Changing China

by William Gascoyne-Cecil; Lady Florence Mary Cecil

If China, therefore, is neither to become Western nor to remain what she is, of necessity she will have to blend the two civilisations together and to take a part from each. The Chinese themselves, with a sanguineness for which they have no warrant, are quite certain that this is an easy matter. They tell the inquirer that they have considered it well, and that they see their way completely through it. They intend to select from Europe only those things that are advantageous to the race, and they expect to have no difficulty in weaving these incongruous elements into their own very complete system of thought. Statesmen seriously say that three or four months' extra study will enable the educated Chinaman to learn all that is necessary of Western civilisation, and then those who have acquired this knowledge can return to China and teach their fellow-countrymen; and it is impossible to convince the Chinese that the uniting together of two different webs of thought is a matter of extreme difficulty, and, it may be added, of extreme risk. The pleasing dream that you can arbitrarily select the good points of West and East and weave them into one is the very reverse of the truth. What naturally happens is the very opposite. There is a tendency to preserve that which is bad and not that which is good in two different systems of thought when they are united into one. The reason probably is that as the bad has its common origin in the wickedness of human nature, it belongs to both systems of thought, and therefore both the Chinaman and the Western meet on common ground when they meet in vice or vileness. On the other hand, the virtues of both are the result of moral cultivation resting on authorities which are not recognised by either. Therefore the tendency is to waive all moral obligations as resting on controverted grounds. Whatever may be the cause, the result is obvious—the Westernised Oriental, unless a Christian, is as a rule only one shade better than the Orientalised Western.

While the careless thinker hopes generally that good will come out of the union of the two, he is as a rule terrified lest there should be any tendency to mingle Western with Eastern thought in any one of whom he is fond. A leading man at Tientsin, extolling the healthy climate of the place, related how he had kept his children there ever since they were born. His friend from home, ignorant of life in a Chinese port, said in an appreciative way, "How nice it must be for your children to be able to speak Chinese; I suppose you encourage them to learn it?" The dweller in China turned on him in anger and said, "Thank God, my children do not know one word of Chinese; I would send them home to-morrow if I caught them learning a single sentence." This enthusiasm for ignorance of the language of a great nation is extraordinarily difficult to understand until the danger of the mixture of Eastern and Western thought is realised. Experience has taught those who have lived in China that it is only a few that can come unscathed through the terrible trial of having to live in two moral atmospheres.

One of the most striking books that has ever been written is "Indiscreet Letters from Peking." The book is marvellous in the power it has of bringing before the eyes of its reader those awful scenes during the siege of Peking, but it is far more wonderful in the character that it imputes to the hypothetical narrator—a character typical of a man who is equally at home in England and in China; and in that character is portrayed a true but curiously unpleasant picture of the characteristics of both races. The narrator has the courage of a lion; he is absolutely without any sense of honour. He fires at an adversary under the flag of truce. He misuses a Manchu woman who in the horrors of the sack throws herself on his mercy. He connives at the breaking of a solemnly pledged word of honour by a soldier. The character is not overdrawn; characters such as these are common in a mixed world, and it is natural that English people should fear that their children should grow up so unutterably vile. But if the Englishman fears for his child, ought he to ignore the welfare of the country in which he lives, and can we pass over this whole problem as something that does not concern us; for what he fears for his child will happen to the whole Chinese nation.

The blending together of the East and the West may be accomplished with the ease which the Chinaman expects—but not in the way in which he or anybody else could wish—it may be accomplished by the eradication of all that is good in either race, on the common ground of vice and sin and evil and cruelty; unless, indeed, the efforts of those who are now labouring to weave together that which is good in both civilisations are supported. The difficulty of preserving the good points and high qualities of Chinese thought is only equalled by the difficulty of introducing the splendid traditions of the West and grafting them on to the Chinese stock. What success has followed the efforts of those who are thus labouring is rather to be credited to the intensity of their efforts, to their single-hearted purpose, to their ready self-denial, than to the ease or simplicity of their task.

No man of any feeling or any conscience could pass indifferently by a single individual eating the berries of a deadly plant, unconscious that they were poison. What shall be said, then, if we allow, not only one individual but a fourth of the population of the world, to eat of a deadly poison which must deprive them of all happiness and of life, which must condemn them by millions to the misery of the very blackest darkness, where the only motives known are selfishness, lust, pride, and cruelty, for this is what certainly will happen to China if she accepts the materialism of the West.

Western thought is very powerful. The way it has dominated the forces of nature gives it a great prestige. As the Chinaman learns about steam and electricity, about the telephone, the flying machine, radium, and a thousand more Western inventions, he cannot fail to be impressed, he must admit that these people have knowledge. Do not for a moment imagine that, after such an illumination, he will be able to go back to the works of Confucius and learn again the old maxims, many of which are antipathetic to Western thought—yes, even more incongruous to Western than they are to Christian thought. How will he, for instance, read Confucius' condemnation of war when the Japanese and Germans and Russians are shouting into his ears, "By war ye shall live and by war alone."

In an interview I had with that great statesman, Tong-Shao-Yi, he said, "We respect Confucius because he has never taught any man to err." Unlike the teaching of Christianity, Confucius preaches that the test of truth is worldly success, and therefore by that test his preaching will be tried and found wanting by the materialist. The materialist will say, if Confucius never taught men to err, how is it that the Western nations who are ignorant of his teaching have succeeded, and that China, who outnumbers them greatly, and who after years of education and training and of following faithfully his teaching, has failed? How is it, they will ask, that she is so powerless, that were it not for European jealousies she could not stand a day before the least warlike of these Western nations? The Confucian will answer, "He taught us to despise war, and that is why we are weak." The materialist will certainly retort, "So he has taught you to err." Confucianism must fall before Western materialism. I do not speak of Buddhism, for that is falling so quickly that its influence may be said to be almost gone. China will be left stripped of religion, robbed of her old ideas, and not clothed with new ones, wandering into all the misery and humiliation that vice and sin can bring upon mankind, till the curse of her millions in misery will go out against the harsh unfeeling West, who could leave her thus blind and helpless without a guide.

The call is great. Those who have knowledge have no right to keep it to themselves. The Christian and the Confucian agree in this, as they do in much else, that all knowledge must be shared. One of the purposes of this book is to arouse my readers to the importance of taking some action. Had they had an opportunity of going to China and seeing things for themselves, I would only have asked them to think; but as there are many who have not had that opportunity, I would try and show them the transitional condition through which China is passing, the danger of that condition ending in disaster, a disaster wide as the world itself. I hope to show them what is being done at the present time to lead the Chinese empire into safe paths, and to illuminate her with the highest knowledge of the West. Many efforts have been made, and there has been much success. I am glad to testify publicly to the heroic and self-denying character of the missions, but those who are most successful are those who frankly say China can never be led by aliens.

No race loves the alien, and the further away the alien is in blood and language the less he is loved; therefore the Chinese above all races are least fitted to be led by the European, as they differ from him in most racial characteristics. If they are to be led by their own race, their own race must be fit to lead them. They must have leaders who understand the whole of Western knowledge, and will be able to take what is true and leave what is false. A Japanese thinker said the other day, "Our people have made a great mistake—they have taken the false and left the true part of Western thought." Let us hope that China may be preserved from such an error, that she may learn Western knowledge so thoroughly and so well that she may be able to distinguish the good from the bad, the beautiful from the vile in our system of thought.