The decisive victory which Japan obtained over China five years ago revealed to the civilized world the existence in the East of Asia of another Sick Man, an even greater invalid and infinitely richer than the better known patient at Constantinople. Four times the size, and twelve or fifteen times more densely peopled than the Ottoman Empire, China contains a much smaller proportion of deserts, her resources are greater and far more varied, and her inhabitants are not only more industrious, but more peaceful and apparently much easier to govern. Therefore, at the end of the nineteenth century—when the material wealth of a country is of far greater importance than its historical memories, and men are more eager to discover fresh openings for enterprise, new lands to cultivate, or mines to exploit than relics to preserve or peoples to liberate—Europe abandons the bedside of the Grand Turk to occupy herself with her chances of inheriting far greater riches from the Son of Heaven. The Sick Man on the shores of the Bosphorus may be afflicted with some dreadful convulsion or crisis in his illness, but the nations pretend not to perceive his contortions, and joyfully welcome any evidence of even a feeble return to health; in a word, they only seek to prolong his existence. If the preservation of peace in Europe has its share in this attitude, the wish not to be disturbed in the work which she pursues in China has also its share in the position which Russia and more than one other Power have assumed with regard to the Chinese Empire.
The fact is, the nations have promised themselves a booty in the Middle Kingdom as precious as it is easy to obtain. China from this point of view is worth a great deal more than Turkey, or even Africa, which Europe has so eagerly sought to divide. Although less extensive than the Dark Continent, China is much more thickly peopled, and the climate is less unhealthy, access easier, the rivers more navigable, and the soil far more fertile. The patient and laborious Chinese will eventually facilitate the exploitation of the wealth of their vast territory, which is more than can ever be expected from the barbarous, ignorant and indolent peoples of Africa.
The resources of China are greater than those of Africa, and many of them are still absolutely undeveloped. The Chinese peasants, moreover, are among the best agriculturists in the world. As evidence of this assertion, it should be remembered that, by the perfection of their method of cultivation, they extract from the soil of their plains sufficient to enable their rural population to multiply in a manner unknown in the Western world. Certain provinces in the Valley of the Yang-tsze-Kiang—Shan-tung, Hu-pe, Kiang-su, and others—in spite of their being purely agricultural, are as densely peopled as Belgium, and we may further observe that, as is the case throughout the Far East, wherever rice dominates, the mountain regions are almost uninhabited. If the soil is admirably cultivated, the subsoil, on the other hand, is absolutely neglected, and only an insignificant quantity of coal is extracted from the immense coal-beds which cover over 40,000 square miles on the banks of the Yellow River, in the plains of Hu-nan, and under the terraces of Shan-si, which, together with those equally important in the basin of Shan-tung, were so highly extolled by the celebrated traveller Richthofen. The coal-beds in Central China appear to be even more extensive, and the carboniferous basin of Sze-chuan, where there is also petroleum, covers an area equal to half France. The coal-beds of Hu-nan are also very considerable, and minerals are equally abundant. The copper-mines of Yunnan are so rich as to have proved one of the chief inducements that attracted the French to Tongking. Mines of precious ore are known to exist in many other places, but, notwithstanding their very ancient civilization, the Chinese have scarcely touched the wealth beneath their feet. In this respect they have proved themselves inferior to the classical nations of antiquity, and have left their riches to be garnered by foreigners.
We can form some idea of the development of which China is susceptible by considering the example of two other Asiatic nations placed in much the same conditions—British India and Japan. India, with all her dependencies, is about a sixth larger than China proper, but contains only about three-quarters of the number of her inhabitants; yet although her subsoil is much less rich and her population far more indolent than the Chinese, she carries on double the trade with Europe that the Chinese Empire does. Japan, nine times smaller and nine times less peopled than China, but reformed by an enlightened Government and by the introduction of European methods, has seen her commerce rise in thirty years from £5,000,000 to £44,000,000, more than three-quarters higher than that of her enormous but stationary neighbour.
Unfortunately, an imbecile Government, as corrupt as it is absurdly exclusive, impedes the progress of China with far greater obstinacy than do the prejudices of her people. So long as the illusion lasted as to the power of this unwieldy Empire, no one ventured to tear from it by force what it was imagined could be obtained by persuasion, and the nations resigned themselves to permit the immense resources of the interior to remain untouched, contenting themselves merely with the opening of a few ports to commerce. But in 1894 the brilliant victories of the Japanese revealed to an astonished world the weakness of the colossus, its corruption, and utter incapacity to regenerate itself; hence the reason why the Chino-Japanese War may be rightly considered one of the greatest events in contemporary history. From it dates the change in the attitude of the foreign Powers towards the Celestial Empire. They now command where formerly they begged, and have mustered up courage to force the Son of Heaven to put a price on the treasures of his Empire, or else to allow them to do so in his stead. If they have not already divided up his territory, they mortgage portions of his provinces, and obtain mining, railway, and all sorts of other concessions. In the eyes of the Powers China is no longer a country to be counted with as a probable ally, but merely one which they may one day reduce to vassalage.
In 1895, after the conclusion of the war, Russia inaugurated the new policy with respect to China. She was at that time the only European nation that seemed to have any idea of the weakness of China, and was already preparing, by the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, to play an important part in the Far East. Germany, France, and England in 1897 obtained the ‘leases’ of various strategical points on the coast and the recognition of what they were pleased to call ‘spheres of influence.’ Russia now returned to the game, and Japan also took a part in the struggle. From the middle of 1898 a lull has occurred, which recent events, however, have disturbed and proved that the Far Eastern problem is far from settled. It would certainly have surprised men who were living at the beginning of this dying century if they had been told that it would close before the Grand Turk was driven out of Europe, and yet the destinies of Eastern Asia are even now far from being determined. The problems which rise round the future of the Celestial Empire are neither less grave nor less complicated now than they ever were. Although China is infinitely less heterogeneous than Turkey, she runs the same dangers from internal disturbance; for she is governed by a foreign dynasty and honeycombed by secret societies. The Central Government is feeble and without cohesion. On the other hand, the rivalry which exists between the European Powers, to whom should be added the United States and Japan, is not less active in the East than it is in the West of Asia. The only, but still enormous, result which has been more or less definitely obtained consequent upon the events of the last five years—the end of the isolation from Europe in which China has hitherto existed, and her being brought for the first time since the beginning of her history into contact with a civilization which has developed quite independently of her own—creates a situation of the intensest interest. If the lack of military qualities among the Chinese and the insufficiency in numbers of the Japanese renders the Yellow Peril, comparatively speaking, little to be feared from the war side of the question, many people, and among them the most enterprising representatives of European civilization, the Americans and Australians, are greatly exercised over the matter from the economic point of view. It would, however, be presumptuous to attempt to prophesy what would be the consequences of the dissolution of the Chinese Empire through internal disorder, or of its partition amongst the Powers in consequence of an international treaty, or after a war which would be sure to become universal, or even of the reawakening of this oldest State in the world by the introduction of Western ideas and methods, or finally of a struggle between the White and the Yellow races; but it is comparatively easy, now that the question poses itself for the first time, to determine its multiple elements, to study the relative position of its diverse factors, the near prospect of their action, and the situation of the patient round whose sick-bed eagerly press the many doctors and heirs of so wealthy an invalid as China.
CHAPTER II
THE CAPITAL OF CHINA
The coasts of Pe-chi-li and the mouth of the Pei-ho—Ta-ku and Tien-tsin—From Tien-tsin to Peking by rail—Peking: the Forbidden, Imperial, Tatar and Chinese cities; the walls, streets, houses, shops and monuments—Behaviour of the natives towards foreigners—Decadence of the capital and of the whole Empire.
If one enters China from Eastern Siberia by the Gulf of Pe-chi-li after a long voyage round the Korean Peninsula, the first impression of the Celestial Empire is distinctly unattractive. The contrast between the shallow waters where the vessel casts anchor, some miles distant from the mouth of the Pei-ho, and the noble port of Vladivostok, or the enchanting Bay of Nagasaki, with its verdant shores and blue waters, enlivened by the picturesque sails of the fishing-junks, is, to say the least, extremely depressing.
Nearly all the ports of the Celestial Empire are thus formed, and can only be entered during a few hours of the day. Even the mouth of the great Blue River is encumbered with shoals, and its famous rival, the Yellow River, in its lower basin, is divided up into such a multitude of channels that meander through the marshy lands as to interrupt all direct navigation from the sea. The Gulf of Pe-chi-li, which may be described as the port of Peking, although situated closer to the Equator than the Bay of Naples, or the mouth of the Tagus, seems, with its choked-up estuaries, its storm-beaten shores, its fogs and icy coat in winter, thoroughly typical of China and her traditional inhospitality, and her eagerness rather to repulse than to invite the stranger within her gates. From the anchorage outside the bar it is difficult to discern the lowlying coast; and the first objects to attract attention are mud forts, mud houses in mud villages, and mud heaps marking the graves in the cemeteries. This uninviting place is Ta-ku, beyond which, a little higher up, at Tang-ku, the Pei-ho ceases to be navigable for vessels of any tonnage. On landing, a surprise awaits you—the railway. Commenced by Li Hung-chang, for the purpose of transporting the coal from his mines at Kaiping, a few miles to the north-east, branches have been added, and since the summer of 1897 it takes the traveller to Peking viâ Tien-tsin. An hour and a half after leaving Tang-ku, I alighted at the former town amid a mob of noisy coolies, who pounced upon me and my luggage. We crossed the Pei-ho in a sampang instead of the ordinary ferry-boat which conveys the Celestials, packed together like sardines in a box, and stuck, apparently immovably, in the most extraordinary postures. From the landing-place, we were trotted in a jinrikisha drawn by a Chinaman through the Rue de France, up Victoria Road to the Astor House, an American hotel kept by a German; opposite it is a garden, over which a white flag with a crimson circle in its centre, the emblem of the Rising Sun, announces that the garden and the house belong to the Japanese Consul. Thus was I first initiated to the cosmopolitanism of a foreign concession in the Far East.