Chinese mettle

by E. G. Kemp

In the old days all positions of importance were given to middle-aged or elderly men—men of weight. Such a fact as Pitt becoming prime minister at the age of twenty-four would have seemed to them grotesque and foolish in the extreme. That a young man should be a man of weight was unthinkable. But now you find young Chinamen in most responsible posts, as their nation’s representatives at the court of St. James, or in Paris or Washington. It is a young Chinaman who by his eloquence and personality wins the admission of China to the Council of the League of Nations. They are men who have all had Western training, but that alone does not account for their influence.

From one end of China to the other I found that the temper of the youth was wholly unlike what it was ten years ago (on the occasion of my last visit), although the change had already begun then. Not only is the veneration for the aged changing, but also the veneration for antiquity, which has been one of the greatest hindrances to progress in the past. Everywhere the young people are taking upon themselves an active share in local affairs and also in affairs of the State. Sometimes this shows itself in rather an amusing way and sometimes with regard to matters of vast importance. Of the latter it will suffice to mention the decision of the Republican Government to make Confucianism the state religion. No sooner was the announcement made than from every quarter the Government was bombarded with telegrams from bodies of students, protesting “we will not have Confucianism as a state religion”; and they won the day.

As an instance of the authority of students in local matters, I came across a college, a member of which had gone to study in Japan. He was engaged to be married to a Chinese girl, but fell a victim to the charms of a Japanese girl and married her. On his return he decided, after some difficulties with the family of his fiancée, to marry her as his secondary wife. Then the students were all up in arms. He had committed the crime against patriotism of marrying a Japanese, and now, forsooth, he would add another by taking a Chinese girl as secondary to the Japanese! They not only forbade him to do this, but also fined him a heavy sum of money and made him pay it.

The Japanese question has roused every student community in this empire, and they have allied themselves with merchants on the subject—an entirely new combination. They have not merely shown their feelings by extensive looting and destruction of Japanese goods, and boycotting of them in the markets, but after the Treaty of Versailles they rose as one man to execrate the officials who were concerned with the betrayal of Chinese interests to Japan, and demanded that they should be dismissed from office. All the schools and colleges went on strike and hundreds of students were imprisoned. In vain the Government tried to put down the movement, but it was so universal, and had so won the support of the shopkeepers (these put up their shutters with notices that this was done in support of the students’ demands), that the Government was again forced to give way and punish the offenders.

While much is known here of the divided political condition of China, but little is heard of this important solidarity. The importance of such occurrences lies mainly in the fact that these are the outward signs of a “Tide of New Thought,” as it has been called in Chinese. This new vitality is pulsating more or less through the people of the whole empire, but especially and with intense vigour in the student world. It has driven them to violent and undisciplined action, so that many people see in it the germs of revolution. But one must not forget that the political Revolution has already become an accomplished fact, and that the new movement is mainly one of educational and social reform, and that the political faith of students is Republicanism. The anti-Japanese feeling is due to the determined infiltration of the Japanese into the country, and more especially their action with regard to Shantung. Japan lost a priceless opportunity of making alliance with China and vindicating herself before the world, when she broke faith with regard to giving back Tsingtau to China at the end of the war. This has had important results on the student movement by leading the students to rapid concerted action and showing them their power to control the action of Government. However, this is but a temporary matter, while the recent literary and social renaissance is likely to have a permanent influence on the national life.

The effect of the new movement on literature of all kinds is particularly interesting. The daily press and the reviews and magazines are full of new thoughts and reflect all the currents of opinion of the Western world. The critical spirit leaves no problem unstudied; the political agitation in India, the Sinn Fein outrages in Ireland, the labour troubles in England are accurately reported in the Chinese daily press. Judgment is being passed on the results of our civilization, and the future shaping of China’s destiny depends largely on that judgment.

One of the most momentous days in all the history of the race was when the Dowager Empress decided to sweep away the old system of education after her great defeat by the Western Powers in 1900. It was an amazing volte-face on the part of one of the most bigoted autocrats that the world has seen. She saw that the root of all her difficulties in finding the right kind of officials was lack of well-educated persons in the social class from which such officials are chosen, so she issued an edict in 1904 which bore the stamp of Yüan Shih-k’ai and Chang Chih-tung, destroying at one blow the old educational system. The document is curious and even a little pathetic. She ordained that graduation in the new colleges should be the only way to official position, pointing out that colleges had been in existence more than two thousand five hundred years ago, and that the classical essay system was quite modern—only having existed about five hundred years.

She also gave orders that more students should be sent to Europe and America—some were already going there—instead of to Japan, whose revolutionary influence she mistrusted.

The greatest difficulty in effecting so great a change was to find teachers fitted for the task. The seed had happily been planted during the last half-century in mission schools, and from them a certain small supply of teachers was obtainable. Chang Chih-tung considered that three months’ study of textbooks would make a competent teacher! Another immense difficulty was to find funds for so vast an enterprise. The gentry were urged to found and support schools, and an official button was granted to those who did so. Chang Chih-tung worked out the whole scheme: colleges, schools of various grades, curricula, regulations as to discipline, etc. etc. All these things are set forth in five official volumes, and thus the national system of education was inaugurated. Obviously so great a change could not be wrought without many difficulties cropping up. The main difficulty was lack of discipline, and that is the case to-day; the student considers that he, or she (for the same spirit pervades girls’ schools), ought to dictate to the master, instead of master to pupil. In the early days of the system it was the easier for the pupils to succeed, in that so many of the teachers were wholly inexperienced and were afraid of losing their posts unless they gave way. Although the above edict professes to train men in China itself for official positions it was supplemented by provision for sending students abroad, in order that they might be the better able to bring their country into line with Western civilization.