Lion and Dragon in Northern China

by Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

I have been asked by one of our village headmen (in perfect good faith) whether England were governed by a tsung-tu (governor-general) or by a kuo-wang (king of a minor state)—the implication in either case being that England was far inferior in status to China. Thus arises among the people the notion that their own Emperor has for some mysterious reason, best known to himself, temporarily entrusted the administration of Weihaiwei to some English officials, and will doubtless decide in his own good time when this arrangement is to be rescinded. The notion does not, indeed, attain this definiteness, and the majority of the people well know from actual experience that no Chinese official, however exalted, has a shadow of direct authority in Weihaiwei at the present time; but any attempt to persuade them that the Emperor could not, if he willed, cause the immediate departure of the foreigners would probably be a miserable failure. The long and short of the matter is that the Chinese of Weihaiwei acquiesce in British rule because their sovereign, as represented by the Governor of Shantung, shows them the example of acquiescence; but if diplomatic troubles were to arise between Great Britain and China, and the command, direct or indirect, were to go forth from the Governor that the British in Weihaiwei were no longer to be treated with respect, a few days or weeks would be sufficient to bring about a startling change in the direction of anti-foreign feeling among the inhabitants of the leased Territory.

Incessant troubles, also, would suddenly and mysteriously arise on the frontier; the magistrates of the neighbouring districts, notwithstanding all their past friendliness, would become distant and unsympathetic; difficulties internal and external would become so serious and incessant that it would be no longer possible to administer the Territory without the presence of an armed force. In the absence of a local garrison the Government would be compelled to requisition the services of the ever-ready British marines and bluejackets; and His Excellency the Vice-Admiral, obliged to detach some of the vessels of his squadron for special service at Weihaiwei, might begin ruefully to wonder whether, after all, Weihaiwei was worth the trouble of maintenance.

This is a picture of gloomy possibilities which, it is to be hoped, will never be realised so long as the British occupation of Weihaiwei subsists. Unfortunately, diplomatic difficulties are not the only possible causes of trouble. If eastern Shantung were afflicted with long-continued drought and consequent famine—not an uncommon event—or if it were visited by some of those lawless bands of ruffians, too numerous in China, who combine the business of robbery and murder with that of preaching the gospel of revolution, the position of Weihaiwei would not be enviable. And parts of China, be it remembered, are in such a condition at present that almost any day may witness the outbreak of violent disorder. A small band of hungry and desperate armed men with a daring leader, a carefully-prepared plan and a good system of espionage—were it not for the Boy Scouts of the Weihaiwei School, who are fortunately still with us!—descend upon Port Edward, glut themselves with booty, and be in a safe hiding-place beyond the British frontier before noon the next day. Much more easily could any village or group of villages be ransacked and looted, and its inhabitants killed or dispersed: and the local Government, except by summoning extra assistance, would be powerless under present conditions to take any vigorous action.

Trouble of this kind is much more likely to come from the Chinese of some distant locality than from the people of the Territory itself. In one very important respect the British have been highly favoured by fortune. It happens that harvests in Weihaiwei for several years past have been on the whole very good, and the people are correspondingly prosperous. There has not been a really bad year since British rule began; moreover certain agricultural developments (especially the cultivation on a large scale of ground-nuts intended for export) have been beneficial to the soil itself, and are a steadily-increasing source of wealth to the farmers. With the loose conceptions of cause and effect common to most peasant-folk, many of the villagers believe that the good harvests and general prosperity are somehow due to the "luck" of their alien rulers, of which they derive the benefit. The gods and spirits of the land, they imagine, must be satisfied with the presence of the British: is it not obvious that they would otherwise show their discontent by bringing a blight on the fields or sending a plague of insects?

Such is the popular argument, indefinitely felt rather than definitely expressed; and there is no doubt that it has had some effect in inducing a feeling of contentment with British rule. I have also heard it remarked by the people that since the coming of the English the villages have ceased to be decimated by the deadly epidemics that once visited them. A sage old farmer whom I asked for an explanation of the recent remarkable increase in the value of agricultural land explained it as due to the fact that the British Government had vaccinated all the children. This prevented half the members of each family from dying of smallpox, as had formerly been the case, and there was naturally an increased demand for land to supply food for a greater number of mouths! The medical work carried out by Government is doubtless of great value; but the reduced mortality among the people is probably chiefly due to the succession of good harvests, the increased facilities for trade, and the consequent improvement in the general conditions of life. A few successive years of bad crops may, it is to be feared, not only reduce the people to extreme poverty—for as a rule the land represents their only capital—but will also produce the epidemics that inevitably follow in the wake of famine. That such disasters may be expected from time to time in the natural course of events the reader will have gathered from the lists of notable local events given in the last chapter. When they come, the people's faith in the fortune-controlling capacities of the foreigners may then suffer a painful shock, and the results may not be unattended by something like disaffection towards their alien rulers.

At the beginning of British rule in Weihaiwei many wild rumours passed current among certain sections of the people with reference to the intentions and practices of the foreigners. One such rumour was to the effect that the English wanted all the land for settlers of their own race and were going to remove the existing population by the simple expedient of poisoning all the village wells. In a few cases it was believed that the Government had actually succeeded in hiring natives to carry out this systematic murder; whereupon the villagers principally affected, growing wild with panic, seized and tortured the unhappy men whom they suspected of having taken British pay for this nefarious purpose. One man at least was buried alive and another was drowned. These cases did not come to the knowledge of the British authorities for some years afterwards, long after the well-poisoning story had ceased to be credited even by the most ignorant. One of them I discovered by chance as lately as the summer of 1909, though the incident occurred nine years earlier. An unlucky man who for some unknown reason was understood to be a secret emissary of the foreigners was seized by the infuriated villagers and drowned in the well which he was said to have poisoned. The well was then filled up with earth and stones and abandoned. The poor man's wife was sold by the ringleaders to some one who wanted a concubine, for a sum equivalent to about ten pounds.

No doubt the many horrible stories that were circulated about the foreigners were deliberately invented by people who, whether from some feeling akin to patriotism or from more selfish motives, were intensely anxious to arouse popular feeling against their alien rulers. Their plan failed, for popular fury was directed less against the English than against those of their own countrymen whom the English were supposed to have bribed.

It may be said that on the whole the chief fear of the people in the early days of British administration was not that they or their families would be slaughtered or dispossessed of their property, or personally ill-treated, but that they would be overtaxed; and the disturbances which arose at the time of the delimitation of the frontier in 1899 and 1900 were in part traceable to wild rumours as to the means to be adopted by the foreigners for the raising of revenue. It was thought, for example, that taxes were to be imposed on farmyard fowls. Taxation has been increased, as a matter of fact, under British rule. The land-tax (the principal source of revenue) has been doubled, and licence-fees and dues of various kinds have had the natural result of raising the price of certain commodities. But these unattractive features of British rule are on the whole counterbalanced, in the opinion of the majority of the people, by comparative (though by no means absolute) freedom from the petty extortions practised by official underlings in China, by the gradual development of a fairly brisk local trade, by the influx of money spent in the port by British sailors, by the facilities given by British merchant ships for the cheap and safe export of local produce, and by the useful public works undertaken by Government for direct public benefit.

The amount spent on public improvements is indeed minute compared with the enormous sums devoted to these purposes in Hongkong, Singapore, and Kiaochou, yet it forms a respectable proportion of the small local revenue. That the construction of metalled roads, in particular, is heartily welcomed throughout the Territory is proved by three significant facts: in the first place the owners of arable land through which the new roads pass hardly ever make any demand for pecuniary compensation, unless they happen to be almost desperately poor; in the second place, wheeled traffic, which a few years ago would have been a ludicrous impossibility in any part of the Territory, is rapidly becoming common; and in the third place the people, on their own initiative, are extending the road-system in various localities at their own expense. It may seem almost incredible that, in one case at least, certain houses that obstructed traffic in a new village road were voluntarily pulled down by their owners and built further back: yet not only did they receive no compensation from Government, but they did not even trouble to report what they had done. Very recently a petition was received praying the Weihaiwei Government to urge the Government of Shantung to extend the Weihaiwei road-system into Chinese territory, especially to the extent of enabling cart traffic to be opened up between the port of Weihaiwei and the neighbouring district-cities of Jung-ch'êng, Wên-têng and Ning-hai. The Shantung Government has been addressed on the subject by the Commissioner of Weihaiwei, and the Governor has smiled upon the project; though as he has since been transferred to another province it is doubtful whether anything will be done in the matter at present. So long as Weihaiwei remains in British hands the Provincial Government, naturally enough, has no desire to extend the trade facilities of that port to the possible disadvantage of the Chinese port of Chefoo.