Where Half The World Is Waking Up Part 8

China is waking up, and I am glad she is. She is going into industrial compet.i.tion with all the world, and I am glad that she is. I believe that every strong and worthy nation is enriched by the proper development of every other nation. But in this coming struggle the people whom vice or dissipation has rendered weak sooner or later must go down before the men who, gaining the mastery over every vicious habit, keep their bodies strong and their minds clear. In thunder tones indeed does China's victory over opium speak to America. If we are to maintain our high place among the nations of the earth, if we are to keep our leaders.h.i.+p in wealth and industry, we can do it only by freeing ourselves, as heroically as the yellow man of the Orient is doing in this respect, from every enervating influence that now weakens the physical stamina, blunts the moral sense, or befogs the brain.

The new China is devoting itself to a number of other reforms to which the people of America may well give attention. The curse of graft among her public officials ("squeeze" it is called over here) is one of the most deep-rooted cancers with which she has to contend.

Officers have been paid small salaries and have been allowed to make up for the meagreness of their stipends by exacting all sorts of fees and tips. Before the coming parliament is very old, however, it will {97} doubtless undertake to do away with the fee and "squeeze" system, stop grafting, and put all the more important offices on a strict salary basis. Under the old fee system of paying county and city officials in the United States, as my readers know, we have often let enormous sums go into office-holders' pockets when they should have gone into improving our roads and schools. The Chinese system not only has this weakness, but by reason of the fact that the fees are not regularly fixed by law, as is the case with us, the way is opened for numberless other abuses.

Currency reform is in China a matter hardly second in importance to the abolition of "squeeze." There is no national currency here; each province (or state, as we would say) issues its own money when it pleases, just as the different American states did two generations ago. I remember hearing an old man tell of going from the Carolinas to Alabama about 1840 and having to pay heavy exchange to get his Carolina money changed into Alabama money. So it is in China to-day.

You must get your bills of one bank or province changed whenever you go into another bank or province, paying an outrageous discount, and a banking corporation will even discount a bill issued by another branch of the same corporation. Thus a friend of mine with a five-dollar Russia-Asiatic banknote from the Peking branch on taking it to the Russia-Asiatic's branch at Hankow gets only $4.80 for it.

Nor is this all: All kinds of money are in circulation, the values constantly fluctuating, and hundreds and thousands of men make a living by "changing money," getting a percentage on each transfer.

Take the so-called 20-cent pieces in circulation; they lack a little of weighing one fifth as much as the 100-cent dollar; consequently it takes sometimes 110 and again 112 cents "small coin" to equal one dollar! The whole system is absurd, of course, and yet when the government proposes to establish a uniform national currency it is {98} said that the influence of these money-changers is so great as to make any reform exceedingly slow and difficult.

And yet let not my readers at home with this statement before them proceed too hastily to laugh or sneer at China for unprogressiveness.

For my part, as I have thought of this matter of money transfer over here, the whole question has seemed to me to be on all-fours with our question of land t.i.tle transfers at home, and the more I have thought of it the firmer has the conviction become. In fact, China's failure to adopt a modern currency system is perhaps even less a sinning against light than our failure to adopt the Torrens system of registering land t.i.tles. The man who makes a living by changing money and investigating its value is no more a parasite than the man who makes a living changing t.i.tles or investigating their value; the hindrance of trade and easy transfer of property is no more excusable in one case than the other; and the 90 per cent, that China might save by a better system of money transfers is paralleled by the 90 per cent, that we might save by a better system of t.i.tle transfers.

Mr. Money-Changing Banker, fattening needlessly at the expense of the people, prevents currency reform in China--yes, that is true. But before we a.s.sume superior airs let us see if Mr. t.i.tle-Changing Lawyer, also fattening needlessly at the expense of the people, does not go to our next legislature and stifle any measure for reforming land-t.i.tle registration. And in saying this I am not to be understood as making any wholesale condemnation of either Chinese bankers or our American lawyers. The ablest advocates of the Torrens system I know are lawyers, men who say that lawyers ought to be content with the really useful ways of earning money and not insist on keeping up utterly useless and indefensible means of getting fees out of the people. Such lawyers, indeed, deserve honor; my criticism is aimed only at those who realize the wisdom of a changed system but are led by selfishness to oppose it.

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After all, however, the most revolutionary and iconoclastic reform in the new China is the changed policy of the schools. For thousands of years the education has been exclusively literary. The aim has been to produce scholars. A thorough knowledge of the works of the sages and poets, and the ability to write learned essays or beautiful verses, this has been the test of merit. When Colonel Denby wrote his book on China five years ago he could say:

"The Chinese scholar knows nothing of ancient or modern history (outside of China), geography, astronomy, zoology or physics. He knows perfectly well the dynastic history of his own country and he composes beautiful poems, and these are his only accomplishments."

But now all this is changed. The ancient system of selecting public officials by examination as to cla.s.sical scholars.h.i.+p was abolished the year after Colonel Denby's book was published, and the new ideal of the school is to train men and women for useful living, for practical things, and to combine culture with utility. j.a.panese education now has the same aim. There, in fact, even the study of the languages is made to subserve a practical end. Where the American boy studies Latin and soon forgets it, the j.a.panese boy studies English and continues to read English and speak it on occasion the rest of his life, increasing his efficiency and usefulness in no small measure as a result. In j.a.pan, too, I found the keenest interest in the teaching of agriculture to boys and domestic science to girls; and in all these things China is also moving--blunderingly, perhaps, but yet making progress--toward the most modern educational ideas.

As a matter of fact, much as America has talked these last ten years of making the schools train for more useful living, China and j.a.pan have actually moved relatively much farther away from old standards than we have done, and if they should continue the same rate of advance for the next thirty years we may find their schools doing more for the efficiency {100} of the people than our American schools are doing. And when I say this let not the cry go up that I am decrying culture. Already I antic.i.p.ate the criticism from men who cling to old standards of education with even more tenacity than absurdly conservative China has done. I am not decrying culture, but I am among those who insist that culture may come from a study of useful things as well as from a study of useless things; that a knowledge of the chemistry of foods may develop a girl's mind as much as a knowledge of chemistry that is without practical use; and that a boy may get about as much cultural value from the knowledge of a language which does put him into touch with modern life as from the knowledge of a language which might put him into touch with ancient life but which he will probably forget as soon as he gets his diploma. Slow-moving and tradition-cursed China and j.a.pan, as we thought them a generation ago, have already committed themselves to making education train for actual life. Has America given anything more than a half-hearted a.s.sent to the idea?

The practical value of this article, I am reminded just here, has to do almost entirely with legislation. You may wish to remind your member of the legislature of the parallel between the wasteful and antiquated money-transfer system in China and the equally wasteful and antiquated t.i.tle-transfer system at home; you may wish to inform your member of the legislature and your school officials of the advance of practical education in the Orient; and you may wish to remind both your member of the legislature and your congressman of China's successful crusade against the opium evil as an incentive for more determined American effort against the drink evil. Let me conclude this letter, therefore, with two more facts with which you may prod your representatives in Was.h.i.+ngton. (Which reminds me to remark, parenthetically, that every reform the Chinese are getting to-day comes as a result of persistently bringing pressure on their officials; and this {101} parenthetical observation may be as full of suggestion as any idea I have elaborated at greater length.)

The two facts with which you may stir up your servants in Was.h.i.+ngton are just these:

First, in regard to the parcels post. Here in China the other day I mailed a package by parcels post to another country for about half what it would have cost me to mail it from one county-seat to another at home. How long are we going to be content to let so-called "heathen" countries like China have advantages which so-called enlightened, progressive America is too slow to adopt?

Secondly, the tariff. Here in the hotel where I write this article one of the foremost journalists in the Far East tells me that the average tariff-protected American industry sells goods to Asiatic buyers at 30 per cent. less than it will sell to the people at home. Thirty per cent., he says, is the usual discount for Oriental trade. An electric dynamo which is sold in America for $1000, for instance, is sold for Chinese trade at $550 or $600. Quite a number of times on this trip have men told me that they can get American goods cheaper over here, after paying the freight ten thousand miles, than we Americans can buy them at our own doors. For example, a man told me a few weeks ago of buying fleece-lined underwear at half what it costs at home; a missionary tells me that he saves 20 cents on each two-pound can of Royal baking powder as compared with American prices; Libby's meats are cheaper in London than in San Francisco; harvesting machinery made in Chicago is carried across land and sea, halfway around the world, and sold in far-away Siberia for less than the American farmer can buy it at the factory gates.

And these are only a few instances. Hundreds of others might be given.

How long the American people are going to find it amusing to be held up in such fas.h.i.+on remains to be seen.

Peking, China.

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XI

THE NEW CHINA: AWAKE AND AT WORK

Within eighteen months China will have a parliament or a revolution (she may have both). Such at least is the prediction I am willing to risk, and it is one which I believe most foreigners in Peking would indorse.

And the coming of a parliament, popular government, to guide the destinies of the vast empire over which the Son of Heaven has reigned supreme for more than four thousand years--this is only one chapter in the whole marvelous story, not of China Awakening, but of China Awake.

For the breaking with tradition, the acceptance of modern ideas, which but yesterday was a matter of question, is now a matter of history.

"China Breaking Up" was the keynote of everything written about the Middle Kingdom ten years ago; "China Waking Up" has been the keynote of everything treating of it these last five years.

Sir John Jordan, British Minister to China, does not exaggerate when he declares that in a European sense China has made greater progress these last ten years than in the preceding ten centuries. The criticism one hears most often now is, not that the popular leaders are too conservative, but that they are if, anything, too radical; are moving, not too slowly, but too rapidly.

Instead of the old charge that China is unwilling to learn what the West has to teach, I now hear foreigners complain that a little contact with Europe and America gives a leader {103} undue influence.

"Let an official take a trip abroad and for six months after his return he is the most respected authority in the empire." Instead of English missionaries worrying over China's slavery to the opium habit, we now have English officials embarra.s.sed because China's too rapid breaking loose from opium threatens heavy deficits in Indian revenues.

Instead of the old extreme "states' rights" att.i.tude on the part of the provinces, as ill.u.s.trated by the refusal of the others to aid Manchuria and Chihli in the war with j.a.pan, the beginnings of an intense nationalism are now very clearly in evidence. Even Confucius no longer looks backward. A young friend of mine who is a descendant of the Sage (of the seventy-fifth generation) speaks English fluently and is getting a thoroughly modern education, while Duke Kung, who inherits the t.i.tle in the Confucian line, is patron of a government school which gives especial attention to English and other modern branches--by his direction. Significant, too, is the fact that the ancient examination halls in Peking to which students have come from all parts of the empire, the most learned cla.s.sical scholars among them rewarded with the highest offices, have now been torn down, and where these buildings once stood Chinese masons and carpenters are fas.h.i.+oning the building that is to house China's first national parliament--unless the parliament comes before this building can be made ready.

And so it goes. When a man wakes up, he does not wake up in a part of his body only, he wakes up all over. So it seems with Cathay. The more serious problem now is not to get her moving, but to keep her from moving too rapidly. In his Civic Forum address in New York three years ago, Wu Ting Fang quoted Wen Hsiang's saying, "When China wakes up, she will move like an avalanche." A movement with the power of an avalanche needs very careful guidance.

The one question about which every Chinese reformer's heart is now aflame is that of an early parliament. By the imperial decree of 1908 a parliament and a const.i.tution were {104} promised within nine years.

At that time there was little demand for a parliament, but with the organization of the Provincial a.s.semblies in the fall of 1909 the people were given an opportunity to confer together and were also given a taste of power. For the first time, too, they seem to have realized suddenly the serious plight of the empire and the fact that since the deaths of the late Emperor and Empress Dowager, and the dismissal of Yuan s.h.i.+h-Kai by the Prince Regent acting for the infant Emperor, the Peking government is without a strong leader.

Consequently the demand for a hastened parliament has grown too powerful to be resisted. True, when the delegates from all the Provincial a.s.semblies voiced this demand to the Prince Regent last spring his reply was the Edict of May 29, declaring that the programme outlined by their late Majesties, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, could not be changed. Furthermore, the Throne remarked significantly: "Let no more pet.i.tions or memorials upon this subject be presented to Us; Our mind is made up."

Unfortunately for the peace of the Regent, however, John Chinaman is absurdly and obnoxiously persistent on occasion. If you will not heed other appeals, he may commit suicide on your doorstep, and then you are bewitched for the rest of your days, to say nothing of your nights. The talk of an earlier parliament would not down even at the bidding of the Dragon Throne. Quietly unmanageable delegations waited upon viceroys and compelled these high officials to pet.i.tion for a reopening of the question. Down in Kiang Su a scholar cut off his left arm and with the red blood wrote his appeal. In Union Medical Hospital, here in Peking, as I write this, a group of students are recovering from self-inflicted wounds made in the same cause. Going to the Prince Regent's, they were told that the Prince could not see them. "Very well," they declared, "we shall sit here till he does." At length the Prince sent word that, though he could not receive them, he would consider their pet.i.tion, and the students then sliced the {107} living flesh from their arms and thighs as evidence of their earnestness, coloring their pet.i.tion with their blood.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: PU YI, THE SON OF HEAVEN AND EMPEROR OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM.]

The baby sovereign of one of the vastest and oldest of empires is shown here in the lap of his father. Prince Chun, the Regent.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW CHINA IS DEALING WITH OPIUM-INTEMPERANCE.]

Burning a pile of pipes of reformed smokers at Hankow. The amazing success of China's crusade to free her people from the opium curse may be justly reckoned one of the greatest moral achievements in history--a challenge to our Western world.

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At this period of our drama there came upon the stage a new actor, at first little heeded, but quickly becoming the dominating figure--the Tzucheng Yuan, or National a.s.sembly. This body, consisting of 100 n.o.bles and men of wealth or scholars.h.i.+p appointed by the Throne, and 100 selected members of Provincial a.s.semblies approved by the viceroys, was expected to prove a mere echo of the royal wishes. "It is evident that the government is to have a docile and submissive a.s.sembly. Mediocrity is the chief characteristic of the members chosen." So wrote one of the best informed Americans in China, some weeks before it a.s.sembled, October 3. Reuter's press agent in Peking predicted through his papers that a few pious resolutions would represent the sum total of the a.s.sembly's labors.

And yet the first day that these two gentlemen went with me to look in on the a.s.sembly we found it coolly demanding that the Grand Council, or imperial cabinet, be summoned before it to explain an alleged breach of the rights of Provincial a.s.semblies!

From the very beginning the course of this National a.s.sembly in steadily gathering unexpected power to itself has reminded me of the old States-General in France in the days just before the Revolution, and I could not help looking for Danton and Robespierre among the fiery orators in gown and queue on this occasion. Significantly, too, I now hear on the authority of an eminent scholar that Carlyle's great masterpiece is the most popular work of historical literature ever translated into Chinese. May it teach them some lessons of restraint as well as of aggressiveness!

Be that as it may, the a.s.sembly has proved untamable in its demands for an early parliament, not even the hundred government members standing up against the imperious pressure of public opinion. In late October the a.s.sembly {108} unanimously pet.i.tioned the Throne to hasten the programme of const.i.tutional government. The day this pet.i.tion was presented it was currently rumored in Peking that unless the Prince Regent should yield the people would refuse to pay taxes. But he yielded. The trouble now is that he did not yield enough to satisfy the public, and there is every indication that he will have to yield again, in spite of the alleged unalterableness of the present plan, which allows a parliament in 1913 instead of in 1916, as originally promised. A parliament within eighteen months seems a safe prediction as I write this.

It also seems safe to prophesy that the powers of the parliament will be wisely used. In local affairs the Chinese practically established the rule of the people centuries before any European nation adopted the idea. Nominally, the local magistrate has had almost arbitrary power, but practically the control has been in the hands of the village elders. When they have met and decided on a policy, the magistrate has not dared run counter to it. In much the same fas.h.i.+on, governors and viceroys of provinces have been controlled and kept in check. Thus centuries of practical self-government in local affairs have given the Chinese excellent preparation for the new departure in national affairs. What is proposed is not a new power for the people but only an enlargement or extension of powers they already exercise.

Parliamentary government is the one great accomplishment the Chinese people are now interested in, because they propose to make it the tool with which to work out the other Herculean tasks that await them.

Happy are they in that they may set about these tasks inspired by the self-confidence begotten of one of the greatest moral achievements of modern times. I refer, of course, to the almost marvellous success of their anti-opium crusade which I have already discussed.

Mr. Frederick Ward, who has just returned from a visit to many provinces, finding in all the same surprising success {109} in enforcing anti-opium regulations, declares: "It is the miracle of the Middle Kingdom and a lesson for the world."'

China's next great task is the education of her people, and the remedy for pessimism here is to compare her present condition, not with that of other nations, but with her own condition ten years ago. A reported school attendance of less than one million (780,325 to be exact) in a population of 400,000,000 does not look encouraging, but when we compare these figures with the statistics of attendance a few years ago there is unmistakable evidence of progress. In the metropolitan province of Chihli, for example, I find that there are now more teachers in government schools than there were pupils six years ago, and the total attendance has grown from 8000 to 214,637!

Even if China had not established a single additional school, however, or increased the school attendance by even a percentage fraction, her educational progress these last ten years would yet be monumental. For as different as the East is from the West, so different, in literal fact, are her educational ideals at the present time as compared with her educational ideals a decade ago. At one fell blow (by the Edict of 1905) the old exclusively cla.s.sical and literary system of education was swept away, made sacred though it was by the traditions of unnumbered centuries. Unfortunately the work of putting the new policies into effect was entrusted to the slow and bungling hands of the old literati; but this was a necessary stroke of policy, for without their support the new movement would have been hopelessly balked.