"We will strive to elevate our people, secure them in peace, and legislate for their prosperity."
At this juncture it were idle to investigate how far these ideals have been reached. There has as yet been no time for deep national reforms to have been worked, and it is not the ambition of this volume to go deeply into political actualities. But no one, realising now that the Manchu rule in China has passed for ever, will doubt that, with such excellent qualities of common sense and eminent industry as the Chinese possess, we shall see a nation move that may move the world with it. The day will assuredly come, perhaps it is not so very far distant, when the Occidental observer will look around to see the globe girdled with an indissoluble bond of Chinese peoples, no longer too weak for aggression, but independent in all departments of national life. They will be taken up as equals into social relations of the white races. They are now struggling among themselves, asking merely to be allowed to fight out their own civil battles and order their own civil affairs. They will make mistakes, but probably will profit by them. The day will come when Chinese will no longer be elbowed and hustled by their haughtier Occidental neighbours, but perhaps instead we shall find ourselves entered into no easy international and commercial competition with people whom not so long since we looked down upon as servile and considered fit only to minister to our needs in manual ways. The problems that loom across the threshold of the future of this newly emancipated race, however, surpass in magnitude any that civilisation has hitherto had to encounter. There are clear indications of progress, but they are not yet clear enough. China has to be remade, and those engaged in the project may blunder because of the varied and widely varying patterns they have in stock to choose from.
Certain phases of development we are sure of. We are able to place our fingers upon certain points in China's national propaganda and say with certainty that such and such a line is bound to be followed, such and such a thing bound to happen. But, generally speaking, China is a land of unintelligibility; the best advice one can give is to "wait and see."
CHAPTER II
THE AFTERMATH
One of the almost certain features of the effect of the Revolution, however, will be China's increased foreign trade—probably 100 per cent., says Sun Yat Sen.
The year 1913 should mark a stride in commercial progress in China such as the world never before has seen. 1912 will probably be a year of unrest and uncertainty. The formation of a permanent Government and the election of a Cabinet, the dispatch of competent officials to outlying places, and the putting down of outlawry in the provinces will be a big programme for this year—if it is accomplished. But 1913 and the following years will probably unfold a remarkably rapid advance in exports and imports. China has held back from all things foreign centuries enough, but during the past two decades the seed has been sown for such a harvest of trade and commercial prosperity as shall keep the factories of the West hard at work to cope with the demands—that is, if the merchants of the West are quick to seize their chances as they come. And in this volume the author feels that it were well at this juncture, when an opportunity is presented to English and American traders to come in and take possession of the trade China is prepared to foster, to speak of the commercial possibilities which the next decade will give.
The reader will probably understand that, despite the enormous foreign imports which for years have come into China, there is not a tithe of the trade done yet which will be done with the opening up of the country, now almost bound to ensue. China's market is stupendous. The possibilities are wider than the average home manufacturer has any conception of. From the China Sea to the British Burma border, from the southern port of Canton up through all the partially opened Eastern provinces, through the whole of the wonderful Yangtze Valley to the practically untouched west, and away into newly touched areas where the inhabitants are all anxious to buy foreign goods, there is presented an unparalleled opportunity for the foreign manufacturer. Any one who has taken an intelligent interest in China's trade with foreign countries must have been impressed with the fact that she was not importing one-hundredth part of what she could easily handle. And if he had studied closely any particular district where some foreign import had been taken or foreign industry had been started and watched the phenomenal commercial growth in that particular district, he immediately would gather some idea of the far-reaching possibilities for the expansion of foreign trade in China.