China in Travail

The Canadian Forum/Editorial/1921-02

China in Travail written by Charles Rupert Carscallen

Désarmement

From The Canadian Forum, February 1921, p. 134

"The Yellow river may change its bed but its waters are still muddy" — Chinese Adage.

When the revolution of 1911 succeeded in overthrowing the Manchu dynasty the Chinese people and many friends of China felt, and rightly felt, that a great thing had been done. The oldest and most absolute of Monarchies in the world had become almost overnight a Republic. But extravagant hopes were built upon this fact. It was thought that all China's problems had been solved and all her troubles ended. But China is learning by sad experience that a mere political revolution can, after all, accomplish very little in the transformation of a people, that evolution is perhaps a safer and surer process of progress than revolution, and that freedom, liberty and democracy are things to be achieved, not merely accepted, and moreover to a certain extent at least must be deserved. It was inevitable in a country where ninety per cent of the people are illiterate and without any high degree of moral attainment that under a Republican form of government power should pass into the hands of a few who should control the whole machinery of government and exploit the masses for their own particular ends, for both intelligence and character are needed in any people if a democratic form of government is to be a blessing to that people.

This has been the result in China. Not only do the few govern, but unfortunately it is not the same few. Faction succeeds faction, clique follows clique, not by the constitutional and peaceful method of a vote of want of confidence but too often by an appeal to arms. The people are being ground to dust between would-be deliverers of their country.

As yet no dictator has emerged strong enough to reduce the whole country to order. The late Yuan Shih Kai came nearest to filling this rôle. He overrode the will of his parliament, who, he claimed, were a lot of corrupt obstructionists. He dissolved that body at the point of the bayonet and might have succeeded in imposing his will on the whole country had not his ambition over-reached itself in his attempt to become Emperor and found a dynasty.

Tuan Chi Jui was the next "will" to emerge. As Premier he also found, it necessary to secure the dissolution of parliament, compelling the Vice-President to sign a decree to that effect, which he himself enforced with his army. But the scattered parliamentarians, most of them, retired to Canton and with the help and encouragement of certain military leaders who professed to sympathize with constitutionalism set up the Southern Military Government, which has ever since, at least until last month, functioned in that place; and Tuan Chi Jui and the Government at Peking has ruled over only a part of China ever since.

The fact is that China both North and South is ruled by her militarists. Each province is controlled by a Military Governor and under him a number of Generals, each in charge of a district. The Civil Governor and the civil officials under him are not much more than figureheads. The real master in every district is the military leader in that district, and a man's power in China is in direct proportion to the number of soldiers he commands. The result is that each General "squeezes" as much as he possibly can by taxes and impositions out of the district that he controls. In this way he can pay more soldiers, increase his power and secure a higher bid for his service when the next fight occurs.

What has occured^(sic!) in one province with which the writer is acquainted is typical of what has occurred in, if not all, at least several of the provinces of China. In Sz-Chuan since the revolution of 1911 there have been seven different Governors and the changes from one to the other in all but two cases entailed fighting. In fact there has been only one whole year during the last seven which the writer has spent in Sz-Chuan in which there has not been fighting in that province.

These civil wars are for no great issues or they might be excused. In most cases they are mere struggles for individual power. A certain General, with the aid of others whom he may have bribed or to whom he may have promised large rewards, considers himself strong enough to challenge the group in control. A pretext for a quarrel is found and the fight is on. During these times of disorder all commerce ceases. The highways by road and river become infested with brigands. The people are terror-stricken both because of the brigands and the soldiers, for the former are only the latter out of a regular job. A band of brigands to-day may become soldiers to-morrow by being recognized by some General who is in need of help. In these times of emergency all able-bodied young men disappear from the streets. They are afraid of being forced to carry the soldier's ammunition or his baggage or his person about the country on his campaigns — and for starvation wages. Entire villages are often deserted on the approach of soldiers, especially if these are from another province. In some countrysides at such times, only old men, women and children till the fields. The young men are in hiding. In the larger cities the merchant classes are forced to [p. 135] put up large sums of money to the military commander in occupation, or it is said "he cannot be responsible for order if the soldiers are not paid." All classes suffer; the homes and institutions of the missionaries become thronged with panic-stricken refugees; and these poor people who ask nothing more than to be left alone, to go about their work unmolested and unafraid, suffer everything at the hands of their pretended protectors.

Not only are there these local and provincial factions but as we have already noticed for several years now China has been split into two great factions the North and the South, with two governments functioning at Peking and Canton respectively. Here, if anywhere, one would think there was a real issue at stake — constitutionalism vs. autocracy — and doubtless there was, at least at first, this real issue involved in the minds of many of the leaders of the South. But these men have long since ceased to exercise control in the affairs of the South, and the Southern Government has passed into the hands of its military men, as despotic and ambitious as those of the North, who only espoused Constitutionalism as a convenient cry by which to gain the sympathy of the people and on wh[i]ch to ride into power. In fact the people have not been slow to recognize this and so far as the people are concerned there is now no North and South. It is fast becoming a dead issue. The military leaders, who have everything to gain, of course try to keep the issue alive, but the people are at last realizing that the real matter at stake in China, whether in the North or in the South, is military vs. civil control and are resolved that they shall no longer be divided by the shibboleths by which certain military men seek to fasten their yoke upon the necks of the people.

Now, in spite of these distressing and almost hopeless political conditions in China, there are some hopeful features in the situation.

There is emerging a national consciousness. China has never been a nation in any true sense. She has never fought a national war. Two or three provinces have been at war. The rest have remained not only neutral but to a large extent indifferent. But now, partly as a result of the low condition to which she has fallen politically, and partly as a result of the humiliations she has suffered in her relations with outside powers, there is growing in China a national spirit and a public opinion organized on a national scale.

When the award of the Paris Peace Conference reached China, giving Kiaochau and certain rights in Shantung to Japan, a wave of indignation swept over the land. They had hoped for so much. They were so bitterly disappointed. An effective boycott of Japanese goods was organized by the students all over China and demands were made, first that China should not sign the Peace Treaty, and secondly that certain ministers, suspected of having sold their country, should be dismissed. The movement was at first underestimated by the Government. What could a lot of unarmed school boys accomplish anyway? But as the merchant guilds came to their support and the public opinion of the masses began to rally to them the Government capitulated. The treaty was not signed, as the Government wished it to be. Three cabinet ministers were dismissed, and for the first time it seems to have entered into the consciousness of the militarists in control that in public opinion there is a force to be reckoned with.

Now this is the most hopeful sign in China at the present time. It has its elements of danger, it is true. It is a young man's movement, and youth is ever apt to be hasty and headstrong. It is too exclusively concerned with China's external relations. It would do well to turn its attention more than it has to China's internal problems. Nevertheless, I am convinced that it has behind it the intelligence, the moral idealism, the forward-looking forces and the youth of the nation, and if it can be encouraged and at the same time guided into wise and constructive channels it will do much toward the regeneration of China, and will not only make China safe for democracy but will make of her a united, strong and prosperous nation, taking her place and contributing her part with other great democracies in that federation of the nations toward which all men of good-will look.

The destiny of these four hundred millions can not be a matter of unconcern to the world. The problem is so great that it can not be ignored. It will not let us ignore it. Some one has said that there are two characteristics which when found in combination make of a nation a diplomatic danger-point. These two characteristics are, first wealth of undeveloped resources, and secondly weakness. These two are combined to an unprecedented degree in the China of to-day. Her resources are pretty well known. I need not dwell on them, except to say that perhaps they are not surpassed by those of any other nation. One quarter, approximately, of the human race being thrown open to the markets of the world — what possibilities are involved. What a mark she is for greedy and less favored nations.

Her weakness and helplessness this article has already described. At present she is in a military sense defenceless, torn by factions and weakened by civil war and famine.

Now the way the great powers treat China in this the time of her weakness will be the acid test of their culture and civilization, and will, moreover, do much to determine whether China's development is to be for the weal or woe of the rest of the world. If we restrain our greed; if we refrain from taking advantage [p.136] of her helplessness to dismember or to exploit her; if we help her sympathetically in her struggles; if we encourage these better elements in China's life, — the moral idealism of the nation now struggling for mastery, — then we may make her our friend and bind her to us with ropes stronger than steel, and she will be anxious to be associated with us in any League or association of the nations which may be formed to guard the peace and to ensure the progress of the world. But, if we go in to exploit her or give consent to her exploitation at the hands of a neighbour, we may do much to convince her of what already is being instilled into her, namely that her only salvation consists in her strong right arm, in the number of battalions she can produce. We may do much to start her on that path of militarism which if followed would make her with her vast human material the greatest menace that the world has ever seen. What nation could compete with her in man power?

This is a doctrine by no means unheard of in the East. There are those there who declare that the destiny of the East is one, that the yellow race should stand or fall together — men who have in view the organization of all that vast human material on military lines. That this is not a likely development in China is quite true, for it is foreign to the traditions and spirit of the Chinese people. China is essentially a lover of peaceful methods and her classic literature despises militarism and exalts the arts of peace. Yet it is not impossible that this traditional bent of the nation might be overcome by a succession of unjust humiliations at the hands of Western powers.

However, I am convinced that if we treat her now in her helplessness as we should wish to be treated, in accordance with those principles of brotherhood and justice of which we heard so much during the great war, China will yet emerge out of her difficulties a strong, united people with friendly relations to the rest of the world, realizing her destiny not in opposition to the other nations of the world, but in closest co-operation with them — a force for peace, stability and democracy in this disturbed world of ours.

C. R. Carscallen.