CHINA AND THE TEEMING MILLIONS OF ASIA
China is potentially the greatest Power on the western littoral of the Pacific. Her enormous territory has vast agricultural and mineral resources. Great rivers give easy access to some of the best of her lands. A huge population has gifts of patient labour and craftsmanship that make the Chinaman a feared competitor by every White worker in the world. In courage he is not inferior to the Japanese, as General Gordon found. In intelligence, in fidelity and in that common sense which teaches "honesty to be the best policy," the Chinaman is far superior to the Japanese.
The Chinaman has been outstripped up to the present by the Japanese in the acquirement of the arts of Western civilisation, not because of his inferior mind, but because of his deeper disdain. He has stood aside from the race for world supremacy on modern lines, not as one who is too exhausted for effort, but as one who is too experienced to try. China has in the past experimented with many of the vaunted ideas and methods of the new civilisation, from gunpowder to a peerage chosen by competitive examination, and long ago came to the conclusion that all was vanity and vexation of spirit.
The Chinaman is not humble; not content to take an inferior place in the world. He has all the arrogance of Asia. The name of "Heavenly Kingdom" given to the land by its inhabitants, the grandiose titles assumed by its rulers, the degrading ceremonies which used to be exacted from foreigners visiting China as confessions of their inferiority to the Celestial race, show an extravagant pride of birth. In the thirteenth century, when Confucian China, alike with Christian Europe, had to fear the growing power of the fanatical Mohammedans, a treaty of alliance was suggested between France and China: and the negotiations were broken off because of the claim of China that France should submit to her as a vassal, by way of preliminary. The Chinaman's idea of his own importance has not abated since then. His attitude towards the "foreign devils" is still one of utter contempt. But at present that contempt has not the backing of naval and military strength, and so in practice counts for nothing.
China cherishes the oldest of living civilisations. Her legendary history dates back to 2404 B.C., her actual history to 875 B.C., when a high state of mental culture had been reached, and a very advanced material civilisation also; though some caution is necessary in accepting the statements that at that time China made use of gunpowder, of the mariner's compass, and of printing type. But certainly weaving, pottery, metal-working, and pictorial art flourished. The noble height to which philosophy had reached centuries before the Christian Era is shown by the records of Confucianism and Taoism. Political science had been also cultivated, and there were then Chinese Socialists to claim that "everyone should sow and reap his own harvest."
There seem to have been at least two great parent races of the present population of the Chinese Empire—a race dwelling in the valleys and turning its thoughts to peace and the arts, and a race dwelling on the Steppes and seeking joy in war. It was the Tartar and Mongol tribes of the Steppes which sent wave after wave of attack westward towards Europe, under chiefs the greatest of whom was Gengis Khan. But it was the race of the valleys, the typical Chinese, stolid, patient, laborious, who established ultimate supremacy in the nation, gradually absorbing the more unruly elements and producing modern China with its contempt for military glory. But the Mongols by their wars left a deep impression on the Middle Ages, founding kingdoms which were tributary to China, in Persia, Turkestan and as far west as the Russian Volga.
The earliest record of European relations with China was in the seventh century, when the Emperor Theodosius sent an embassy to the Chinese Emperor. In the thirteenth century Marco Polo visited the Court of the Grand Khan at Pekin, and for a while fairly constant communication between Europe and China seems to have been maintained, the route followed being by caravan across Asia. Christian missionaries settled in China, and in 1248 there is a record of the Pope and the Grand Khan exchanging greetings.
When towards the end of the fourteenth century the Ming dynasty supplanted the Mongol dynasty, communication with Europe was broken off for more than a century. But in 1581 Jesuit missionaries again entered China, and the Manchu dynasty of the seventeenth century at first protected the Christian faith and seemed somewhat to favour Western ideas. But in the next century the Christian missions were persecuted and almost extirpated, to be revived in 1846. Since that date "the mailed fist" of Europe has exacted from the Chinese a forced tolerance of European trade and missions.
But Chinese prejudice against foreign intrusion was given no reason for abatement by the conduct of the European Powers, as shown, for example, in the Opium War of 1840. That prejudice, smouldering for long, broke out in the savage fanaticism of the Boxer outbreak of 1900, which led to a joint punitive expedition by the European Powers, in conjunction with Japan. China had the mortification then of being scourged not only by the "white devils" but also by an upstart Yellow Man, who was her near and her despised neighbour. All China that knew of the expedition to Pekin of 1900 and understood its significance, seems to have resolved then on some change of national policy involving the acceptance of European methods, in warfare at least. Responding to the stimulus of Japan's flaunting of her success in acquiring the ways of the European, China began to consider whether there was not after all something useful to be learned from the Western barbarians. The older Asiatic country has a deep contempt for the younger: but proof of Japan's superior position in the world's estimation had become too convincing to be disregarded. China saw Japan treated with respect, herself with contumely. She found herself humiliated in war and in diplomacy by the upstart relative. The reason was plain, the conclusion equally plain. China began to arm and lay the foundations of a modern naval and military system. The national spirit began to show, too, in industry. Chinese capital claimed its right and its duty to develop the resources of China.
Early in the twentieth century "modern ideas" had so far established themselves in China that Grand Councillor Chang Chih-tung was able, without the step being equivalent to suicide, to memorialise the Throne with these suggestions for reform:—