Read Ebook: China Japan and the U.S.A. Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference by Dewey John

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 119 lines and 27789 words, and 3 pages

Present-day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing on the Washington Conference

JOHN DEWEY

Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University

Copyright 1921 REPUBLIC PUBLISHING CO. INC.

On Two Sides of the Eastern Seas

It is three days' easy journey from Japan to China. It is doubtful whether anywhere in the world another journey of the same length brings with it such a complete change of political temper and belief. Certainly it is greater than the alteration perceived in journeying directly from San Francisco to Shanghai. The difference is not one in customs and modes of life; that goes without saying. It concerns the ideas, beliefs and alleged information current about one and the same fact: the status of Japan in the international world and especially its attitude toward China. One finds everywhere in Japan a feeling of uncertainty, hesitation, even of weakness. There is a subtle nervous tension in the atmosphere as of a country on the verge of change but not knowing where the change will take it. Liberalism is in the air, but genuine liberals are encompassed with all sorts of difficulties especially in combining their liberalism with the devotion to theocratic robes which the imperialist militarists who rule Japan have so skilfully thrown about the Throne and the Government. But what one senses in China from the first moment is the feeling of the all-pervading power of Japan which is working as surely as fate to its unhesitating conclusion--the domination of Chinese politics and industry by Japan with a view to its final absorption. It is not my object to analyze the realities of the situation or to inquire whether the universal feeling in China is a collective hallucination or is grounded in fact. The phenomenon is worthy of record on its own account. Even if it be merely psychological, it is a fact which must be reckoned with in both its Chinese and its Japanese aspects. In the first place, as to the differences in psychological atmosphere. Everybody who knows anything about Japan knows that it is the land of reserves and reticences. The half-informed American will tell you that this is put on for the misleading of foreigners. The informed know that it is an attitude shown to foreigners only because it is deeply engrained in the moral and social tradition of Japan; and that, if anything, the Japanese are more likely to be communicative--about many things at least--to a sympathetic foreigner, than to one another. The habit of reserve is so deeply embedded in all the etiquette, convention and daily ceremony of living, as well as in the ideals of strength of character, that only the Japanese who have subjected themselves to foreign influences escape it--and many of them revert. To put it mildly, the Japanese are not a loquacious people; they have the gift of doing rather than of gab.

When accordingly a Japanese statesman or visiting diplomatist engages in unusually prolonged and frank discourse setting forth the aims and procedures of Japan, the student of politics who has been long in the East at once becomes alert, not to say suspicious. A recent illustration is so extreme that it will doubtless seem fantastic beyond belief. But the student at home will have to take these seeming fantasies seriously if he wishes to appreciate the present atmosphere of China. Cables have brought fragmentary reports of some addresses of Baron Goto in America. Doubtless in the American atmosphere these have the effect of reassuring America as to any improper ambitions on the part of Japan. In China, they were taken as announcements that Japan has about completed its plans for the absorption of China, and that the lucubration preliminary to operations of swallowing are about to begin. The reader is forgiven in advance any scepticism he feels about both the fact itself and the correctness of my report of the belief in the alleged fact. His scepticism will not surpass what I should feel in his place. But the suspicion aroused by such statements as this and the recent interview of Foreign Minister Uchida and Baron Ishii must be noted as evidences of the universal belief in China that Japan has one mode of diplomacy for the East and another for the West, and that what is said in the West must be read in reverse in the East.

China, whatever else it is, is not the land of privacies. It is a proverb that nothing long remains secret in China. The Chinese talk more easily than they act--especially in politics. They are adepts in revealing their own shortcomings. They dissect their own weaknesses and failures with the most extraordinary reasonableness. One of the defects upon which they dwell is the love of finding substitutes for positive action, of avoiding entering upon a course of action which might be irrevocable. One almost wonders whether their power of self-criticism is not itself another of these substitutes. At all events, they are frank to the point of loquacity. Between the opposite camps there are always communications flowing. Among official enemies there are "sworn friends." In a land of perpetual compromise, etiquette as well as necessity demands that the ways for later accommodations be kept open. Consequently things which are spoken of only under the breath in Japan are shouted from the housetops in China. It would hardly be good taste in Japan to allude to the report that influential Chinese ministers are in constant receipt of Japanese funds and these corrupt officials are the agencies by which political and economic concessions were wrung from China while Europe and America were busy with the war. But in China nobody even takes the trouble to deny it or even to discuss it. What is psychologically most impressive is the fact that it is merely taken for granted. When it is spoken of, it is as one mentions the heat on an unusually hot day.

Another item concerns the labor situation. Japan seems to feel itself in a dilemma. If she passes even reasonably decent factory laws and regulates child and women's labor, she will lose that advantage of cheap labor which she now counts on to offset her many disadvantages. On the other hand, strikes, labor difficulties, agitation for unions, etc., are constantly increasing, and the tension in the atmosphere is unmistakable. The rice riots are not often spoken of, but their memory persists, and the fact that they came very near to assuming a directly political aspect. Is there a race between fulfillment of the aspirations of the military clans who still hold the reins, and the growth of genuinely democratic forces which will forever terminate those aspirations? Certainly the defeat of Germany gave a blow to bureaucratic militarism in Japan which in time will go far. Will it have the time required to take effect on foreign policy? The hope that it will is a large factor in stimulating liberal sympathy for a Japan which is beginning to undergo the throes of transition.

As for the direct international situation of Japan, the feeling in Japan is that of the threatening danger of isolation. Germany is gone; Russia is gone. While those facts simplify matters for Japan somewhat, there is also the belief that in taking away potential allies, they have weakened Japan in the general game of balance and counter-balance of power. Particularly does the removal of imperialistic Russia relieve the threat on India which was such a factor in the willingness of Great Britain to make the offensive-defensive alliance. The revelation of the militaristic possibilities of America is another serious factor. Certainly the new triple entente cordiale of Japan, Italy and France is no adequate substitute for a realignment of international forces in which a common understanding between Great Britain and America is a dominant factor. This factor explains, if it does not excuse, some of the querulousness and studied discourtesies with which the Japanese press for some months treated President Wilson, the United States in general and its relation to the League of Nations in particular, while it also throws light on the ardor with which the opportune question of racial discrimination was discussed. . In any case there is no mistaking the air of tension and nervous overstrain which now attends all discussion of Japanese foreign relations. In all directions, there are characteristic signs of hesitation, shaking of old beliefs and movement along new lines. Japan seems to be much in the same mood as that which it experienced in the early eighties before, toward the close of that decade, it crystallized its institutions through acceptance of the German constitution, militarism, educational system, and diplomatic methods. So that, once more, the observer gets the impression that substantially all of Japan's energy, abundant as that is, must be devoted to her urgent problems of readjustment.

These are some of the aspects of the most complete transformation scene that it has ever been the lot of the writer to experience. May it turn out to be only an extraordinary psychological experience! But in the interests of truth it must be recorded that every resident of China, Chinese or American, with whom I have talked in the last four weeks has volunteered the belief that all the seeds of a future great war are now deeply implanted in China. To avert such a calamity they look to the League of Nations or to some other force outside the immediate scene. Unfortunately the press of Japan treats every attempt to discuss the state of opinion in China or the state of facts as evidence that America, having tasted blood in the war, now has its eyes on Asia with the expectation later on of getting its hands on Asia. Consequently America is interested in trying to foster ill-will between China and Japan. If the pro-American Japanese do not enlighten their fellow-countrymen as to the facts, then America ought to return some of the propaganda that visits its shores. But every American who goes to Japan ought also to visit China--if only to complete his education.

May, 1919.

Shantung, As Seen From Within

American apologists for that part of the Peace Treaty which relates to China have the advantage of the illusions of distance. Most of the arguments seem strange to anyone who lives in China even for a few months. He finds the Japanese on the spot using the old saying about territory consecrated by treasure spent and blood shed. He reads in Japanese papers and hears from moderately liberal Japanese that Japan must protect China, as well as Japan, against herself, against her own weak or corrupt government, by keeping control of Shantung to prevent China from again alienating that territory to some other power.

The history of European aggression in China gives this argument great force among the Japanese, who for the most part know nothing more about what actually goes on in China than they used to know about Korean conditions. These considerations, together with the immense expectations raised among the Japanese during the war concerning their coming domination of the Far East and the unswerving demand of excited public opinion in Japan during the Versailles Conference for the settlement that actually resulted, give an ironic turn to the statement so often made that Japan may be trusted to carry out her promises. Yes, one is often tempted to say, that is precisely what China fears, that Japan will carry out her promises, for then China is doomed. To one who knows the history of foreign aggression in China, especially the technique of conquest by railway and finance, the irony of promising to keep economic rights while returning sovereignty lies so on the surface that it is hardly irony. China might as well be offered Kant's Critique of Pure Reason on a silver platter as be offered sovereignty under such conditions. The latter is equally metaphysical.

As for the comparison of Germany and Japan one might suppose that the objects for which America nominally entered the war had made, in any case, a difference. But aside from this consideration, the Germans exclusively employed Chinese in the railway shops and for all the minor positions on the railway itself. The railway guards were all Chinese, the Germans merely training them. As soon as Japan invaded Shantung and took over the railway, Chinese workmen and Chinese military guards were at once dismissed and Japanese imported to take their places. Tsinan-fu, the inland terminus of the ex-German railway, is over two hundred miles from Tsing-tao. When the Japanese took over the German railway business office, they at once built barracks, and today there are several hundred soldiers still there--where Germany kept none. Since the armistice even, Japan has erected a powerful military wireless within the grounds of the garrison, against of course the unavailing protest of Chinese authorities. No foreigner can be found who will state that Germany used her ownership of port and railway to discriminate against other nations. No Chinese can be found who will claim that this ownership was used to force the Chinese out of business, or to extend German economic rights beyond those definitely assigned her by treaty. Common sense should also teach even the highest paid propagandist in America that there is, from the standpoint of China, an immense distinction between a national menace located half way around the globe, and one within two days' sail over an inland sea absolutely controlled by a foreign navy, especially as the remote nation has no other foothold and the nearby one already dominates additional territory of enormous strategic and economic value--namely, Manchuria.

These facts bear upon the shadowy distinction between the Tsing-tao and the Shantung claim, as well as upon the solid distinction between German and Japanese occupancy. If there still seemed to be a thin wall between Japanese possession of the port of Tsing-tao and usurpation of Shantung, it was enough to stop off the train in Tsinan-fu to see the wall crumble. For the Japanese wireless and the barracks of the army of occupation are the first things that greet your eyes. Within a few hundred feet of the railway that connects Shanghai, via the important center of Tientsin, with the capital, Peking, you see Japanese soldiers on the nominally Chinese street, guarding their barracks. Then you learn that if you travel upon the ex-German railway towards Tsing-tao, you are ordered to show your passport as if you were entering a foreign country. And as you travel along the road you find Japanese soldiers at every station, and several garrisons and barracks at important towns on the line. Then you realize that at the shortest possible notice, Japan could cut all communications between southern China and the capital, and with the aid of the Southern Manchurian Railway at the north of the capital, hold the entire coast and descend at its good pleasure upon Peking.

You are then prepared to learn from eye-witnesses that when Japan made its Twenty-one Demands upon China, machine guns were actually in position at strategic points throughout Shantung, with trenches dug and sandbags placed. You know that the Japanese liberal spoke the truth, who told you, after a visit to China and his return to protest against the action of his government, that the Japanese already had such a military hold upon China that they could control the country within a week, after a minimum of fighting, if war should arise. You also realize the efficiency of official control of information and domestic propaganda as you recall that he also told you that these things were true at the time of his visit, under the Terauchi cabinet, but had been completely reversed by the present Hara ministry. For I have yet to find a single foreigner or Chinese who is conscious of any difference of policy, save as the end of the war has forced the necessity of caution, since other nations can now look China-wards as they could not during the war.

An American can get an idea of the realities of the present situation if he imagines a foreign garrison and military wireless in Wilmington, with a railway from that point to a fortified sea-port controlled by the foreign power, at which the foreign nation can land, without resistance, troops as fast as they can be transported, and with bases of supply, munitions, food, uniforms, etc., already located at Wilmington, at the sea-port and several places along the line. Reverse the directions from south to north, and Wilmington will stand for Tsinan-fu, Shanghai for New York, Nanking for Philadelphia with Peking standing for the seat of government at Washington, and Tientsin for Baltimore. Suppose in addition that the Pennsylvania road is the sole means of communication between Washington and the chief commercial and industrial centers, and you have the framework of the Shantung picture as it presents itself daily to the inhabitants of China. Upon second thought, however, the parallel is not quite accurate. You have to add that the same foreign nation controls also all coast communications from, say, Raleigh southwards, with railway lines both to the nearby coast and to New Orleans. For this corresponds to the position of Imperial Japan in Manchuria with its railways to Dairen and through Korea to a port twelve hours sail from a great military center in Japan proper. These are not remote possibilities nor vague prognostications. They are accomplished facts.

A former consul was indiscreet enough to put into writing that if the Chinese Governor did not stop the boycott and the students' movement by force if need be, he would take matters into his own hands. The chief tangible charge he brought against the Chinese as a basis of his demand for "protection" was that Chinese store-keepers actually refused to accept Japanese money in payment for goods, not ordinary Japanese money at that, but the military notes with which, so as to save drain upon the bullion reserves, the army of occupation is paid. And all this, be it remembered, is more than two hundred miles from Tsing-tao and from eight to twelve months after the armistice. Today's paper reports a visit of Japanese to the Governor to inform him that unless he should prevent a private theatrical performance from being given in Tsinan by the students, they would send their own forces into the settlement to protect themselves. And the utmost they might need protection from, was that the students were to give some plays designed to foster the boycott!

Japanese troops overran the Province before they made any serious attempt to capture Tsing-tao. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that they "took" the Chinese Tsinan before they took the German Tsing-tao. Propaganda in America has justified this act on the ground that a German railway to the rear of Japanese forces would have been a menace. As there were no troops but only legal and diplomatic papers with which to attack the Japanese, it is a fair inference that the "menace" was located in Versailles rather than in Shantung, and concerned the danger of Chinese control of their own territory. Chinese have been arrested by Japanese gendarmes in Tsinan and subjected to a torturing third degree of the kind that Korea has made sickeningly familiar. The Japanese claim that the injuries were received while the men were resisting arrest. Considering that there was no more legal ground for arrest than there would be if Japanese police arrested Americans in New York, almost anybody but the pacifist Chinese certainly would have resisted. But official hospital reports testify to bayonet wounds and the marks of flogging. In the interior where the Japanese had been disconcerted by the student propaganda they raided a High School, seized a school boy at random, and took him to a distant point and kept him locked up several days. When the Japanese consul at Tsinan was visited by Chinese officials in protest against these illegal arrests, the consul disclaimed all jurisdiction. The matter, he said, was wholly in the hands of the military authorities in Tsing-tao. His disclaimer was emphasized by the fact that some of the kidnapped Chinese were taken to Tsing-tao for "trial."

The matter of economic rights in relation to political domination will be discussed later in this article. It is no pleasure for one with many warm friends in Japan, who has a great admiration for the Japanese people as distinct from the ruling military and bureaucratic class, to report such facts as have been stated. One might almost say, one might positively say from the standpoint of Japan itself, that the worst thing that can be charged against the policy of Japan in China for the last six years is its immeasurable stupidity. No nation has ever misjudged the national psychology of another people as Japan has that of China. The alienation of China is widespread, deep, bitter. Even the most pessimistic of the Chinese who think that China is to undergo a complete economic and political domination by Japan do not think it can last, even without outside intervention, more than half a century.

Today, at the beginning of a new year, the boycott is much more complete and efficient than in the most tense days of last summer. Unfortunately, the Japanese policy seems to be under a truly Greek fate which drives it on. Concessions that would have produced a revulsion of feeling in favor of Japan a year ago will now merely salve the surface of the wound. What would have been welcomed even eight months ago would now be received with contempt. There is but one way in which Japan can now restore herself. It is nothing less than complete withdrawal from Shantung, with possibly a strictly commercial concession at Tsing-tao and a real, not a Manchurian, Open Door.

According to the Japanese-owned newspapers published in Tsinan, the Japanese military commander in Tsing-tao recently made a speech to visiting journalists from Tokyo in which he said: "The suspicions of China cannot now be allayed merely by repeating that we have no territorial ambitions in China. We must attain complete economic domination of the Far East. But if Chino-Japanese relations do not improve, some third party will reap the benefit. Japanese residing in China incur the hatred of the Chinese. For they regard themselves as the proud citizens of a conquering country. When the Japanese go into partnership with the Chinese they manage in the greater number of cases to have the profits accrue to themselves. If friendship between China and Japan is to depend wholly upon the government it will come to nothing. Diplomatists, soldiers, merchants, journalists should repent the past. The change must be complete." But it will not be complete until the Japanese withdraw from Shantung leaving their nationals there upon the footing of other foreigners in China.

In discussing the return to China by Japan of a metaphysical sovereignty while economic rights are retained, I shall not repeat the details of German treaty rights as to the railway and the mines. The reader is assumed to be familiar with those facts. The German seizure was outrageous. It was a flagrant case of Might making Right. As von Buelow cynically but frankly told the Reichstag, while Germany did not intend to partition China, she also did not intend to be the passenger left behind in the station when the train started. Germany had the excuse of prior European aggressions, and in turn her usurpation was the precedent for further foreign rape. If judgments are made on a comparative basis, Japan is entitled to all of the white-washing that can be derived from the provocations of European imperialistic powers, including those countries that in domestic policy are democratic. And every fairminded person will recognize that, leaving China out of the reckoning, Japan's proximity to China gives her aggressions the color of self-defence in a way that cannot be urged in behalf of any European power.

It is possible to look at European aggressions in, say, Africa as incidents of a colonization movement. But no foreign policy in Asia can shelter itself behind any colonization plea. For continental Asia is, for practical purposes, India and China, representing two of the oldest civilizations of the globe and presenting two of its densest populations. If there is any such thing in truth as a philosophy of history with its own inner and inevitable logic, one may well shudder to think of what the closing acts of the drama of the intercourse of the West and East are to be. In any case, and with whatever comfort may be derived from the fact that the American continents have not taken part in the aggression and hence may act as a mediator to avert the final tragedy, residence in China forces upon one the realization that Asia is, after all, a large figure in the future reckoning of history. Asia is really here after all. It is not simply a symbol in western algebraic balances of trade. And in the future, so to speak, it is going to be even more here, with its awakened national consciousness of about half the population of the whole globe.

Let the agreements of France and Great Britain made with Japan during the war stand for the measure of western consciousness of the reality of only a small part of Asia, a consciousness generated by the patriotism of Japan backed by its powerful army and navy. The same agreement measures western unconsciousness of the reality of that part of Asia which lies within the confines of China. An even better measure of western unconsciousness may be found perhaps in such a trifling incident as this:--An English friend long resident in Shantung told me of writing indignantly home concerning the British part in the Shantung settlement. The reply came, complacently stating that Japanese ships did so much in the war that the Allies could not properly refuse to recognize Japan's claims. The secret agreements themselves hardly speak as eloquently for the absence of China from the average western consciousness. In saying that China and Asia are to be enormously significant figures in future reckonings, the spectre of a military Yellow Peril is not meant nor even the more credible spectre of an industrial Yellow Peril. But Asia has come to consciousness, and her consciousness of herself will soon be such a massive and persistent thing that it will force itself upon the reluctant consciousness of the west, and lie heavily upon its conscience. And for this fact, China and the western world are indebted to Japan.

It takes no forcing to see a symbol in this incident. Part of it stands for the almost incredible ignorance which has rendered China so impotent nationally speaking. The other part of it stands for the new spirit which has been aroused even among the common people in remote districts. Those who fear, or who pretend to fear, a new Boxer movement, or a definite general anti-foreign movement, are, I think, mistaken. The new consciousness goes much deeper. Foreign policies that fail to take it into account and that think that relations with China can be conducted upon the old basis will find this new consciousness obtruding in the most unexpected and perplexing ways.

One might fairly say, still speaking comparatively, that it is part of the bad luck of Japan that her proximity to China, and the opportunity the war gave her to outdo the aggressions of European powers, have made her the first victim of this disconcerting change. Whatever the motives of the American Senators in completely disassociating the United States from the peace settlement as regards China, their action is a permanent asset to China, not only in respect to Japan but with respect to all Chinese foreign relations. Just before our visit to Tsinan, the Shantung Provincial Assembly had passed a resolution of thanks to the American Senate. More significant is the fact that they passed another resolution to be cabled to the English Parliament, calling attention to the action of the American Senate and inviting similar action. China in general and Shantung in particular feels the reinforcement of an external approval. With this duplication, its national consciousness has as it were solidified. Japan is simply the first object to be affected.

The concrete working out of economic rights in Shantung will be illustrated by a single case which will have to stand as typical. Po-shan is an interior mining village. The mines were not part of the German booty; they were Chinese owned. The Germans, whatever their ulterior aims, had made no attempt at dispossessing the Chinese. The mines, however, are at the end of a branch line of the new Japanese owned railway--owned by the government, not by a private corporation, and guarded by Japanese soldiers. Of the forty mines, the Japanese have worked their way, in only four years, into all but four. Different methods are used. The simplest is, of course, discrimination in the use of the railway for shipping. Downright refusal to furnish cars while competitors who accepted Japanese partners got them, is one method. Another more elaborate method is to send but one car when a large number is asked for, and then when it is too late to use cars, send the whole number asked for or even more, and then charge a large sum for demurrage in spite of the fact the mine no longer wants them or has cancelled the order. Redress there is none.

Tsinan has no special foreign concessions. It is, however, a "treaty port" where nationals of all friendly powers can do business. But Po-shan is not even a treaty port. Legally speaking no foreigners can lease land or carry on any business there. Yet the Japanese have forced a settlement as large in area as the entire foreign settlement in the much larger town of Tsinan. A Chinese refused to lease land where the Japanese wished to relocate their railway station. Nothing happened to him directly. But merchants could not get shipping space, or receive goods by rail. Some of them were beaten up by thugs. After a time, they used their influence with their compatriot to lease his land. Immediately the persecutions ceased. Not all the land has been secured by threats or coercion; some has been leased directly by Chinese moved by high prices, in spite of the absence of any legal sanction. In addition, the Japanese have obtained control of the electric light works and some pottery factories, etc.

Because the population of Shantung is directly confronted with an immense amount of just such evidence, it cannot take seriously the professions of vague diplomatic utterances. What foreign nation is going to intervene to enforce Chinese rights in such a case as Po-shan? Which one is going effectively to call the attention of Japan to such evidences of its failure to carry out its promise? Yet the accumulation of precisely such seemingly petty incidents, and not any single dramatic great wrong, will secure Japan's economic and political domination of Shantung. It is for this reason that foreigners resident in Shantung, no matter in what part, say that they see no sign whatever that Japan is going to get out; that, on the contrary, everything points to a determination to consolidate her position. How long ago was the Portsmouth treaty signed, and what were its nominal pledges about evacuation of Manchurian territory?

Japan itself has recently afforded an object lesson in the actual connection of economic and political rights in China. It is so beautifully complete a demonstration that it was surely unconscious. Within the last two weeks, Mr. Obata, the Japanese minister in Peking, has waited upon the government with a memorandum saying that the Foochow incident was the culminating result of the boycott; that if the boycott continues, a series of such incidents is to be apprehended, saying that the situation has become "intolerable" for Japan, and disavowing all responsibility for further consequences unless the government makes a serious effort to stop the boycott. Japan then immediately makes certain specific demands. China must stop the circulation of handbills, the holding of meetings to urge the boycott, the destruction of Japanese goods that have become Chinese property--none have been destroyed that are Japanese owned. Volumes could not say more as to the real conception of Japan of the connection between the economic and the political relations of the two countries. Surely the pale ghost of "Sovereignty" smiled ironically as he read this official note. President Wilson after having made in the case of Shantung a sharp and complete separation of economic and political rights, also said that a nation boycotted is within sight of surrender. Disassociation of words from acts has gone so far in his case that he will hardly be able to see the meaning of Mr. Obata's communication. The American sense of humor and fair-play may however be counted upon to get its point.

January, 1920.

Hinterlands in China

One of the two Presidents of China--it is unnecessary to specify which--recently stated that a renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance meant a partition of China. In this division, Japan would take the north and Great Britain the south. Probably the remark was not meant to be taken literally in the sense of formal conquest or annexation, but rather symbolically with reference to the tendency of policies and events. Even so, the statement will appear exaggerated or wild to persons outside of China, who either believe that the Open Door policy is now irrevocably established or that Japan is the only foreign Power which China has to fear. But a recent visit to the south revealed that in that section, especially in Canton, the British occupy much the same position of suspicion and dread which is held by the Japanese in the north.

Upon the negative side, the Japanese menace is negligible in the province of Kwantung, in which Canton is situated. There are said to be more Americans in Canton than Japanese, and the American colony is not extensive. Upon the positive side the history of the Cassell collieries contract is instructive. It illustrates the cause of the popular attitude toward the British, and quite possibly explains the bitterness in the remark quoted. The contract is noteworthy from whatever standpoint it is viewed, whether that of time, of the conditions it contains or of the circumstances which accompany it.

Premising that the contract delivers to a British company a monopoly of the rich coal deposits of the province for a period of ninety years and--quite incidentally of course--the right to use all means of transportation, water or rail, wharves and ports now in existence, and also to "construct, manage, superintend and work other roads, railways waterways as may be deemed advisable"--which reads like a monopoly of all further transportation facilities of the province--first take up the time of the making of the contract. It was drawn in April, 1920 and confirmed a few months later. It was made, of course, with the authorities of the Kwantung province, subject to confirmation at Peking. During this period, Kwantung province was governed by military carpet-baggers from the neighboring province of Kwangsei, which was practically alone of the southern provinces allied with the northern government, then under the control of the Anfu party. It was matter of common knowledge that the people of Canton and of the province were bitterly hostile to this outside control and submitted to it only because of military coercion. Civil strife for the expulsion of the outsiders was already going on, continually gaining headway, and a few months later the Kwangsei troops were defeated and expelled from the province by the forces of General Chen, now the civil governor of Kwantung, who received a triumphal ovation upon his entrance into Canton. At this time the present native government was established, a change which made possible the return of Sun Yat Sen and his followers from their exile in Shanghai. It is evident, then, that the collieries contract giving away the natural resources of the people of the province, was knowingly made by a British company with a government which no more represented the people of the province than the military government of Germany represented the people of Belgium during the war.

As to the terms of the contract, the statement that it gave the British company a monopoly of all the coal mines in the province, was not literally accurate. Verbally, twenty-two districts are enumerated. But these are the districts along the lines of the only railways in the province and the only ones soon to be built, including the as yet uncompleted Hankow-Canton railway. Possibly this fact accounts for the anxiety of the British partners in the Consortium that the completion of this line be the first undertaking financed by the Consortium. The document also includes what is perhaps a novelty in legal documents having such a momentous economic importance, namely, the words "etc." after the districts enumerated by name.

Since the text was written, the newspapers have stated that the Peking Government has officially refused to validate the agreement.

It cannot be too often repeated that the real point of friction between the United States and Japan is not in California but in China. It is silly--unless it is calculated--for English authorities to keep repeating that under no circumstances does the alliance mean that Great Britain would support Japan in a war with the United States. The day the alliance is renewed, the hands of the militarists in Japan will be strengthened and the hands of the liberals--already weak enough--be still further weakened. In consequence, all the sources of friction in China between the United States and Japan will be intensified. I do not believe in the predicted war. But should it come, the first act of Japan--so everyone in China believes--will be to seize the ports of northern China and its railways in order to make sure of an uninterrupted supply of food and raw materials. The act would be justified as necessary to national existence. Great Britain in alliance with Japan would be in no position to protest in anything but the most perfunctory way. The guarantee of such abstinence would be for Japan the next best thing to open naval and financial support. Without the guarantee they would not dare the seizure of Chinese ports. In recent years diplomatists have shown themselves capable of unlimited stupidity. But it is not possible that the men in the British Foreign Office are not aware of these elementary facts. If they renew the alliance they knowingly take the responsibility for the consequences.

May 24, 1921.

A Political Upheaval in China

Even in America we have heard of one Chinese revolution, that which thrust the Manchu dynasty from the throne. The visitor in China gets used to casual references to the second revolution, that which frustrated Yuan Shi Kai's aspirations to be emperor, and the third, the defeat in 1917 of the abortive attempt to put the Manchu boy emperor back into power. And within the last few weeks the fourth upheaval has taken place. It may not be dignified by the name of the fourth revolution, for the head of the state has not been changed by it. But as a manifestation of the forces that shape Chinese political events, for evil and for good, perhaps this last disturbance surpasses the last two "revolutions" in significance.

Chinese politics in detail are highly complicated, a mess of personalities and factions whose oscillations no one can follow who does not know a multitude of personal, family and provincial histories. But occasionally something happens which simplifies the tangle. Definite outlines frame themselves out of the swirling criss-cross of strife, intrigue and ambition. So, at present, the complete collapse of the Anfu clique which owned the central government for two years marks the end of that union of internal militarism and Japanese foreign influence which was, for China, the most marked fruit of the war. When China entered the war a "War Participation" army was formed. It never participated; probably it was never meant to. But its formation threw power wholly into the hands of the military clique, as against the civilian constitutionalists. And in return for concessions, secret agreements relating to Manchuria, Shantung, new railways, etc., Japan supplied money, munitions, instructors for the army and a benevolent supervision of foreign and domestic politics. The war came to an unexpected and untimely end, but by this time the offspring of the marriage of the militarism of Yuan Shi Kai and Japanese money and influence was a lusty youth. Bolshevism was induced to take the place of Germany as a menace requiring the keeping up of the army, and loans and teachers. Mongolia was persuaded to cut her strenuous ties with Russia, to renounce her independence and come again under Chinese sovereignty.

The army and its Japanese support and instruction was, accordingly, continued. In place of the "War Participation" army appeared the "Frontier Defense" army. Marshal Tuan, the head of the military party, remained the nominal political power behind the presidential chair, and General Hsu was the energetic manager of the Mongolian adventure which, by a happy coincidence, required a bank, land development companies and railway schemes, as well as an army. About this military centre as a nucleus gathered the vultures who fed on the carrion. This flock took the name of the Anfu Club. It did not control the entire cabinet, but to it belonged the Minister of Justice, who manipulated the police and the courts, persecuted the students, suppressed liberal journals and imprisoned inconvenient critics. And the Club owned the ministers of finance and communications, the two cabinet places that dispense revenues, give out jobs and make loans. It also regulated the distribution of intelligence by mail and telegraph. The reign of corruption and despotic inefficiency, tempered only by the student revolt, set in. In two years the Anfu Club got away with two hundred millions of public funds directly, to say nothing of what was wasted by incompetency and upon the army. The Allies had set out to get China into the war. They succeeded in getting Japan into control of Peking and getting China, politically speaking, into a seemingly hopeless state of corruption and confusion.

The militaristic or Pei-Yang party was, however, divided into two factions, each called after a province. The Anwhei party gathered about little Hsu and was almost identical with the Anfus. The Chili faction had been obliged, so far as Peking was concerned, to content itself with such leavings as the Anfu Club tossed to it. Apparently it was hopelessly weaker than its rival, although Tuan, who was personally honest and above financial scandal, was supported by both factions and was the head of both. About three months ago there were a few signs that, while the Anfu Club had been entrenching itself in Peking, the rival faction had been quietly establishing itself in the provinces. A league of Eight Tuchuns came to the assistance of the president against some unusually strong pressure from the Anfu Club. In spite of the fact that the military governor of the three Manchurian provinces, Chang Tso Lin, popularly known as the Emperor of Manchuria, lined up with this league, practically nobody expected anything except some manoeuvering to get a larger share of the spoils.

But late in June the president invited Chang Tso Lin to Peking. The latter saw Tuan, told him that he was surrounded by evil advisers, demanded that he cut loose from little Hsu and the Anfu Club, and declared open war upon little Hsu--the two had long and notoriously been bitter enemies. Even then people had great difficulty in believing that anything would happen except another Chinese compromise. The president was known to be sympathetic upon the whole with the Chili faction, but the president, if not a typical Chinese, is at least typical of a certain kind of Chinese mandarin, non-resistant, compromising, conciliating, procrastinating, covering up, evading issues, face-saving. But finally something happened. A mandate was issued dismissing little Hsu from office, military and civil, dissolving the frontier defense corps as such, and bringing it under the control of the Ministry of War . For almost forty-eight hours it was thought that Tuan had consented to sacrifice little Hsu and that the latter would submit at least temporarily. Then with equally sensational abruptness Tuan brought pressure to bear on the president. The latter was appointed head of a national defense army, and rewards were issued for the heads of the chiefs of the Chili faction, nothing, however, being said about Chang Tso Lin, who had meanwhile returned to Mukden and who still professed allegiance to Tuan. Troops were mobilized; there was a rush of officials and of the wealthy to the concessions of Tientsin and to the hotels of the legation quarter.

This sketch is not meant as history, but simply as an indication of the forces at work. Hence it is enough to say that two weeks after Tuan and little Hsu had intimidated the president and proclaimed themselves the saviors of the Republic, they were in hiding, their enemies of the Chili party were in complete control of Peking, and rewards from fifty thousand dollars down were offered for the arrest of little Hsu, the ex-ministers of justice, finance and communications, and other leaders of the Anfu Club. The political turnover was as complete as it was sensational. The seemingly impregnable masters of China were impotent fugitives. The carefully built up Anfu Club, with its military, financial and foreign support, had crumbled and fallen. No country at any time has ever seen a political upheaval more sudden and more thoroughgoing. It was not so much a defeat as a dissolution like that of death, a total disappearance, an evaporation.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet