WHAT A CHINESE SAYS ABOUT CHINA'S FUTURE.
Waves of Progress Are Now Sweeping
Over the Long Somnolent Flowery
Kingdom, Says Kang Yu Wan.
That there is in China a growing reform movement directed by leaders of the younger and more progressive generation is coming to be quite generally known. Kang Yu Wan, the president of the reform association, has been traveling through the United States on his way from Mexico to Europe. In his flowered silk jacket and blue-and-pink cap he looks like a veritable teacup politician. But it will not do to judge the Chinese by their apparel. Mr. Kang is an active reformer, and he is leading an active movement. In a New York interview he talked freely of the new spirit in China, saying, in part:
China is no longer in the Dark Ages. She has already reached the point where Japan was only twenty years ago.
We have now, for example, more than twenty thousand Chinese students pursuing advanced modern courses of study. As to common schools, some five thousand have been started in the one province of Canton. There are now four million Chinese who can speak English. Our courts are being remodeled after the English system.
The number of books we have translated into Chinese—text-books, technical works, and treatises, mostly—indicate how extensively the progressive movement is spreading. We have thus appropriated to our use over ten thousand American, English, and European works.
China is no longer asleep. She is wide awake, and fully able to care for her interests.
See what happened a few months ago. There were eight thousand Chinese students in the schools of Japan, enjoying equal terms with the Japanese. Japan imposed on these students some humiliating and unfair conditions.