The Problem of China

by Bertrand Russell

I could of course have given many other instances, but I content myself with one, because it especially concerns China. I quote from an American weekly, The Freeman (November 23, 1921, p. 244):—

On November 1st, the Chinese Government failed to meet an obligation of $5,600,000, due and payable to a large banking-house in Chicago. The State Department had facilitated the negotiation of this loan in the first instance; and now, in fulfilment of the promise of Governmental support in an emergency, an official cablegram was launched upon Peking, with intimations that continued defalcation might have a most serious effect upon the financial and political rating of the Chinese Republic. In the meantime, the American bankers of the new international consortium had offered to advance to the Chinese Government an amount which would cover the loan in default, together with other obligations already in arrears, and still others which will fall due on December 1st; and this proposal had also received the full and energetic support of the Department of State. That is to say, American financiers and politicians were at one and the same time the heroes and villains of the piece; having co-operated in the creation of a dangerous situation, they came forward handsomely in the hour of trial with an offer to save China from themselves as it were, if the Chinese Government would only enter into relations with the consortium, and thus prepare the way for the eventual establishment of an American financial protectorate.

It should be added that the Peking Government, after repeated negotiations, had decided not to accept loans from the consortium on the terms on which they were offered. In my opinion, there were very adequate grounds for this decision. As the same article in the Freeman concludes:—

If this plan is put through, it will make the bankers of the consortium the virtual owners of China; and among these bankers, those of the United States are the only ones who are prepared to take full advantage of the situation.

There is some reason to think that, at the beginning of the Washington Conference, an attempt was made by the consortium banks, with the connivance of the British but not of the American Government, to establish, by means of the Conference, some measure of international control over China. In the Japan Weekly Chronicle for November 17, 1921 (p. 725), in a telegram headed "International Control of China," I find it reported that America is thought to be seeking to establish international control, and that Mr. Wellington Koo told the Philadelphia Public Ledger: "We suspect the motives which led to the suggestion and we thoroughly doubt its feasibility. China will bitterly oppose any Conference plan to offer China international aid." He adds: "International control will not do. China must be given time and opportunity to find herself. The world should not misinterpret or exaggerate the meaning of the convulsion which China is now passing through." These are wise words, with which every true friend of China must agree. In the same issue of the Japan Weekly Chronicle—which, by the way, I consider the best weekly paper in the world—I find the following (p. 728):—

Mr. Lennox Simpson [Putnam Weale] is quoted as saying: "The international bankers have a scheme for the international control of China. Mr. Lamont, representing the consortium, offered a sixteen-million-dollar loan to China, which the Chinese Government refused to accept because Mr. Lamont insisted that the Hukuang bonds, German issue, which had been acquired by the Morgan Company, should be paid out of it." Mr. Lamont, on hearing this charge, made an emphatic denial, saying: "Simpson's statement is unqualifiedly false. When this man Simpson talks about resisting the control of the international banks he is fantastic. We don't want control. We are anxious that the Conference result in such a solution as will furnish full opportunity to China to fulfil her own destiny."

Sagacious people will be inclined to conclude that so much anger must be due to being touched on the raw, and that Mr. Lamont, if he had had nothing to conceal, would not have spoken of a distinguished writer and one of China's best friends as "this man Simpson."

I do not pretend that the evidence against the consortium is conclusive, and I have not space here to set it all forth. But to any European radical Mr. Lamont's statement that the consortium does not want control reads like a contradiction in terms. Those who wish to lend to a Government which is on the verge of bankruptcy, must aim at control, for, even if there were not the incident of the Chicago Bank, it would be impossible to believe that Messrs. Morgan are so purely philanthropic as not to care whether they get any interest on their money or not, although emissaries of the consortium in China have spoken as though this were the case, thereby greatly increasing the suspicions of the Chinese.

In the New Republic for November 30, 1921, there is an article by Mr. Brailsford entitled "A New Technique of Peace," which I fear is prophetic even if not wholly applicable at the moment when it was written. I expect to see, if the Americans are successful in the Far East, China compelled to be orderly so as to afford a field for foreign commerce and industry; a government which the West will consider good substituted for the present go-as-you-please anarchy; a gradually increasing flow of wealth from China to the investing countries, the chief of which is America; the development of a sweated proletariat; the spread of Christianity; the substitution of the American civilization for the Chinese; the destruction of traditional beauty, except for such objets d'art as millionaires may think it worth while to buy; the gradual awakening of China to her exploitation by the foreigner; and one day, fifty or a hundred years hence, the massacre of every white man throughout the Celestial Empire at a signal from some vast secret society. All this is probably inevitable, human nature being what it is. It will be done in order that rich men may grow richer, but we shall be told that it is done in order that China may have "good" government. The definition of the word "good" is difficult, but the definition of "good government" is as easy as A.B.C.: it is government that yields fat dividends to capitalists.

The Chinese are gentle, urbane, seeking only justice and freedom. They have a civilization superior to ours in all that makes for human happiness. They have a vigorous movement of young reformers, who, if they are allowed a little time, will revivify China and produce something immeasurably better than the worn-out grinding mechanism that we call civilization. When Young China has done its work, Americans will be able to make money by trading with China, without destroying the soul of the country. China needs a period of anarchy in order to work out her salvation; all great nations need such a period, from time to time. When America went through such a period, in 1861-5, England thought of intervening to insist on "good government," but fortunately abstained. Now-a-days, in China, all the Powers want to intervene. Americans recognize this in the case of the wicked Old World, but are smitten with blindness when it comes to their own consortium. All I ask of them is that they should admit that they are as other men, and cease to thank God that they are not as this publican.