Part 8 (2/2)
”China Breaking Up” was the keynote of everything written about the Middle Kingdom ten years ago; ”China Waking Up” has been the keynote of everything treating of it these last five years.
Sir John Jordan, British Minister to China, does not exaggerate when he declares that in a European sense China has made greater progress these last ten years than in the preceding ten centuries. The criticism one hears most often now is, not that the popular leaders are too conservative, but that they are if, anything, too radical; are moving, not too slowly, but too rapidly.
Instead of the old charge that China is unwilling to learn what the West has to teach, I now hear foreigners complain that a little contact with Europe and America gives a leader {103} undue influence.
”Let an official take a trip abroad and for six months after his return he is the most respected authority in the empire.” Instead of English missionaries worrying over China's slavery to the opium habit, we now have English officials embarra.s.sed because China's too rapid breaking loose from opium threatens heavy deficits in Indian revenues.
Instead of the old extreme ”states' rights” att.i.tude on the part of the provinces, as ill.u.s.trated by the refusal of the others to aid Manchuria and Chihli in the war with j.a.pan, the beginnings of an intense nationalism are now very clearly in evidence. Even Confucius no longer looks backward. A young friend of mine who is a descendant of the Sage (of the seventy-fifth generation) speaks English fluently and is getting a thoroughly modern education, while Duke Kung, who inherits the t.i.tle in the Confucian line, is patron of a government school which gives especial attention to English and other modern branches--by his direction. Significant, too, is the fact that the ancient examination halls in Peking to which students have come from all parts of the empire, the most learned cla.s.sical scholars among them rewarded with the highest offices, have now been torn down, and where these buildings once stood Chinese masons and carpenters are fas.h.i.+oning the building that is to house China's first national parliament--unless the parliament comes before this building can be made ready.
And so it goes. When a man wakes up, he does not wake up in a part of his body only, he wakes up all over. So it seems with Cathay. The more serious problem now is not to get her moving, but to keep her from moving too rapidly. In his Civic Forum address in New York three years ago, Wu Ting Fang quoted Wen Hsiang's saying, ”When China wakes up, she will move like an avalanche.” A movement with the power of an avalanche needs very careful guidance.
The one question about which every Chinese reformer's heart is now aflame is that of an early parliament. By the imperial decree of 1908 a parliament and a const.i.tution were {104} promised within nine years.
At that time there was little demand for a parliament, but with the organization of the Provincial a.s.semblies in the fall of 1909 the people were given an opportunity to confer together and were also given a taste of power. For the first time, too, they seem to have realized suddenly the serious plight of the empire and the fact that since the deaths of the late Emperor and Empress Dowager, and the dismissal of Yuan s.h.i.+h-Kai by the Prince Regent acting for the infant Emperor, the Peking government is without a strong leader.
Consequently the demand for a hastened parliament has grown too powerful to be resisted. True, when the delegates from all the Provincial a.s.semblies voiced this demand to the Prince Regent last spring his reply was the Edict of May 29, declaring that the programme outlined by their late Majesties, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, could not be changed. Furthermore, the Throne remarked significantly: ”Let no more pet.i.tions or memorials upon this subject be presented to Us; Our mind is made up.”
Unfortunately for the peace of the Regent, however, John Chinaman is absurdly and obnoxiously persistent on occasion. If you will not heed other appeals, he may commit suicide on your doorstep, and then you are bewitched for the rest of your days, to say nothing of your nights. The talk of an earlier parliament would not down even at the bidding of the Dragon Throne. Quietly unmanageable delegations waited upon viceroys and compelled these high officials to pet.i.tion for a reopening of the question. Down in Kiang Su a scholar cut off his left arm and with the red blood wrote his appeal. In Union Medical Hospital, here in Peking, as I write this, a group of students are recovering from self-inflicted wounds made in the same cause. Going to the Prince Regent's, they were told that the Prince could not see them. ”Very well,” they declared, ”we shall sit here till he does.” At length the Prince sent word that, though he could not receive them, he would consider their pet.i.tion, and the students then sliced the {107} living flesh from their arms and thighs as evidence of their earnestness, coloring their pet.i.tion with their blood.
{105}
[Ill.u.s.tration: PU YI, THE SON OF HEAVEN AND EMPEROR OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM.]
The baby sovereign of one of the vastest and oldest of empires is shown here in the lap of his father. Prince Chun, the Regent.
{106}
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW CHINA IS DEALING WITH OPIUM-INTEMPERANCE.]
Burning a pile of pipes of reformed smokers at Hankow. The amazing success of China's crusade to free her people from the opium curse may be justly reckoned one of the greatest moral achievements in history--a challenge to our Western world.
{107 continued}
At this period of our drama there came upon the stage a new actor, at first little heeded, but quickly becoming the dominating figure--the Tzucheng Yuan, or National a.s.sembly. This body, consisting of 100 n.o.bles and men of wealth or scholars.h.i.+p appointed by the Throne, and 100 selected members of Provincial a.s.semblies approved by the viceroys, was expected to prove a mere echo of the royal wishes. ”It is evident that the government is to have a docile and submissive a.s.sembly. Mediocrity is the chief characteristic of the members chosen.” So wrote one of the best informed Americans in China, some weeks before it a.s.sembled, October 3. Reuter's press agent in Peking predicted through his papers that a few pious resolutions would represent the sum total of the a.s.sembly's labors.
And yet the first day that these two gentlemen went with me to look in on the a.s.sembly we found it coolly demanding that the Grand Council, or imperial cabinet, be summoned before it to explain an alleged breach of the rights of Provincial a.s.semblies!
From the very beginning the course of this National a.s.sembly in steadily gathering unexpected power to itself has reminded me of the old States-General in France in the days just before the Revolution, and I could not help looking for Danton and Robespierre among the fiery orators in gown and queue on this occasion. Significantly, too, I now hear on the authority of an eminent scholar that Carlyle's great masterpiece is the most popular work of historical literature ever translated into Chinese. May it teach them some lessons of restraint as well as of aggressiveness!
Be that as it may, the a.s.sembly has proved untamable in its demands for an early parliament, not even the hundred government members standing up against the imperious pressure of public opinion. In late October the a.s.sembly {108} unanimously pet.i.tioned the Throne to hasten the programme of const.i.tutional government. The day this pet.i.tion was presented it was currently rumored in Peking that unless the Prince Regent should yield the people would refuse to pay taxes. But he yielded. The trouble now is that he did not yield enough to satisfy the public, and there is every indication that he will have to yield again, in spite of the alleged unalterableness of the present plan, which allows a parliament in 1913 instead of in 1916, as originally promised. A parliament within eighteen months seems a safe prediction as I write this.
It also seems safe to prophesy that the powers of the parliament will be wisely used. In local affairs the Chinese practically established the rule of the people centuries before any European nation adopted the idea. Nominally, the local magistrate has had almost arbitrary power, but practically the control has been in the hands of the village elders. When they have met and decided on a policy, the magistrate has not dared run counter to it. In much the same fas.h.i.+on, governors and viceroys of provinces have been controlled and kept in check. Thus centuries of practical self-government in local affairs have given the Chinese excellent preparation for the new departure in national affairs. What is proposed is not a new power for the people but only an enlargement or extension of powers they already exercise.
Parliamentary government is the one great accomplishment the Chinese people are now interested in, because they propose to make it the tool with which to work out the other Herculean tasks that await them.
Happy are they in that they may set about these tasks inspired by the self-confidence begotten of one of the greatest moral achievements of modern times. I refer, of course, to the almost marvellous success of their anti-opium crusade which I have already discussed.
Mr. Frederick Ward, who has just returned from a visit to many provinces, finding in all the same surprising success {109} in enforcing anti-opium regulations, declares: ”It is the miracle of the Middle Kingdom and a lesson for the world.”'
China's next great task is the education of her people, and the remedy for pessimism here is to compare her present condition, not with that of other nations, but with her own condition ten years ago. A reported school attendance of less than one million (780,325 to be exact) in a population of 400,000,000 does not look encouraging, but when we compare these figures with the statistics of attendance a few years ago there is unmistakable evidence of progress. In the metropolitan province of Chihli, for example, I find that there are now more teachers in government schools than there were pupils six years ago, and the total attendance has grown from 8000 to 214,637!
Even if China had not established a single additional school, however, or increased the school attendance by even a percentage fraction, her educational progress these last ten years would yet be monumental. For as different as the East is from the West, so different, in literal fact, are her educational ideals at the present time as compared with her educational ideals a decade ago. At one fell blow (by the Edict of 1905) the old exclusively cla.s.sical and literary system of education was swept away, made sacred though it was by the traditions of unnumbered centuries. Unfortunately the work of putting the new policies into effect was entrusted to the slow and bungling hands of the old literati; but this was a necessary stroke of policy, for without their support the new movement would have been hopelessly balked.
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