This exclamation from a Chinese seemed amusing. It came on the evening of the red dust-storm that enveloped Peking, during one of the long after-dinner conversations with Liang Shih-yi and Chow Tsu-chi; and it was the latter who thus gave vent to his impatience.
Liang Shih-yi, the "Pierpont Morgan of China," Chief Secretary to the President, was credited as being, next to Yuan Shih-kai, the ablest and most influential man in Peking. Mr. Liang is highly educated according to Chinese literary standards, and while he has not studied Western science, he has a keen, incisive mind which enables him readily to understand Western conditions and methods. His outstanding quality is a faculty for organization. He built up the Chinese Communications Service on the administrative and financial side. He declined taking office as a minister, but usually controlled the action of the cabinet through his influence over important subordinates, and managed all financial affairs for Yuan Shih-kai. Cantonese, short of stature and thickset, with a massive Napoleonic head, he speaks little, but his side remarks indicate that he is always ahead of the discussion, which is also shown by his searching questions. When directly questioned himself, he will always give a lucid and consecutive account of any matter. He did not rise above the level of Chinese official practice in the matter of using money to obtain political ends. To some he was the father of deceit and corruption, to others the god of wealth, while still others revered in him his great genius for organization. While by no means a romantic figure, he thoroughly stimulated a romantic interest among others, who attributed to him almost superhuman cunning and ability.
When the noted Sheng Hsuan-huai became Minister of Communications in 1911, he used his influence and cunning to thwart Liang and throw him out of the mastery of the Board of Communications, known as the fattest organ of the Government. Mr. Liang stood his ground, and his influence greatly increased because of his ability to withstand so strong an attack. During the revolution Liang Shih-yi was also very influential in the Grand Council, attaching himself more and more strongly to Yuan Shih-kai. Always satisfied with the substance of power without its outward show, he steadfastly declined to become a responsible minister, and worked from the vantage ground of the Secretariat of the President. His life has frequently been endangered. He gained the hatred of the democratic party, with which he was once associated, because he aided Yuan in playing his complicated game of first confusing, then destroying, parliament. Nor were the Progressives (Chin Pu Tang) enamoured of him. Of great personal courage, he was indifferent to the blame and ridicule which for a while almost all newspapers heaped upon him. As he was still in a comparatively inferior position when these attacks began, they rather helped him by calling attention to his abilities and his personal importance. Thus his opponents advertised him. In possession of all the intricacies of the situation, when the parliamentarians first came to Peking, he sat back inconspicuously, and, supplied with influence and money, moulded the political situation as if it had been wax.
Of all the cabinet, Mr. Chow Tsu-chi, Minister of Communications, was personally most familiar with American affairs, having lived for several years in Washington and New York in an official capacity. He speaks English fluently and prefers American methods. He hates unnecessary ceremony. Whenever he called upon me I had almost to engage in personal combat with him to be permitted to accompany him to the outer door, as is due to a high dignitary in China. He believes in learning improved methods from reliable foreigners, and will go as far as any Chinese in giving foreigners whom he trusts a free hand, though he would not yield to any one a power of supreme control. On this occasion he talked about the reorganization of the Bank of China, and the possibility of floating domestic bonds among Chinese capitalists. Mr. Chow was chanting a jeremiad about how the Chinese had been led to give valuable concessions to Americans, which had not been developed, and how this had brought only embarrassment and trouble to China.
We spoke, also, of the original Hankow-Canton railway concession which the Americans tried to sell to King Leopold; of the Knox neutralization plan, and of the Chinchow-Aigun railway concession, the only effect of which had been to strengthen the grip of Russia and Japan on Manchuria. When the Americans, as a mark of special confidence and trust, had received the option on a currency loan with the chance to reorganize Chinese currency, they had straight-way invited Great Britain, Germany, and France into the game. "Thus they saddled China with the International Consortium," Chow Tsu-chi moaned. And so on went the recital, through many lesser and larger enterprises that had proved abortive.
One had to confess that in China we certainly had not taken Fortune by the forelock, nor even had we clung to her skirts. Mr. Chow Tsu-chi was especially grieved at the circuitous and dilatory methods of the Four-Power Group which held the contract to build the Hukuang railways. "The thirty millions of dollars originally provided has been almost entirely spent," he complained, "without producing more than two hundred miles of actual construction; and there is constant wrangling among the partners concerning engineering standards. Moreover, everything has to be referred from Peking to London, thence to New York, Paris, Berlin, and back and forth among them all, until it is necessary to look up reams of files to know what it is all about. And it may all have been about the purchase of a flat car."
I knew well enough that Americans, too, were much discouraged at the cumbersome progress of the Hukuang railway enterprise. The engineering rights on the section west from Ichang up into Szechuan Province had been assigned to America, and Mr. W. Randolph was at this time making a survey. He had great energy and unlimited belief in the future importance and profitableness of this line. But beyond the initial survey the available funds would not go, and no new financing could be obtained—this for a railway to gain access to an inland empire of forty millions of people!
In the American enterprises which had been launched recently, however, there was no little activity. The Standard Oil Company with commendable expedition, if perhaps with undue lavishness of men and supplies, sent to China geological experts of the first order, together with large staffs of engineers, drilling experts, and all needed machinery. The geologists were soon off toward the prospective oil regions in Chihli and Shensi provinces. In Mr. Hsiung Hsi-ling's bureau and in the Standard Oil offices the outfitting of expeditions, the purchase of supplies, and the selection of a large Chinese personnel proceeded apace. Everyone was hopeful.
With the Hwai River conservancy matter, also, negotiations had gone rapidly in the United States. The American National Red Cross and the engineering firm of J.G. White & Company had agreed to finance the preliminary survey. The American Congress in May passed an act lending the services of an army engineer for the preliminary survey. Colonel Sibert of the Panama Canal Commission was designated as chairman of the engineering board. The outlook was favourable, action had been taken promptly.
The excitement stirred up among the Japanese by the sojourn in China of the Bethlehem Steel Company's vice-president, Mr. Archibald Johnston, now had a further sequel. The text of an alleged contract between the Chinese Government and the Bethlehem Steel Company was circulated early in May—by interested persons—which included among other provisions arrangements for construction of a naval base in Fukien Province. The bogus quality of the report was at once manifest. Through some influence, however, it was assiduously pushed forward in the press; it became the basis of a legend, which even got into the books of otherwise well-informed writers as authentic. It was on the subject of this spurious paper that the Japanese ambassador at Washington called on Secretary Bryan for information. Thus the matter of the possible building of a naval base in Fukien for the Chinese Government by American contractors became a matter of State Department note. I was informed that the Japanese ambassador at Washington had left a summary of the conversation, of March 12th, between the Japanese minister at Peking and myself. Apparently the Japanese were attempting to get around my refusal to acknowledge that American enterprise in China could in any way be limited by the declarations or agreements of other powers than the United States.