 123!

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use of torture in a case in which it had admittedly
been employed:

If you are going to adopt foreign methods, you will never
recover the stolen property, you can never get evidence, and
you can never depend on it. We have got a code of regulations,
but underneath the surface we have to carry on in our own
old way. 1

Summary executions are still frequent. A dis-
patch from Shanghai dated May 18, 1925, records
the execution of a newspaper editor there, after a
summary trial by court-martial, because the local
general was enraged at the publication of an article
alleging extortion on the part of the Army. The
unfortunate man offered to bring evidence in sup-
port of this allegation, but permission to do so was
refused, and he was shot. 2

I have here a photograph of the scene following
a roundup of alleged bandits in Lintsing County,
not more than a day's journey from Tientsin, early
in 1924. It is too harrowing to show around,- but
the fact is that over one hundred men, women, and
children were butchered in cold blood, and subse-
quently mutilitated by the troops, who were so
proud of their work that they suspended the
butchering for an hour or two while a half-dozen

1 Quoted at the British Chambers of Commerce Conference, 1923.

2 Shanghai Evening News, May 19, 1925.

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

of the victims were still living, in order to have
them photographed. A missionary familiar with
the details writes further (February., 1924):

As if this were not enough, four days ago a memorial
service was held for the soldiers killed in the campaign, at
which time three of the bandits held for the purpose were
tortured for over three hours, an immense crowd of Chinese
watching the while. From these living victims the torturers
cut the ears, the nose, and then slices of flesh from different
parts of the body. These things seem hard to believe in this
day and age, but they have taken place within a week in our
own city, and members of our force of workers were present
and witnessed them.

I come., finally, to the "other considerations"
which must be taken into account when discussing
the question of the abolition of extraterritoriality.
I shall do no more than mention the fact that it is
to extraterritoriality that the foreigner in China
owes his immunity from the arbitrary and hap-
hazard taxation imposed by the local Chinese au-
thorities upon their own countrymen, and from the
exactions and levies of the militarists. It is to ex-
traterritoriality that he owes the existence of for-
eign settlements and concessions, where he can
reside under hygienic regulations and in conditions
of reasonable safety, free, as a rule, from incursions
of Chinese troops and bandits, and enjoy a measure
of self-government. These are privileges not lightly

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

to be sacrificed. But I shall urge, in conclusion,
that the most important of those other considera-
tions are not foreign but Chinese interests. Irre-
sponsible Chinese may clamor for the abolition of
extraterritoriality., but they flock into the conces-
sions for safety whenever a civil war is in progress.
And it is, after all, not unreasonable that the treaty
powers should demand that certain standards of
justice should be applied to the Chinese themselves
before their courts are permitted to experiment
upon foreigners. The only foreign advocates of the
abolition of extraterritoriality that I know of are
small groups of missionaries, who are actuated
more by the spirit of martyrs than by practical con-
siderations in advocating this step. Their view is
not shared by the majority of the missionary body.
I cannot, perhaps, do better than conclude this lec-
ture with a quotation from an address given by a
veteran missionary in a lecture at Kuling, in
August, 1910:

But the thought which I am anxious to emphasize in clos-
ing this lecture is this that China cannot come to deal fairly,
rightly, and humanely, Tff\\h foreigners alone. Every guarantee
given to foreigners for their proper treatment as dwellers in
China must soon become a guarantee, also, to the people of
China, that they too shall henceforth receive for themselves a
like justice and consideration to that which the superior power
of the Western nations has demanded as a right in the case of

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

every citizen coming from Western lands . . . .: Let every
patriotic Chinaman .... think with himself:

"This state of liberty, this security for life and property in
China, this immunity from torture and from official oppression,
corruption and injustice which foreign governments today
demand from China for their respective countries, enforcing
the demand where necessary through foreign consuls and by
diplomatic pressure this, and nothing less than this, is what
we Chinese have to seek to obtain as a matter of course from
our rulers for ourselves. We shall not get it, however, by first
depriving the foreigner of it, or by subjecting him to all the
injustice to which our own nationals subject us." 1

1 Rev. Arnold Foster, B.A., Extraterritoriality in China.

IV
CHINA'S FOREIGN RELATIONS

The countries that have the greatest com-
mercial interests in China today are Great Britain,
Japan, and the United States, in the order named.
France and Russia have important political inter-
ests, though for the moment Russia's trade is
negligible. Until recent years the common rights of
the so-called treaty powers were exercised through
the diplomatic body at Peking, which acted as a
unit in matters of general foreign interest, though
the policital aspirations of the powers were not al-
ways identical. Since 1914, however, there has
been a complete change in the situation. The diplo-
matic body has ceased to act as a unit. In most
cases in which there have been deliberate violations
of the treaties the treaty powers, that is, those
powers which still exercise extraterritorial rights,
act together. The non-treaty powers, those like
Austria and Germany which have lost their extra-
territorial rights, the new European states which
have never acquired them, and some of the Central
and South American republics which are in the
same position, form another diplomatic group.
f 129!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

And last of all comes soviet Russia, whose Am-
bassador, ever since the recognition of the Moscow
government by China, has deliberately ranged him-
self in opposition to the treaty powers, and has
publicly incited, and secretly intrigued with, the
Chinese to oppose the so-called "unequal treaties."

I propose, first of all, to deal as briefly as pos-
sible with those questions in which all of the treaty
powers are interested, and then refer in detail to the
interests and policies of individual states. The
treaty powers have a common interest in the en-
forcement, until such time as the Chinese have
shown themselves capable of assuming greater re-
sponsibilities, of extraterritorial rights, with which
I have dealt in a separate lecture. Their next most
important common interest is the Chinese customs
tariff.

Until the conclusion of the so-called Opium
War, which, as I have previously pointed out, was
in reality a war to establish the right of foreign
traders to pursue their avocations under conditions
comparable to those prevailing in all civilized coun-
tries, China had no regular customs tariff. Foreign
merchants were permitted to trade only at Canton,
where they were subjected to all kinds of indignities
and restrictions, and to any imposts that the local
Chinese authorities cared to exact. The Treaty of

1 130 1

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

Nanking, signed in 1842, in addition to providing
for the cession of Hongkong and the opening of
five Chinese ports to foreign residence and trade,
stipulated that "a fair and regular tariff of export
and import customs and other dues" should be
drawn up, and that on payment of a further fixed
percentage as transit duty, foreign imports might
be transported to any province or city in the in-
terior of China without further taxation, A tariff
of duties, calculated on a 5 per cent ad valorem
basis, was subsequently agreed upon, and it was
arranged that the transit duty should not exceed
"the present rates, which are upon a moderate
scale/' Since the Tientsin Treaty of 1860, the im-
port and export duties of China have been fixed at
5 per cent ad valorem, and the transit duty, which
is supposed to confer immunity from all other
taxation in transit on imports, and on commodities
brought from the interior to the coast for export^
has been fixed at 2| per cent.

The customs administration came under for-
eign supervision first, that of Mr. Lay, and a few
years later, that of Sir Robert Hart as a result of
the situation created in Shanghai by the capture of
that city by rebels in 1853, and worked so satis-
factorily that it has ever since been maintained.
Under the direction of the late Sir Robert Hart,

f 131!

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who became the trusted adviser of the imperial
Chinese government, the whole system of collect-
ing import and export duties was systematized.,
the central government for the first time in its his-
tory receiving an exact account of all duties col-
lected which, after payment of the expenses of col-
lection, were entirely at its disposal. The customs
administration also assumed responsibility for the
buoying and lighting of the coast, and inaugurated
the Chinese postal service. In 1898 the Chinese
government gave an undertaking that the inspec-
tor-general of customs should be a British subject
as long as British trade predominated.

Following the Taiping rebellion the provincial
authorities began to impose a new tax, known as
"likin," on goods in transit. It was at first a trifling
impost, though as time went on it became a serious
handicap to the movement of commodities in the
interior, not so much because the tax levied by any
individual likin station was very heavy, but be-
cause of the multiplication of such tax offices. Ac-
cording to Morse, along the Grand Canal between
Hangchow and Chinkiang, "likin stations, alter-
nately collecting and preventive, are established at
distances averaging ten miles one from the other;
and in that part of Kiangsu lying south of the
Yangtze, there are over 250 stations, collecting and

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

preventive." Even where the immunity conferred
by the transit pass is recognized, goods in transit
are subjected to heavy delay, which can often only
be overcome by submission to official blackmail.
Likin is recognized, by Chinese and foreign mer-
chants alike, as a serious obstacle to trade in the
interior, and both are in favor of its abolition.

The first serious attempt to secure its abolition
was made in the Anglo-Chinese commercial treaty
of 1902, in which Great Britain agreed to an in-
crease of the import duty from 5 per cent to not
more than 12^- per cent, and of the export duty
from 5 to not more than 7-^ per cent, in the event
of the complete abolition of likin. The American
and Japanese commercial treaties of the following
year contained similar provisions. At Versailles,
and again at Washington, the Chinese delegation
put forward a demand for tariff autonomy. At
Washington, while disclaiming any immediate in-
tention of interfering with the present system of
administration of the customs, the Chinese argued
that the present tariff was unfair and unscientific,
as it imposed a uniform rate on necessaries and
luxuries, and there was no reciprocity, certain
articles, such as tobacco and spirits, on which very
heavy duties were imposed in other countries, en-
tering China on the 5 per cent basis. They argued,

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

further, that with the present tariff China did not
secure a revenue commensurate with her require-
ments. They asked for an immediate increase of
the import tariff to 12^- per cent (irrespective of the
abolition of likin) and the right to impose duties
not exceeding 25 per cent ad valorem at their dis-
cretion, at the end of a five-year period. As a mat-
ter of fact., certain of the arguments advanced by
the Chinese delegates would not bear very close
examination, for they overlooked the fact that
everything entering China pays duty at the rate of
5 per cent except foreign rice, cereals, and flour;
gold and silver, both bullion and coin; printed
books, charts, maps, periodicals, and newspapers.
Taking the 1922 trade figures as a basis, one will
find that on the total volume of trade (import and
exports) the average percentages of customs rev-
enue in the . countries mentioned worked out as
follows :

Percentage

China 3 |

Japan 2

Great Britain 6

America 5 J

France 4^

Had the 12^- per cent import duty and the 7-3- per
cent export duty been in force at that date, the
average percentage of duties on China's trade

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

would have worked out at 7.2, which is consid-
erably higher than that of any of the countries
mentioned above.

The Washington Conference was not disposed,
for various reasons, chief among which were appre-
hensions that tariff autonomy would result in the
exploitation of foreign trade for the subsidizing of
China's militarists, to accede to China's demands.
But the subcommittee was greatly impressed with
certain evidence which was placed before it tending
to show that in the event of a reasonable compro-
mise with the central government on the subject of
taxation, the illegal imposts which are being levied
in the provinces would be abandoned. The British
American Tobacco Company and various other
foreign tobacco interests, a few months previous to
the Conference, had entered into an agreement
with the National Tobacco and Wine Administra-
tion under which payment of certain taxes to that
administration were to free their cigarettes from
all other taxation in the interior, any illegal taxes
imposed being refunded out of the taxes paid at the
factories. This agreement was reported to be work-
ing smoothly, and offered some hope that a settle-
ment of the likin question, on the basis of the 1902
treaty, might really prove feasible. The Confer-
ence, therefore, agreed to the assembling of a

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

special conference in China, within three months of
the ratification of the Customs Tariff Treaty,
signed at Washington on February 6, 1922, which
was to "prepare the way for the speedy abolition of
likin," and also to

consider the interim provisions to be applied prior to the
abolition of likin .... and it shall authorize the levying of a
surtax on dutiable imports as from such date, for such pur-
poses, and subject to such conditions, as it may determine.
The surtax shall be at a uniform rate of aj per centum ad
valorem, provided that in the case of certain articles of luxury
which, in the opinion of the special conference, can bear a
greater increase without unduly impeding trade, the total sur-
tax may be increased, but may not exceed 5 per centum ad
valorem.

The special conference has not yet assembled,
owing to a protracted dispute with France over the
resumption of payments of the annual Boxer-
indemnity instalments, which had been suspended
for five years from December i, 1917, when China
entered the war. The French claimed that such
payments must be made in gold francs, and the
Chinese government, after twice recognizing this
obligation, was influenced by political agitation to
repudiate it, and to insist that payment be made in
paper francs. The controversy was only settled in
April, 1925, and in a characteristic manner, the
government being bribed with the release of the

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

two years' accumulated indemnity instalments,
and agreeing to meet the indemnity payments in
gold dollars !

In the meantime,, events can hardly have been
said to have strengthened China's claims to tariff
autonomy. The tobacco agreement, to which I
have referred, has been violated in nearly every
province, the militarists imposing an additional
tax of 20 per cent ad valorem. In Canton, Shansi,
and other centers, attempts have been made and
are still being made to impose additional taxation
on kerosene, piece goods, and other foreign imports.
In the latter part of 1923, an international naval
demonstration at Canton was necessary to prevent
Dr. Sun Yat-sen from carrying out this threat to
seize the Canton customs, thus disintegrating the
only fiscal service which has been maintained in-
tact throughout the troubles of the past thirteen
years.

The likin collection was estimated in 1911, the
last year of the Manchu dynasty, at just over forty-
four million taels y or sixty-six million dollars. The
latest estimate places it at thirty-nine million dol-
lars. Neither of these estimates can be considered
reliable. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
of parasites live on the likin collectorate, the gross
total of which probably exceeds the total mari time-
It *37 1

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

customs revenues- one hundred and four million
dollars in 1924. The militarists now in control in
various parts of the country are taxing trade indis-
criminately and in complete disregard of China's
treaty obligations. It is, at present, inconceivable
that this huge vested interest likin can be got
rid of by any scheme devised by the Chinese gov-
ernment or the powers. And foreign trade, already
seriously handicapped by the numerous illegal
taxes now imposed, would probably be completely
strangled if, in addition to the levy of these taxes,
the central government which is also under mili-
tarist domination were permitted to impose any
import duties it thought fit.

The special conference, if it should assemble
this year, will be confronted with a series of most
complicated problems, for China's foreign credi-
tors, especially the Japanese, are clamoring for the
payment of some, at least, of her long-overdue ob-
ligations, and the proposed 2-J- per cent surtax
which is only to be permitted conditionally would
be a mere drop in the bucket if it had to be applied
to the discharge of foreign debts.

The maintenance of American, British, French,
Italian, and Japanese garrisons in Peking and Tient-
sin, and along the railway between Peking and Shan-
haikuan (on the seashore), is the outcome of the

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

Boxer Rising of 1900. The peace protocol signed
in 1901 provided for the establishment of a lega-
tion quarter in Peking, which the powers concerned
had the right to put in a state of defense, and to
administer, and from which they had the right to
exclude all Chinese. The Chinese government also
recognized the right of the treaty 'powers to occupy
certain points along the railway between Peking
and Shanhaikuan "in order to maintain free com-
munication between the capital and the sea," and
agreed to raze the forts at Taku. When the peace
protocol was signed, the Chinese city of Tientsin
was still under foreign military control, and the so-
called Tientsin provincial government was only
abolished after China had accepted further condi-
tions, which included the exercise of foreign mili-
tary jurisdiction over the railway and a zone ex-
tending to two miles each side of it to be exercised
only for the protection of the railway and the
obligation not to station Chinese troops within
twenty // (about seven miles) of Tientsin. By the
exercise of the powers then conceded the foreign
military commanders could have prevented the use
of the railway by Chinese troops engaged in mili-
tary operations, but unfortunately an undesirable
precedent was created in 1911, when it was agreed
that imperialistic and republican forces should be

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

permitted the use of the railway as long as they re-
frained from damaging the bridges or track. Con-
sequently,, in every civil war that has since occurred
in North China, the Peking-Mukden line has been
overrun by Chinese troops belonging to the rival
armies, with the result that on each occasion the
operation of the line has been completely disorgan-
ized, and serious damage has been done to track
and equipment, especially the latter.

The combined foreign garrisons in North China
number less than five thousand officers and men,
and with this force it is obviously impracticable to
guard two hundred and sixty miles of railway,
swarming with Chinese troops, as well as garrison-
ing Peking and Tientsin. In practice, what is usu-
ally done is to station small detachments at various
points along the line to guard the bridges, while as
soon as the railway is completely blocked by
Chinese military incompetence which invariably
happens so-called "international trains/' with an
armed escort of fifty to eighty men of various na-
tionalities, are run between Peking and Tientsin,
and Tientsin and Shanhaikuan, to maintain com-
munication "between the capital and the sea/'

At Versailles, and again at Washington, the
Chinese maintained that the necessity for the pres-
ence of foreign garrisons in North China had

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

ceased to exist (the conditions which led to their
being stationed in North China having disap-
peared), and requested their removal. The powers
represented at Washington were skeptical, but
agreed, when so requested by the Chinese gov-
ernment, to appoint delegates to an impartial
Commission of Inquiry into this question. China
has not since attempted to convene this Com-
mission, and recent events scarcely support her
boast that she is capable of assuring the protec-
tion of foreign lives and property within her terri-
tory. In 1920, 1922, and again in 1924, Tientsin
owed its immunity from molestation by Chinese
military rabble to the presence and watchfulness
of the foreign garrisons.

Britain still claims the largest volume of trade
with China, though her political influence today
can hardly be considered as important as that of
Japan. In addition to her commercial interests, she
has other important interests which raise serious
issues between the British and Chinese govern-
ments. I need not dwell here upon China's obliga-
tions to Great Britain in respect to opium suppres-
sion, merely mentioning that the cessation of the
export of Indian opium to China, at a substantial
cost to India, was conditional upon the suppression
of the cultivation of home-grown opium. China

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

today produces at least twelve times as much
opium as India.

The Peking-Mukden, Shanghai-Nanking,
Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo, Canton-Kowloon,
Tientsin-Pukow (southern section), and Taokow-
Chinghua railways have been constructed with
British capital, and in addition to the capital
obligations arising out of their construction and
equipment, the Chinese government owes British
concerns large sums for railway equipment sup-
plied but not yet paid for. She has defaulted again
and again, also, upon the loans raised from the
Marconi Company for the erection of wireless sta-
tions, and from the Vickers Company for the sup-
ply of a number of aeroplanes designed exclusively
for commercial use, but actually seized and utilized
by the militarists within a few months of delivery.

Great Britain has concessions, over which she ex-
ercises municipal control, usually through an elect-
ed council, in Amoy, Canton, Hankow, Kiukiang,
Chinkiang, Tientsin, and Newchwang. The cen-
tral and most important district in Shanghai was
originally set apart for British residence and trade,
but was amalgamated with the American concession
to form the international settlement in 1863. In
general, the policy enunciated by Lord Aberdeen in
1841, that "we seek no exclusive advantages, and

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

demand nothing that we shall not willingly see en-
joyed by the subjects of all other nations/' has
been consistently followed. Indeed, it may reason-
ably be claimed that to Great Britain is mainly due
the credit of breaking down the barriers to foreign
trade in China, and of opening the way for for-
eigners of all nationalities to reside and do business
in China under conditions approximating those
prevailing in Western lands. In her concessions,
for instance, permission has, as a rule, been readily
given to individuals and firms of other nationalities
(Chinese in some instances excepted) to lease or
purchase property for residence or trade, providing
they will agree to abide by the local municipal
regulations. The Tientsin land regulations pro-
vide for the election of at least one American to the
Municipal Council, annually, in recognition, I take
it, of the fact that a small strip of territory origi-
nally granted to America has been turned over to
the British municipality for administrative pur-
poses.

In addition to her concessions, Great Britain
owns the island of Hongkong and a portion of the
mainland opposite, and, in 1898, in the interests
of security the port being exposed to attack from
the surrounding hills obtained a ninety-nine-year
lease of a further area on the mainland, in the

|i43l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

vicinity of what is known as Kowloon. She also
holds on lease two hundred and eighty-eight square
miles of territory surrounding Weihaiwei, in Shan-
tung. It was at the instance of the Chinese them-
selves that Great Britain applied for the lease of
this territory then in Japanese military occupa-
tion as an offset to Russian's occupation of the
Liaotung peninsula, with Port Arthur and Dairen.
The original lease was to remain in effect "for so
long a period as Port Arthur shall remain in the
occupation of Russia." But the Chinese govern-
ment never suggested the restoration of Weihaiwei
when Russia was supplanted by Japan in the Liao-
tung peninsula,, it apparently being assumed on
both sides that the lease would be prolonged for so
so long as Port Arthur was in alien hands. At the
Washington Conference., however, with a view to
promoting a settlement of the Shantung question,
the British delegation announced its government's
willingness to restore Weihaiwei to China, subject
to satisfactory arrangements being made for its
continued use as a sanatorium and summer health
resort for the British far eastern squadron. There
are no other ports suitable for this purpose in
North China except Chefoo and Tsingtao. The
American fleet always spends the summer at
Chefoo, where .there is no room for any more

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

vessels, and Tsingtao is developing into an im-
portant commercial port, where the presence of a
number of foreign warships would not be welcome.
An Anglo- Chinese Commission to negotiate the
rendition of Weihaiwei met there in September,
1922, and an agreement was actually signed in
May, 1923. But the Peking government then de-
manded modifications which the British govern-
ment would not accept in their entirety, and nego-
tiations have since been indefinitely suspended. I
may mention that a suggestion for which I may
claim to have been responsible was embodied in the
draft agreement, by which the Chinese govern-
ment should undertake, instead of repaying the
money spent by the British government on the
development of Weihaiwei, to set aside a fixed sum
annually for a period of ten years, for the construc-
tion of roads linking up the territory with the
hinterland.

Another Sino-British problem that has defied
solution so far is the status of Tibet. Tibet is con-
tiguous to India, and India regards it as a matter
of vital importance that her Tibetan frontier
should remain secure, and free from the frequent
disturbances which have been caused by Chinese
efforts to conquer the Tibetans, and keep them in
subjection by force. Several times British agents

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

have intervened to extricate Chinese troops from
their difficulties, or to secure a truce between the
Tibetans and the Chinese. For years past, relations
between the British and Tibetan governments have
been most cordial; indeed, had Great Britain enter-
tained the desire to do so, she could unquestionably
have proclaimed a protectorate over Tibet without
encountering any serious opposition from the gov-
erning class. But her desire is to see Tibet preserve
her autonomy under Chinese suzerainty, and the
stumbling-block, hitherto, has been the definition
of the Chinese-Tibetan frontier. The state of
Szechwan and Yunnan, the Chinese provinces con-
tiguous to Tibet, racked by successive civil wars
during the past few years, has rendered it impos-
sible for the Chinese government, even it if were
willing, to enter into any agreement worth the
paper it is written upon, in respect to Tibet.

As long ago as December, 1922, the British gov-
ernment notified the Chinese government of its in-
tention to remit the balance of the British share
of the Boxer indemnity, amounting to between
twelve and fourteen million pounds sterling, in
order that it might be devoted to purposes mutu-
ally beneficial to China and Great Britain. The nec-
essary legislation to fulfil this promise was passed
a month or two ago, the money to be expended

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

on educational or other purposes, as decided by the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who was to
be advised by a Statutory Committee. Originally,
the British communities in China were in favor of
employing the entire amount for educational pur-
poses, but the events of the past three years, the
growing insubordination of the student class, and
the hostility of Chinese educationalists to any form
of foreign supervision or control have raised serious
doubts as to the wisdom of earmarking so large a
sum for educational ends. The British Chamber of
Commerce in Tientsin early this year adopted a
resolution which advocated reasonable support of
educational institutions, and the expenditure of the
balance on conservancy and flood-prevention meas-
ures which would insure the livelihood of many
millions of Chinese who are periodically reduced to
starvation by famine and floods and, if conditions
permit, upon railways and other means of com-
munication so necessary for the development of the
country.

I may, I think, fairly sum up British policy in
China today as aiming at the maintenance of the
open door and equality of opportunity, the exten-
sion of commercial and industrial facilities in
China, the maintenance of existing treaty rights
until such time as China proves her fitness to as-

{i47l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

sume greater administrative responsibilities, and
peace on the Indian-Tibetan frontier. The British
government willingly abandoned its former claim
to a sphere of influence in the Yangtze Valley, and,
to the best of my belief, there has been no serious
difference of opinion between the British and
American governments as to the policy to be pur-
sued in China for some years past. Great Britain
was the first power to agree, conditionally, to the
abolition of extraterritoriality and the revision of
the customs-import tariff.

Japanese political influence has been steadily
increasing in China since the establishment of the
republic, in spite of the bitter and persistent hostil-
ity aroused by her aggressive action during the
Great War period. Her actual or financial control
of the South Manchuria, Antung-Mukden, Kirin-
Changchun, and Ssupingkai-Taonan railways, to-
gether with her occupation of the Liaotung penin-
sula, gives her a dominating position in South
Manchuria, won as a result of a costly war with
Russia, and whatever assurances she may give re-
garding her respect for Chinese territorial or ad-
ministrative integrity she is unlikely for many
years to come to relax her grip political and eco-
nomic on this part of China. Soon after the out-
break of the Great War, Japan's assistance was

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

invoked by Great Britain, under the terms of the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, for the reduction of
Tsingtao. This action of the British government
has been severely criticized, even by some Britons
in China, but was unavoidable. Tsingtao was a
strongly fortified naval harbor, garrisoned by
German troops, and though the larger German
ships had left for the Southern Pacific before the
outbreak of hostilities, it would, while war lasted,
have constituted a constant menace to British and
allied shipping in Northern Chinese waters. With
what forces were available, Great Britain at-
tempted a naval blockade of Tsingtao. She had
only three or four batallions of infantry in North
China and Hongkong, and no siege artillery nearer
than India.

Japan immediately sent an ultimatum to
Germany demanding the surrender of Tsingtao,
and followed it up by a naval blockade and the
landing of a large expeditionary force, two British
battalions participating to give the operations an
allied character. Tsingtao was systematically re-
duced, and then "for the purpose of fundamentally
weakening the influence of Germany in the said
region" which had been recognized as a German
sphere of influence the Japanese advanced and
occupied the Shantung Railway, which, with the

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

former German leased territory, remained in their
possession until the end of 1922. The British forces
in North China, with the exception of a single
Indian battalion divided between Peking and
Tientsin, were then withdrawn, and with Europe,
and to a great extent America, also, preoccupied
with the European war, Japan was left with a
virtually free hand to do what she liked in China.
She was not slow in moving. While the Chinese
government was still protesting against the exten-
sion of Japanese activities beyond the former
German leased territory, the Japanese Minister, on
January 18, 1915, secretly and menacingly present-
ed President Yuan Shih-kai himself with a series of
twenty-one demands, the acceptance of which, in
toto, would have virtually converted China into a
Japanese protectorate. Negotiations followed in
which China stubbornly contested every demand,
only yielding or compromising under extreme pres-
sure, and on May 7, 1915, the Japanese govern-
ment presented China with an ultimatum demand-
ing compliance with all of her demands (except
Group 5, which contained the most objectionable)
within forty-eight hours. China had no option but
to submit. She had to agree to recognize whatever
disposition Japan might think fit to make of
Germany's interests in Shantung; to extend the

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

leases of the Liaotung peninsula., and of the South
Manchuria and Antung-Mukden railways, for a
further ninety-nine years; to give Japan special and
extended privileges in South Manchuria and east-
ern inner Mongolia; and to concede to Japan the
exclusive right of financing the Hanyehping Cor-
poration in the Yangtze Valley, thus giving her
control of the bulk of China's output of iron and
iron ore.

The original Liaotung lease was to Russia, for
a period of twenty-five years, expiring in 1923, with
provision for extension by mutual agreement* In
1938, according to the Chinese Eastern Railway
concessions agreement, China should have had the
right to repurchase that railway from Russia,
whose interests had been transferred on the
Dairen-Changchun sector to Japan. No one fa-
miliar with the situation can, I think, have im-
agined that Japan would have restored the Liao-
tung leased territory or sold back the South Man-
churia Railway on the dates mentioned, and there
is little doubt that the extension of these leases
could have been secured in 1915, or later, by more
tactful negotiation. Japan has since paid heavily
for her bludgeoning of China in 1915, which has
caused successive boycotts and embittered rela-
tions between the two countries ever since. It is

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

noteworthy, as a side light on Chinese psychology,
that the restoration of the former German leased
territory and the Shantung Railway has in no way
abated anti-Japanese feeling. On the contrary, it
seems to have given the impression that it is only
necessary for the Chinese to continue to agitate to
extort anything they want from Japan. In spite of
the clamor that arose over the restoration of the
Shantung Railway, and the agitation for a national
subscription to repurchase it direct from Japan,
only a few hundred thousand of the forty million
yen that will eventually be required for its redemp-
tion have actually been raised.

In the Yangtze Valley ^ Japan has substantial
interests in two important enterprises the Han-
yang Ironworks, whose ouput she virtually con-
trols, and the Kiangsi Railway, which has gone
deeper and deeper in debt to Japanese financiers, as
a result of incompetent management, and has been
compelled to appoint a Japanese adviser and a
Japanese superintending engineer in order to stave
off insolvency.

Japan has concessions at Amoy, Hankow,
Chungking, Tientsin, Hangchow, and Soochow.
Her nationals also have the right under the 1915
treaties to lease land and engage in agricultural
enterprises, and to reside, travel, and engage in

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

business and manufacturing enterprises of every
kind throughout south Manchuria. These rights
should also accrue to other nationalities whose
governments have signed treaties with China con-
taining the "most favoured nations" clause.

Japan has obtained a financial hold over China,
and on many public undertakings, including "all
the property and revenue of the telegraph lines
throughout the Republic of China/' by means of
the enormous loans concluded with the Peking gov-
ernment during 1918, most of which are now in de-
fault. These loans were concluded by Japanese
financiers with the approval of the Japanese gov-
ernment, which, it is understood, is about to make
itself responsible for those that are in default. Rec-
ognition of the so-called Nishihara loans, and ar-
rangements to meet interest and amortization
charges, are likely to cause considerable trouble in
the near future, probably at the special Customs
Conference.

A Japanese firm has erected a high-power, long-
distance wireless station in the vicinity of Peking,
which, according to the terms of the original agree-
ments, is to enjoy a monopoly of long-distance
communication for a period of thirty years. This
monopoly has been challenged by the British gov-
ernment on the ground that it conflicts with prior

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

engagements entered into with the Marconi Com-
pany, and by the American government, which
supports the Federal Wireless Company, on the
ground that the Mitsui contract contravenes the
treaty rights of American citizens in China and the
principle of the open door. Chinese duplicity in en-
tering into contracts, each of which conflicts with
the terms of the other, is responsible for the friction
that has arisen over the wireless question.

The aggressive policy inaugurated by Japan in
1915 has been abandoned superficially, at any
rate during the past few years, and replaced by
a more conciliatory attitude. There is little doubt,
however, that Japan plays a more active part than
any other power in China's internal affairs. It was
notorious that she was assisting Chang Tso-lin by
every means in her power during the civil war of
1524, the result of which was to restore the pro-
Japanese Anfu leader, Tuan Chi-jui, to power.
And I have it on the highest authority that on the
eve of the collapse of the Chihli party a strong pro-
test was addressed to the Chinese legations abroad,
to be presented to the governments to which they
were accredited, definitely charging Japan with
breaches of neutrality during the conflict. That it
was not presented was due to the sudden change in
the situation produced by the capture of Peking

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

and the control of the government by the Christian
general. 1 At the moment Japan seems less inclined
to assert her treaty rights than any other of the
Great Powers, and allows incidents which a few
years ago would have been followed by drastic de-
mands for redress., coupled with a threat of military
coercion, to pass with nothing more than a mild
protest. America and Great Britain can no longer
rely upon her sincere co-operation and support in
the maintenance of treaty rights a fact which I
attribute to the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese
Alliance, as a result of the Washington Confer-
ence, followed up by the passage of the new Ameri-
can Immigration Law. One cannot avoid the con-
viction that there is now an undercurrent of
hostility to Anglo-Saxon interests on the part of
Japanese officials in China. A year ago, when the
Japanese government protested against the new
immigration bill, I wrote:

The very real danger of Japanese retaliation taking the
form of refusal to co-operate with the other treaty powers in
the protection of rights which they regard as vital at the pres-
ent time has not> presumably, been reckoned with by Con-
gress. The deliberate affront to Japanese susceptibilities of-
fered by the passage of the new Immigration bill in its present

1 The accuracy of the statements made In this and the preced-
ing sentences of the paragraph was challenged after the lecture by
Count Soyeshima.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

form, against the advice of the President and the Secretary
of State, may have consequences far graver than a temporary
outbreak of indignation in Japan. It may well imperil the
position of all the white races in the East, and render nuga-
tory the efforts of America and the powers who associated
themselves with her at Washington, to "stabilize conditions in
the Far East, to safeguard the rights and interests of China,
and to promote intercourse between China and other powers
upon the basis of equality of opportunity."

American interests in China are chiefly com-
mercial, financial, and educational. Her political
influence has been consistently exerted for the pur-
pose of maintaining the integrity and independence
of the Republic, and equal opportunity. Unlike
other powers with substantial commercial inter-
ests, America, as I have already stated, has no
settlements or concessions in China. Those of us
who live in the Far East, however, are tempted to
retort to boasts upon this point that in the case of
America it is not difficult to be virtuous as she en-
joys to the full the advantages accruing to other
peoples from the possession of such concessions.
You do not in Shanghai, Tientsin, or Hankow find
American business concerns showing their inde-
pendence by seeking offices and residences outside
the concessions or settlements, in Chinese territory.
What was known as the American settlement in
Shanghai was amalgamated with the British settle-

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

ment in 1863, to form the present international set-
tlement, in which British interests still predomi-
nate, but which on several previous occasions has
had and today has an American as chairman of
the Municipal Council. The strip of land in Tient-
sin granted to the Americans as a concession has
been incorporated for administrative purposes in
the British municipal area, whose Council always
contains at least one American. The American con-
cession at Amoy was known by that name until
1899, and is now embodied in the British con-
cession.

No existing railway in China has been con-
structed or financed by Americans. Americans
were the first to interest themselves in the project
of constructing a railway between Peking and
Hankow, but the contract eventually went to the
Belgians. Americans also secured the concessions
for the Canton-Hankow Railway, which, it was
stipulated, must remain an American enterprise.
But the bulk of the concessionaire's stock was ac-
quired in the open market, by Belgian interests,
and after attempting to cancel the concession on
the ground that there had been a violation of its
terms, the Chinese government, in 1905, had to buy
out the concessionaires for the exorbitant sum of
$6,750,000. The Canton-Hankow Railway, there-

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

fore, has never yet been constructed. Under the
terms of the Hukuang loan agreement, to which
America was a party, the construction of the north-
ern (Hupeh-Hunan) section of this railway is
placed under British supervision. The southern
(Kwangtung) section remains in the hands of a
provincial company, which has been unable to com-
plete its task. Funds being exhausted for the
northern section, work is now at a complete stand-
still both in Hunan and Kwangtung; work has also
been suspended on the American (Szechwan) sec-
tion of the Hukuang railways.

Railway contracts were signed with the Siems
Carey Company in 1916 for the construction of
fifteen hundred miles of railway in Hunan and
Kwangsi, Honan and Hupeh, and Hupeh and
Shansi, but have never been carried out, partly
owing to opposition from other powers who claimed
that these contracts violated pre-existing agree-
ments, partly because of the difficulty of raising
sufficient capital during the Great War. Americans
also obtained contracts for the Hwai River and
Grand Canal Conservancy works, which have also
remained inoperative, and for the erection of one
high-power, one medium, and four small wireless
stations, construction of which has yet to be begun.

America has taken the lead in educational work

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

in China, and her missions, and mission and edu-
cational institutions,, are the wealthiest and best
equipped in China. The Rockefeller Institute in
Peking not only furnishes opportunities for ad-
vanced postgraduate work in medicine and surgery,
but supports scientific investigations in many parts
of China, and subsidizes many mission hospitals of
high grade, including several union (Anglo-Ameri-
can) institutions. Tsinghua College, near Peking,
which is under the control of the Chinese Foreign
Office, is supported from American indemnity
funds, and staffed mainly with American teachers
and professors. Its object is to prepare students
for study in American colleges and universities.
Some doubts have recently been expressed whether
this institution and the scheme for sending Chinese
to America to continue their studies have fulfilled
expectations, and a very bad impression was cre-
ated a few months ago by the issue and acceptance
of an invitation to the soviet Ambassador to give
a lecture at Tsinghua. He is reported to have re-
ceived an enthusiastic welcome, and to have made
a characteristic address inciting the students
against Western "imperialism" and "oppression."
Other American educational institutions, nota-
bly Yenching University at Peking, have also come
in for considerable criticism of late, owing to the

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

participation of their students, apparently with the
knowledge and at least tacit approval of the
faculty, in anti-Japanese and other political dem-
onstrations. Japanese papers in Peking alleged
that the anti-Japanese and anti-government stu-
dent demonstrations in Peking in May, 1925, were
organized in the Peking Academy and participated
in by students from Yenching University, the
Y.M.C.A. School of Finance, and the Academy.
And just before leaving Shanghai I saw a telegram
from Peking stating that Yenching University,
with the approval of the staff, and without await-
ing reliable details of what had occurred in Shang-
hai, had issued a manifesto deploring the action of
the Shanghai municipal police. It might reason-
ably have been expected that the riotous conduct of
the students would also be deplored. It is only fair
to add that other American educational institu-
tions, notably Boone University at Wuchang, and
St. John's University at Shanghai, deservedly en-
joy a high reputation for the maintenance of
discipline among their students.

American trade is rapidly increasing in China,
and it is noteworthy that the percentage of Ameri-
can shipping entering and leaving Chinese ports
rose from 0.96 per cent in 1913 to 4.55 per cent in

life}

PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

1923, the tonnage under the American flag increas-
ing more than sixfold during that period.

No one, I think, doubts the sincerity of Ameri-
ca's desire to aid China during the troublous times
through which she has been passing since 1911, but
as an Englishman I feel that a great deal more
might have been accomplished had America, Great
Britain, and Japan made a firm and united stand
on certain questions of vital interest to their na-
tionals, such, for instance, as the registration of
trade-marks and the progressive destruction of
China's railways by her militarists.

French commercial interests are insignificant
compared with those of Britain, Japan, and the
United States; but her political interests are im-
portant. Her Indo-China frontier is contiguous to
the provinces of Yunnan and Kwangsi, and the
Yunnan Railway, which is owned and operated by
French interests, is the only rapid means of access
to Yunnan. France has a lease of the port and
about two hundred square miles of territory around
Kwangchouwan, in Kwangtung province, which
she expressed her willingness to restore to China
only when all other powers holding leased terri-
tories in China came into line. In addition to the
Yunnan Railway, which is French owned, France

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

has financed and constructed, in whole or in part,
the Peking-Hankow and the Shansi railways. She
owns concessions in Shanghai, Canton, Hankow
and Tientsin, in the administration of which the
French Consul plays a larger role than does his
British colleague in the British concessions. France
also has substantial financial interests in China,
having participated in the Russo-French loan of
four million francs floated in 1895, to pay off part
of the Japanese indemnity, as well as in the Huku-
ang and reorganization loans. A Frenchman is at
the head of the Chinese postal service, which fact
does infinite credit to his organizing capacity. The
Chinese Government in 1898 undertook to con-
sult the French Government regarding the selec-
tion of the staff of the postal service, and the
director-general has since always been a French-
man.

The outstanding issue between France and
China for the past three years has been the gold-
franc controversy. The Allied Powers, Russia ex-
cepted, agreed, on China's entry into the war, to
the suspension for five years of China's Boxer in-
demnity payments. Before they had to be re-
sumed, on December I, 1922, a large French bank
in the East, the Banque Industrielle de Chine, col-
lapsed, and although it was not an official enter-

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

prise, the disaster had so serious an effect upon
French credit in the Far East that the French
legislature sanctioned a scheme by which the Boxer
indemnity annuities would be utilized for the
rehabilitation of the bank. This scheme, which in-
volved resumption of indemnity payments in gold
francs, and was devised in such a manner that the
money would eventually be repaid to China for
educational and other cultural purposes, was sub-
mitted to, and approved by, successive Chinese
ministers of foreign affairs, in July, 1922, and
February, 1923. Subsequently, however, a political
agitation was started in Peking, the contention be-
ing put forward that the French indemnity was
payable in paper francs, and not gold. It seems
probable that the motive behind the agitation was
blackmail, and the Chinese parliamentarians have
for years past been on the lookout for bribes and
subsidies. The Chinese government weakly repu-
diated its undertaking, and the controversy re-
mained unsettled until April, 1925. As a result of
China's attitude on this question, the French gov-
ernment refused to recommend the ratification of
the Nine-Power Customs Tariff Treaty of Wash-
ington, without which the convening of the special
conference therein provided for could not take
place. The settlement in April provided for the re-

163!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

lease of the accumulated indemnity annuities for
two years to the central government,, whence, of
course, most of it was filched by the militarists, and
resumption of payment in gold dollars. France,
just previous to the settlement, the details of which
had been arranged, recognized that the gold-franc
issue and the tariff question were not interrelated,
and undertook to ratify the treaty at the earliest
opportunity.

Although a party to the arms-embargo agree-
ment, under which the principal powers engaged to
restrain their nationals from "exporting to, or im-
porting into, China, arms and munitions of war,
and material destined exclusively for their manu-
facture/' France has been supplying Chang Tso-
lin with quantities of aeroplanes, with machine-
gun mountings, without any undertaking that
they would not be used for warlike purposes, and a
French mail steamer was actually diverted to
Manchuria, after the outbreak of hostilities in
1924, in order to deliver a large consignment of
aeroplanes which the Manchurian war-lord had
ordered.

French policy in the Far East seems to me to be
opportunist. France clings tenaciously to her
rights as evidenced by the gold-franc question, in
which, by the way, she enlisted and obtained the

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

support of the other treaty powers. But during the
recent trouble in Shanghai the French cruiser in
port was the only warship that did not land
marines, the Consul, I understand, maintaining
that French interests were not involved in the dis-
turbances in the international settlement.

France's political influence has suffered to some
extent by the abandonment of her role of exclusive
guardian of Roman Catholic interests in China, a
role which was inconsistent with the anticlerical
legislation of a few years ago.

America, Britain, France, and Japan are com-
mitted to the policy of supporting a financial con-
sortium composed of representative banking in-
stitutions of their respective nations, which aims,
according to its published statements, at "the sub-
stitution of international co-operation for inter-
national competition, in the economic and financial
affairs of China." The consortium was re-estab-
lished, on American initiative, in October, 1920, its
activities being limited to

existing and future loan agreements which involve the issue for
subscription by the public of loans to the Chinese Govern-
ment or to Chinese Government Departments, or to Provinces
of China, or to companies or corporations owned or controlled
by or on behalf of the Chinese Government, or any Chinese
Provincial Government, or to any party if the transaction in

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question is guaranteed by the Chinese Government or Chinese
Provincial Government, but does not relate to agreements for
loans to be floated in China.

The Chinese government has never recognized nor
had any official dealings with the consortium since
its re-establishment, knowing full well that it
would be impossible to raise loans for administra-
tive purposes without foreign supervision over the
expenditure and the security. The consortium,
however, has fulfilled a useful purpose by prevent-
ing the indiscriminate lending of money to China
upon inadequate security, and with ulterior po-
litical motives.

The soviet government proposed the resump-
tion of official relations in a telegraphic declaration
dispatched in French from Irkutsk in July, 1919, in
which it was stated:

The Soviet Government returns to the Chinese people,
without demanding any kind of compensation, the Chinese
Eastern Railway, as well as all the mining concessions,
forestry, gold mines, and all other things that were seized
from them by the Government of the Tsars. .... The Soviet
Government gives up the indemnities payable by China for
the insurrection of Boxers in 1900.

This declaration was signed by Karahan, acting for
the Commissary of Foreign Affairs, as also was
another declaration dated September 27, 1920,
which set forth in detail proposals for an agreement

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

with the Chinese Republic, which, however, re-
served for a special treaty an agreement "on the
way of working the Chinese Eastern Railway with
due regard to the needs of the Russian Socialist
Federated Soviet Republic." A. A. JofFe, former
soviet ambassador to Berlin, who was expelled for
being implicated in the Spartacist rising, reached
Harbin in August, 1922, as soviet envoy, but was
unable to reach an agreement either with China or
Japan, and was replaced by Karahan, who reached
Peking in September, 1923. Dr. C. T. Wang was
intrusted with the negotiations with the soviet
envoy, and on March 14 an agreement was actu-
ally initiated by the Russian and Chinese pleni-
potentiaries, which was immediately repudiated by
the Chinese Foreign Office chiefly because of dis-
satisfaction with the clauses relating to outer
Mongolia. Karahan attempted to enforce the
formal signature of this agreement by a three days'
ultimatum, which the Chinese ignored. Negotia-
tions were eventually resumed between Karahan
and Dr. Wellington Koo, which resulted in the
signature of an agreement and a number of
declarations, providing for recognition of soviet
Russia, the redemarcation of national boundaries,
joint control of the Chinese Eastern Railway
(which was not given back to China without de-

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

manding any kind of compensation), the relin-
quishment of extraterritorial rights, and recogni-
tion of outer Mongolia as "an integral part of the
Republic of China," it being left to future negotia-
tions to arrange for the withdrawal of Russian
troops from that territory. Declarations attached
to the agreement made provision for the handing
over to Russia of all former Russian government
properties, and of the premises of the Russian
orthodox mission in Peking, for the expenditure of
the Russian share of the Boxer indemnity "for the
promotion of education among the Chinese people,
after the satisfaction of all prior obligations,"
under the direction of a commission composed of
two Chinese and one soviet representative, whose
decisions must be unanimous; and for the dis-
missal from Chinese government employment of
"all the subjects of the former Russian Empire now
employed in the Chinese army and police force."
When these documents were signed on May 31,
1924, the Manchurian provinces were independent
of the Peking government, whose authority they
flatly refused to recognize, so that the provisions
relating to the Chinese Eastern Railway could not
be carried out.

During the civil war in North China of the
autumn of 1924, however, while mass meetings
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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

were being staged in Moscow in support of a
"Hands off China Movement/' at which the so-
called "imperialistic powers" were the objects of
soviet animosity, a separate agreement was signed
at Mukden between a soviet representative and
representatives of Chang Tso-lin, following in gen-
eral terms the Peking agreement of May 31 . At the
time this agreement was signed, Chang Tso-lin was
technically a rebel against the central government.
He was induced to authorize its signature only by
apprehension of soviet mischief in his rear while his
armies were battling with the Chihli forces. This
was the only overt act of interference in the civil
war on the part of any foreign government. The
members of the old Board of Directors of the Chin-
ese Eastern Railway were immediately dismissed,
and the general manager and chief of the land de-
partment have been imprisoned ever since, on
vague charges, to gratify soviet spite.

A soon as China had recognized the Moscow
government, the latter announced its intention of
appointing Karahan its ambassador at Peking. No
other power in Peking is represented by an envoy of
higher rank than a minister. Protracted and some-
what acrimonious negotiations and correspondence
followed with reference to the restoration of the
former Russian legation to the soviet envoy. It is

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

situated within the legation quarter, which is sur-
rounded by fortified walls and a wide glacis, and it
was difficult to see how a bolshevik ambassador,
who made use of every opportunity to insult and
denounce publicly the treaty powers, and who
boasted that Russia had renounced all privileges
acquired by her under the tsarist regime, could be a
desirable neighbor. Karahan maintained, however,
that in the Sino-Russian agreement of May 31,
1924, Russia had not actually renounced, but had
agreed to annul, at a conference to be held later,
the so-called "tsarist treaties/' and that Russia,
therefore, was still entitled to the rights and privi-
leges enjoyed by the treaty powers as a result of the
Boxer protocol. At an informal conversation with
the American Minister, Karahan is said to have
given assurances of his intention to act as a good
neighbor, and an undertaking not to bring Red
troops into the quarter. The legation property was
subsequently handed over to the bolshevik Am-
bassador, who has had its gates painted a brilliant
red, and hoisted the Red flag in place of the old
Russian flag. Hardly a week has passed since the
signature of the Sino-Russian agreement in May,
1924, that Karahan has not addressed prolix pro-
tests to the Chinese Foreign Office or the treaty
powers, on matters ranging from the use of the

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

glacis fronting the Russian legation, for "horse-
jumping" by American marines, to the employ-
ment of White Russians in Chang Tso-lin's army,
and the refusal of the Manchurian authorities to
sanction the wholesale dismissal of non-soviet em-
ployees on the Chinese Eastern Railway. He has,
moreover, frequently entertained, or been enter-
tained, by Chinese politicians, educationalists, and
students, whom he has openly incited to a "bloody
struggle for national freedom and liberation from
imperialism."

A soviet agent was attached to the Canton gov-
ernment, even when the latter was in open revolt
against Peking, and soviet military instructors have
been placed at the disposal of the Canton authori-
ties for the instruction of their military cadets.

Thus Russia has not actually given up any
privileges which had not previously been taken
away from her, and she has reacquired control of
the Chinese Eastern Railway. I have not the time
here to dwell in detail upon soviet activities in
China, but I may sum up Russian policy during
the past year as having been concentrated upon
fomenting anti-foreign feeling among the Chinese,
and encouraging them to resist every attempt on
the part of the treaty powers to assert their treaty
rights-

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

I have dealt with the interests of the powers
which have the most substantial commercial and
political interests in China, and I need not say very
much about the others. Belgium has extensive
railway and mining interests. The Dutch are co-
operating with the Belgians on the coast section of
theLunghai Railway. Italy's commercial interests
are unimportant, but she has a concession in Tient-
sin, and has recently sent out a contingent of
Italian marines for garrison duty in North China.
Spain's interests are also unimportant, and her
diplomatic and consular officials during the past
thirteen years have probably done more than those
of any other power to bring extraterritoriality and
foreign prestige into disrepute. There are over
three thousand Portuguese in China, most of whom
are employed in subordinate clerical positions.
Portugal, however, owns the colony of Macao,
which may be described as the plague-spot of the
East. Its commerce is of no account, and the gov-
ernment is supported almost entirely by opium and
gaming revenues.

We may sum up the situation at the moment,
then, by saying that British and American inter-
ests in China are in the main identical, both seek-
ing, above all, to secure stable conditions for the
development of their commerce; that Japan's real

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PROBLEMS OF PRESENT-DAY CHINA

interests should lie in the same direction, but that
while vacillating between an aggressive and a con-
ciliatory policy, she interferes to a greater extent
than any of the other powers in China's internal
affairs, though, as a rule, secretly, and with the
result if not the intent of perpetuating internal
dissensions; and that soviet Russia is bending all
her efforts to creating hostility between China and
the treaty powers, and dissensions among the
latter, and is finding favorable soil for her poison-
ous activities in the discontents produced by
thirteen years of misrule under the so-called
Chinese Republic.

1 1?3 1

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

By JITLEAN ARNOLD

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

China's geographical isolation, her unique civ-
ilization, her disregard of the civilizations of other
peoples, and the overpowering, all-pervading re-
spect of the intellect of the nation for the teachings
of the ancient sages found the country at the begin-
nings of the twentieth century economically still a
medieval civilization, although possessed of a rich
heritage in a culture which has filtered down
through the masses, the resultant of the millen-
niums of its national life. The developments fol-
lowing the application of steam and electricity to
the industrial life of the peoples of the Occident
only began to make their influence felt in China
during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Topographically, China and the United States
are very similar. Each is a country of vast con-
tinental proportions. The great Yangtze Valley of
China may be compared to the Mississippi Valley
of the United States. Without railways the popu-
lation of the United States at the end of the nine-
teenth century would have been grouped about the
seacoasts and waterways accessible thereto. The
Mississippi Valley would probably have been set-

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

tied from New Orleans up. There would have been
a situation somewhat comparable to that of China.
In other words, the great land areas out of touch
with water communications would have remained
unsettled and undeveloped.

Although China is larger in area than Europe,
or the United States including Alaska, yet six-
sevenths of China's population is concentrated in
one-third of its area. It is a mistaken idea to speak
of China as overpopulated. There is in the lower
Yangtze Valley, that is, in the Yangtze Delta
region, an estimated population of forty million
people in an area of fifty thousand square miles, or
that similar to the state of Illinois. Mongolia, with
an area equivalent to about one-and-a-half times
that of the states east of the Mississippi, has a
population of about two million, or less than two
to the square mile. There are other regions of the
Chinese Republic, comprising hundreds of thou-
sands of square miles, more sparsely populated
than any state in the American Union, due pri-
marily to lack of economic transportation- There
are also provinces in China which are cut away
economically from the rest of the country, and
which enjoy only a minimum of commercial inter-
course. So-called West China, with an estimated
population of one hundred million, is out of eco-

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

nomic communication with the rest of China, hence
with the outside world, because of lack of railways.
Much of the transportation in this section of West
China is on the backs of human beings. If the cargo
carried in one year by the railways for the one
hundred million people of the United States had to
be placed on the backs of human beings, it would
require eight hundred million men working 365
days out of the year, each carrying a load of 150
pounds over an average of fifteen miles a day, to
equal it. This indicates, in an impressive way, the
significance of the lack of economic transportation
to those regions in China out of touch with water-
ways. Furthermore, transportation in these sec-
tions is about ten times as expensive as railway
transportation in the United States, although un-
skilled labor receives there not more than the equiv-
alent of about twelve cents gold a day. To get the
wheat from the rich Wei Basin in southern Shensi,
where it can be purchased at one-third the price in
America, to the Peking-Hankow Railway, about
five hundred miles distant, increases the price to
such a degree as to make it cheaper to purchase
wheat in America and transport it to the milling
centers of China.

Within the past few years, the Governor of the
Shansi province has constructed nearly a thousand

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

miles of good roads in the so-called "model prov-
ince." This was done with the idea of encouraging
motor transportation. There are, however, in the
aggregate, no more than seventy-five motor vehi-
cles in the whole of the Shansi province, which has
a population of about ten million, in an area similar
to that of the state of Kansas. Transportation by
pack animals and carts in Shansi averages about
sixteen cents in Chinese silver, a ton-mile. Motor
transportation runs from twenty to twenty-five
cents a ton-mile, whereas railways should be able
to carry cargo at less than three cents a ton-mile.
Shansi needs a trunk-line railway from north to
south, and good roads might then well serve as
feeders. Without railways, the most enlightened
government in that province will not make for sub-
stantial prosperity. Railways in China, operated
under reasonably efficient management, are poten-
tial gold mines, as the populations have preceded
the railway in many sections not yet provided with
railways. They can be operated at a cost of less
than 50 per cent on their operating revenues. The
Chinese coolie daily wage can purchase one ton-
kilometer coolie transportation or twenty tons-
kilometer railway transportation, as compared
with the American common laborer's wage which
can purchase two hundred tons-kilometer railway

1 1 80 1

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

transportation ten times the purchasing power
of the Chinese wage-earner in railway transporta-
tion,, or two hundred times that of the coolie
carrier.

Bad internal communications in China have en-
couraged provincialism. This has been accentu-
ated through the perpetuation over many cen-
turies of the family system, interwoven with which
is ancestor worship. A laissez faire governmental
policy left the people to their own devices with a
minimum of pressure from above. However, to
safeguard against the redevelopment of a feudal
system which characterized China prior to the be-
ginnings of the Christian Era, the civil-service ex-
aminations carried with them the stipulation that
the native of any province should not hold official
position in that province. These civil-service ex-
aminations, perpetuated for a period of over one
thousand years, also acted as a reinforcing agency,
holding Chinese society together, with common
ideals and aspirations. On the other hand, each
community developed its own interpretation of
many of the nation's institutions, as, for instance,
the country's weights and measures and currency
units. Often distinct dialects differentiated a com-
munity from its neighbors, although through the
civil-service examinations a common written lan-

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

guage, a common literature, and common educa-
tional ideals were perpetuated among an aristoc-
racy of learning. This overpowering respect for
the teachings of the sages, which marked Chinese
society up to the beginnings of the twentieth cen-
tury, encouraged individualism but discouraged
initiative, scientific research, and invention, as evi-
denced by the fact that the country has not as yet
developed a patent office. It produced a stereo-
typed, self-sufficient society. Although this society
has been for upward of two thousand years dis-
tinctly democratic, yet education has been for the
favored few. Economic conditions were not such
as to encourage but a very small fraction of the
population in seeking an education. Thus, while
the civil-service examination acted as a safety-
valve for the ambition of the nation, yet under it
the percentage of illiteracy among the masses was
appalling. Nor did it result in the development of
a system of public schools, for under it instruction
was individual. That great agency in a modern
democratic society for the encouragement of a
spirit of group activity, the public school, is of
recent growth in China.

China is essentially agricultural, with probably
80 per cent of the people engaged in rural pursuits.
Although from time immemorial agriculture has
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CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

been honored and assigned a position next after
learning in Chinese society, yet one sees but little
evidence of improvements in agricultural processes
over many centuries. This is demonstrated by the
fact that four-fifths of the population is engaged in
providing the sustenance for the nation. In the
United States less than 40 per cent of the people
comprise the agricultural population, yet live bet-
ter and produce a proportionately greater surplus
for export than do the people of China. Irrigation.,
afforestation, deep plowing, scientific seed selec-
tion, rural credits, effective marketing, and animal
husbandry are subjects which have received but
little attention on the part of the government or
through organized effort in any other direction.
Agriculturally, China suffers badly through poor
and inadequate irrigation, through deforestation,
through lack of a knowledge of proper plowing
methods, through little attention to seed selection,
through usurous practices in financing the farming
class, through a bad and uneconomic marketing
system, through poor internal communications,
and, in general, through lack of co-operative effort
and the application of science to productive indus-
try, in spite of the highly developed industrious and
thrifty personal traits of character of the people.
In a similar way, China was found at the begin-

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ning of the twentieth century to be far behind the
Occident in industrial and commercial develop-
ments. The individual business rather than the
corporate enterprise, and the domestic handicraft
industry rather than organized manufacturing with
modern machinery, characterized the old China.
In an article on "Manpower plus Horsepower/'
George Otis Smith, director., United States Geo-
logical Survey, made the statement:

Edward Everett Hale charted the course of industrial
development when he said that the extent to which the world
had changed the laborer who uses his body into the workman
who uses his head was the index of civilization. The true
measure of industrial progress is found in the amount of me-
chanical power used to supplement manpower.

Mr. Smith calculates that the motor-power we are
now using, steam and electricity, gives us the
equivalent of five energy servants for every man,
woman, and child in the United States, which in it-
self is equivalent to giving us industrially the
effectiveness of five hundred millions of people
working without this power. This statement can
be appreciated in a country like China, where there
has not yet been developed one horse-power of its
wonderful potentialities in hydroelectric power,
and where steam-power is only at the threshold of
its possibilities in modern industry.

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

It is only during the past fifty years that the
Chinese people have come to realize the backward-
ness of their country in a modern economic sense.
It was about fifty years ago that the first group of
Chinese students was sent abroad to imbibe
Western learning. That this movement had not the
sympathy of the nation at that time is demonstra-
ted by the fact that these students were recalled be-
fore they were able to complete their education. It
was a number of years after their return to China
before they were reinstated in positions of honor
and respect and permitted to utilize their training
abroad for the benefit of their people.

The shock to the nation came in 1 894 with their
defeat in a war against the Japanese, a people
whom they had always considered inferior to them-
selves. It was only then that the Chinese realized
the efficacy of Western methods, as the Japanese
had gone much farther in the utilization of ideas
from the West than had the Chinese. The Emper-
or, to make amends, rushed headlong into an
elaborate program of reform, and issued the most
sweeping edicts, calling for drastic changes. With
the Boxer troubles in 1900, there were evidences of
reactionary forces again in control. During the
early years of the twentieth century, feverish
efforts were made by the Manchu dynasty to save

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

itself from the possible consequences of a revolu-
tionary spirit rapidly developing among the think-
ing people of the country. Drastic reforms were in-
troduced. Among the more important of these
were the abolition, in 1905, of the ancient classics as
the test in the civil-service examinations and the
substitution therefor of subjects of Western learn-
ing., the appointment of constitutional commissions
to proceed abroad to study foreign forms of govern-
ment, the establishment of modern schools in
China, and provisions for the institution of a con-
stitutional form of government. Young China be-
came, however, unduly impatient, and demanded
more than was physically possible to accomplish.
Thus, with the revolution of 1911, the Manchu
dynasty was swept out of power and the republican
form of government inaugurated.

Thousands of Chinese students have, during the
past two decades, matriculated in Western uni-
versities, imbued with the idea of making China
over along modern lines. It is only within the past
few years that it has been discovered that the task
is too stupendous and that no hasty progress in
connection with the establishment of a new eco-
nomic order in China may be expected. As a re-
sult, to some a keen sense of disappointment over
the efficacy of Western ideas is manifest. This has
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CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

brought about a reaction. There are those who
place the blame of the failures in these experiments
in Westernization upon the foreign institutions,
and advocate a reversion to the old order. The
better balanced among the intellectuals, however,
appreciate the fact that there has been much of the
superficial in Western learning as acquired by
many of those who journeyed abroad with the
mistaken idea that this learning would in itself
serve as a panacea for China's ills. There is now a
substantial realization on the part of these better-
informed persons of the necessity of adjusting what
modern science and Western learning have to offer,
to meet the peculiar needs of the Chinese environ-
ment.

China was not prepared for the drastic change
which came with the overthrow of a monarchy of
several thousand years and the sudden inaugura-
tion of a republican form of government. Under
the old order the family system had been accentu-
ated to such a degree that the individual was
trained to a deep and keen sense of responsibility in
his relations to the family or clan, but with little
or no appreciation of a responsibility to the larger
unit, the community, or the nation. Thus public
opinion, so essential to the success of a representa-
tive form of government, had not been developed

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

under the monarchy. What protection the indi-
vidual required in his relations to society was se-
cured through his affiliations with his clan and with
his trade, craft, or provincial guilds. Custom and
tradition carried more weight than law. The lawyer
was unknown in Chinese society prior to the begin-
nings of the twentieth century. A man's relations
to his fellow-men were those based upon equity
rather than upon legal definition. On the whole, so-
ciety was very loosely knit, so far as its relations to
the larger unit, the central government, was con-
cerned. So long as China remained isolated, this
condition of affairs might have continued, as there
were apparently no reasons from within for a
change, but the inevitable contact with the civiliza-
tions of other peoples altered the entire situation.
With the inauguration of the republic, there
has been a tendency to scrap the institutions of the
old China in a wholesale way irrespective of rela-
tive values, and to take on occidental institutions
in form rather than in essence. For instance, the
ideas of corporate business as taken from the West
will no more succeed in China without an accom-
panying sense of the responsibility of trusteeship
than they will elsewhere. Potentially, the Chinese
possess the qualities necessary to the success of
corporate enterprise. This has already been dem-

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

onstrated by a number of successful organizations
of this character, but before corporate business can
be developed in a large way among the Chinese
mercantile communities, it becomes necessary to
institute a body of law and courts competent to
administer the law, and to build a solid founda-
tion for the new order.

During the past decade, the Chinese have
organized numerous manufacturing companies of a
corporate nature. Under the extraordinary condi-
tions resulting from the European war, huge profits
were made, but, unfortunately, these were paid out
in dividends without the building up of reserves or
provisions for depreciation and maintenance. Con-
sequently, with the leaner years following the
termination of the war, many of these companies
suffered financial embarrassments for lack of liquid
capital. Furthermore, stockholders have often
been at the mercy of promoters or rapacious
officials. However, experience is educating the
Chinese business man to an appreciation of the
necessity of providing capital reserve in corporate
enterprise and of safeguarding his investments
against abuses, with the result that there has been
a very noticeable slackening in modern industrial
enterprise in the country. The family system^
which was admirably adapted to the old order be-

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

fore the introduction of modern machinery and the
application of the principles of modern science,
handicaps in many ways the building up of trade
and industry on modern lines. The responsibility
of a successful member in a family for all his rela-
tives is disastrous to the pay-roll of a corporate
institution of which the successful member is a
director. The institution known in China as face,
which is so strongly identified with the family sys-
tem, militates seriously against young men start-
ing at the bottom of the ladder and working their
way up. Students trained in engineering in the
West return to China reluctant to participate in
anything flavoring of manual labor. Face stands in
the way. The trade and craft guilds' apprentice
system also adds to the difficulties of young men of
education launching upon a career in business or
industrial establishments. Gradually these handi-
caps to the successful institution of a modern eco-
nomic order will disappear, but for many years after
they will have disappeared in form, the essence will
continue in evidence. An analogous situation exists
in Japan, where in form feudalism has disappeared,
but in essence it continues to embarrass industry
and trade.

The greatest handicap to the rapid institution
of a successful modern economic society in China

1 1901

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

is the disintegration of the central-government au-
thority. Following the dissolution of the mon-
archy,, numerous individuals working through the
control of military organizations have set them-
selves up in various parts of the country as semi-
independent rulers with the result that we now
have in China over a million men under arms serv-
ing various leaders, each pitted against the others
in efforts to strengthen his own political position.
The economic conditions in the country generally
have encouraged individuals joining the standards
of these semi-independent leaders as according
them a better means of livelihood than struggling
to eke out an existence otherwise. Thus soldiering
in China seems to be a matter of necessity rather
than of choice. In other words, with improved eco-
nomic conditions,, particularly improved internal
communications, the temptation to leave the pro-
ductive employments for employment in brigand
armies will be less in evidence. Thus whatever may
be done to improve the economic conditions in the
country generally would assist in hastening the
development of a stronger central government.

A distinctly promising aspect of the situation is
the sense of nationalism which is growing, particu-
larly among the business men, bankers, and the
students of the country. This, together with the

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

receptivity of the people generally to modern ideas,
promises much for the future. The Chinese are
essentially an industrious people. They possess
good ethical and educational ideals. They are nat-
ural traders and show ability in the handling of
machinery and the instruments of modern indus-
try. In foreign countries,, where they have worked
under favorable political and economic conditions,
they exhibit remarkable ability. The problems con-
fronting the country today are stupendous. The
transition from a medieval civilization to that of a
modern social and economic order for a people pos-
sessing one-quarter of the world's population and
an area greater than that of the United States or
Europe must of necessity be attended with friction
and involve the time element, especially so as the
evolution is one from the bottom up rather than
from the top down. The forces that work beneath
the surface are, however, of such a nature that we
may expect a fairly successful consummation of
this transition during the next few decades.

Nothing better exemplifies China's backward-
ness in a modern economic sense than her per
capita consumption of iron and steel, which is one-
one hundred and eightieth of that of the United
States, one-one hundredth of that of England or
Germany, one-tenth of that of Japan, and one-

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

thirtieth of the average per capita consumption of
the world generally. The country possesses the best
coal and iron resources of any Pacific region, but
very little by way of development has yet taken
place in these two industries which constitute the
backbone of a modern industrial society. China has
14 blast furnaces with a maximum capacity of
8 50,000 tons annually but which produced in 1923
about 300,000 tons. The United States has 450 fur-
naces, which in 1922 produced 27,000,000 tons of
pig. As for coal, China produces about 25,000,000
tons annually and the United States 500,000,000
tons. China has but 7,000 miles of railways com-
pared with America's 265,000 miles. In motor ve-
hicles China should have, proportionate to her
population and territory, four times as many as
the United States, which would mean 50,000,000.
Instead there are but 10,000 in use in the country.
The United States can boast of 10,000,000 tele-
phones in use throughout the country, compared
with about 100,000 in use in China. Of surfaced
motor roads, the United States has about 300,000
miles and a total of total of 2,500,000 miles of rural
roads. In China, surfaced roads are confined at
best to a very few cities, with probably an aggre-
gate of less than 1,000 miles, and so called "good
roads" about 8,000 miles. In modern manufactur-

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

ing industries, the United States has 7,000,000
employees compared with less than 500,000 in
China. The United States annually produces 17,-
000,000,000 kilowatt-hour units of electric power
by the utilization of her water-power resources.
China, which is equally rich in water-power re-
sources, has as yet done practically nothing to avail
herself of her resources. In cotton spindles, which
represent the most extensively developed modern
industry in China, the country boasts of 3,000,000
compared with 37,000,000 in America, yet China is
the third in importance as a cotton-growing coun-
try. It represents the largest market in the world
for cotton yarn and cotton goods, and has cheaper
labor for cotton manufacture than any other coun-
try.

These figures indicate clearly the backwardness
of the country in a modern economic sense, and at
the same time serve to convey to the mind of the
American reader, who resides in a country very
similar in topography to that of China, the enor-
mous potentialities of the Chinese Republic as a
modern economic society.

Among Western observers there are those who
would discourage China's rise as a modern eco-
nomic and political society, fearing the competition
of the four hundred million industrious Chinese,

1 194 3

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

when armed with the implements of modern sci-
ence. A weak, undeveloped China is a far greater
menace to the world than would be a strong, well-
ordered, well-nourished population, especially one
possessing the rich background of culture that
characterizes the Chinese people. As shown above,
China is not land poor. Furthermore, Asia prob-
ably possesses more undeveloped and unsettled
territory than does any other continent. The West
need only fear a yellow peril so long as the economic
level of China remains below that of the Occident.
Through the development of China and Asia's
great treasure-houses of natural resources, the eco-
nomic level of the Chinese people will be elevated
to that approaching America's, with a correspond-
ing advance in the earning and purchasing powers
of the individual. Thus it is to the interest of the
American people to assist in every possible way in
the improvement of the economic condition of the
Chinese people.

It is a noteworthy fact that America has been
and continues to be the largest contributor, both in
funds and in personnel, to philanthropic work in
China. It is estimated that the American contribu-
tions, which probably amount to ten million dol-
lars gold a year, and the American missionary
population of six thousand, who handle these funds

I i95l

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

in China, represent more than the aggregate of the
funds and facilities furnished by all other peoples.
In addition to these regular contributions, special
contributions are made from time to time. For in-
stance, a few years ago seven million dollars gold
were expended upon the installation of the Rocke-
feller Foundation Medical School in Peking, and a
year later seven million and five hundred thou-
sand dollars were raised in the United States for
famine relief in North China. It is unfortunate
that the modern educational institutions in China,
including the many mission schools, have not
adapted their curricula in a more practical way to
the present-day needs of the Chinese environment.
There is entirely too much of a tendency to sub-
stitute the academic training of the West for the
former Chinese academic curriculum.

There was probably never a time in Chinese
history when the country was so sadly in need of
men trained to appreciate the significance of
China's great outstanding economic needs and to
devise ways and means of correcting this situation
than there is today. It is a sad comment upon the
intellect of the nation, possessing as she does a
marvelous wealth in man-power and material re-
sources, that it continues to be necessary to put out
periodically calls to the outside world for famine

CHINA'S ECONOMIC RESOURCES

relief. Far too many men are being graduated with
the degree of Bachelor of Arts whose training fits
them for little more than the ability to pass down
to others that which they have acquired. China is
suffering from tremendous economic ills, and the
brains and brawn of the country should be mobil-
ized in efforts to correct these. The Chinese people
would also do well to encourage the investments of
foreign capital in the development of the natural
resources of their country. There is no need of
jeopardizing the future political status of China,
through foreign-capital investments, any more
than has America's political status been injured
through the large sums of British capital which
in decades gone by played so prominent a part in
the development of the natural resources of the
United States. America now possesses a surplus
of capital which could, under proper safeguards,
be invested in productive enterprises in China in a
manner helpful to the correction of China's great
economic ills and thereby assist China and the
world generally.

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

Ey HENRY KITTREDGE NORTON

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

In the middle of the sixteenth century, about
the time the Spaniards were beginning to garner
the golden harvest of the New World and to send
their people out into its wildernesses to establish
there the power and the civilization of Spain, there
was a similar urge toward riches and territory in
the opposite corner of Europe.

The growing power of the rulers of Muscovy
had been bruited abroad, and inspired their nearer
neighbors and even more distant ones with concern
for their safety. Some prepared for war; others sent
to Moscow rich gifts, which the Russian rulers con-
sidered as tribute.

Even beyond the Urals, the high mountain wall
which marks the eastern boundary of Europe, had
spread the fame of Russian prowess, and the Tartar
prince of this region, Kutshum Khan, sought to
secure the friendship of the Tsars by sending to
Moscow long trains of the finest furs. Furs in
Russia were as good as gold in Spain, and if the
Khan's gift excited feelings of gratitude in the
palace, it excited cupidity elsewhere. When Yer-
mak, an outlawed bandit chieftain, heard of this

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princely gift, he determined to cross the Ural wall
and try his fortune in the lands beyond. In 1580,
with less than two thousand men, he set forth. He
soon made himself master of Kutshum's country,
including his capital, which was known as Sibir.
Yermak called the country Siberia, and offered it
to the Tsar in exchange for his pardon.

The bargain was struck, and Russia found her-
self facing a new world across the Urals, with its
lure of conquest, riches, and death, as surely as
Spain was facing a new world across the Atlantic.
And the Russians were no less eager than the Span-
iards to enter and explore. They swarmed across
the mountain wall and advanced steadily east-
ward. Cossacks were in the van; herdsmen and
farmers followed.

From river valley to river valley they moved,
founding towns as they went. By 1651 they had
reached Lake Baikal and founded Irkutsk. Thus
far they had met no serious resistance, but east of
Baikal they were opposed by the Buriats, a power-
ful tribe of the Mongol race that had produced a
Genghis Khan and a Tamerlane. It took the Cos-
sacks four years of hard fighting to subdue these
doughty plainsmen. But in the north the advance
had been more rapid, and other Cossack bands had
reached the sea of Okhotsk as early as 1636. The

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

territory along the Amur from Baikal to the Pacific
was still unknown.

In 1649 the governor of Yakutsk granted the
request of the Cossack chieftain, Habarov, that he
be allowed to enter this country in search of a short
route to the Amur. Habarov started with about
seventy men. Violating the governor's instructions
that the natives should be treated with considera-
tion, Habarov left behind him a wide trail of
burned villages, murdered men, and tortured
women. The outraged natives turned upon him,
and he was obliged to return for reinforcements.
With a larger force he was able to defeat the natives
and establish a fortified post at Albazin on the
Amur River.

Here the Russians first came into contact with
the Chinese. China had never occupied the coun-
try north of the Amur, but the governor of Man-
churia collected an annual tribute in furs for the
emperor of China. Habarov, flushed with success,
dispatched an embassy to the governor to demand
a tribute "as great as he could give," and at the
same time asked his own superiors for an army to
conquer, not only the Amur country, but Man-
churia as well. His embassy was massacred by the
natives, and his request for an army was ignored,
so Habarov continued his murderous course down

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

the river to its junction with the Ussuri, where the
city of Habarovsk now stands. Here he fought off
one Manchu army, and slipping around another,
fixed his camp on the site of the modern Blago-
veshchensk.

Quarrels with his men and with his superiors
resulted in Habarov's recall, and without his grim
leadership, the Russians had to resist the deter-
mined efforts of the Chinese to rid the country of
their presence. They were driven out and Albazin
destroyed in 1658. But seven years later it was re-
established, and by 1674 had become a large post.
The Chinese emperor, Kang Hsi, renewed the
struggle, and in 1685 again destroyed the settle-
ment. No sooner had his troops left, however, than
the Russians were back rebuilding the fortifications
once more.

While Cossack indomitability was winning over
Chinese military effort on the Amur, Russian state-
craft was losing to Chinese diplomacy at Nert-
chinsk. By a treaty signed in 1689, China's first
treaty with a Western power, Russia agreed to
withdraw from the Amur and recognize the river
Gorbitza (Argun?) as the boundary between the
two empires.

For over one hundred and fifty years Russia
contented herself with what she had gained, and

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

made no effort to extend her possessions in the Far
East. In 1846, Tsar Nicholas I, disturbed by the
increasing interest of Great Britain in China, sent
an expedition to explore the mouth of the Amur.
The following year he sent out Nicolai Muraviev
as governor-general of Siberia. Muraviev was of
the breed of empire-builders. He resolved to con-
trol the Amur at all costs. The Tsar supported
him, and settlements were made at Nikolaievsk,
DeCas tries Bay, and Alexandrovsk. This was fol-
lowed by the occupation of Saghalien. Muraviev
not only organized armies and colonizing expedi-
tions, but he won over the natives by fair treat-
ment.

Thus it was that when the Crimean War
temporarily wrecked the power of Russia in
Europe, the Siberian Governor-General was able
to continue with his plans in the Far East. In 1854
he started down the Amur with one steamship and
seventy-five barges. This expedition enabled him
to hold Nikolaievsk against the French and English
so that Russia lost no ground in the Far East in
the war. Other expeditions followed. The Chinese
protested and Muraviev invited them to a confer-
ence, at which he assured them that he wanted
nothing but peace, but he was going to establish a
string of forts along the left bank of the Amur.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

The Governor-General proceeded with his
plans, and the Chinese continued with their pro-
tests. Peking was too busy at the time warding off
English and French aggression to do other than
protest, however, and in 1858 agreed with Mura-
viev, in a treaty signed at Aigun, that the
Amur should be the boundary between the two
empires as far as the Ussuri. Beyond that it was
to be determined by later agreement. Russians and
Chinese were to share the navigation of the river,
and trade was to be free across the new boundary.
The Chinese took a leaf from their experiences with
the Treaty of Nanking, and provided that Chinese
on the left bank should remain under Chinese -
jurisdiction.

There was great rejoicing among the Russians.
Muraviev was made a count with the title of
"Amurski," by a grateful Tsar. Holy Russia had
not only reached the Amur, but had done so with-
out hostilities or bloodshed. But Russian appetite
grew by what it fed upon, and Muraviev was not
slow to take advantage of the pressure then being
exerted upon Peking by Britain and France to ex-
tend still farther the boundaries of his Siberian
Empire. He surveyed the coast of the Japan Sea as
far south as the Korean boundary, and then occu-
pied Peter the Great and Possiet bays in 1860, an
1 206 1

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

occupation which was sanctioned and made per-
manent by the Treaty of Peking in the same year.

Thus Russia, as a result of the general European
aggression upon China in the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, finally established her far eastern boundaries
on the mainland. In the island of Saghalien she
first came into contact with the newly opened em-
pire of Japan. In 1867 she made a naiVe agreement
with Japan under which the island was to be joint-
ly occupied by the two powers. Five years was
enough to show the unworkability of this plan, and
Russia ceded Japan the Kurile Islands in return
for Japanese claims on Saghalien.

Vladivostok, "the ruler of the East/' was made
the chief Russian naval station in the Far East,
and it was hoped for a time that it would at least
realize Peter the Great's dream of an open port.
Some means of communication other than un-
certain rivers and poor roads was necessary for this,
however. At last it came the Trans-Siberian Rail-
road. In 1898 the first train reached Irkutsk from
Russia, and the line was opened from Vladivostock
to Habarovsk.

By this time, however, the dreams of Peter the
Great had grown in the minds of the Russian bu-
reaucracy until they had become a vision of a vast
Asiatic empire under Russian sway. Vladivostok

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was good, but there were other ports which were
better; one of these was at the foot of the Korean
peninsula, and the other was Talienwan on the Li-
aotung peninsula. When Japan specified the Liao-
tung peninsula as a part of the spoils of her victory
over China in 1895, Russia, first securing the co-
operation of Germany and France, stepped in and
forced Japan to relinquish her claims. As a reward
for this move, which she characterized as a "service
to China," Russia secured in the following year the
right to build a railroad across Manchuria to
Vladivostok, with a branch from Harbin to Port
Arthur. Two years later she secured a twenty-five-
year lease on the Liaotung peninsula and the ice-
free harbor of Port Arthur. The new line, known
as the Chinese Eastern Railway, was opened in
1903, and at last Russia had her warm-water port.
This achievement made Russia the dominant
power in Northern Asia, and the money-and-
power-mad bureaucrats at St. Petersburg enlarged
their vision of empire to the shores of the Yellow
Sea. Under the agreement with China, Russia was
authorized to send guards into the railroad zone.
She had sent in troops far beyond the number need-
ed for police purposes, and, when the Boxer revolt
paralyzed China, Russia sent in six army corps and
occupied the whole of Manchuria. By subtle in-

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

trigue during the negotiations at Peking after the
Boxer trouble, Russia secured the right to remain
in Manchuria nearly two years longer. Before this
time expired she presented new demands to China
which furnished ample evidence of her intention to
stay until she was put out.

At the same time Russia had been busy at the
court of Korea. Advisers were sent. Concessions
were secured. Intrigue was rife. All to the end that
Russian influence and Russian power might over-
come the opposing wave of Japanese influence and
Japanese power and reach to the very foot of the
peninsula. Agreements were made between the
rival empires; as readily were they broken.

Another power was watching the Russian ad-
vance with ill-concealed alarm. Britain's interests
in India and China were too vast and too vital for
her to allow Russia to push too far to the south
without making a determined effort to resist her.
Co-operation with Japan was the obvious method,
and in 1902 was signed the first Anglo-Japanese
Alliance. This assured Japan that when she and
Russia came to blows, she could count on British
support if any third power entered the fray on
Russia's side.

Thus supported, Japan claimed to have found
that Russia was sending troops into Korea in

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

civilian dress. Tokyo solemnly called a halt. Brief
and unsuccessful negotiations were followed by the
outbreak of war in February of 1904. When the
Treaty of Portsmouth was signed the following
year, Russia's dream of a great Asiatic empire had
faded into a more distant future. The Liaotung
peninsula, now known as south Manchuria, with
the railroad south of Changchun, was gone; Japan
had the same rights in northern Manchuria as
Russia; the Russian influence in Korea was forever
broken; and the island of Saghalien, as far north as
the fiftieth parallel, passed to Japan.

Not even such a disaster could crush the
Russian ambitions. Construction was immediately
begun upon the Amur Railway line, and the line
around Lake Baikal to replace the ferry there.
Many stretches of the road were double-tracked.
Vladivostok, which had been sacrificed to Port
Arthur, again came into its own; it was heavily
fortified and garrisoned with eighty thousand men.
Immigration was encouraged. Industrial develop-
ment was enhanced. Every preparation was made
looking toward the day of revenge upon Japan.

These preparations were rendered unnecessary
by the development of the international political
situation. The talk of the "open door" in China,
with equal opportunities for the people of all na-
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THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

tions, and the insistence upon the maintenance of
the territorial integrity of the Chinese Empire by
the United States, soon made it clear to the bureau-
crats of St. Petersburg and Tokyo that if they con-
tinued quarreling, international honesty might pre-
vail and neither of them would get the rich
Manchurian spoil. It behooved the spoilers to co-
operate. By 1907, such co-operation had replaced
any feeling of enmity left by the late war, and
Russia and Japan proceeded under cover of pro-
fessions of adherence to their international obliga-
tions to arrange for the division of the wealth of
Manchuria between themselves.

How effective was this co-operation between the
erstwhile enemies the United States was to learn to
her sorrow. In 1907-8 British-American interests
secured from China a concession to build two lines
of railway in Manchuria. These would have con-
nected the Gulf of Chihli and the Amur River by a
line some two or three hundred miles west of the
South Manchuria Railway, crossing the Chinese
Eastern Railway probably at Tsitsihar. Japan and
Russia protested, and Great Britain, in spite of the
new aspect this Russo-Japanese co-operation
placed upon the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, was con-
strained to let her ally have her way. The project
was killed.

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

In 1909 the same combination offerees as effec-
tively quashed Secretary Knox's plan for the inter-
nationalization of the Manchurian railways. This
plan, utterly impractical as it seems, is the only
means yet devised which offers any possibility of
permanent peace in the Far East. But it means the
renunciation of imperialistic ambitions by both
Russia and Japan, a renunciation which so far has
been a matter of words rather than deeds on both
sides.

Shut off from warm water in the Yellow Sea by
Japan's victory and the later agreements which left
south Manchuria and Korea in Japanese hands,
Russia devised a new and still more audacious
scheme to re-establish her Asian empire. After all,
the direct route from Baikal to the Gulf of Chihli
was shorter than the route through Manchuria, and
Peking was a greater prize than Seoul. The situa-
tion in Mongolia offered an excellent opportunity
for Russian intrigue in this direction. While the
Mongols had voluntarily submitted to the Man-
chus, they had always enjoyed a large measure of
independence. In the years just preceding the
Chinese revolution, there was a marked increase of
Chinese activity in and about Urga, the Mongolian
capital. More Chinese troops were sent out, and
immigration of Chinese colonists and traders was

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

promoted. The Mongols began to realize that their
nationality was threatened. The Mongol princes
were already in friendly communication with St.
Petersburg, and the overthrow of the Manchu
dynasty was the signal for Russian recognition of
Mongol autonomy. This was followed by an agree-
ment, signed as late as September 17, 1914, giving
Russia a deciding voice in the construction of rail-
ways in Mongolia.

But the Great War was upon the world, and the
days of imperial Russia were numbered. The war
in Europe soon absorbed all Russia's energies, and
her pressure to the East ceased. Japan was not
slow to seize her advantage. She had made secret
agreements with Russia in 1907, 1910, and 1912,
looking to the partition of Northern China between
them. But now Japan had Shantung and other ad-
vantages under the Twenty-one Demands, and in
1916, by subtly suggesting that she might join
Germany, she constrained Russia to underwrite all
of these gains, thus consolidating Japan's greatly
advanced position.

Then came the bolshevik revolution, with re-
sults no less far-reaching in Asia than in Europe.
The Siberians were at first bewildered by the
changes at Petrograd. But the communists were
active in the East. Soviets were formed and took

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OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

over the government; allied intervention followed;
the Soviets were wiped out, and support was given
to the reactionary group surrounding Admiral Kol-
chak. This called forth a real military effort on the
part of the soviet government at Moscow. Kol-
chak was defeated, captured, and executed and his
adherents driven out of the country. The soviet
line was brought eastward as far as Lake Baikal
and a socialist state, known as the Far Eastern
Republic, was set up in the territory between the
lake and the Pacific.

The Japanese military party was determined
that the confusion in Russia should be taken ad-
vantage of to extend Japan's possessions on the
mainland. The agreements between the Allies as
to the intervention were openly and repeatedly
violated, and upon the withdrawal of the Allied
arms, the intervention became a Japanese occupa-
tion with Japanese troops in control as far west as
Lake Baikal.

The Siberian peasants are not of those who
lightly tolerate foreign rule. With help from Mos-
cow they organized as partisans and gradually
cleared their country of Cossacks and Japanese,
thus making the Far Eastern Republic a reality
from Baikal to the Pacific, with the exception of
Vladivostok, which was still held by the Japanese

I 214!

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

and Russians they could control, and of Saghalien,
which was occupied by Japanese troops. The in-
fant republic struggled on for nearly two years, but
while it was able to make itself master in its own
house, it was cut off from the rest of the world by
a continuous line of reactionary Cossacks and
Japanese, who kept the man-power of the country
constantly under arms ready to repel invasion, and
who literally starved the republic. In November of
1922, it quitely slipped into soviet Russia, as, ac-
cording to some observers, it had intended to do
from the beginning.

Of the many raids and counterraids across the
borders of the republic, one is of special impor-
tance. With the breakdown of the Russian power,
the Chinese had renewed their efforts to subject
Mongolia to their rule. The resulting hostility of
the Mongols made it easy for the Russian reaction-
ary, Baron Ungern, when he fled from Siberia, to
drive the Chinese from Urga, and to occupy the
town as a base from which to make attacks upon
the Far Eastern Republic. In the summer of 1921
he made his great raid. He was speedily repulsed,
and the pursuing Russians not only effected his
capture but themselves took Urga, where they set
up a sort of Mongolian soviet regime, which has
continued to the present time.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

After this coup, Russia seriously undertook the
re-establishment of her former position in the Far
East. Soviet diplomacy had begun its efforts with
a dramatic renunciation of claims inherited from
the tsarist regime. After a preamble declaring that
"all nations should have their independence and
self-government, and should not submit to being
bound by other nations/' Moscow offered to deal
with Peking upon a new basis. Territory seized by
the tsarist regime was to be returned; the Chinese
Eastern Railway was to be handed over to China
without a cent of compensation; the Boxer-indem-
nity payments were renounced; extraterritoriality
for Russians was to be canceled; and all treaties
made by imperial Russia with Japan or other
powers which were unfair to China were to be
annulled.

The Chinese people had just come through a
very painful experience in their dealings with the
Allies. Entering the war against Germany at the
urgent request of the United States, and on the
theory that by thus making common cause with
the Allies she would have the opportunity to se~
cure a fair hearing and an equitable settlement
of her demands at the Peace Conference, China had
found herself bound hand and foot and delivered
over to the mercies of Japan. The name Shantung

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

stands as the symbol for all of the wrong that was
done and the right that was undone to China at the
Peace Conference. To a humiliated and embittered
China, the voice of Russia offering to deal with her
in the spirit of fairness and equity was like balm on
an aching wound. Was this at last a great and
powerful nation from the West ready to stand by
China in her struggle against exploitation and
bondage? The Chinese people were ready to give
her a chance at least. Russia could not treat her
worse than had Japan and the Allies.

But the foreign office at Peking was inclined to
be cautious. They knew of many a previous oc-
casion when Russia had spoken fairly yes, when
Russia had stood with them against their enemies.
They remembered her friendly offices after the
Sino-Japanese War, when the Liaotung peninsula
was saved to China. They remembered her sup-
port in the negotiations of 1901 after the Boxer
trouble, and they also remembered the high cost of
Russian friendship. Three years after Russia saved
the Liaotung for China, it was in Russian hands
and China has not got it back yet. And three years
after the Boxer negotiations were over, Russia was
still sprawled all over Manchuria; and when Japan
drove her back China must stand by and watch the
erstwhile combatants make an agreement to divide

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

her great dependency between themselves. It was
small wonder that the Chinese diplomats were a bit
wary of this new Russia which came bearing gifts.

Events soon showed that there was justification
for this attitude. The soft words, first spoken in
1919 and repeated in September of 1920, were put
to the test of good faith in the summer of 1921. It
will be remembered that Russian troops had en-
tered Urga, and that a soviet regime had been
established there under the aegis of Moscow.
When, in the face of this old-fashioned aggression,
the Soviets asked for the re-establishment of diplo-
matic relations with Peking, the Chinese demanded
the immediate evacuation of Mongolian territory.
Russia offered to negotiate about it; China in-
sisted upon evacuation as a condition precedent to
any negotiation.

Under these circumstances, Moscow sent one
of her cleverest diplomats, Joffe, to further her
interests in the Far East. Joffe is as good a public-
ity agent as he is a diplomat, and his plan was to
play upon the sentiments of the Chinese people in
order to bring the Chinese government to his way
of thinking. "Why," he asked, "was there so much
fuss about a people's army in distant Urga when
the capitalistic nations all had troops within the
very walls of Peking?" The usual bolshevik at-

f 218 I

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

tacks upon the imperialistic nations of the West
were spread broadcast throughout the country.
America came in for a special diatribe because of
the friendly feelings which many Chinese still en-
tertained for the United States.

Having created what he thought was a favor-
able atmosphere, Joffe began to make known his
demands upon China. Outstanding among these
was a large measure of control in the Chinese
Eastern Railway. This was hardly consonant with
earlier professions of intention to turn over the
railroad to China "without a cent of compensa-
tion/' and Joffe attempted to explain the dis-
crepancy. He pointed out that the renunciatory
declaration promised to relinquish rights which had
accrued from the "predatory and violent policy of
the Tsar's government/' but that it "did not at
all annul Russia's legal and just interests in
China." "Even if they turned over the Chinese
Eastern Railway to China, for instance," he said,
"this will not annul Russia's interests in this line,
which is a portion of the Great Siberian Railway
and unites one part of the Russian territory with
another." And he closed with the threat that, if
China continued in her refusal to recognize Russian
interests, Russia would "consider herself free" from
her voluntary promises.

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

This was music of an entirely different tempo.
It was now clear to China and the world that the
new Russia, despite her idealistic protestations and
her professed adherence to the principle of self-
government and the entire independence of na-
tions,, was as active and aggressive a neighbor as
the tsarist Russia which she had replaced.

Japan had long realized this., and had lost no
opportunity to strengthen her own position and to
counter the expected Russian advance. Her ambi-
tions in Shantung, in Siberia, and on the Chinese
Eastern Railway had been thwarted, and in each
case the weight of America's influence has been
thrown into the scale against her. Japan looks
upon Russia in Asia as her enemy rather than
China's, and it is not to be wondered at if she looks
upon Washington's efforts as opposition to her
rather than as assistance to China. Japan has no
present fear of a rapprochement between Washing-
ton and Moscow, however, and so now humoring
Uncle Sam, now blustering against him, sometimes
even threatening him Japanese statecraft is di-
rected toward securing for the island empire as
large a share of the spoils of Northern Asia as is
possible.

For the directing minds of both Russia and
Japan the northern half, at least, of the Chinese

f 220]

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

territory is a legitimate subject of partition. The
vast fertile plains of Manchuria, the grazing lands
and mineral wealth of Mongolia, and the teeming
cities and ports of the northern provinces of China
proper are the stakes of a vast game of diplomacy,
intrigue, economic exploitation, and war.

The present state of affairs in China itself tends
strongly to encourage this cynical view, and offers
an excellent opportunity for the imperialistic play-
ers to exercise all their skill in the game they are
playing. The Chinese Republic has never been
anything but a name. It is merely a euphemism
for a succession of military adventurers whose great
aim in life is the enhancement of the prestige of
their ancestors as measured by the wealth they
themselves are able to accumulate. Their chief
concern has been to get their hands upon the
sources of revenue which the control of Peking
gives to them. For them, too, China is but a vast
field for exploitation.

With a few such leaders in power in Peking and
with many others of similar character striving
to supplant them, there is a standing invitation
to aggressive and unscrupulous diplomacy to use
wholesale bribery and corruption to secure its
ends. That the hands of both Russia and Japan
are at work in the disorganization of the Chinese

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

Republic is not to be denied if we would look at
the realities of the situation. The very vigor and
frequency of denials would do much to convince
the sophisticated observer if there were not ample
other evidence available.

Out of the sorry tangle of political corruption
and diplomatic intrigue have come three so-called
"treaties." What purport to be the terms of these,
have been published. If we recall the history of
Russo-Japanese and Russo-Chinese diplomacy and
the vast differences which have been shown to
exist between the published terms and the actual
terms of their agreements, we shall be forgiven if
we suspect that the published terms of these new
agreements do not tell the whole story. But let us
consider them as they are published, and then look
at the actual situation.

First, in point of time, is the Sino-Russian
agreement of May 31, 1924. China holds Russia to
her generous offer in part. A conference is to be
held "within one month" to annul the tsarist
treaties. Agreements between the tsarist govern-
ment and third powers detrimental to China are
declared null and void. China's sovereignty over
Mongolia is affirmed, withdrawal of soviet troops
to be arranged at the forementioned conference.
Bolshevik propaganda in China is prohibited.

f aaaj

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

Boundaries and navigation rights are also to be
fixed by the conference. Concessions, the Boxer
indemnity, and extraterritoriality are renounced.
On its face, it is a fair string of victories for Chinese
diplomacy. What did the Soviets get? First, rec-
ognition, possession of the old Russian legation and
consulates, and, by making her representative the
first ambassador to China, the deanship of the
diplomatic corps. Second, the promised suppres-
sion by China of White Guard activities in her
territory. Last, but far from least, the promise of
joint control of the great artery without which
Russia's position is hopeless the Chinese Eastern
Railway.

Such was the first of the three treaties. What
did it mean ? The promised conference is still in the
future. Russia is quite as desirous of being freed
from the old agreements as is China. While Mos-
cow blandly recognizes Chinese sovereignty over
Mongolia, she as blandly enters into a treaty with
the latter country recognizing Mongolian auton-
omy, which Chicherin has described as being
"practical independence and allowing the Mon-
golians full freedom in foreign affairs." Russia has
within the last few weeks withdrawn her troops
from Urga, first taking care to establish there a
Mongolian soviet government wholly in sympathy

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

with Moscow and which will facilitate the speedy
return of those troops when occasion demands.
Concessions, extraterritoriality, and the Boxer
indemnity had long since gone by the board,
abolished by the Chinese themselves. As for bol-
shevik propaganda, there is every evidence that it
has increased rather than diminished since the
treaty was signed.

Russia gave practically nothing. What did she
get ? Joint control of the Chinese Eastern Railway ?
The Chinese government's promise was clear and
unequivocal. But the Chinese government's power
is very limited. It is extremely shadowy in Man-
churia, where Chang Tso-Lin is no slower than the
Mongolians to assert his autonomy; and the
Chinese Eastern Railway is in what he chooses to
call the "autonomous three eastern provinces."
Before Russia may have joint control of any rail-
roads in his territory, Chang, not Peking, must be
seen. He ignored the treaty until he found himself
at war with Peking and the Russians making dis-
concerting demonstrations in his rear. Chang must
choose between loss of the railway and complete
overthrow. In September, 1925, a new treaty be-
tween Moscow and Mukden was given publicity.
This reiterated many of the provisions of the pre-
vious document, and the arrangement for the joint

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

control of the railway was affirmed. Soviet Russia
at last secured the long-desired joint control over
the coveted railway, and is now busily engaged in
converting this into sole control as rapidly as cir-
cumstances will permit.

One paragraph found in both of these treaties is
significant. In each case the contracting parties
"agree that the future of the Chinese Eastern Rail-
way shall be determined by the Republic of China
and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to the
exclusion of any third party or parties." This is
plain notice to Great Britain and France with their
investment interests, to the United States with her
internationalization schemes, and to Japan with
her own designs upon the road that Russia is going
to fix the future of the Chinese Eastern Railway
with China alone, and that the ultimate arrange-
ment is to be in no way detrimental to Russia.

The progress of soviet diplomacy was becoming
alarming, and Japan determined to arrive at an
adjustment of outstanding differences. Hitherto
she had been very dictatorial in announcing her
terms for recognition, and the Russians had been
hardly less extreme in their demands. The irrecon-
cilable attitude was now softened on both sides.
New negotiators, Karakhan and Yoshizawa, took
up the task, and on January 20, 1925, the latest

I 225 I

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

Russo-Japanese treaty was signed. The Soviets se-
cured recognition of the old Russian legation and
consulate properties, the revision of all treaties
since that of Portsmouth, the suppression of White
Guard activities, and the evacuation of northern
Saghalien. In return, Japan obtained a ratification
of the Treaty of Portsmouth; temporary fishing-
rights in Russian waters; the prohibition of bol-
shevik propaganda; an agreement for the settle-
ment of Russian debts on as favorable a basis as
any other nation may receive; and, most impor-
tant, extensive rights of exploitation for oil and
coal in northern Saghalien. In addition, she re-
ceived an expression of the personal regret of the
Russian negotiator for the Nikolaievsk incident.

The difference between the Russian concessions
in this treaty and the exaggerated Japanese de-
mands of four years ago is the measure of the extent
to which Russia has come back in the Far East. It
has been possible to do little more than suggest the
processes by which Russia has re-established her
position in Northeastern Asia. It took a great deal
of diplomacy, four conferences, and a large amount
of irregular fighting. ' But Russia has come back.
The Soviets today occupy all of the territory in
Siberia within the boundaries of the former Russian
Empire, and in addition they have a firm hold on

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

Mongolia. The Chinese Eastern Railway is once
more in their grasp, carrying the products of
Siberia and Manchuria to Vladivostok, which is
again a Russian port.

In spite of the turmoil of war and revolution,
Russia finds herself in as strong a position in the
Far East today as in 1914. And she is the same
old Russia the Russia of one hundred and fifty
million people constantly pressing outward 3 con-
stantly thirsting for warm water; the same old
Russia expansive and expanding, dominating and
domineering, who has done her full share to keep
the world in arms for more than a century. Her
leaders are no whit more scrupulous and be it
said, no whit less so than those of imperial days.

Thus Russia and these leaders find themselves
in an unusually favorable position in the Far East.
The slogans of the war democracy, self-determi-
nation, and independence have echoed through
the Orient, and have stressed the discord between
occidental preaching and occidental practice. The
reluctance of the treaty powers to make any con-
cessions, however justifiable; the long delay of
France in ratifying the results of the Washington
Conference; the refusal of Japan even to discuss
withdrawal from south Manchuria, at the expira-
tion of the Russian lease; and, above all, the con-
1 227!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

stant assumption of superiority both in word and
deed by Europeans, Japanese, and Americans have
exasperated the more awakened section of Chinese
opinion to the limit of endurance.

This makes a rich soil in which bolshevism may
sow its troublous seeds. Communism as an eco-
nomic or political doctrine is wholly opposed to the
genius and tradition of the Chinese race. But ex-
treme nationalism, an instrument highly favored at
Moscow, despite internationalist professions, is
eagerly seized upon by the more active Chinese as a
possible means of freeing their country from the
claims in which Europe and Japan, and, to a lesser
extent, America, now hold her. The evidences of
Russian activity along this line are too abundant
to leave any doubt as to its existence. Having re-
established her old position by arms and diplo-
macy, Russia is now preparing for still further ad-
vances by stirring up the Chinese against her two
chief rivals and her only likely foes Japan and
Britain.

For it is the Japanese and the British that have
felt the full weight of the present outburst of xeno-
phobia. That this is not spontaneous but due to
conscious direction is shown by a curious feature
of a number of the recent outbreaks. They
started as strikes against the foreigner. A few days

THE RUSSIANS IN THE FAR EAST

later, about the time necessary for communication
with Peking, Americans had been suddenly ex-
cluded, and the strike continued with renewed
vigor against the others. It is apparent, then, that
care is being taken not to antagonize America and
China for the present, nor to drive America over to
the side of Great Britain and Japan. They are the
enemies. America may still be useful in restrain-
ing Japan if any untoward opportunity should offer
for her to advance once more.

That Japan will advance, if such opportunity
does offer, is as sure as history and the covert con-
struction of strategic railroads in Manchuria can
make it. That she is even now supporting the
Manchurian overlord and using his forces as a
screen to cover her own purposes is as certain as
anything in the political realm can be. There is as
little question that Russia is supporting and ma-
neuvering behind the rival forces of Feng, the
much-heralded Christian general. Open warfare
between these two foreign-supported Chinese fac-
tions may come with surprising suddenness. How
long the struggle would be confined to the Chinese
rivals it is useless to speculate, but unless some un-
expected distraction occurs, the two great imperial
rivals are so close to the front and their interests are
so deeply involved that we are forced to contem-

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

plate the possibility even the probability of an-
other great war. It will start, at least, in the East,
and it will begin, not between Japan and America,
but between Japan and Russia.

What America's part in such a war would be,
no man can tell. Neutrality would be the obvious
course, and it is difficult to imagine this country
sending its sons to fight at the side of either soviet
Russia or imperial Japan or it would be difficult
if Roosevelt had not threatened to go to the aid of
Japan in 1904, and if American troops had not
already served under Japanese generals in Siberia
in 1919. America's interests as a great trading na-
tion and America's prestige as a great power would
be seriously endangered in a renewal of the struggle
between Japan and Russia. We could hardly stand
by and hope to escape scot-free, and a thousand
things might happen to drag us into war.

While such possibilities are abroad in the world,
it were well for us not to dwell too happily on silks
and cherry blossoms, or too disdainfully on bolshe-
viks and Soviets, or too ethereally on peace and
disarmament, but to realize that in the Far East
there is going on at this moment a desperate game
of world-politics, no less fraught with danger to
America and American interests than the game
which culminated at Sarajevo in June of 1914.
f 230!

APPENDIX

LEADING STATESMEN OF MODERN
CHINA 1

THE MANCHU EMPEROR

P'u Yi (HsuAN TUNG), former emperor. Son of Prince
Ch/un (Tsai Li) and nephew of Emperor Kwang Hsu. Born on
February 11, 1906. Succeeded to the throne, under the
regency of his father, on November 14, 1908, and adopted the
reign-title of Hsuan Tung. Abdicated on February 12, 1912.
His mother was the daughter of the late Jung Lu. Under the
republic the former emperor continued his studies under his old
tutors and also received instruction from Mr. R. F. Johnston,
C.B.E. On June 30, 1917, Chang Hsun carried out a mon-
archical coup in the interests of the Manchu dynasty. Hsuan
Tung ascended the throne, but the "monarchy" survived little
more than a week and once again his name was affixed to an
"abdication." Cut off his queue in May, 1922. Married in
December, 1922. Ejected from the palace by the "Christian
general" on November 5, 1924, and fled to the Japanese lega-
tion on November 29 and Tientsin on February 24, where
he is now residing in the Japanese concession.

THE MODEL TUCHUN

YEN HSI-SHAN. Shamsi. Born, 1882. A graduate of a
military-staff school in Japan. Lieutenant general with the
brevet rank of general of the army, and tutuh of Shansi. In
Japan he joined the Tungmenghui, and after returning from
that country he was appointed director of the military school

1 China Year Book, (1925), edited by H. G. W. Woodhead.
I2-33I

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

and chief of the Eighty-sixth Regiment. When the Revolution
broke out, he took up the revolutionary cause, and was
elected tutuh of Shansi. He led an army and occupied Koupei
and district. Was the first to propose that the troops should
be disbanded in order to curtail expenses, and he himself dis-
banded more than 30,000 troops in his province. When the re-
bellion in the south broke out he was a strong supporter of
the central government. Tuchun of Shansi since 1916. Con-
currently civil governor of Shansi. Non-partisan. Author of
The Discipline of the Revolutionary Army. Known as the
"model tuchun."

YUAN" SHIH-KAI

YUAN- SHIH-KAI. Born, 1859. Chinese resident at Seoul
at age of twenty-six. Expelled during Sino-Japanese War.
Judicial commissioner, Chihli, 1897. Director general for
training of modern army, 1895. Assisted Empress Dowager in
coup d'&at, 1898. Governor, Shantung, 1899, where he pro-
tected foreigners against Boxers in 1900. Viceroy, Chihli,
1901. Minister, Army Reorganization Council, 1903. Presi-
dent, Board of Foreign Affairs, 1907. Dismissed from all offices
in January, 1909, after Empress Dowager's death, and re-
mained unemployed and in retirement until the 1911 Revolu-
tion when he was appointed Hukuang viceroy, with command
of naval and military forces (October 14), and premier (No-
vember i). Authorized to arrange peace with revolutionaries,
and eventually arranged abdication of Manchus (in February,
1912), himself becoming provisional president of republic.
Elected formal president, October, 1913. Whereafter he ruled
autocratically until latter part of 1915, when he attempted to
make himself emperor. A widespread revolt followed, and he
abandoned project, dying in June, 1916.

H>34l

APPENDIX

DR. SUN YAT-SEN

SUN WEN (SuN YAT-SEN). Kwantung. Born in 1866,
the son of a farmer in the Hsiangshan district. Learned
English at an early age, and studied under Dr. Kerr, of the
American Mission. Enrolled as a student of the Alice Me-
morial Hospital at Hongkong in 1887, whence he graduated as
"Licentiate of Medicine and Surgery, Hongkong," in 1892.
Started to practice in Macao, where he organized the Young
China party. Subsequently settled in Canton, where he be-
came an active revolutionary. After the failure of a conspiracy
at Canton in 1 895 he fled to Macao, and thence proceeded to
Hongkong, Japan, Honolulu, and America, in all of which
places he obtained adherents to the reform party. Arrived in
England in 1896, and on October n of that year was kid-
napped outside the Chinese legation by order of the Chinese
Minister. It was intended to ship Dr. Sun to China as a
lunatic, but he managed to make his plight known to Dr.
Cantlie, who was instrumental in effecting his release after
twelve days' imprisonment. Subsequently Dr. Sun toured
through Europe, America, and the East as a revolutionary
propagandist. In Japan (with General Huang Hsing) he was
instrumental in founding the Tungmenghui. Was in England
when the Wuchang outbreak occurred, but came out to
China at the end of 191 1, and was elected provisional president
of the republic by the Nanking Council. Resigned from the
presidency on the abdication of the Manchus, on the under-
standing that Yuan Shih-kai should be elected to succeed him,
and proceeded on a tour to Wuchang and South China, where
he advocated a socialistic policy. Came to Peking at the Presi-
dent's request in August, 1912, and was accorded an en-
thusiastic welcome. Advocated an extensive program of rail-

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

way construction, and on September 10 was appointed by the
President "to consider and draft plans for a national system of
railways/' and to "submit and discuss the same with inter-
national financiers." Visited Kalgan, and on September 17
left for Taiyuanfu and Shanghai. Strongly advocated the
transfer of the capital from Peking to Wuchang or Nanking.
His authority as chief of the National Railway Corporation
was canceled on the outbreak of the rebellion, and Dr. Sun
subsequently took up his residence in Japan. Dr. Sun was in
Shanghai in 1920, but proceeded to Canton in 1921 when the
Kwangsi officials were ejected by General Chen Chiung-ming,
and was elected president of China by the so-called "parlia-
ment" there in April, 1921. He was expelled from Canton by
Chen Chiung-min in the summer of 1922, and returned to
Shanghai, where he remained until February, 1923, when he
again established himself in Canton. Maintained himself in
Canton in 1924 by Yunnanese and Hunanese mercenaries, who
supported themselves on opium, gambling, and brothel
licenses. Became closely allied with the soviet. Quarreled with
and massacred merchant volunteers. Died in Peking on March
12, 1925, one of his last messages being one of friendship to the
soviet.

THE "CHRISTIAN GENERAL"

FENG YU-HSIANG. Anhwei. Commander of the Eleventh
Division. Appointed acting tuchun of Shansi on August 25,
1921, upon sudden and mysterious death of Yen Hsiang-wen,
who had been appointed only two months previously when
Chen Shu-fan fled. Transferred to Honan, May 10, 1922. Was
appointed inspector of army and transferred his troops to
Peking, October, 1922. His troops played a decisive part in
the Chihli-Fengtien War. His troops being stationed at Nan

' 1*36}

APPENDIX

Yuan, near Peking, Feng was influential in the politics of Pek-
ing during the spring and summer of 1923. His untimely resig-
nation in June was considered to have brought about the flight
of President Li to Tientsin and the coup d'etat of 1923. Tupan
(director) of defense on northwestern frontier, May, 1923.
Known as the "Christian General," Second Order of Merit.
A full general in the army. Responsible for the coup of
October, 1924, when he seized Peking and the President and
established a provisional government. Ejected Manchu em-
peror. Has established his headquarters at Kalgan, but still
has some troops at Peking.

THE LOYAKTG WAR-LORD

WTJ PEI-FU. Shantung. Born, 1873. Obtained his de-
gree of Hsiutsai (B.A.) at the age of twenty-one. Graduated
with honor from the Kai Ping Military Academy, near Tient-
sin, 1898. After a brief service under the late General Nieh
Shih-cheng, entered a military school of which Marshal Tuan
Chi-jui was director. After graduation, General Wu joined the
Third Army Division, of which General Tsao Kun was then
commander. Was promoted to battalion commander. Partici-
pated bravely in the military campaigns in Shansi, Szech-
wan, and Honan, since the republic. Awarded Fuwei Chiang-
chun. Became Commander of the Sixth Brigade of the Third
Division early in 1916. When General Tsao Kun was made
military governor of Chihli, Wu was instructed to act for him
as commander of the Third Division. Participated in the fight
against General Chang Hsun's monarchical movement, sum-
mer, 1917. His division was sent to recapture Yochow and
Changsha from the south in the spring of 1918. General Wu
was successful as these two cities were retaken by the Third
Division. The return of his troops from Hunan to Chihli in

1 23? I

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

the summer of 1920 was opposed by Marshal Tuan, resulting
in the armed conflict responsible for the downfall of the Anfu
Club. Appointed vice-inspecting-general of Chihli, Shantung,
and Honan, 1920. Inspector-general of Hupeh and Hunan,
1921. Defeated the Fengtien invasion of Chihli in the spring
of 1922. Appointed minister of war, June 12, 1922, but did not
accept. Made Fu Wei Shang Chiang Chun, January I, 1923,
succeeded Tsao Kun as inspector-general of Chihli, Shantung,
and Honan when Tsao became president of the republic
October, 1923. Was asked to promote highways in the three
provinces, January, 1924. First-class Tashou Paokwang
Chiaho decoration. Defeated in the civil war of 1924, owing
to Feng Yu-hsiang's treachery. At present in Yochow.

DR. W. W. YEN

YEN HUI~CH'ING (W. W, YEN). Shanghai. Born, 1877.
Had early education in local schools. Studied in the Episcopal
High School, Virginia, U.S.A., 1895-97, winning therefrom
gold medal for English composition and debating. Studied in
the academic and law departments of the University of
Virginia, receiving degree of B.A. and law diploma. Member
of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Professor of English, St.
John's University, Shanghai, 1900-1906. Chinshih, Hanlin.
One of the founders and honorary secretary of the World's
Chinese Students* Federation, Shanghai. Member of various
educational and social organizations. LL.D., Peking, 1906.
Secretary to the Chinese legation at Washington, 1908-10.
Was recalled to Peking to organize the Press Bureau, becom-
ing its director. Junior councilor, ministry of foreign affairs,
1911. After various promotions, was appointed vice-minister
of foreign affairs, April, 1912. Minister to Germany and Den-
mark, 1913, 1918-20. Plenipotentiary to the Opium Confer-

1238]

APPENDIX

ence at The Hague, May 26, 1913. Appointed minister of for-
eign affairs, August 11, 1920. Appointed acting premier, De-
'cember 1 8, 1921, upon resignation of Chin Yun-p'eng. Reap-
pointed acting premier, June 11, 1922, when Li Yuan-hung
reassumed the presidency, but resigned a few weeks later.
President, Commission on Adjustment of National Finance,
August, 1923. Minister of agriculture and commerce, January
12, 1924. Author, translator, and editor of various books.
Second Order of Merit. Chairman, Western Returned Stu-
dents' Club, Peking, 1923. Appointed premier after outbreak
of civil war in September, 1924. Resigned after the "Christian
general's" coup of October 23, 1924.

FORMER PRESIDENT HSU SHIH-CH J ANG

Hsu SHIH-CH'ANG Honan. Probationary grand counci-
lor, June, 1905. Minister of Government Council, June, 1905.
President, Board of Police, October, 1905. Grand councilor,
February, 1906. Removed from Grand Council, November,
1906. Special Mission to Manchuria, December, 1906. Presi-
dent, Board of Interior, December, 1906. Viceroy of Man-
churia, April, 1907. President of Board of Communications,
February, 1909. Director-general, Tientsin-Pukow Railway,
July, 1909. Grand secretary, February, 1910. Grand coun-
cilor, August, 1910. Appointed vice-premier in Prince Ching's
cabinet, May, 1911. Removed from that post and appointed
vice-president of the Privy Council on November i, 1911.
Chief of General Staff, November, 1911. High commissioner
for training imperial guard, and grand guardian to the em-
peror, December, 1911. Relieved of post on general staff,
February, 1912. On the resignation of the Prince Regent was
appointed, with Shih Hsu, grand guardian of the emperor. A
"sworn brother" of President Yuan Shih-kai. Secretary of

{239!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

State, 1915. With Chao Erh-hsiin, Li Ching~hsi, and Chang
Chien received the title of "the four friends of Sungshan" (i.e.,
of Yuan Shih-kai). On the failure of Yuan Shih-kai's attempt
to establish a monarchy, Hsu Shih-ch'ang resigned his secre-
taryship and retired to Honan. Returned to Peking, Novem-
ber, 1916, to mediate between the president, Li Yuan-hung,
and the premier, Tuan Chi-juL During the unsettled period,
1917-18, he remained detached from Peking politics, but with-
out losing his influence over the contending factions. On Sep-
tember 4, 1918, elected president of the republic of China, at
a joint meeting of the Senate and House of Representatives of
the so-called "Tuchuns' Parliament," by 425 out of 436 votes.
Received honorary Doctor's degree from University of Paris.
Sent Chu Chi-chien to represent him, June, 1921. Vacated
presidency, June i, 1922, and left for Tientsin on the following
day, where he still resides.

THE MUKDEN WAR-LORD

CHANG TSO-LIN. Mukden. General Chang is under fifty
years of age. He received no education in his youth. Fought
on the side of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. After
the war General Chang surrendered to the Chinese govern-
ment at the request of Japan. He and his Hunghutze were
taken into the Chinese government service and received quick
promotion on account of their bravery. Appointed military
governor of Fengtien in 1911, which position he is still holding.
First commanded the Twenty-seventh Army Division and
now has under control nearly 300,000 men scattered all over
China. Served Former President Yuan faithfully until the col-
lapse of the latter's monarchical movement in 1916. When
General Chang Hsun made his coup d'6tat in 1917, he assisted
General Tuan Chi-jui in restoring the republic. Was ap-

1240}

APPENDIX

pointed inspector-general of the three eastern provinces in
1918. Jointly with General Tsao Kun, led an expeditionary
force to disband the Anfu Political Club in the summer of
1920. Attended the "Super-Tuchuns* Conference" at Tient-
sin in May, 1921. Ordered to be relieved of all his posts after
being defeated by the Chihli party, May, 1922. After his dis-
missal he defied the central government and ruled Manchuria
as an independent province. Victorious in 1924, civil war, and
has since occupied and garrisoned Chihli, Shantung, Anhwei,
and Kiungsu.

FORMER PRESIDENT LI YUAN-HUNG

Li YUAN-HUNG. Hupeh. Born, October 19, 1864. Studied
at Pei-yang Naval College, graduating m 1 888 after a course of
six years. Served on a cruiser during the Sino-Japanese War.
After the war he was engaged for service at Nanking by Vice-
roy Chang ChihTung. On the latter's transfer to Wuchang he
accompanied him to assist in the organization of the modern
troops there. Thence he went to Japan for two years to study
fortification. On his return he became a major in the cavalry
in 1895, and subsequently held several commands, including
that of colonel in the Twenty-first Brigade. He was in charge
of the organization of the Changteh Maneuvers in 1905 and
for the five following years served on the staff at Wuchang.
On the outbreak of the Revolution at Wuchang he was forced
Into accepting the command of the revolutionary forces, whose
operations he directed thenceforward. He was mainly instru-
mental in arranging for the Shanghai Peace Conference. After
the abdication of the Manchus he was elected vice-president
of the republic and appointed chief of the general staff and
tutuli of Hupeh (November, 1911). Given rank of general on
September 7. Acting tutuh, Kiangsi, June 8, 1913. Re-elected

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

vice-president of the republic, October 7, 1913. On the death
of Yuan Shih-kai, became president of the republic (June,
1916), resigned July I, 1917, when Chang Hsun carried out his
coup d'6tat. When Hsu Shih-chang left the capital, June,
192.2, Li was asked to reassume the presidency. Was compelled
to leave the capital September, 1923, when plans were perfected
for Tsao Kun to become president; first fled to Tientsin and
later went to Shanghai and Japan. Author of various lecture
notes not published. Formerly member of Chinputang but re-
signed therefrom when accepting chief of general staff. First
Order of Merit. First class of Chiaho and Wenhu decorations.
Now resides in Tientsin.

THE PROVISIONAL CHIEF EXECUTIVE

TUAN CH'I-JUI. Anhwei. A graduate of the Peiyang
Military School. Yuan Shih-kai's chief military adviser while
viceroy of Chihli. Brigade general in Fukien in 1906, deputy
lieutenant general of the Chinese Bordered Yellow Banner,
October, 1907; and general commanding the Sixth Division
of the Luchun, December, 1909. Commander-in-chief, Kiang-
peh, December, 1910. He was in a large measure responsible
for the reorganization upon modern lines of the northern
army, and after Yuan Shih-kai accepted the premiership in
November, 1911, he succeeded him as viceroy of the Hukuang
provinces. On the recall of Baron Feng Kuo-chang, General
Tuan took command of the First Army. He was one of the
most prominent of the military commanders who signed the
memorial to the throne at the end of January, urging the
emperor to abdicate. On the formation of the first republican
cabinet he was elected minister of war. Given rank of general
(Shang Chiang), September 7, 1912; the field marshal, 1915.
Chief of the headquarters staff, 1915* Acting premier, May
I 242 I

APPENDIX

i, 1913, to July 19, 1913. Acting tutuh of Hupeh (during vice-
president's absence in Peking), December 10, 1913. Chiang-
chun and acting governor of Fengtien. Minister of war, 1914.
Granted sick-leave, June i, 1915. In May, 1916, Tuan Chi-
jui was appointed premier and charged with the formation of
a responsible cabinet. Dismissed by Li Yuan-hung, May,
1917, but resumed office in July after the failure of Chang
Hsun's monarchical coup cT6tat. Resigned October, 1918. At-
tempting to rescue the Anfu Club, organized without authority
an army, called by himself the Ting Kuo-chun, and personally
directed it to oppose the combined march of Chihli and Feng-
tien forces on Peking, 1920. Retired and resided in Tientsin,
1922. Installed as provisional chief executive by Chang Tso-
lin and Feng Yu-hsiang in November, 1924.

TANG SHAO-YI

TANG SHAO-YI. Kwangtung. Educated in America.
Secretary to Yuan Shih-kai while the latter was imperial
resident in Korea. Consul-general in Korea after the Sino-
Japanese War. Then employed on the staff of the Northern
Railway Administration. In Shantung with Yuan Shih-kai,
winter, 1900. Customs Taotai, Tientsin, February, 1902.
Special commissioner to Tibet, September, 1904. Proceeded
to India as special envoy, to negotiate the Tibet Convention,
which was subsequently completed at Peking in April, 1906.
Acting junior vice-president of the Board of Foreign Affairs,
November, 1905. Substantive junior vice-president of the
Board of Foreign Affairs, February, 1906. Director-general
Shanghai-Nanking, and Lu-Han railways, 1906. Controller-
general, Revenue Council, May, 1906. Senior vice-president of
Board of Communications, November, 1906. Continued to
act as vice-president of Board of Foreign Affairs. First gov-

l 243 I

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

ernor of Fengtien on reorganization of government of Man-
churia, April, 1907. Special envoy to America to thank the
government for waiving part of the Boxer indemnity, July,
1908. Resigned governorship of Fengtien, July, 1909. Ex-
pectant vice-president, Board of Communications, and acting
president, August, 1910, and resigned in the spring. Ap-
pointed minister of communications on the dismissal of Sheng
Hsuan-huai on October 26, 1911. Proceeded to Shanghai as
Yuan Shih-kai's delegate to negotiate with the revolutionary
leaders in December. Resigned his position as delegate on De-
cember 27. Appointed premier, after abdication of the man-
chus on February 12. Resignation as premier accepted on
June 27, when he was appointed superior adviser to the presi-
dent on state affairs. A member of the Tung MengHui. One of
the four directors of the Canton government, 1918. Minister
of finance at Canton, 1919-22. First-class Tashou Chiaho
Paokwang decoration. Li Yuan-hung appointed Tang pre-
mier, August 5, 1922, to succeed Dr. Yen. Tang refusing to
come up to Peking, his appointment was canceled on Septem-
ber 19, whereupon Dr. C H. Wang was made premier. Ap-
pointed but refused office as minister of foreign affairs, in
November, 1924.

FORMER PRESIDENT TSAO KXTN

TSAO KTTN. Chihli. Born, December 12, 1862. Gradu-
ated from Peiyang Military Academy. Was on active service
during the Sino-Japanese War. Until recently general of Third
Army Division. Tuchun of Chihli, 1917-23 (that office was
thereupon abolished). Appointed inspector-general of Szech-
wan, Kwangtung, Hunan, and Kiangsi, June, 1918, for opera-
tions against the south. When Chang Hsun re-established the
Manchu monarchy, July, 1917, Tsao directed his forces

H>44l

APPENDIX

against Chang's forces in concert with Former Marshal Tuan
Chi-jui. With Marshal Chang Tso4in's army, Tsao's forces
succeeded in dissolving the Anfu Political Club, 1920. Inspec-
tor-general, Chihli, Shantung, and Honan provinces. Elected
president of the republic, October 5, 1923, by the Peking
parliament, most of whose members were reported to have
been lavishly bribed for the purpose. Seized, and since im-
prisoned in his palace, after the "Christian general's" coup of
October, 1924.

SUN" YAT-SEN'S ENEMY

CHEN CHIUNG-MING. Kwangtung. Tutuh of Kwang-
tung, June, 1913. Drove out the Kwangsi tuchun, Mo Yung-
hsin, in 1920 and was appointed civil governor. Concerned in
the Yunnan revolt, 1915-16. Commander-in-chief of the
Kwangtung troops. Civil governor of Kwangtung. Minister
of war in the Canton government. In 1922 his troops attacked
and overthrew Sun Yat~sen, and after the latter's flight, Chen
reassumed command of all the Kwangtung forces, but was
himself driven out of Canton in January, 1923. Persistently
fought against Sun Yat-sen, 1923-24. His forces were recently
attacked and defeated by the Kuomintang army (chiefly
Yunnanese mercenaries) in Kwangtung.

LITTLE HSU

Hsu SHU-TSENG. Kiangsu. Was private secretary to
Former Marshal Tuan Chi-jui. Sent to Japan to study mili-
tary science by Tuan. Secretary-in-chief of the cabinet; re-
signed, November, 1916. Played a prominent part in Peking
in 1917-18. Sent on a special mission to Japan, October, 1918.
During the armed struggle between the Chihli military leaders
and Anfu Club, in 1920, Hsu, who was commanding general of
the northwest frontier army, was in chief command. After the

1 245 1

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

Anfu army was defeated, Hsu fled for refuge in the Japanese
legation, which notified the Chinese government on Novem-
ber 1 6, 1920, that he had mysteriously escaped. He has re-
mained at large ever since. Generally referred to as "Little
Hsu.'* In October, 192.2, was implicated in the revolt against
the Fukien tuchun, and another mandate was issued ordering
his arrest. Expelled from Shanghai during the civil wars of
1924. Now touring in Europe as special industrial commis-
sioner of the chief executive.

1*46!

INDEX

INDEX

American Immigration Law, 155

Anfu party, 27; collapse of, 32

Anhwei party, see Anfu

Anglo-Chinese Commercial Trea-
ty of 1902,95, 133

Anglo-Chinese Commission, on
rendition of Weihaiwei, 145

Anglo- Japanese Alliance, 21 1;
abrogation of, 155; for reduc-
tion of Tsingtao, 149; source
of, 209

Anti-foreign sentiment, 75; see
Karahan

Anti-Japanese movement, 57 f.,
72 if., 75, 77, 152; in American
colleges, 1 60

Antung-Mukden Railway, Ja-
pan demands lease of, 151

Banque Indus trielle de Chine,
162

Belgium, in China, 172

Boone University, at Wuchang,
1 60

Boxer uprising, 7, 8, 18, 57, 185;
indemnity, 146 f., 168; pay-
ments to France, see Gold
Franc Case; treaty following,

139

British American Tobacco Com-
pany, 135

British Chambers of Commerce,
Annual Conference of, in 1921,
94

Bureau of National Loans, see

loans
Buriats, 202

Cantlie, Sir James, 14

Canton: foreign trade in, 82;
-Hankow Railway proposed,
157; -Kowloon Railway, 142

Canton Christian College, 79

Central Education Society, in
China, 22

Chang Chih-tung, Learn, 5

Chang Hsun, 28; in Second Rev-
olution, 23

Chang Shao-tseng, premier, 35

Chang Tso-lin, 32, 33, 39, 41,
119, 224; and France, 164;
and the soviet, 1 69 ; army of, 52,
171; for central government,
34; supported by Japan, 154

Chang Yen-mao, 105 f.

Chihli party, 27; domination of
the northern provinces, 38

China: agriculture in, 182 f.;
American interests in, see
United States; Bolshevism in,
see Soviet; communication in,
179; corporations, 189; cur-
rency, 55 f.; customs tariff,
130 ff.; distribution of popula-
tion in, 178; economic re-
sources, 192; election to House
of Representatives, 22; fi-
nances in, 52; foreign garrisons

249!

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

in, 138 ff.; foreign interests in,
see respective countries; in-
dustrial development, 184;
Japanese financial hold over,
153; legal interpretations in,
1 88; literacy in, 50; military
resources of, 51; postal service,
132; provincialism encouraged,
181; railways, 54 ; reform
in, see reform; republic, see
Chinese Republic; roads, 179
; tariff autonomy wanted,
133 IF.; taxation, 125; trade of,

S3 I

Chinese Chambers of Commerce,
74

Chinese Eastern Railway, 151,
167, 168, 208, 216, 219, 223,
224; management of, 119

Chinese Rate-payers* Associa-
tion, 74

Chinese Republic, 221; weak-
ness of, 191

Ching, Prince, 9

Christian general, see Feng Yu-

hsiang
Confucius, revival of worship of,

26

Crimean War, Russia in the Far

East during, 205

Gushing, Caleb, 87
Customs Tariff Treaty, of 1922,
136

Dutch, in China, 172

East India Company, 84
Empress Dowager, death of, 8;

plot against, 6; and reform
movement, 7

England, commercial interests in
China, 129

Extraterritoriality, 81, 93 ff.; ab-
olition of, 95; see also Washing-
ton Conference

Far Eastern Republic, 214, 215

Federal Wireless Company, in
China, 154

Feng Kuo-chang, president, 29;
vice-president, 27

Feng Shih-yu, 68

Feng Yu-hsiang, 34, 113; occu-
pies Peking, 40

France, commercial interest in
China, 161 ff.; policy in Far
East, 164 f.

Franco-Chinese School, 71

Genghis Khan, 202
Gold Franc Controversy, 38,
162 ff.

Great Siberian Railway, 219
Great War, 25, 90, 213; period
of, 148

Habarov, 203, 204
Hanyang Ironworks, Japanese
interests in, 152

Hart, Sir Robert, 121

Higher Normal School for Girls,
uprising in, 71

Hongkong and Shanghai Bank-
ing Corporation, 19

Hsiung Hsi-ling, 17

1250]

INDEX

Hsuan Tung, Emperor, acces-
sion of, 8

Hsu Shih-chang, resignation of,
34

Hsu Shu-tseng, 32

Hukuang loan agreement, 158;
Railway, 10

International banking consor-
tium, 165 f.

International Foreign Municipal
Council, 74, 91, 92, 143

Irkutsk, founding of, 202

Japan: commercial interests m
China, 129; control of Chinese
railways, 148, 151; financial
hold over China, 153; press,
77; in Shantung, 28

Joffe, A. A., 60, 61, 66, 167, 218

Jung Lu, 5, 6

Kang Hsi, 204

K'ang Yu-wei, reformer, 4 ff.

Kao Ling-wei, wanted as pre-
mier, 37

Karahan, 166; inciting anti-
foreign sentiment in China,
61 ff.

Kiangsi Railway, Japanese con-
trol of, 152

Koo, Wellington, 167; The Status
of Aliens in China, 81

Kuomingtang, 23, 44; formed,
22; in Parliament, 24

Kutshum Khan, 201

Kwang Hsu, Emperor, 3; death
of, 8

"Lady Hughes" incident, 83 f.
Liang Shih-yi, premier, 33

Liaotung peninsula, 208, 210,
217; Japan demands lease of,
151; Russian lease of, 151

Likin, 132 f., 135

Lincheng, 37

"Little Hsu," see Hsu Shu-tseng

Li Yuan-hung, n, 14, 19, 28,
29; and Parliament, 35; plot
against, 35; president, 27;
reassumes presidency, 34; re-
tires, 37; vice-president, 16, 24

Loans, Bureau of National
Loans, 21; foreign, 1912-13, 19

Marconi Company, 154

Ma Soo, 68

Mixed court, establishment of,

92 f.
Monarchy, restoration of, 29

Morse, International Relations of
the Chinese Empire, 81

Municipal Council, see Inter-
national Foreign Municipal
Council

Muraviev, Nicholai, 205, 206

Naigai Wata Kaisha, 72
Nanking National Council, 16;

Treaty of, of 1842, 86 f., 130 f.,

206

Nicholas I, Tsar, 205
Nine-Power Customs Treaty, 163

Octroi, and the Christian Gen-
eral, 36

OCCIDENTAL INTERPRETATIONS

Open door, and Russian intrigue,

210

Opium, 142; War, 85, 130
Ostroumov, B. V,, 119 ff.

Padoux, George, 100
Paotingfu, headquarters of Tsao

Kun, 36
Peace Conference, at Versailles,

9 . 6
Peiyang party, domination of,

27; split in, 29
Peking Government University,

60
Peking: -Hankow Railway, 108

flf.- -Mukden Railway, 140,

142; Treaty of, 207
Portsmouth, Treaty of, 210
Presidential Election Law of

P'u Yi, see Hsuan Tung

Red Army, Chinese, 43
Reform, i85ff.; constitutional
proposed, 8; need for Chinese,

4
Reorganization Conference,

planned, 44
Revolution, beginning of, 10;

cause, 9; Second, 23
Rockefeller Foundation Medical

School in Peking, 159, 196
Russell and Company, 86
Russia, soviet, political interests

in China, 130
Russian Language School, up-

rising in, 70
Russo-Asiatic Bank, 119

Russo-Japanese Treaty, 1925,
226

Saghalien, 207, 210, 215, 226

Shameen, attack on, 78 f.

Shanghai: Committee., 13;
-Hangchow-Ningpo Railway,
142; Municipal Council, 76;
-Nanking, Railway, I42;strikes
in, 72 if.

Shanghai University, 77

Shantung, 25, 213, 216; question,
144; Railway, Japanese occu-
pation of, 149

Sino- Japanese War, 217

Sino-Russian Treaty of May 31,

1924, 62, 170, 222

South Manchuria Railway, Jap-
anese demands on, 151

Soviets, in China, 61 ff., 1 66;
press, 77

Students: in American schools,
1 60; demonstrations of, 57 ff.

Sung Chiao-jen, 22

Sun Pao-ch'i, 38

SunYat-sen, 15, 47, 61, 62, 77,
118; control weakening, 42;
death of, 44; escapes from
Canton, 35; leader of Red
Army, 43; president of China,
13; and the soviet, 66

Taiping rebellion, 132

Taliy uano, 115

Tang Shao-yi, 41

Taokow-Chinghua Railway, 142

Tibet, 145 f.

Tientsin-Pukow Railway, 54, 142

INDEX

Tientsin Treaty of 1860, 131
Trans-Siberian Railroad, 207
Treaty powers, 90; cdmmercial

rights of, 129
Tsai Ao, in revolution, 26
Tsao Kun, 29, 32, 39; election of,
51; pledged to ackninistration,
34; president, 37
Tsinghua College, 159
Tuan Chi-jui, 15, 29, 32, 41, 154;
in control of north, 46; min-
ister of war, 17; premier, 27;
for republic, 29
Tung Chih, death of, 3
Tuchun, system denounced, 35
Tungmenhui, 17, 22
Twenty-one Demands on China a

25, 213

Tzu An, Dowager Empress, 3
Tzu Hsi, Dowager Empress, 3

United States, commercial inter-
ests in China, 129; Court for
China, 91; educational work in
China, 158$".; interests in
China, 156 if.; philanthropic
work in China, 195 f.; trade
with China, 160 f.

WaichiaopUj 71
Wang, C. T., 62, 167
Wanghia, Treaty of, 87 ff.

. Wang Huai-ching, 36

Washington Conference, 25, 144,
155, 227; Chinese tariff au-
tonomy, 135; extraterritori-
ality, 97, 99

Weng Tung-ho, 4

Wen Tsung-yao, 13

Wuchang, group, 13; revolution
at, ii

Wu Pei-fu, 39, 40; betrayed, 40;
dismissed, 32; victor in Peking,
3 2 >34

Wu Ting-fang, 13

Yenching University, 78, 159

Yen Hsi-shan, administrator of
model province, 47

Yen, James, 50

Yen, W. W., nominated premier,
38

Yermak, 201

Y.M.C.A. School of Finance, 160

Yuan Shih-kai, 6, 8, 13, 15, 21,
22, 46, 56; conditions since
death of, 51; and Japan in
1915, 25, 26; for monarchial
restoration, 25, 26; premier,
12, presented with Twenty-
one Demands, 1 50 f. ; presi-
dent, 1 6, 17, 1 8, 24; revolt
against, 26; versus the legisla-
ture, 23

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