What has caused the chronic anti-foreign movement to swell suddenly to imperial dimensions, and to explode simultaneously in the capital and in distant provinces, is a larger question than we can attempt to answer. As contributory causes, however, there are certain facts lying on the surface of foreign relations which are too suggestive to be passed over. The Japanese war of 1894-95, and the train of events following it, noted in a previous chapter, struck at the vital centre of the Chinese empire. Foreigners of all nations applied force to China, not to defend person or property, but to divide up the empire in disregard of the Government and the people, both assumed to be moribund. The partition of China was discussed in the Western press as a matter in which the Government and natives of the country had no concern. Open doors, spheres of influence, concessions, protectorates—the various modes in which the Chinese oyster was to be cooked and served—were treated solely as questions of rivalry and preponderance between the Western Powers. The people were not indeed ignored, for the aggressors reckoned on them as their most valuable asset, the raw material of prospective armies, the source of labour supply for excavations and earthworks, and of the payable traffic for railways and other exotic enterprises. But there is more in human nature than a capacity to dig or obey a drill-sergeant, and it is precisely the elements which were disregarded by political, financial, and industrial adventurers which have risen up in judgment against them. The grandiose pronouncements of the foreign press during the last two or three years were by no means lost on the Chinese Government. These writings showed that the ambitions of foreign countries had no limits, while the gratification of them was absolutely incompatible with the retention of any semblance of independent authority by the rulers of the country.
Reasoning after the fact, and from effect to cause, is apt to be fallacious, but when the circuit is completed by the joining of prediction with realisation, some confidence may be felt in the soundness of the conclusion. Those who have observed the condition of China with a sympathetic eye have been for years labouring under the deepest apprehension for the peace of the country. The Japanese war accentuated this feeling, and the subsequent ruthless proceedings of the Western Powers deepened the apprehension. As the forces of aggression could in nowise be restrained, anxious, but inadequate and altogether ineffectual, attempts were made to avert their worst effects. Warnings were not wanting that "dangers which might have slept for generations to come had been suddenly brought within the range of practical politics, and that unless measures of precaution were taken in time, what happened in 1894-95 would sooner or later happen again, ... that the Chinese Empire would be brought to the verge of disruption; for all the forces, external and internal, which make for anarchy would be let loose, and the empire would be powerless alike to resist dismemberment by the aggressive Powers or the subversion of authority by internal upheaval." The paper from which we quote, doubtless one of many such drawn up in 1896, goes on to say: "However desirous some, or even all, of the Great Powers might be of saving China from dissolution, they would be paralysed by their own jealousies, and they would perhaps be more concerned to avert a general war among themselves than to prevent calamity in China. A crisis might thus arise more direful in its consequences than the chronic crisis in the Ottoman Empire, and a reign of havoc would follow in which millions would perish where the loss of thousands now excites the indignation of the civilised world.[35] No circumstances would be wanting to intensify the horror, for it would not be even civil war, but promiscuous rapine as aimless and as uncontrollable as a forest fire. A generation has scarcely passed since China was desolated by the scourge of the Taiping rebellion, which is thought to have destroyed a population equal to that of a first-class European State; and a new outbreak of the like kind would be more hopeless, inasmuch as the factors which were eventually brought into play to extinguish the conflagration in 1862-64 would now be wanting, or would be rendered inoperative by the complex circumstances above indicated."
The spectre was anarchy, the provocatives aggression and dismemberment; and the permanent interests of international commerce were appealed to to avert the calamities foreshadowed. "Dismemberment, from the point of view of the general interests of trade, would be little better than anarchy." Severe pressure was being put on the Chinese Government—even in 1896, when these and similar forebodings were uttered—to permit free communication by steam and rail, and the development of the mineral resources of their country. It was from such sources that the immediate danger to the integrity of the territory and the peace of the State was apprehended, while, on the other hand, the need for the innovations was freely granted. "The Chinese having neither men nor appliances capable of undertaking either the construction or management of railways, must be wholly dependent on foreigners for their inauguration. This state of things, fully recognised on all sides, has led speculators and promoters of all nations to besiege the Chinese authorities with offers of the means of construction and with demands for concessions. But considering the relative positions of China and the Western nations, it cannot but be admitted that the Chinese have done well to refuse to listen to such proposals. Rival concessionaires working under the ægis of extra-territoriality in the interior would be the axe at the root of the tree of China's integrity."
The problem of preserving the independence and integrity of China, while permitting the opening of the interior of the country to foreign enterprise, was felt to be one of the gravest importance, not to be settled by the clamour either of rival concession-hunters or the intrigue of rival States. "Inland residence," wrote Sir Rutherford Alcock, in 1868, "will bring weakness to the nation and death to the Government, and must eventuate in greater anarchy than has yet been seen.... Right of residence in the interior is hardly compatible with an extra-territorial clause."
The essential condition of safety for the country was evidently, therefore, to bar the acquisition of territorial rights by any foreign Government or company. With this view it was urged that at least the ownership and control of railways and mines should be retained in the hands of the Government itself, under a competent organisation in which foreign skill and experience should be effectively represented. As the then existing railway line of 200 miles was of such a character, a development of the same system was recommended for the larger schemes which were thought to be impending. The foreign Powers were urged to assist China in putting her house in order and in adapting her administration to the exigencies of the time.
Such were among the proposals made in 1896, and not disapproved by the Powers to which they were addressed. But common action thereon by foreigners was hindered by mutual rivalry and distrust, while the Chinese Government on its part showed neither inclination nor capacity—any more than it had ever done—to meet its difficulties by comprehensive measures. It preferred the ancient system of resisting, in detail and in secret, the advances of foreigners,—a policy of traps and snares and entanglements. Possibly the paralysis of despair had already reached the nerve centres of Chinese statesmanship, or the desperate scheme of a general expulsion of foreigners had begun to fascinate the leading spirits. Certain it is no practical rapprochement was effected, or even seriously attempted, between the contending forces.
Meantime, however, the invaders would brook no delay,—they had no time for temporising tactics. The "ugly rush" began—syndicate rivalled syndicate, and Government Government, in dividing up the corpus vile. Within twelve months of the period just referred to Germany led the way in the dismemberment of China by cutting off a slice of Shantung; Russia promptly followed in Liaotung; then Great Britain took Weihai-wei as a set-off, and assumed an interest in the central zone keener than that of the Chinese Government itself. Other Powers followed with imperious demands for portions of Chinese territory, on no ground whatever except that China was weak. Every law save the law of the strongest was suspended. Justice and mercy were thrown to the winds. And yet the orgies of spoliation were followed by no change in the outward forms of diplomatic relations with the Chinese Government. Foreign representatives continued to negotiate as if the power of that Government remained intact, though to assume, for one purpose, that there was neither sentient organism nor sovereign authority in China, and for another, that the Government retained its full competence,[36] was obviously to bring chaos into their intercourse. As a consequence, diplomatic correspondence with China since 1898—the British share of which, so far as has been published, extends to a thousand pages—is but a harvest of Dead Sea Fruit.
But Chinese relations being a compound of courtesy and force on the part of foreign Powers, it is not difficult to divine which of the two must be the dominant factor. Though they bowed their heads in morose silence before their conquerors, Chinese statesmen retained sufficient vitality to discriminate between platonic diplomacy and the "mailed fist," yielding in all things to menace, in nothing to argument. To seize territory, under this régime, presented less difficulty than to obtain redress for trivial injuries. Aggressive Powers were respected according to the measure of their aggression, while those who concerned themselves with the preservation of the empire met with no recognition whatever. British schemes were thwarted at every point, while other Powers ran riot throughout the territory. For this reason the Chinese Government collectively, and individual mandarins, have been stigmatised as anti-British, as if to be so were a blot upon their escutcheons. No doubt they are; but to assume on that account that the Chinese rulers are pro-Russian, pro-French, or pro-German is more than the premisses seem to warrant. History and tradition are alike opposed to such an idea. That peculiar kind of patriot, the friend of every country but his own, is not much in evidence in China. The vainest and most jealous nation on earth was not likely in a moment to suppress its self-love, invert its whole character, and welcome an army of foreign adventurers, no matter of what nationality, who came in the guise not of servants but masters. And, setting sentiment aside, the Chinese were not blind to the material consequences of the foreign schemes which were pressed on them, but were as keenly alive to the danger of intrusting railway and mining enterprises to foreigners as they had always shown themselves to be when their military and naval armaments were concerned. The memorials of provincial authorities clearly prove this. If, therefore, they admitted the disruptive agency into their country, it was from no love of the interlopers, but solely by way of submission to superior force, and under the same mental reservation with which they had subscribed to all their previous treaty engagements.
The chronic missionary irritant mentioned in previous chapters had been steadily spreading, and the hostility evoked by it as steadily increasing. Christianity being the only character in which foreigners had presented themselves to the view of the masses, the extirpation of it stood in the forefront of the anti-foreign programme. The disasters which the governing classes had always apprehended from the extension of foreign missions had suddenly assumed the form of a concrete reality. All that its opponents had for generations foretold became fact: their administration was being undermined, their traditions set at nought, their very territory wrenched from them in the name of the foreign religion. Propagandism was finally unmasked by the German Emperor in the uncompromising manner characteristic of that potentate. The Name that is above every name was openly made subservient to the lust of conquest. China saw at last that she was really doomed through the instrumentality of the religion which she had engaged herself to tolerate.