Part 23
To most people Chinese matters seemed settled. The preservation of a nation had been combined with the guaranteeing of a great free market; the orgy of grabbing had ceased. Russia, assenting to the open door, had promised to evacuate Manchuria. The special concessions, though secured by stand-and-deliver methods, it was felt would bring economic improvements and would furnish to the Chinese a demonstration of the beneficent results of Western civilization.
It was recognized that there would be frictions: misunderstandings are inevitable when old ways are faced with new. The extra-territorial rights of foreigners and their converts, absolutely necessary to protect their liberties if not their lives, could not but create occasional unharmonious situations, in which the consuls would have to intervene. The severity of the judicial punishment meted out at times to rioting cities for harm done to the protégés of the Powers was to be deplored, each nation grieving at the atrocities the others had seen fit to perpetrate.
But periodic local and temporary disturbances had been going on from time immemorial. Did not the Chinese realize, we reasoned, that their old corrupt government had been given another undeserved chance to try and march with the rest of the race; that this world is not the place for graft-ridden relics from the fifth century B.C.? The least we felt was that, thanks to the bearer of the “Flowery Banner,” the Chinese had been given a last opportunity. A self-denying Occident had guaranteed the nation’s existence and had presumably earned its everlasting gratitude. “Let China get up and do something--let it redeem itself.”
A very small circle of Chinese shared this Western view, and realized at their true value the mights if not the rights. There existed among the literati at Peking and in the coast cities the rudiments of a foreign liberal party. Recognizing that Western methods must come, they had been in favor of accepting foreign improvements even at the cost of railway concessions and the violated dwellings of wind and water spirits. When this party won over the young Emperor, there began the period of foreign concessions. Reforms, too, covering every subject, from queue-cutting to postage-stamps, were inaugurated.
The summer of 1898 saw the important edict which ordered the abolition of the Wen-chang essays and the penmanship posts, with the Emperor’s personal comment that the examinations should test “a knowledge of ancient and modern history, and information in regard to the present state of affairs, with special reference to the governments and institutions of the countries of the five great continents, and their arts and sciences.” A Bureau of Mines was established, a patent-office, schools, a scheme of army reform.
The climaxing decree was the one abolishing sinecures. For the Emperor’s unreconstructed entourage this last was too much. Foreign aggression had embittered to the point of unreason mandarin and coolie alike. The _coup d’état_ planned by the Dowager Empress, and executed by the reactionaries, virtually dethroned the Emperor, exiled his advisers, and ended the foreign-encouragement reform.
Indeed it was not within human nature for it to endure. From the point of view of the party of the second part the aspect of the whole foreign relationship, even after the Hay Note, looked very ugly indeed. The fact of guaranteed integrity was obscured by the _laissez-faire_ of the already consummated grabs. The idea that gripped them was the humiliation of foreign occupation and foreign aggression. It was as if the Russians and the English had just seized rival reservations on Long Island and the Jersey coast, commanding New York City; as if the English had wrenched away Charleston; the Germans, Philadelphia; the French, New Orleans; and Cossacks were garrisoned in strategic points throughout New England. It was as if the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway were manned and guarded by Slavs, the New York Central by Belgians, the Pennsylvania by Prussians; as if the Pittsburgh mines were handed over _en bloc_ to an English corporation, and the Russians had exclusive mining rights to the gold of Alaska’s Yukon region. It was as if America’s protective-tariff and contract-labor laws were repealed at foreign dictation, and a flood of foreign machine-made goods and undesired immigrants were poured into the unwilling country. It was as if yellow-robed Buddhist lamas were everywhere haranguing the Yankee farmers, telling them of the fraudulent nature of the Christian creed, and urging upon them an approved canine method for disposing of deceased ancestors, to replace their superstitious funeral services. It was as if astrologers, calling themselves engineers, were to dig up New York cemeteries in order to erect prayer-wheels; as if the apostates whom these yellow priests had drawn into their joss-houses were enabled to dodge part of the taxes, which consequently fell with added oppression on the rest of the people; and as if, when they did something which others would in the normal course of events get punished for, a lama came before the magistrate and got them off. As if the President and the Senate were given a weekly wigging by the diplomatic corps, and were periodically forced to deed away sections of the forest reserve and tracts of particularly desirable territory.
With such an aspect as this, which represents what in an undefined, bewildered way the Chinese saw and felt, it is no wonder that they considered the Confucian dictum obsolete: “Do not unto others, what you would not that they should do unto you”; and joined the patriotic harmonious Fists,--the Boxers.
Chinese sentiment was ungauged in the West because we had never put ourselves in their places. Unforeseen save by a few unheeded Cassandras, and unprepared for, there broke out the planless, leaderless Boxer Rebellion, grim fruitage of the national resentment. A few hastily gathered legation guards were alone available for defense. Spreading from the Shan-tung Province, where the severity of the Germans had goaded the usually peaceable people to madness, the I-Ho-Chuan besieged the legations at Peking. It was the infuriated and ill-directed rush of a patriotism real if futile,--a turning against the spoilers.
The movement was crushed in a torrent of blood, and with a devastation that for long will leave its mark upon the northern provinces. The closing year of the nineteenth century saw the Taku forts stormed, Tien-tsin, the Liverpool of the North, taken over and administered by a foreign board, Manchuria and Mongolia swarming with Cossacks, the Dowager Empress in flight, and her capital looted by foreign armies.
The coming of alien soldiery to the Forbidden Palace left its impress in the fiercer though more carefully smothered hatred of mandarins and people. It was still a blind resentment. They were injured, stung in all their pride and self-sufficiency, but dumb, bewildered, not knowing what to do, which way to turn. The liberals with their solution were gone; with them had passed the hopes of a progressive policy.
The people, perplexed, looked to their reëstablished reactionary rulers for guidance. But these officials, mostly of advanced age, and steeped in the ideas and ideals of the Confucian classics, were anxious mainly to close the ears and eyes of the masses to the unpleasant realities; to feather their own nests and finish off their lives in tranquility.
The Chinese Minister to the United States, Wu Ting Fang, gives a graphic picture of these Celestial Bourbons:--
“It must be remembered that most of the high officials in Peking are born and bred Chinese of the old school. All the princes and nearly all the ministers of state have spent most of their days within the four walls of the capital. They have never visited even other parts of the empire, not to say foreign lands; nor can they speak any other language besides their own. They have absolutely no knowledge or experience of foreign ways except those who are ministers of the Tsung-li Yamen, and the experience of these men has been confined exclusively to their official intercourse with the foreign representatives at Peking.”
Buttressing their hereditary _intransigeance_, these mandarins had, after the Hay Circular, possessed a measure of confidence that their yielding of open-door trade privileges to the greed of the foreigners had enlisted a combined support which would preserve China’s remaining national powers.
But so powerless to fulfill their purposes had these paper pledges become, so far was the open-door doctrine from settling the situation, that in China’s own territory, where by solemn promises of both parties no special privileges could accrue, the year 1904 saw two Powers in the throes of the greatest war of modern times.
If the realization of the combatants’ purpose has signified much to the nations of the West,--perhaps rather to the United States, for the others nursed no illusions,--to China it has meant far more. It has brought for the first time a real and general appreciation of the necessity for modernized, efficient self-defense.
Fifteen years of aggression have been needed to drive home this knowledge. While the defeats of 1895 came as a blow to a few keen-minded Chinese, to most they were a matter of entire indifference. China was not conquered, they reasoned: only two provinces took part while the viceroys of the rest looked idly on. “That Shan-tung man’s war” was the general attitude; “Li Hung Chang’s boats beaten.” When it was over, merely Formosa, the little-valued island of “tame barbarians,” had been lost. The traditional policy of playing off the jealous powers one against the other had apparently succeeded; it had cleared the Japanese from Corea and Port Arthur. China as a nation was hardly touched, and multitudes of people never knew there had been a war.
The seizures of 1897-1899, coming close upon each other, exasperated, but taught no lesson. The mass of Chinese, and even those in high official circles, believed that a little effort would drive the foreign devils into the sea. The march of the Allies to Peking stunned them. It was their first facing of the fact.
The Russo-Japanese War, and the partition of the province that had cradled their Emperor’s dynasty, dissipated their fool’s paradise. It was seen then, clearly, by all, that China’s only hope of maintaining her integrity lay in her defensive power. With the object, not of securing the blessings of civilization (which the overwhelming majority of Chinamen desire no more than we do the Holy Inquisition), but of beating away the spoilsmen, the Peking rulers turned at length to the survey of their actual military condition. As this concerns intimately the Chinese internal situation, a summary of it may be pertinent.
The Hwai-lien regulars, to the number of twenty-five thousand, are well-drilled, and well-armed with Chinese-made Mausers. They are stationed in the northern provinces, including the Taku and Peht’ang forts, the Tien-tsin station, and the neighborhood of Peking. These make up the only national force of modern troops at the disposal of the Chinese Government, but the private armies of various viceroys bring up the total somewhat as follows: The camps of foreign-drilled troops, formerly Yuan Shi Kai’s, probably the best in China, number roundly twenty thousand. From the Shen-ki Ying, or artillery force, from the camps of the Manchu Banners, which the Government is making an effort to whip into some kind of shape, from the Imperial body-guard, and other scattered and less important troops, ten thousand effectives might be culled. In the south the Viceroy of Nanking has, all told, some twenty thousand more men holding the Wusung forts, who may be classed as efficient and well-armed; some of these are German- and Japanese- drilled. This total of seventy-five thousand represents China’s numerical military strength in effective modern troops.
The old hereditary organization of twenty-four Banners, adds some two hundred thousand Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese,--of the privileged soldier caste, which through two hundred and fifty years has drawn an annual subsidy of eight million taels from the Peking treasury. Billeted as the nominal wardens of the provincial cities and garrisoned around Peking, these Tatars have become as a rule so degenerated by immemorial idleness as to be useless save for picturesque parades. The one positive element is that they are men under pay, subject to order, and available for initial experiments.
The Green Banner, or militia, under the command of a general for each province, is theoretically composed of a large number of native Chinese. The army is made up mainly of officers. The higher officials of the Green Banner acquire the pay, commissary, and weapon-allotments of their nominal armies, and pad the rolls with the names of coolies who come out for the annual review in return for the small portion of their nominal wage which must be spent to keep face.
To expect these men to get out and fight is obviously more than they bargained for. The Green Banner can deliver about the same relative number of actual soldiers per unit of population that a Mississippi backwoods county polls for the Republican party. The most that can be said for the Green Banner is that it has a list of men’s names from which a certain number of real recruits might be obtained.
The military organization of even the best regular troops is feeble. Constant word reaches the press of soldiers revolting for lack of pay. In one such instance nine hundred men near the Manchuria border mutinied and were put down with difficulty, tying up the caravans for some time. Aside from questions of discipline, and considering number only, it is doubtful if, in the whole empire of four hundred million people, one hundred thousand decently armed and drilled troops could be gathered, in an extremity, for defensive purposes.
Drilled and armed men in whatever numbers are, however, but one element of a country’s defensive power. Organization, transportation, commissary, and supply are factors of hardly less importance. The troops that get there are the ones which count, and even a Chinese army marches on its belly. Russia’s defective transport, to mention but one case, undoubtedly decided both the Crimean and the Japanese wars. The question of territorial defense is one of several dimensions, first of which is how soon could a given force, with its necessary commissary and ammunition-supply, be disposed along the various lines of possible attack.
Making the round of the Chinese Empire, it is apparent that Tibet and Mongolia, for all the resistance that could be made, might be taken by England and Russia respectively whenever they were minded to cross the border. The Chinese could throw out barring columns no further westward than Sze-chuan, no further northward than the Great Wall.
On the frontier of Corea, the Yalu River formerly defined the first line of defense. But this frontier has been moved westward by the Japanese, so that it would be a political impossibility to put men there even were it practically possible. The present line would of necessity be between Shan-hai-kwan and Yung-ping. Perhaps withdrawals from the northern provinces, the viceroys permitting, might admit massing here fifty thousand troops. But this, as well as any other possible line, is entirely unfortified, giving hardly more advantages to the repelling than to the attacking forces. There would be no second line of defense, nothing to fall back upon but the old Tatar Wall of Peking. Beyond this fifty thousand any quota brought from the south would consume a very considerable time, probably a month, even allowing that their semi-independent viceroys did not discreetly hold off altogether.
Further east, at Shan-tung, Germany’s railway pierces to the heart of the Confucian province; while from the Chinese military centre in Chi-li there is no corresponding railroad, Chinese-manned, giving them access, were it necessary to repel aggression. The Anamese railways afford the French means of bringing up troops, where China could assemble an army only after weeks of marching. The Burmese frontier of Britain’s dominion is similarly vantaged.
The German _Land-Wehr_, while the first armies go to the front, may be called out and mobilized, until the whole manhood of the nation is in arms. Such a body is nonexistent in the Celestial Empire. Like her own lichee nut, once the frail shell of her resistance is broken, the meat is ready for the eating. Considered solely from the military standpoint, aside from reform as such, China is as supine as a huge helpless jelly-fish, with disconnected nerve-ganglia, and not even the rudiments of a backbone.
For the first requirements of national defense, what is necessary? For the north there should be a thoroughly drilled and equipped regular army of at least one hundred and fifty thousand men, with capacity for rapid concentration in the neighborhood of Peking. For the south a standing army of at least fifty thousand men. An intermediate army of fifty thousand more should be available near Hankow, capable of being thrown either way. The Peking-Hankow railway line must have strategic branches to Canton, Shanghai, Yun-nan, and Shan-tung. These must be controlled not by foreigners but by Chinese. There must exist a reserve of, say, five hundred thousand men, at least partially drilled, from which to draw reinforcements. There must be arsenals able to make all the weapons and ammunition for these forces, since foreign nations will continue to command the sea. The sums needed to realize such a programme must be available, and China must possess the organization and fiscal system for the conduct of a war. From this summary it may be seen that adequate defense requires a measure of increase in her efficiency that is revolutionary. The demand which such measures would make upon any nation is stupendous. How much more would it exact of China, where for its accomplishment every single factor must overthrow the ideas, the principles, the very morals evolved through centuries in the most conservative race of the globe!
At the outset, for the personnel of such a regular army, two hundred and fifty thousand adults must be transformed from stolid, superstitious field-tillers and coolies, never of combative spirit, into courageous, disciplined fighting men. Can this be done? Some, eminently qualified to judge, answer that it can; but Chinese history has not for several thousand years furnished many glorious annals. Where a stark fight is recorded, as at Albazin, or against the Mongol khans in the sixteenth century, the warriors have been Manchus rather than Chinese. Whenever an aggressive nation, be it Hiung-nu or Khitan, Mongol or Manchu, British or Japanese, has gone against the genuine Chinaman, the latter has invariably submitted. It is only when his subjugators, absorbed into the swarming mass of conquered, have degenerated, that the native has been able to rise and drive out his enfeebled oppressor. The Chinese have conquered by time and their birth-rate.
On the other hand, the Chinaman has qualities which, translated into military virtues, should theoretically give him a great initial advantage over any other race. He is comparatively without nerves; he can hold a gun without a tremor for what to a Westerner is an inconceivably long time; he has good eyes and a strong sight; he can be victualed on a few handfuls of rice; he is entirely indifferent as to where or how he lodges; he is sober and reliable; he is a big-bodied man, stronger even, perhaps, than the Japanese; he is docile, obedient, and susceptible to discipline. Indeed, in all that concerns his physical qualities and certain moral superiorities, one could not ask for better raw material. When well led he has at times done very creditably. A generation of such leadership as Yuan Shi Kai’s would do not a little toward bringing out what there is latent in this people.
If in the army organization the gap between what is and what should be is so great, how much wider is it in the government organization needed to finance reform. The revenues of China are some $100,000,000. About $36,000,000 are allotted to military purposes. When from this has been deducted the eighteen million-odd which go to the generals of the Red and Green Banners, there is left, theoretically, about $18,000,000 for the real army. Actually there is efficiently applied probably not over $10,000,000. The regular army of Japan--two hundred and twenty-five thousand--takes $40,000,000 effectively expended. China must begin from the very bottom, whereas Japan is simply carrying along. A judicious total expenditure of at least $50,000,000 is needed for China’s army. With the additional railway and arsenal programme, and other concomitant work, the demands over and above present outlays would reach around $110,000,000. Add this to the present budget, less the well-spent ten millions, and there is to be reckoned a total budget of at least $200,000,000.
Could China raise such a defense-fund on top of her present hundred-million-dollar budget? Could she cut down on present expenses to help it out? The latter might be considered. Theoretically the wasted army money of the present budget might be saved and applied. Practically the vested interests in the graft are so important as to make it of infinite difficulty. The mere beginning of sinecure-cutting cost the Emperor the actuality of his throne and nearly his head.
The list shows other items of expenditure which cannot be materially economized. The large and growing sum which goes to repay interest, foreign loans, and indemnities, cannot be touched, nor can the $16,000,000 sent to the provinces for their local expenditures. The $8,000,000 for the Peking salaries and palace expenses is a fixture. The modest and well-administered $3,000,000 of the customs expenditures, covering about all the public works that China undertakes,--the lighthouse and coast-patrol allowances, the mails, the interpreters’ school,--this cannot be pared. The needed money must come if at all by increase of the receipts. One is driven irresistibly back to the Government’s taxing capacity.
The physical possibility of such taxation undoubtedly exists. The per capita revenue which the Government receives from its four hundred million subjects is but twenty-five cents. The American per capita revenue is eight dollars, the Japanese five dollars, the Russian twelve dollars, the Indian--perhaps in conditions the closest parallel to the Chinese--one dollar and a quarter. An extra twenty-five cents would raise the Chinese Government well above all financial difficulties, and still leave the rate far below that of the other great nations of the world.