CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE OUTCOME.
I. THE SITUATION IN PEKING.
A magnified repetition of experiences in Canton—Chinese unchanged—International usages inapplicable.
Since the foregoing chapters were put into the printer's hands the Far Eastern Question has reached a crisis in which its ruling factors have been suddenly exposed in their nakedness. But the searchlight now thrown upon them casts a blacker shadow on the unilluminated portions of the field. The events of 1900, while revealing the landmarks of past foreign relations with China, have deepened the obscurity of all that concerns the future of the Chinese State itself, as well as of the position of the foreign Powers in relation to it and to one another. International comity is seen to have made no progress in sixty years; on the contrary, the gulf that divides China from the world yawns wider than ever, of which a striking example is afforded by the telegrams lately exchanged between the Chinese and the German Emperors. They speak in tongues unknown to one another and are mutually unintelligible, so that they have no common ground but that of brute force. Intercourse imposed on them against their will and conscience has resulted, naturally enough, in exhibiting the Chinese as the enemies of the human family.
The capture of the Taku forts and the occupation of Peking by foreign troops were but a repetition of similar incidents forty years before; and it is instructive to observe how closely the lines of the old precedents have been followed. Prisoners taken treacherously, or envoys held as hostages; the threat to kill them if foreign troops menaced the capital; the devices to arrest the advance of the Allied forces; the proposal to negotiate only when the Chinese case became desperate; the ineradicable belief in the credulity of foreigners; and the flight of the Court when all other expedients failed,—were but another rehearsal, with variations, of previous performances at Canton, Nanking, and Peking. The parallel is completed by the efforts of foreign Powers to coax the emperor back to his capital. Nothing has been changed, only the scale has been magnified, and the civilised world, instead of one or two Powers, has become directly interested in the catastrophe. Official intercourse with China has thus continued on the lines on which it began. The first British envoy was treated as a malefactor, imprisoned, his letters were intercepted, his communications cut off, his servants withdrawn; he was guarded and threatened by armed men posted at his door, and reduced to dangerous subterfuges in order to get a message conveyed to his countrymen outside. Canton in 1834 was simply Peking in 1900, in embryo. A naval force was required to relieve Lord Napier from his perilous situation then,[33] as a combined naval and military force has been required to relieve the foreign Ministers in Peking now. The cycle has been completed. Every link in the chain connecting the opening with the closing incidents of diplomatic intercourse has been, on one side at least, homogeneous. Whatever and whoever may have altered, the Chinese certainly have not. Commissioner Lin, Viceroy Yeh, Prince Tuan, the empress-dowager, and all wielding authority, whether in name or not, have been true to the Chinese ideal. They have all alike been blind to the consequences of their acts, which have throughout been characterised by the strategy of fools—momentary success followed by overwhelming reverses, resulting at each succeeding encounter in a further invasion of the frontiers of their political independence.
The crisis has been sufficiently prolonged to enable the world to perceive what the Chinese mean by the term negotiation. To them it signifies what it has always done, a palaver to gain time, to hoodwink an opponent, to escape from a threatened danger, to purchase immunity by promises; a device to manage, or, as they themselves express it, "to soothe and bridle barbarians." As little now as at any former period can they conceive the idea of a fair bargain between equals. They but temporise as with a savage or a dangerous beast. "Get rid of the barbarians" is their unvarying mot d'ordre, and it matters but little to them what instruments are employed in carrying it out. The office is one from which every statesman instinctively shrinks, since if he fails in taming the barbarians his case is referred to the Board of Punishments, and if he succeeds he incurs the contempt of all classes for the concessions by which he has purchased peace. It is hardly possible for him in any case to escape degradation. Be it therefore Lin, Kishen, Kiying, Yeh, Kweiliang, Wênsiang, Chunghou, Li Hung-chang, or any one else, Chinese negotiators, whatever their apparent success in averting a danger, are morally certain to come to a bad end; and for the reason which caused the failure of Lord Napier in 1834, the impossibility of reconciling two principles which are wholly incompatible. As negotiation under such conditions can only be nugatory, a lengthened experience has made it clear that neither the negotiator nor the negotiation avails anything, but solely the manner in which the Chinese are held to their engagements, even when imposed on them by force, and the strictness with which the common duties of civilised nations are exacted from them, with or without written agreements.
One feature in the recent Peking episode distinguishes it from previous experiences. A Government communicating with foreign Powers through its own envoys, doling out through them garbled information, while isolating the envoys of those same Powers within its capital, and planning, and if not doing its best to effect, their extermination, at least openly approving the attempt, is surely unexampled in human history. The proposal of such a Government, on the failure of its plans to "negotiate for peace," would be the most sardonic of practical jokes if we could disconnect it from the evidence implied in the proposal of the estimate of foreign nations which is ingrained in the Chinese moral constitution. Obviously, however, such a Government has placed itself beyond the pale of international relations, and it is hardly possible to conceive any restoration of the old or evolution of a new régime which can place China in the rank of civilised Powers.
We are, in fact, thrust back on the conclusion arrived at by Lord Napier in 1834: "That Government is not in a position to be dealt with or treated by civilised nations according to the same rules as are acknowledged and practised among themselves." Yet, instead of being treated with less, the Chinese Government has received greater consideration than is accorded by one Western State to another. Prerogatives implying superiority have been conceded to it by consent of all the foreign Powers—a false principle which has now produced its natural result.
The usages of Western Courts, therefore, being wholly inapplicable in China, no matter what Government may rule there, international relations of the European type must be, as they have hitherto been, an illusory ideal, and some new form of intercourse, corresponding more closely to the realities of the case, must take the place of that which has proved so totally unworkable. Should foreign nations, by reason of differences among themselves or the magnitude of the problem, hesitate to act up to this view of the situation, the continuance of a status which is essentially false to the facts must lead to some still more tragic catastrophe than any that has yet taken place.