Lion and Dragon in Northern China

by Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

One of the strongest reasons why the Chinese Government is reluctant to invoke the assistance of a foreign Financial Adviser is that such a step might lead to the introduction of foreign capital on an immense scale, and its gradual monopolisation of industry and exclusive exploitation of the national resources. Many recent events have shown that the Chinese people—even more than the Government—are exceedingly averse from throwing China freely open to foreign capital, even when the want of capital obviously retards the material development of the country. This attitude, though naturally enough it excites the indignation of foreign financiers and traders, who are apt to regard the matter solely from the economic standpoint, is probably only temporary, and not unjustifiable when we remember the enormous power wielded by capital in these days, not only in commerce and industry but also in international politics. Sir Alfred Lyall truly points out that the European money-market is to Asia a "most perilous snare," and that the more any Asiatic Government runs into debt with European financiers, or has permitted the investment of foreign capital within its territory, the more it falls under the stringent, self-interested and inquisitive "political superintendence" of the capitalist state.[433]

That China cannot expect to develop her resources fully and rapidly without the help of European and American capital is doubtless true enough: but in view of her somewhat precarious political condition it may be that she is acting not unwisely in restricting the inflow of foreign capital to the irreducible minimum, and if she has reason to believe that the recommendations of a Financial Adviser would include the free admission of alien capital, her hesitation to avail herself of foreign expert advice may perhaps be easily explained. Chinese apprehensions on this subject might perhaps remain for ever unrealised, but at least they can hardly be said to be totally unreasonable.[434]

Next to finance there is perhaps no department that calls more peremptorily for foreign supervision than that of forestation. The dearth of timber throughout the greater part of north China has caused a serious deterioration of the climate within historic times, and is largely responsible for the denudation of once fertile lands and the periodical recurrence of famines. Forestry is an unknown science in China, and without foreign expert assistance it is unlikely that reforestation will be undertaken seriously and methodically. In legal and judicial matters, education, railways, municipal government, the army, hospitals, technical institutions, and other important matters, some considerable progress has already been made with or without direct foreign assistance, though it seems obvious that until the national finances and the Civil Service have been thoroughly reorganised every effort made in the direction of other reforms must to some extent be crippled.

The Chinese are naturally most anxious to secure the abolition of the foreign rights of extra-territorial jurisdiction. They feel very keenly the undignified position of their country in respect of the fact that they alone, of the great nations of the world, have no judicial authority over the foreigners who reside within their territorial limits, and they know that the reasons why they are in this undignified position are that their laws are to some extent inconsistent with Western legal theories, that many or most of their judicial officers are corrupt, that torture is sometimes resorted to as a means of extorting confessions, and that their prisons are dens of filth and disease. Knowing that until these matters are remedied it will be impossible to persuade the Western Powers to relinquish jurisdiction over their own nationals, the Chinese have devoted a good deal of attention during recent years to the reform of their judicial procedure and—under Japanese and other foreign advice—to the production of a new legal code.[435] Time will show whether the importation of a brand-new legal system into a country like China will effect all the good that is expected of it. There is a very serious danger that by adapting Western legal notions to a country in which the native legal system (however faulty in practice in some respects) has for many centuries been closely intertwined with the traditions and customs that govern the lives of the Chinese people, the Government may be applying a treatment that will act as a solvent of the bases of the entire social organism. Even the abolition of foreign consular jurisdiction might be bought too dearly if it necessitated a surrender of doctrines and principles which, as we have seen in the foregoing chapters, have formed the foundation of the social and political system of China throughout the whole of her known history.

If in the matter of finance the Chinese Government would unquestionably do well to act on the advice of the best foreign expert it can get, it is by no means so certain that it would be wise to follow foreign counsel, with tacit obedience, in all matters affecting social, administrative, or even judicial reform. That changes are urgently needed in certain directions goes without saying; but in view of the impossibility of carrying out extensive legal reforms in China without simultaneously affecting the social organism, perhaps in serious and unexpected ways, it will be well for the stability of the State if amid the contending factions into which the intelligent sections of the country are sure to be divided there may always be one party in the land whose programme will be summed up in the words "Back to Confucius!" That such a call will ever be literally obeyed is quite improbable and certainly undesirable; but it is earnestly to be hoped that however drastic may be the social and political changes that China is destined to undergo her people may never come to regard Confucianism, with all that the term implies, merely as a fossil in the stratum of a dead civilisation.

In the course of the foregoing chapters an attempt has been made to show that there is much fundamental soundness in many of China's social institutions, much that it is to the interest of China herself and of the whole world to respect and conserve. It is difficult to say whether China stands at present in greater danger from her own over-enthusiastic revolutionary reformers or from her well-meaning but somewhat ignorant foreign friends who are pressing her to accept Western civilisation with all its political and social machinery and its entire religious and ethical equipment. If ever a State required skilful guidance and wise statesmanship, China needs them now: but wise statesmanship will not consist in tearing up all the old moral and religious sanctions that have been rooted in the hearts of the Chinese people through all the ages of their wonderful history.