But probably the custom that has the greatest effect upon Chinese life is that, just as twelve centuries ago they introduced competitive examinations, to which we have now in our nineteenth century of Christianity turned as to a sheet-anchor, so centuries ago the Chinese resorted to the principle of co-operation. In a Chinese business, be it large or be it small, pretty well every man in the business has his share; so that you are sometimes astonished when a merchant introduces to you as his partners a set of young men, who in England would be junior clerks. Even the coolie wrappering the tea-boxes says "We are doing well this year," and works with a will through the night, knowing he too will have his portion in the increased business this increased work signifies. The way, indeed, in which Chinese work through the night is most remarkable. Men will row a boat day and night for four or five days, knowing that the sum of money gained will thus be quicker earned, and only pausing one at a time to take a whiff at a pipe or to eat. They will press wool all through the night to oblige their employer without a murmur, if only given free meals whilst doing this additional work. The truth is, the habit of industry has been so engendered in Chinese as to be second nature, their whole system tending to encourage it, whilst ours, with our free poor-houses and licensed public-houses, tends rather in the other direction; our Trades Unions seem trying all they can to further diminish the incentives to good work on the part of skilled workmen by denying them any higher wage than that obtained by the incompetent. Co-operation after the Chinese model will, it is to be hoped, eventually put this right again. There is so much we might learn from the Chinese; but we have never followed the system we press upon Oriental nations, of sending out clever young students to other countries to see what they can learn that would be advantageous among our own people. In some ways China would serve as a warning. But a civilisation, that reached its acme while William the Norman was conquering England, and that yet survives intact, must surely have many a lesson to teach.
Besides all this mutual support and responsibility, Chinese customs are such that, as people often say somewhat sadly, you cannot alter one without altering all. The people here referred to are not the twenty-years-in-China-and-not-speak-a-word-of-the-language men, but Europeans who have tried to study the Chinese sympathetically. As it is, if you were to alter their houses and make them less draughty and damp, then all their clothing must be altered. That is again the case if you try to encourage them to play cricket—for which there is no sufficient level space in the west of China—or take part in other sports. But if you were to attempt to alter their clothing before you had rebuilt their houses, they would all be dying of dysentery or fever. In like manner, if you attempted to dragoon the Chinese into greater cleanliness, or into taking certain sanitary precautions, you would require a police force, which does not exist. But how to obtain that until you have got this self-respecting, self-governing people to see any advantage in being dragooned?
The solidarity of the Chinese race is one of the reasons it has lasted so long upon the earth, and its civilisation remained the same. It is twenty-one centuries since the Emperor Tze Hoang-ti said "Good government is impossible under a multiplicity of masters," and did away with the feudal system. It is twelve centuries since the Chinese found out what Burns only taught us the other day, that "A man's a man for a' that," and, giving up the idea of rank, began to fill posts by competitive examinations. Another of their most remarkable methods we shall probably copy whenever we begin seriously to consider Imperial Federation. They never send any man to be an official in his own province. Thus we should have Canadian officials in places of trust here or in Australia, and Australians in England or Canada. And to each province in China so many Government posts, civil and military, are assigned. If England had followed this method, there might be the United States of England now instead of America, for no system is better calculated to knit closely together the outlying regions of a great empire, than that in accordance with which every official in turn has to be examined as to his qualifications for office at the capital, and to return there to pay his respects to his sovereign before entering upon each new office.
The contemplation of China is discouraging: to think it got so far so long ago, and yet has got no farther! The Emperor Hoang-ti, who lived 200 B.C., may be supposed to have foreseen the deadening effect that government by literary men has upon a nation, for he burnt all their books except those that treat of practical arts. He was even as advanced as Mr Auberon Herbert, and warned rulers against the multiplication of unnecessary laws. Laotze, China's greatest sage, although too spiritually-minded a man to have gained such a following as was afterwards obtained by Confucius, again insists that the spiritual weapons of this world cannot be formed by laws and regulations: "Prohibitory enactments, and too constant intermeddling in political and social matters, merely produce the evils they are intended to avert. The ruler is above all things to practise wu-wei, or inaction."
The Chinese, it seems, experimented in socialism eight centuries ago. The Emperor Chin-tsung II., at a very early age, and led thereto by Wu-gan-chi, the compiler of a vast encyclopædia, conceived the idea that "the State should take the entire management of commerce, industry, and agriculture into its own hands, with the view of succouring the working classes and preventing their being ground to the dust by the rich." To quote again from W. D. Babington's Fallacies of Race Theories: "The poor were to be exempt from taxation, land was to be assigned to them, and seed-corn provided. Every one was to have a sufficiency; there were to be no poor and no over-rich. The literati in vain resisted the innovations, the fallacy of which they demonstrated from their standpoint. The specious arguments of the would-be reformer convinced the young Emperor and gained the favour of the people. Wu-gan-chi triumphed. The vast province of Shensi was chosen as the theatre for the display of the great social experiment that was to regenerate mankind. The result was failure, complete and disastrous. The people, neither driven by want nor incited by the hope of gain, ceased to labour; and the province was soon in a fair way to become a desert." Mencius, Confucius' greatest follower, taught that "the people are the most important element in the country, and the ruler is the least." Mencius openly said that if a ruler did not rule for his people's good it was a duty to resist his authority and depose him.
Whilst other nations have vaguely asked Quis custodiet custodes? the Chinese invented the College of Censors and the Tribunal of History, both selected from their most distinguished scholars. It is the duty of Censors to remonstrate with the Emperor when necessary, as well as to report to the College, or to the Emperor himself, any breach of propriety in courts of justice or elsewhere. They have no especial office but to notice the doings of other officials. The Tribunal of History is busy recording the events of each Emperor's reign; but no Emperor has ever seen what is written about him, nor is any history published till the dynasty of which it treats is at an end. Chinese history is full of examples of the courage and adherence to truth with which the members of this tribunal have been inspired.
It is all so beautiful in description, one sighs in thinking it over. But it must be remembered that it was yet more beautiful, startlingly beautiful, at the period of the world's history when it was all originated, and that to this day the Chinese peasant enjoys a degree of liberty and immunity from Government interference unknown on the Continent of Europe. There is no passport system; he can travel where he pleases; he can form and join any kind of association; his Press was free till the Empress Tze Hsi, probably inspired by Russian influence, issued her edict against it in 1898; his right of public meeting and free speech are still unquestioned. Public readers and trained orators travel about the country instructing the people. The system of appealing to the people by placarding the walls has been very far developed in China. There is there complete liberty of conscience. And at the same time, as all people who know China will testify, the moral conscience of the people is so educated that an appeal to it never falls flat, as it often would in England. Try to stop two men fighting, saying it is wrong to fight, and you will hear no one say in China, "Oh, let them fight it out!" Appeal to the teaching of Confucius, and every Chinaman will treat you with respect, and at least try to appear guided by it. How far in Europe would this be the case with a citation from the Bible?
The system of education, the crippling of the women by footbinding, and consequent enfeebling of the race, together with the subsequent resort to opium-smoking, are the three apparent evil influences that spoil what otherwise seems so ideal a system of civilisation. Possibly we should add to this, that the system of Confucius—China's great teacher—is merely a system of ethics, and that thus for generations the cultured portion of the nation has tried to do without a religion, although falling back upon Taoism and Buddhism to meet the needs of the human heart. That any civilisation should have lasted so long without a living religion is surprising. But Buddhism has evidently had an enormous influence upon China, though its temples are crumbling now, its priests rarely knowing even its first elements. The good that it could do for China it has done. And now another influence is needed.
