The burden of the memorials of the Chinese high functionaries on this subject have been that the Middle Kingdom being overcome by the brute force of the rebellious barbarians, the obvious way to restore the lapsed authority of the empire was to acquire the instruments of foreign strength. This they diligently set themselves to do, but apparently without the slightest comprehension of the secret of the strength of the foreigners. The Chinese being what they were, could no more win the secret of the Western power by buying its weapons than a musical tyro could hope to rival the greatest artistes by possessing himself of a Stradivarius. Guns, ships, explosives of the latest type, are worse than dummies without the organised human force that gives them life. The element which would have infused vitality into the new organisation was the one thing beyond their imagination, and so far as they did comprehend it, it inspired them with aversion and awe, for it meant in their eyes delivering the keys of power into the hands of strangers. What was needed to regenerate the army, to create a navy, to reform the finances, was the liberal importation of men. This necessity was no doubt partially perceived by Li Hung-chang and his like, but never entirely even by him; for he remained throughout the one-eyed man among the blind, groping after something which he could only guess at. Teachers from Europe and America were employed in the country, and natives were sent to foreign countries to be instructed; but the spirit of the new instruction was never allowed to vitalise the organisation, and consequently all the knowledge that was acquired by both methods remained barren and unfruitful. Thus Li Hung-chang's efforts fell short of their object, and China continued to be the land of moral force for the iron-shod physical forces to trample on.
From the earliest period of his career Li Hung-chang stood out far in advance of his fellows, and in all the troubles which have beset the empire during his time, it is he who has been thrust into the breach and made to bear the brunt of its misfortunes. Being the only man who did anything, he was naturally made responsible for all, and critics, both foreign and native, have had an easy task in laying bare his failures, which his contemporaries have escaped by confining themselves to official routine and playing for their own safety. Though the burden of the State has fallen upon the shoulders of Li Hung-chang more than upon any other individual, he has never flinched from the responsibility. The occurrences of 1894 and subsequently threw him into greater prominence than ever before. Forced to carry on the war with Japan, during which the defences of the empire for which he was responsible completely broke down, he was next also forced to make peace with that Power on very humiliating conditions. Seldom was a more pathetic scene witnessed than the virtual controller of the Chinese empire lying at the feet of a victorious enemy in a foreign country, with the bullet of an assassin in his cheek. More tragic still was his return to the capital with the treaty of Shimonoseki. An intense feeling against Li had been roused throughout the country. The provincial officials with singular unanimity denounced his treachery as they considered it, for the treaty was in their eyes no less disgraceful than the conduct of the war, for both of which Li alone was deemed responsible. The sentiment of the provinces was echoed in Peking, where his enemies in high places had almost secured the capital punishment of the negotiator, and failing that, his assassination, from which fate he was only saved by the veto of Prince Kung and the subsequent protection of the empress-dowager. He was also in an important sense under the protection of Russia, that Power having undertaken to hold him harmless from the consequences of his surrender to the Japanese. In order to take him out of the way of the conspiracies in Peking, Russia requested that an Imperial prince might be sent to the coronation ceremony in 1896. That being impossible by the laws of the empire, which Russia very well knew, a substitute of the highest rank had to be found, and thus Li Hung-chang was designated, by the approval of the empress-dowager and by the consent—reluctant it is believed—of the Emperor, for the mission of congratulation to the Czar. After the festivities at Moscow, Li made the tour of Europe and the United States, meeting everywhere with a distinguished reception.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHINA'S AWAKENING.
Prestige gained, 1880-90—Yields to Japan in Korea while reasserting full suzerainty—The lessons of adversity—Schemes for naval and military reforms—Purchase and manufacture—Provincial system antagonistic to reform—Li Hung-Chang's efforts—Faithful service of foreign experts—Drill-instructors—Creation of a navy—Coast fortification—Superior efficiency of navy compared with army—Corruption and nepotism—Awakening of China apparent, not real.
The service of the navy in the conveyance of troops and of a special envoy to Korea in 1882 was the first which that luckless force was able to render to China. The service was repeated on two other occasions: when a High Commissioner was sent on a mission of imperial condolence in 1890, and again when an assassin was rescued from the revenge of counter-assassins and conveyed safely from China to Korea in 1894. The little kingdom thus played a considerable part in the awakening scenes of the suzerain empire.
On a retrospective view, indeed, it would appear that during the period in question China passed the culminating-point in her efforts to regain national prestige. She had just asserted herself in an unexpected manner in her dealings with Russia, playing a very different part in regard to her distant and worthless possessions in the north-west from what she had done twenty years before in regard to the integral part of her proper territories in the north-east, which she had surrendered with scarcely a protest. The world began to respect China as a power. Her decisive action in Korea showed that she was no longer disposed to permit her neighbours to trifle with the question of her suzerainty in that kingdom, and for ten years she was pre-eminent there in fact as well as of right. Yet with a significant qualification. For, being challenged by Japan while at war with France in 1885, she was unable to vindicate her sole supremacy in Korea, and was constrained to admit her rival into partnership. Thus was the first irrevocable step taken towards the future realisation of the Japanese designs on the peninsula. A condominium must ever be destructive to the policy of the less energetic member, and the treaty concluded between Li Hung-chang and Count Ito in 1885 was the fatal prelude to the events of ten years later. As the treaties granting to Russia a coequal right of navigating the Amur and a joint ownership of the Usuri province constituted the virtual surrender of Chinese rights, so any treaty with Japan, no matter on what conditions, respecting Korea, was a virtual abdication of the Chinese suzerainty. The right in common to send troops into Korea on notice given could have no other effect than to deliver up the kingdom to the Power which was the most alert in taking advantage of the agreement. In giving up half her rights China retreated from an inexpugnable position, and left herself no footing for defending the remaining half, when its turn came to be assailed.
But with the irony which is the very pathos of human and national decline, the outward pretence to authority became more demonstrative as the substance of the claim slipped away. Not for two hundred and fifty years had China asserted her prerogative with such uncompromising arrogance as when she sent an imperial mission of condolence to the royal Court in 1890, years after the keystone of her Korean arch had been pulled away. It was also about this period that the Chinese Minister to England lent his name to a manifesto warning the world of the coming resurrection of China. "The sleep and the awakening" strictly followed the law above alluded to, that hollowness, not solidity, makes the loudest sound.
But so many interests are now inextricably interwoven with the destinies of China that her effort at reform and its failure compel us to give attention to the opening of a new chapter in the world's history. The humiliating foreign invasions, the three rebellions that shook the empire, and the numerous minor risings, had all left their impression. The lessons taught by these adversities had been taken to heart, and the rulers of the empire were called upon to devise a remedy. The first and most obvious desideratum was, of course, naval and military reform, or rather regeneration, whereby they might be strengthened to speak with their enemies in the gates. On this subject Chinese statesmen were absolutely at one with their officious foreign advisers: it was a subject which inspired many of the early homilies of the British Minister, if no others. There was, however, this essential difference in the conception of the means of carrying out the reform, that the foreign advisers of China were completely prepossessed by the notion that an imperial executive, if it did not exist, must be promptly created, while nothing was further from the imagination of the Chinese. They were entirely prepossessed by their tradition and the state of things actually existing, which they did not dream of changing. That was the provincial system on which the administration of the empire rested. The fiasco of the Lay-Osborn flotilla, which was the first crude attempt to mix the oil and vinegar of the two conflicting systems, revealed the fundamental, irreconcilable divergence between the two sets of ideas, which rendered all advice from the one side to the other futile, and co-operation impossible. That palpable failure of the Central Government was calculated to discourage fresh innovations from the same quarter, and the incident was constantly referred to by diplomatists as having blighted the promising career of Wênsiang as a reformer, he being the minister personally responsible for the scheme.
The Chinese, nevertheless, proceeded according to their own lights to set their house in order in so far as its defensive services were concerned. The successful employment of foreign arms and foreign auxiliaries in the suppression of the Taiping rebellion showed them the way. It was a natural but a fatal error, which the Chinese have not to this day abjured, to attach too much importance to the arms, and too little to the man using them. They accordingly commenced in a rather wild and wayward manner to buy weapons and munitions, and then to set up in their own country the means of manufacturing the simpler kinds. The chief promoter, if not the originator, of these novelties was Li Hung-chang, who continued to be the presiding genius of military and naval reform, no matter in what province his official duties happened to lie. The personal authority wielded by the Grand Secretary in provinces beyond his own government was really a step towards centralisation of the executive, and with time and an adequate succession of followers in the same path there is no telling what changes in the Government system might not have been evolved from such a nucleus. But the one-man power was unequal to any great result; it also weakened with age, opposition, and discouragement. The actual reforms inaugurated remained strictly provincial, and even local. There was no evidence of initiative or supervision from the Central Government. The nearest approach to it was the establishment of an arsenal at Tientsin by Chunghou, the first superintendent of trade for the northern ports, and a member of the imperial clan. It would almost appear as if the Government had no concern with the more distant parts of the country, and the strange anomaly presented itself to the onlookers of large sums being expended on the most modern artillery and in the manufacture of thousands of arms of precision while the Peking field force was equipped with bows and arrows.
There came a time at last when the necessity of some kind of centralisation was forced on the Government. It was after Prince Kung had been sent into retirement in 1884, when his younger brother, the father of the emperor, had decided to "come out" and take a part in the executive government, and especially after Prince Ch'un had made a short cruise in salt water in 1886, that a Naval Board was established in Peking itself with the prince at its head. The institution was of course laughed at, as the beginnings of things usually are, and its inefficiency was indeed glaring enough. It would have taken a generation in slow-moving China for such a board to have learned the rudiments of its duties.