CHAPTER X THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA Idem semper erit, quoniam semper fuit idem. Is China awake? SEVEN years ago the Western, and I dare say the Eastern world also, in so far as it was made aware of the fact, was startled by the appearance in the pages of an English magazine of an article purporting to have been written by the foremost Chinaman then living, a tried statesman and a successful ambassador, in which, with a skilfulness that was to be expected of his abilities, and with an emancipation of sentiment that was surprising in his nationality, he advanced the propositions that China had at length been aroused from her age-long sleep, and, with the same energy with which she had for so many centuries pursued and idealised the immobile, was about to enter into the turbulent competition of modern progress.1 Possibly the Marquis Tseng, assuming that he wrote the article -which I believe that there is good reason for doubting—may have believed in his own assurances; unquestionably they proved palatable to the large class of European readers who cannot conceive of any standard of life, either for an individual or a nation, except that which prevails in the country of which they themselves are citizens, who bisect mankind into two 'China, the Sleep and the Awakening, by the Marquis Tseng. Asiatic Quarterly Revice, January 1887. camps, the civilised and the barbarian, and hold it to be both the destiny and the duty of the latter to wear the former's gyves. Had China at last, the most arrogant of the rebels, the most formidable of the barbarians, been driven to capitulate? Was the Celestial about to sit, a chastened convert, at the feet of Western doctors? So blessed a proclamation had not for long been spread abroad upon the earth; and loud were the Hosannas that went up from chapel and conventicle, from platform and pulpit and press, at these glad tidings of great joy. It may be worth our while, who are neither, like the Marquis Tseng, diplomats whose interest it is to conciliate, nor prophets who are ahead of our times, to examine how far it is true that China has really awakened from her ancestral sleep, or whether she may not merely have risen to stop the rattling of a window-sash, or the creaking of a shutter, that interferes with her quietude, with the fixed intention of settling down once more to the enjoyment of an unabashed repose. surrender. For now more than fifty years has the combined force of the Western nations, exercised commonly by diplomacy, frequently by threats, and sometimes by open A tactical war, been directed against that immense and solid wall of conservative resistance, like the city walls of their own capital, which the Chinese oppose to any pressure from the outside. In parts an opening has been effected by the superior strength of the foreigner, backed up by gunboats or cannon. Of such a character are the concessions as regards missionaries and trade, which fall more properly under the heading of China's external than of her internal relations, and, as such, have been dealt with in the previous chapter. In what respects, however, may she be said to have yielded, or to be even now abating her stubborn opposition, in deference to no exterior compulsion, but of her own free will? The answer, whether we look at the introduction of the electric telegraph and railways, at the adoption of foreign mechanical appliances in arsenals, dockyards, and workshops, at the institution of a native press, at the development of internal resources, or at the encouragement of domestic enterprise - the familiar first lessons of the West to the East-will teach us that it is with no lighthearted or spontaneous step, but from the keenest instincts of self-preservation alone, that China has descended from her pinnacle of supercilious self-sufficiency, and has consented to graduate in Western academies. One might think that in the contemplation of the magnificent wharves and streets and buildings of Shanghai, which worthily claims to be the Calcutta of the Far East; of the spacious and orderly foreign settlement of Tientsin, contrasted with the filth of the native city adjoining; or of the crowded dockyards and shipping of Hongkong-the Chinese would have found at once a reproach to their own backwardness and a stimulus to competition. It is doubtful whether any such impression has ever been produced upon the Celestial mind. What suits the foreigner's taste is not necessarily required by his. If the foreigner prefers to be comfortable, he is content to be squalid. If space and grandeur are essential to the one, they have for centuries been dispensed with, and are, therefore, not necessary to the other. Were it not that experience has shown beyond. possibility of cavil that, in the struggle with the foreigner to which the march of events has committed her, China is herself handicapped by the absence of those appliances. which have rendered her antagonists so formidable, she would not have made the smallest concession to a pressure which she still despises, even while yielding to it. In a word, her surrender is the offspring, not of admiration, but of fear. It is based upon expediency, not upon con viction. Railways in China. No more striking illustration of this thesis can be furnished than the enterprise which will seem to the superficial observer the evidence of its very opposite, viz. the introduction of railways into China. When I first visited the Chinese Empire in 1887, there was not a mile of railroad in the country. The little abortive railway from Woosung to Shanghai, which had been constructed in 1876 by English merchants, and had been compulsorily acquired and torn up by the provincial authorities in 1877, was only a memory and a warning. Now, however, the stranger can travel in an English-built carriage upon English steel rails from the station of Tongku, near the Taku forts at the mouth of the Peiho River, over the 27 miles that separate him from Tientsin; while from Tongku the main line is already prolonged for 67 miles to the Tungshan and Kaiping coalfields, and thence as far as Shan-hai-kuan, at the seaward terminus of the Great Wall, in the direction of Manchuria beyond. The reason of these several extensions has been as follows: Of the first (which was begun in 1887), the alarm produced Manchu rian Railway. by the French war in 1884; of the second, the necessity, in the event of a future campaign, of possessing native coalfields, instead of being dependent upon foreign supply-as well as the interests of a speculation in which the Viceroy Li Hung Chang is personally concerned; of the third, the fear of Russian aggression on the north;-self-interest or apprehension having been, therefore, in each case the motive power. In other words, the introduction of these railways has been a compulsory operation, not undertaken of free will or inclination, but forced from the outside. At one period the works were stopped by the resurgence of old-fashioned and superstitious ideas,1 and by the weight of Palace intrigue. But the influence of Li Hung Chang has triumphed; and the line, though nominally mercantile in its inception, has now become in reality a strategical railway, which before the war was being steadily pushed forward in the direction of Kirin. Its total length will then be just short of 650 miles. The first 94 miles were constructed by a company, the China Railway Company ; the remainder is a State railway. But inasmuch as both undertakings are controlled by the Viceroy, and as the former is in no sense a commercial speculation, the shareholders being all officials, and no accounts being published, the entire project may be considered as one scheme. At the rate of advance before the war, 40 or 50 miles were being laid yearly, a sum of £400,000 being allocated for the purpose. This left a gap of several years before Kirin was expected to be reached; but it was calculated that, owing to the paucity of physical obstacles, and the ability of the Chinese navvies in throwing up earthworks, the whole line could, at a pinch, be completed in two years. In 1894, however, progress was for a while suspended, in order that the funds so released might be devoted to the celebrations of the sixtieth birthday of the Empress-Dowager-a proceeding profoundly Chinese. Before these could take place the warcloud burst upon China; and railroad-construction went the way of every other Chinese undertaking. Had the line been pushed forward without interruption before the outbreak of hostilities, it is conceivable that Port Arthur might 1 When it was announced that a branch line was to be constructed from Moukden to Newelwang, the Tartar General of the former place, who did not want it at all, consulted the geomancers, who reported that the vertebræ of the dragon encircling the holy city of Monkden would infallibly be sundered by driving the long nails of the railway sleepers into them. Accordingly, he advocated the removal of the Ime from Moukden The spinal cord of the dragon was ultimately secured by shifting the rails a few hundred yards. |