CHINA'S REVOLUTION
GENERAL LI YUAN HUNG, THE LEADER OF THE REVOLUTION Frontispiece.
GENERAL LI YUAN HUNG, THE LEADER OF THE REVOLUTION Frontispiece.
CHINA'S REVOLUTION
1911-1912
A HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL
RECORD OF THE CIVIL WAR
BY
EDWIN J. DINGLE
WITH 2 MAPS AND 36 ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
1912
(All rights reserved.)
TO
THOSE WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES AND
TO THE NEW CHINA PARTY
IN THE HOPE THAT THEIR STRUGGLES FOR FREEDOM
MAY HERALD THE DAWNING OF A DAY OF
RIGHT AND TRUTH FOR CHINA
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This volume is a popular history of the Revolution in China that broke out at Wuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang in October of 1911. The narrative contains a good deal of new information touching upon revolutionism in China, and the events leading up to the present climax. The magnitude of this Revolution cannot possibly be understood yet; but this volume is written in the hope that it will enable the student otherwise untutored to understand much that one absorbs in Chinese life.
When the Revolution broke out, I was residing in Hankow. Throughout the war I remained in Hankow, leaving this centre for Shanghai during the days when the Peace Conference was held in that city. I am a personal friend of the leader of the Revolution, General Li Yuan Hung, and, by virtue of having all the time been in possession of much exclusive information from behind the political curtain, am probably equipped to write of the main doings of the Revolution in that area where its effects were most marked. On the very eve of the Revolution, a book written by myself was published simultaneously in England and America, which contains some strangely prophetic utterances, and will give the reader who has not made Chinese politics a study a general idea of the condition of the country when the Revolution made the scales drop from the eyes of her teeming millions.[1]
I wish gratefully to acknowledge the kind offices of Mr. Thos. F. Millard, editor of the China Press, for allowing me free use of the columns of that journal. Much of my information has been culled from the C.P., although many of the articles were written by myself for that newspaper, whilst the war was in progress; but I am largely indebted to that paper also for many of my general later facts.
Especially also do I wish to thank the Rev. Bernard Upward, of Hankow, for the assistance he has rendered me whilst this volume was being prepared. The chapter entitled "Some Revolution Factors" is from Mr. Upward's pen, as is also that headed "Yuan Shih K'ai"; many of the illustrations shown in the volume also are reproductions from Mr. Upward's splendid collection. My warm thanks are also due to Mr. Stanley V. Boxer, B.Sc., for the drawings from which the two maps embodied in this volume were prepared, and for the explanatory note accompanying the sketch map of the battlefields.
It should, perhaps, in fairness to myself, be mentioned that, owing to absence from England, I have not had an opportunity of reading the proof-sheets before this volume was printed.
EDWIN J. DINGLE.
HANKOW, HUPEH, CHINA.
April 1, 1912.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE REVOLUTION
II. THE AFTERMATH
III. GENERAL EXPECTATIONS
IV. GENERAL LI YUAN HUNG'S AMBITIONS FOR THE NEW CHINA
V. A PREMATURE OPENING
VI. THE EARLY HOSTILITIES
VII. THE BATTLE OF KILOMETRE TEN
VIII. THE BURNING OF HANKOW
IX. THE STRONGHOLD OF WUCHANG
X. LI YUAN HUNG SEEKS PEACE
XI. THE FALL OF HANYANG
XII. THE REPUBLIC SEEKS RECOGNITION
XIII. THE PEACE CONFERENCE—A MONARCHY OR A REPUBLIC?
XIV. THE COMING OF SUN YAT-SEN
XV. YUAN SHIH K'AI'S RETIREMENT
XVI. RECALLED TO SAVE THE MONARCHY
XVII. THE SZECHUEN REVOLT
XVIII. SOME REVOLUTION FACTORS
XIX. THE ABDICATION EDICT
XX. THE OUTLOOK FOR REFORM
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
GENERAL LI YUAN HUNG .... Frontispiece
WHERE CHINA'S REVOLUTION STARTED
THE PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLY HALL, WUCHANG
A CAPTURED BOMB-MAKER
A QUEUELESS BRIGADE
TYPICAL REVOLUTIONARIES
THE RAW MATERIAL OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY
THE CENTRAL MART OF THE WORLD
THE FLIGHT OF THE GUN-JUNKS
THE EFFECT OF A NAVAL BOMBARDMENT
PREPARED FOR EVENTUALITIES
FOES MEETING AS FRIENDS
TACHIMEN, WITH IMPERIALISTS IN OCCUPATION
THE BURNING OF HANKOW
THE SING SENG ROAD
THE TOLL OF THE DEAD
ESCAPED FROM WUCHANG
TOMMY ATKINS ON GUARD
HOW THE IMPERIALISTS CROSSED THE HAN
HUNAN SOLDIER
HUPEH SOLDIER
THE IMPREGNABLE HANYANG HILL
THE THREE-EYED BRIDGE
THE HANDY MAN ASHORE
DISMANTLED IMPERIAL GUN ON PURPLE MOUNTAIN, NANKING
THE UBIQUITOUS BOY
DR. WU TING-FANG
YIN CHANG
TANG SHAO-YI
FENG KUO-CHANG
HWANG HSING
DR. SUN YAT SEN
YUAN SHI-K'AI
A PRE-REVOLUTION GROUP
THE CHILD-EMPEROR OF CHINA
WHAT REMAINS OF HANKOW'S MAIN RIVER GATEWAY
MAPS
HANKOW NATIVE CITY, SHOWING BURNT AREA
WUHAN CENTRE: SKETCH MAP OF THE BATTLEFIELDS
CHINA'S REVOLUTION
1911-1912
CHAPTER I
THE REVOLUTION
The story of the great Chinese Revolution of 1911-12 will probably never be told fully or accurately. China is a continent in its vast area. Its population is one-fourth of the whole human race. The country is not opened up by roads or railways and travel generally is arduous and slow; exaggeration among the people, as among all Orientals, is second nature. And so it would be at once impossible for any one man closely to follow up and widely and accurately to write of the Revolution which broke out at Wuchang last year, tracing it up to the present moment and getting a clean political and international outlook whilst doing so. Although I have endeavoured by careful study to get into focus with doings all over the Empire, I confess that I have been unable to secure unimpeachable information on any part of China other than that in which I was living (I speak of the interior of China, for it was easy enough to be kept informed in the main centres and the treaty ports whilst the telegraph lines were intact). Had there been roads and railways and communication of a kind to render it physically possible to move about, even then this would have been impossible; for soon after the Revolution broke the anti-foreign spirit and the outlawry shown in many parts of the country forbade any European going far from the treaty ports—and, of course, practically all foreigners were ordered to the coast by their consuls. Had a man a workable knowledge of the Chinese language in character, it would have been foolish to form one's opinions from the rumours that were printed everywhere in the Chinese Press. And so it comes about that only upon those things which one saw and did is a man justified to write.
The reader, if he knows China, will need no further explanation, for readily will he recognise my meaning. He will understand by experience what a mass of inconsistency and incongruity China and her people are. But to the Westerner who has never been into China nor rubbed shoulders closely with this peculiar people it will perhaps be necessary to add that life in China, in all its forms and phases, is fraught with such a truly remarkable atmosphere of the unexpected that to write on any Chinese man, woman, custom, habit, place, or thing one is able only to generalise—unless he goes into the tedium of particularising. To get into line it is necessary so to cut down and to prune and generally to reinterpret that when one has told his story there seems to be very little at all in it. But those who have lived in China know the conditions. They will have absorbed this incomprehensible spirit of the country, will understand what is written—and what is more important still, will magnetically feel what is left out which the writer on Chinese affairs would have said. When in writing upon men and things Chinese you think you have pruned down all apparent misinterpretation or misrepresentation, you find there is still a little pruning left to be done; you prune again, and in the end you find you often are, to the Western mind, misinterpreting and misrepresenting facts merely because you have left out that which, to you, with your Chinese eyes, appeared untrue. You see a thing in China and you think that you understand it. You fix it in your mind and tell yourself that you have absorbed it, whatever it may be, and that you now have the final thought and word and correct meaning. But after a little time you find, by a peculiar process of Chinese national twisting and shifting, no matter what you see, hear, think, believe, your final thought and word and correct meaning are changed completely.
This, perhaps, describes the political atmosphere during the Revolution. Into everything there came an exasperating suspense, a terrible tangle of all national affairs, as there still must be for a very long time to come. Therefore to the man who sets out to write a detailed history of China's Revolution, and correctly to diagnose the effect of one event upon another in a consecutive and truthful line, there at once appears a formidable task.
What the author has set out to do in this volume is to tell of what he saw and understood, and then to put into print carefully considered opinion on the general situation and a historical survey of revolutions and main events in China that have led up to the Revolution of last October. This Revolution, although outbreaking prematurely, was all wonderfully planned. "The movement began to take definite shape about fifteen or sixteen years ago," says Sun Yat Sen, the greatest of Chinese revolutionists, though he had been interested in the movement for a longer time than that. "Three years ago we were ready to take over Wuchang, Canton, and Nanking, but we were waiting to gain control of the Peking soldiers. We had been working for some time through the students. Following the war with Japan, the Peking Government began to organise its new army, sending students abroad to be trained to take charge of the army. It was at once seen that if the Manchus were able to organise and control a modern army it would greatly strengthen their position, and the Revolutionary party set to work to counteract their efforts. They worked through the students, so that when they returned to China to take positions as officers in the army they came as revolutionists. The outbreak could not have been postponed for more than a few months, but it did occur before it was expected. We knew that we had Wuchang, Nanking, and Canton, but there was a preliminary outbreak at Canton, then another one last summer. Then when the outbreak at Wuchang occurred it was no longer possible to postpone action, for the Government would have begun to disarm the soldiers who sympathised with us. At Canton they scattered our sympathisers over the province, so that it was very difficult to concentrate them. If our original plan had been carried out, there would have been very little fighting. Canton, Nanking, and Wuchang would have quietly gone over to us, and then all the troops could have marched on Peking if necessary. We have always had half of the Peking troops with us."
Thus declared Sun Yat Sen—and there is little doubt he was right. The hitherto irremediable suppression of the individual qualities and national aspirations of the people arrested the intellectual, the moral, and the material development of China. The aid of revolution was invoked to extirpate the primary cause, and China now proclaimed the resultant overthrow of the despotic sway wielded by the Manchu Dynasty and the establishment of a Republic. The substitution of a Republic for a Monarchical form of government was not the fruit of a transient passion; it was the natural outcome of a long-cherished desire for broad-based freedom, making for permanent contentment and uninterrupted advancement. It was the formal declaration of the will of the Chinese nation.
In a manifesto issued to all friendly nations from the Republic of China, when Sun Yat Sen was appointed Provisional President, it was declared that "we, the Chinese people, are peaceful and law-abiding. We have waged no war except in self-defence. We have borne our grievances during two hundred and sixty-seven years of Manchu misrule with patience and forbearance. We have by peaceful means endeavoured to redress our wrongs, secure our liberty, and ensure our progress, but we have failed. Oppressed beyond human endurance we deemed it our inalienable right as well as our sacred duty to appeal to arms to deliver ourselves and our posterity from the yoke to which we have so long been subjected, and for the first time in our history inglorious bondage has been transformed to an inspiring freedom splendid with a lustrous light of opportunity. The policy of the Manchu Dynasty has been one of unequivocal seclusion and unyielding tyranny. Beneath it we have bitterly suffered, and we now submit to the free peoples of the world the reasons justifying the Revolution and the inauguration of our present government. Prior to the usurpation of the Throne by the Manchus, the land was open to foreign intercourse, and religious tolerance existed, as is evidenced by the writings of Marco Polo and the inscription on the Nestorian Tablet of Sian-fu. Dominated by ignorance and selfishness, the Manchus closed the land to the outer world, and plunged the Chinese people into a state of benighted mentality, calculated to operate inversely to their natural talents and capabilities, thus committing a crime against humanity and the civilised nations almost impossible of expiation."
WHERE CHINA'S REVOLUTION STARTED. This picture of Wuchang gives a good idea of the type of buildings seen in a Chinese city. Six hundred Manchus perished in Wuchang during the early days of the slaughter.
WHERE CHINA'S REVOLUTION STARTED.
This picture of Wuchang gives a good idea of the type of
buildings seen in a Chinese city. Six hundred Manchus perished
in Wuchang during the early days of the slaughter.
And there can be no doubt that, actuated by a perpetual desire for the subjugation of the Chinese, by a vicious craving for aggrandisement and wealth, the Manchus had governed China to the lasting injury and detriment of the people, creating privileges and monopolies and erecting about themselves barriers of exclusion in national custom and personal conduct which were rigorously maintained throughout the centuries. They had levied irregular and unwholesome taxes upon the Chinese without their consent, restricted foreign trade to treaty ports, placed likin embargoes upon merchandise in transit, and obstructed internal commerce. They had retarded the creation of industrial enterprises, rendered impossible the development of natural resources, and wilfully neglected to safeguard vested interests. They had denied the people a regular system and impartial administration of justice; inflicted unusual and cruel punishments upon all persons charged with offences, whether innocent or guilty; and frequently had encroached upon Chinese sacred rights without due process of law. They had connived at official corruption, sold offices to the highest bidder, and had subordinated merit to influence. They repeatedly rejected the Chinese people's most reasonable demand for better government, and reluctantly conceded pseudo-reforms under most urgent pressure, making promises without intention of fulfilling them.
Thus the manifesto showed up the weak spots in the Manchu governmental policy. And it continued: "To remedy these evils and render possible the entrance of China to the family of nations, we have fought and formed our Government; lest our good intentions should be misunderstood, we now publicly and unreservedly declare the following to be our promises:—
"All treaties entered into by the Manchu Government before the date of the Revolution will be continually effective up to the time of their termination; but any and all entered into after the commencement of the Revolution will be repudiated.
"All foreign loans or indemnities incurred by the Manchu Government before the Revolution will be acknowledged without any alteration of terms; but all payments made to and loans incurred by the Manchu Government after the commencement of the Revolution will be repudiated.
"All concessions granted to foreign nations or their nationals by the Manchu Government before the Revolution will be respected, but any and all granted after the commencement of the Revolution will be repudiated.
"All persons and property of any foreign nation within the jurisdiction of the Republic of China will be respected and protected.
"It will be our constant aim and firm endeavour to build upon a stable and enduring foundation a national structure compatible with the potentialities of our long neglected country.
"We will strive to elevate our people, secure them in peace, and legislate for their prosperity."
At this juncture it were idle to investigate how far these ideals have been reached. There has as yet been no time for deep national reforms to have been worked, and it is not the ambition of this volume to go deeply into political actualities. But no one, realising now that the Manchu rule in China has passed for ever, will doubt that, with such excellent qualities of common sense and eminent industry as the Chinese possess, we shall see a nation move that may move the world with it. The day will assuredly come, perhaps it is not so very far distant, when the Occidental observer will look around to see the globe girdled with an indissoluble bond of Chinese peoples, no longer too weak for aggression, but independent in all departments of national life. They will be taken up as equals into social relations of the white races. They are now struggling among themselves, asking merely to be allowed to fight out their own civil battles and order their own civil affairs. They will make mistakes, but probably will profit by them. The day will come when Chinese will no longer be elbowed and hustled by their haughtier Occidental neighbours, but perhaps instead we shall find ourselves entered into no easy international and commercial competition with people whom not so long since we looked down upon as servile and considered fit only to minister to our needs in manual ways. The problems that loom across the threshold of the future of this newly emancipated race, however, surpass in magnitude any that civilisation has hitherto had to encounter. There are clear indications of progress, but they are not yet clear enough. China has to be remade, and those engaged in the project may blunder because of the varied and widely varying patterns they have in stock to choose from.
Certain phases of development we are sure of. We are able to place our fingers upon certain points in China's national propaganda and say with certainty that such and such a line is bound to be followed, such and such a thing bound to happen. But, generally speaking, China is a land of unintelligibility; the best advice one can give is to "wait and see."
CHAPTER II
THE AFTERMATH
One of the almost certain features of the effect of the Revolution, however, will be China's increased foreign trade—probably 100 per cent., says Sun Yat Sen.
The year 1913 should mark a stride in commercial progress in China such as the world never before has seen. 1912 will probably be a year of unrest and uncertainty. The formation of a permanent Government and the election of a Cabinet, the dispatch of competent officials to outlying places, and the putting down of outlawry in the provinces will be a big programme for this year—if it is accomplished. But 1913 and the following years will probably unfold a remarkably rapid advance in exports and imports. China has held back from all things foreign centuries enough, but during the past two decades the seed has been sown for such a harvest of trade and commercial prosperity as shall keep the factories of the West hard at work to cope with the demands—that is, if the merchants of the West are quick to seize their chances as they come. And in this volume the author feels that it were well at this juncture, when an opportunity is presented to English and American traders to come in and take possession of the trade China is prepared to foster, to speak of the commercial possibilities which the next decade will give.
The reader will probably understand that, despite the enormous foreign imports which for years have come into China, there is not a tithe of the trade done yet which will be done with the opening up of the country, now almost bound to ensue. China's market is stupendous. The possibilities are wider than the average home manufacturer has any conception of. From the China Sea to the British Burma border, from the southern port of Canton up through all the partially opened Eastern provinces, through the whole of the wonderful Yangtze Valley to the practically untouched west, and away into newly touched areas where the inhabitants are all anxious to buy foreign goods, there is presented an unparalleled opportunity for the foreign manufacturer. Any one who has taken an intelligent interest in China's trade with foreign countries must have been impressed with the fact that she was not importing one-hundredth part of what she could easily handle. And if he had studied closely any particular district where some foreign import had been taken or foreign industry had been started and watched the phenomenal commercial growth in that particular district, he immediately would gather some idea of the far-reaching possibilities for the expansion of foreign trade in China.
Even the recent changes in dress wrought by the Revolution have shown the enormous demand there is for re-dressing the Chinese; with the passing of the queue they decided against the little round Manchu hat, an article made almost exclusively in China. Immediately there came a cry for the foreign hat; at once a trade was created, into the country there came all kinds and conditions and shapes of foreign head-gear—felts, cloth caps, and all sorts; they sold in hundreds of thousands and had to be supplied by some one. China, at all events, could not make them; to her it was something quite new; they had to come from outside. Japan was watching. She collared the trade, and in two months she had practically re-hatted China. But this is merely an instance; many more might be given to show the rapidity with which commercial changes come. In over seven thousand miles of travel in China, mostly far away inland where the effect of the treaty port is least felt, the writer some time ago made a study of the commercial aspect of things and how far the modern spirit had penetrated the interior, with a view specially to ascertain how the British merchant stands in the business life of the nation. This chapter, therefore, should have especial interest so far as it embodies correct data, gleaned in two years and a half of travel in many parts of the Chinese Empire where the traveller is still to the Chinese a wonder of wonders. In China, even in far interior places, one finds life, business, prosperity—a strange commingling of Western ideas with Eastern. Four hundred millions of people have to all intents and purposes become civilised. They are anxious to swing into line and want the equipment. Their needs are making China the greatest market in the world. They want everything—railways, machinery, tools, guns, ships, and much else. That there is an unprecedented large trade to be done must at once be granted. During the last decade, without thinking for the moment of the Revolution, China's foreign trade has doubled; in the next decade, if peace prevails, it must be trebled, and although one cannot ignore the fact that under ordinary conditions of progress China must ultimately become a serious rival to Western countries as an industrial nation, that day is not yet at hand. She must be a stupendous buyer before she can hope to become a serious competitor.
But the point need not, I think, be pursued farther. The country has merely to regain its normal condition, and we shall see trade increasing by leaps and bounds. I say merely to regain its normal condition for this reason: whilst the prevailing uncertainty continues no permanent increase of trade can be expected, but let there be some stable form of government and we shall see China recuperate and begin trade again in a wonderful manner. No people have such recuperative power. No people have such power of adaptation. And in the era of trade development upon whose threshold we are now standing we may confidently look to probably an uneclipsed season of foreign commercial enterprise in all parts of China. In the increased demand for woollen goods, for engineering equipment of all kinds, especially mining gear, for railroad supplies, for the thousands of household requirements of daily use, motor-boats and all the varied paraphernalia required to place an antiquated nation upon the footing of modern civilisation there will be a demand such as will make even Japan's era of commercial progress pale into insignificance.
The trade will come. Let so much be granted. The next point is, Who is to get it, and how is it to be got?
I am not a manufacturer nor a trader, and cannot go deeply into the detail of how business should be pushed. But I have seen a good deal of China, have closely watched the methods adopted by various internationals in various parts of the Empire, and it may be that my remarks on the matter may have the effect of awakening British and American traders to the realisation of the opportunity now before them. Some time ago, when placing manuscript for a prospective work on China, the publisher said: "What people want to know is how to increase their trade—they don't want to know about the physical characteristics of the country and the people so much as how to increase their trade. Write a book on how trade can be improved, and your book will sell." But it is probable that those who would most readily buy and read such a book would be the Britisher's competitor.
Now, so far as actual trading advantages are concerned, it may be said of the British that they hold the highest advantage possible over other nations; that advantage is in the fact that they hold the confidence of the people. No foreigner, be he merchant, missionary, traveller, or official, is trusted in China as is the Britisher. I speak with no intention of hurting the susceptibilities of any one. In trade the Chinese believe in the British, they believe in his goods; in the Revolution the soldiers would congratulate you most heartily if they knew that you were an Englishman, telling you that there is none better in the world. They might be right or wrong, I am merely writing what they were saying, and it is a fair ensample of the general opinion of the common people. But despite this advantage, it is patent to the thoughtful student of Chinese affairs that a great need exists among British merchants as a whole to "wake up." I am a Britisher, am perhaps naturally quick to notice where British merchants fail, where they are outrun in the race for trade in this land of great promise. I know there will be many who will at once ask me to turn to the shipping in Shanghai, in Tientsin, in any of the ports, and notice the predominance of British shipping. I shall be told that Great Britain still controls the bulk of the trade of China, and that there is no need for fear of the future. But there is another side to the story.
Go any day to the Bund at Hankow or Shanghai; watch the progress being made also by Japan. Go into the godowns and watch the progress of the little brown men from the land of the Rising Sun and watch their methods; run your eye along the offices whose men work hardest and longest—the Germans; keep yourself informed on the doings of the day in exports and imports, and you will find that, even if he does hold the volume of trade he has held for years, the Britisher by no means advances with new trade as rapidly as his competitors. In the past no nation has done so much towards the true development of China as the British. The British have laid the foundation, have sown the seed, and it is only their due that they should reap the harvest now at hand. But in the period during which the trade of China has so phenomenally advanced the cry has gone up from all quarters that the Britisher is not only losing his grip of the increase of China's trade in her commercial dawn, but literally giving way to the German, and that but a few years will be necessary to prove that Great Britain occupies a position relatively nearer the bottom of the list of nations who have a commercial finger in the pie.
I am not the first writer who has had a wail to make over the loss of British trade. But I do not, at the same time, see any reason why the British merchant should not easily maintain an indefinite supremacy of trade in China. It only needs a little more vim, a keener outlook, a speedier business adaptation to needs, the maintenance of commercial wakefulness where business has a tendency to increase. Competitors of Great Britain hold no advantages; they cannot in the long run put better goods upon the market—Japan, the most serious rival, certainly is producing inferior goods in larger bulk, and is everywhere overrunning the land with cheap and nasty goods, but the British-made article will always hold its own side by side with that of any other nation. And to the British merchant who in China, as in most other trading commercial spheres, has almost always absorbed the external trade, it does not matter much whether people say he is or is not losing the trade—so long as he is not. It has always been a case of Britain first and the rest nowhere. The Britisher makes a good living, has an established connection, is the life and soul of the social community, keeps up a fair average of orders with home firms, and is content. But no right-thinking Englishman, no matter how optimistically he may view the general situation of Great Britain's trade in the Chinese Empire, can deny that British trade does not expand proportionately with what is to be done and what others are doing. This is not pessimistic. Optimism is the keynote of the British merchant, and Great Britain's returns of exports and imports in the China trade are beyond that of any other nation. But very powerful rivals—Germany and Japan, more powerful than British merchants will admit to themselves—are in the field and fighting in a way that we cannot afford to ignore.
Take Germany first. German success is undeniable. It is patent to all beholders. German merchants are at every port. In real interior China, far away from the beaten tracks, I do not remember ever having met a single British commercial traveller—Germans I have met often. They go out into the byways, beating up the trade and creating new trade, putting themselves to inconvenience and exertion to get orders, and undergoing in many cases greatest physical strain in travel to get business. Once I met a man not far from the border of British Burma; he had come right across China and had been away from his business house in Shanghai for several months, and was then going down to Rangoon and around to Shanghai by sea because it was the easier and quicker way back. This is perhaps an isolated case, but one may judge from it that the German merchants, while doing all they can as importers of the goods the people want to buy, spread their representatives far away from the buying centres to show the people what they can do. In Tientsin, during the past few years, the German has become a serious rival. German trade now at that important northern port is probably equal to British trade. In Eastern Siberia German is the business language, as a matter of fact, but to the German, unlike the nonchalant Britisher, it does not matter where he is placed in China, the first thing he does is to get a working knowledge of the language, a factor of far greater importance in China than appears on the surface. The German succeeds, not by political influence, not by tariffs nor underhand methods, but by sheer business application, and is building up an extensive scheme, founded on sound principles, to capture the lion's share of the growing trade which will go to Europe and to wrest from the Britisher a large proportion of that which has always been his. The average German reads about China—its history, of the physical characteristics of the country, of the people in the interior and the life they live, what they have and what they want. The Englishman does not trouble. He rarely learns the language, is careless to find out anything about the country unless it is to get an idea of sport, and so on.
The other dangerous rival is the Jap. If one were to go into detail and write regarding the Japanese methods of business, it is probable that much of it would subsequently be suppressed. The Japanese in business in China is not the soul of honour. He has to be watched. It is not possible here to speak at length on the unprincipled and shady tactics employed in China—and particularly in the north and in Manchuria—by Japanese traders. One and all seem to be alike, all endowed with that secret and clannish spirit permeating all Eastern nations, with a big dash of some peculiar virtue of unscrupulousness, and they have brought themselves into a position of the most favoured nation in the Chinese Empire. Japan has determined to get the trade by any means. Once in a Chinese city in the interior, where doors were closed to foreign trade, I saw the largest store on the street was Japanese. Business is not done there, they say in self-defence, but a show is maintained so that goods of the same kind may be secured from Tokio! The Jap is in everything, he is everywhere—to be first he cuts under, for he has little reputation to lose. Yet he is as good in his own opinion as the best-bred European, and he lets you know it. No man, however, unblinded by prejudice, can study the progress of Japan in China, can look upon its amazing national advance with either admiration or respect. I have met him in the interior, in Yunnan and Szechuen, prospecting quietly for minerals, tapping goldfields and iron beds that are lying waste, seeking out the best centres for the opening up of trade, finding out what there is a demand for, and marking out the strategic centres from whence his trade may be handled to the disadvantage of every one. The Jap, as I have said, is everywhere, in everything—rarely, however, to be trusted.
But no matter how many the rivals, I should think that no two nations have better prospects for the securing of China's new trade than Great Britain and the United States. It needs alertness, however.
CHAPTER III
GENERAL EXPECTATIONS
With the opening of China as a Republic the progress to be made in education will undoubtedly be stupendous. Missionaries will probably find an ever-increasing field. Missionaries and educationists will have a freer hand and be everywhere more greatly respected. They will play more than ever an increasing part in uplifting the people. Lord William Gascoign-Cecil has pointed out that if the West is to be saved she must illuminate China, and he says unless that vast country has attained the same standard as ourselves we must undergo a process of degradation. Our civilisation grew up, like our old towns, under the shadow of the Church; you will see in any country in Christendom the village clustering round the church, the town round the cathedral. Of late years big factory chimneys have been covered with the smoke of industry; still, they have left their mark as much on our civilisation as on our landscapes. But now a country which knows nothing of church or cathedral is entering into that civilisation, and the church and the cathedral become things of archÆological interest and nothing more, unless, indeed, the Church will take the opportunity and conquer the industrial China that threatens the West.
"I do not mean," said Lord William Cecil, "only by sending out missionaries, but also by teaching the future rulers of this great industrial people the truth and value of a Christian civilisation. The pessimist says this is impossible, and thus sounds the knell of our social legislation; but the Christian says the world is built for progress, and the acquisition of China to our civilisation is our opportunity for making the world a happier place. If we could at this moment help the Chinese to value the high principles which underlie our Western thought, China might be rendered happy by the brilliant light of a Christian civilisation and the world saved from a disaster of having labour sink from a Christian to a semi-Oriental status."
And although the fall of the Manchu dynasty will open the pathway into real progress in this land, we must agree that there is an infinite pathos in the Child-Emperor, ignorant, innocent, abdicating the throne which his forefathers had won, a mere pawn in the game between Chinese and Manchus. But pathetic as this incident is, we must not let its pathos obscure in our minds its more important aspects; it is not only the abdication of an Emperor we have to consider, but it is also the destruction of the conventional and artificial Chinese civilisation before the vigorous civilisation of the West. Vast China, with its four hundred millions of industrious population, with its infinite resources of coal, iron, and other minerals, with its traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Lamaism, has become part, and a very large part, too, of Western civilisation.
We are indeed, during our generation, watching the making of history wonderful in its possibilities. The following quotation from the writer quoted may be intensely prophetic:—
"We are opening a new volume in the history of the world—a volume in which strange and terrible things may be written; a volume which, on the other hand, may contain a brighter story than any of us conceive to be possible. How one longs to read that volume as it will be written by the historian a hundred or two hundred years hence! Will it run thus: 'From this time the condition of the working class of Europe began steadily to deteriorate, and though the short-sighted statesmen of the twentieth century failed to appreciate it, this was the inevitable result of adding to the working men of the world a population remarkable for its industry and so inured to poverty that its workers gladly submitted to conditions which the Western workmen naturally and with justice refused'? Or will it run thus: 'The decadent Christianity of the West, corrupted by luxury, divided by sectional strife, received new life under the influence of the more sincere Chinese Christianity, purified in the harsh school of persecution and stimulated by the great political upheaval which caused the deposition of the Manchu Emperor'?"
We cannot take down the volume, we cannot read to the end; we must wait as year after year the pages are turned over, but we shall do well to appreciate the importance of this page of contemporary history.
China now will undergo before our very eyes a social and commercial and educational transformation, and so speedily will events in the main transpire that if one is to get the historical march of events fixed in his mind it is necessary to read at once what has passed. As soon as any national event passes now it falls speedily back into history. We cannot keep pace with all that transpires. Changes pass even us who live in China for the most part unnoticed. The face of China whilst we look upon it takes on a new appearance.
It is well that we should read of the doings leading up to this great era of transition.
CHAPTER IV
LI YUAN HUNG'S AMBITIONS FOR THE NEW CHINA
"We will have no further Manchu rule.
"China must be a Republic founded on lines laid down by the United States of America. The United States of China must be opened up with all speed, and for this purpose there must be a combined effort made with Chinese and foreign capital and Chinese and foreign labour.
"Confucianism will probably become the national religion, but I personally favour the doctrine of Christianity being proclaimed far and wide in China, and of encouraging missionaries to come in greater numbers to our country.
"I am desirous that the form of government, after the Manchu rule is abolished, shall not alter very greatly, so that there shall be no disruption of trade and commerce and of diplomatic connections of China in the Empire and in foreign countries."
This practically covers the main statement made to myself on Monday, November 20, 1911, by General Li Yuan Hung, leader of the Revolution of China. My privilege of interviewing the General was exclusive. I was given a special pass, and was granted the privilege of going where I liked in Wuchang, the city where the Revolution broke out, and doing almost as I pleased, being the first to secure exclusive conversation with his Excellency since the Revolution had begun.
China's Revolution is one of the most thrilling epochs in the world's history. Had there been no Li Yuan Hung, whose name to-day, is known in civilisation everywhere, there would probably have been no Revolution. History may prove Li Yuan Hung to be the greatest reformer China has given to the world. To his remarkably sound administration and his clean example to the people he was leading are due the changes that have so speedily ushered the New China to full prominence on the political stage of the East and the West. To rise from total obscurity in the life of a nation to the highest point of political fame is rarely given to any man. To change the whole tendencies of the national life of a people is rarely given to one man. But no one man ever in history was able to mould anew the social and political outlook of a quarter of the whole human race, as did Li Yuan Hung when he led the Chinese Revolution. He proved himself a man unique in the eyes of the world, the most effective reformer of his generation of any country.
On the day that I set out to have my talk with Li Yuan Hung, Wuchang, the capital city, of Hupeh, which had revolted to a man, bore every evidence of victory; and despite the minor reverses that the Republican Army had for several days been suffering in their encounters with the Imperial Army, sent down from Peking under General Yin Chang to quell the rebellion, I found that in the city there was infinitely greater hope among the people and infinitely stronger confidence in their leader than in the early days of the Revolution. One felt that he was touching the bedrock of humanity, had come into grips with a people who with one set purpose were going forward day by day to accomplish the true work of winning back China for the Chinese. As one passed through the streets, around the forts, in and out among the men who were with their lives prepared to buy freedom for Manchu-ridden China, one realised that this part of the Chinese nation, hitherto as silent as some great sleeping monster, had suddenly found its voice, and had set out determinedly to tell the world what it meant to do. Around one was waging civil war that was to decide the enormous stakes. There had been many civil wars in the world before—Wars of the Roses and many others which had had their historical significance—but as one seemed to gaze out upon a great country like China and a people who go to make up one-fourth of the human race, slowly was the fact borne in upon one's mind that this civil war had a significance that perhaps belonged to none other. It seemed like a war of belief against unbelief. One felt that he had met men who were concerned only with the real essence of justice and reform which were to regulate the deep-reaching interests of four hundred millions of men—one must be understood as talking about the leaders more particularly. And this is the most real thing about this people's Revolution—the making of order and right government. General Li Yuan Hung seemed to be a great national carpenter, taking now the rough trees, shaping them into purpose and real use. This was my first impression of the man, for by his extreme calmness, his practical insight into things—it was almost impossible to conceive a mere military man capable of such patience in the midst of extreme mental and physical strain—he was showing the world that he was a leader born. General Li was a man of perhaps forty-eight, at first sight giving the impression that he had developed as an altogether brave and quiet man. As I conversed with him I could not help noticing again and again the decisive, practical eye of this leader of the people, how he drove immediately towards the practical, and had a genuine insight into what was fact and right and truth. He had an eye to see and a heart to dare. His nature was strong rather than intense, with his utterances full of sincerity and of substance.
THE PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLY HALL, WUCHANG. Where General Li had his headquarters until after the fall of Hanyang.
THE PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLY HALL, WUCHANG.
Where General Li had his headquarters until after the fall of Hanyang.
I went direct to the Assembly Hall, where the guard received me and where my foreign visiting-card was taken first to the Foreign Office, while I was marched to a waiting-room. Around the building there was a flutter of official life, for from that building the whole channel of China's history was being changed. Here there were no tremulous, hesitating, half-hearted men; all was life. Each man, from the usual underlings who hung about the doorways to the lowest soldier on guard, from the lowest clerk on the General staff to the General himself—all men went about their business with a fixity of purpose that was new to China. There was no disorganisation. All was quiet and smoothly running. The new Republican flag from many towers waved triumphantly in the morning wind. On the drill-ground outside one could hear the blowing of bugles and the clatter of arms as the regiments were being drilled. Away down in the town, on one, two, a dozen, twenty pieces of open ground recruits were being licked into shape. Over on the hills could be heard the blast of cannon and field-pieces from all directions. The slight whistle of a shell dropping through the air told one that bombarding from both sides was going on apace. But in the General's hall no evidence other than the running hither and thither of dispatch-runners could be seen that war was waging all around one. No one could listen to General Li Yuan Hung without developing a great trust in the man. Sometimes his face lit up with radiance bred only of devout determination, and he had all along succeeded in infusing that spirit into all the people of the city in which he had been so long an ordinary military officer. My reader should not, however, understand me to mean, in my description of the scene where the Revolution broke out, that a China freed from all corruption and all the usual Chinese incongruities and official twistings had suddenly come into being. Any one who has followed my writings on China generally would, were this the case, accuse me of the greatest inconsistency. But during those early days of the Revolution we certainly saw a Chinese official life we had never seen before. Li's court was at that time the cleanest and the most hard-working and practical that had been seen at any time in China's history. That it was not perfect all those who looked on were quite aware, but it was vastly ahead of the general run of Chinese civic life.
Soon there came to the waiting-room a smart young officer, wearing foreign spectacles, in a uniform that had a peculiar mingling of foreign military and civic dress. He saluted, then bade me follow him. His business was to show me to the Foreign Office. Here I decided to make an instant objection, being content with nothing less than an interview with Li Yuan Hung. So that when, having arrived inside a large room at the end of the veranda of the second story of the rectangular building, a rather stout Chinese gentleman in military undress accosted me, I explained that I had already made arrangements for an interview with General Li, that I would be obliged if the proper wheels of office could be set in motion to allow me to see him, and that as soon as possible. Just at this point the Chinese in military undress smiled, and quietly said, "Yes, I am General Li."
Addressing me in English, the General, with gentle Chinese suavity, told me that his time was at my disposal; that with only an imperfect hold upon my honourable language he would probably find some difficulty in telling me accurately what was in his mind, but that whatever question I put to him he would do his best to answer. Li Yuan Hung was a handsome Chinese gentleman—about five feet three or four, queueless, with close-cropped, bristly black hair, eyes somewhat close set, which at times shone with extraordinary fire, and a chin that immediately gave evidence of an infinite determination; were it not for his military bearing, he might readily have been taken for a prosperous Chinese merchant. He was keen, a leader of men who did not hesitate a moment. So utterly unlike the ordinary Chinese official, who leaves the vital points of an interview until he rises to take his leave, General Li, with eyes beaming, and slightly raising his hand in his enthusiasm, exclaimed: "Yes, now we have thirteen out of the eighteen provinces, and our Republican party is formidable.[1] We have gathered under our new flag many more provinces in a much shorter time than we had hoped for, an evidence that China was waiting for the step to be taken to overthrow the Manchus."
"Why, General Li, did the Revolution break out? Can you tell me briefly the specific reason you assign for the outbreak to have taken place so suddenly?"
He smiled slightly as he looked me straightforwardly in the eyes. "Well, throughout our Empire there had been for years the feeling that the Manchus would never give us Chinese any justice. They were pressing us down, and although the Revolution took place sooner than anticipated, all Chinese knew that it was coming sooner or later. I personally had formulated no great scheme to take the lead. As a matter of fact, although I knew all that was going on in the Hupeh Model Army, I had no intention of taking the lead, nor of occupying the position in which you find me to-day. The time planned for the Revolution would probably have been later. China was waiting for the man to rise up who would strike. None of the leaders of the Revolution—of our new Republic—were anxious that there should be great slaughter—the only wish was that the Manchu rule should be abolished for ever. And since I have been the leader of the Republic I have done my best that as little loss of life as possible might be incurred."
"Are you quite sure that the Revolution will be permanently successful, that all China will become loyal to the Republican flag?"
"Loyal!" exclaimed Li, with the joviality of a boy, then his face was closer knit again. "There is no doubt whatever. We have thirteen provinces, with the armies of all those provinces; we have the Chinese Navy, part at Hankow, part at Nanking,[2] sent there to aid in the attack, and part at Shanghai. We control the Yangtsze." But the General dismissed the question of loyalty to the Republic as not being worthy of notice, adding that it was merely a matter of time for China to be knit together with a great overpoweringly strong patriotism which would have no equal in the Eastern or Western world. Then he continued: "My personal desire would be to see every province a free province, with its own Assembly, but controlled by one great national governmental body. We shall take our pattern from the United States of America, having a President to control our provincial assemblies—just like America," he added curtly.
"How often would you elect a President? In China, unopened as it is, with no communication, do you not think it would be more difficult to organise elections and matters of a national character than it is in the States?" I asked.
"Every four, five, six, or even ten years. Our President, if we got the right man, might be in office for ten years for that matter. At all events, this is my personal opinion, but this, with many other matters, would come up for decision at the first assembly, and it is my desire not unduly to influence that body."
"Who do you think you would ask to become the President—Yuan Shih K'ai perhaps?" I asked.
"Ah, no," came the quick rejoinder. For some considerable time Li Yuan Hung had been endeavouring to persuade Yuan Shih K'ai to come over to the Revolutionary party and assume control of the formation of the Republic; but his efforts had met only with a stubborn refusal by Yuan. "We must push out the Manchus. Yuan Shih K'ai will not, I believe, become our President."
His Excellency stopped talking at this point, and I waited in vain to hear more about Yuan. After a moment I suggested: "But Yuan Shih K'ai is one of your great friends, is he not?"
"No, I do not call Yuan Shih K'ai a friend. He is known to me personally, but I do not know much about him or of the ambition he now has with China. You see, he will not listen to me."
"True, but the foreign newspapers are saying that Yuan Shih K'ai, because he is your personal friend, will become the first President."
"Are they? I did not know. Well, perhaps Yuan Shih K'ai would rise very high in the Republican party, but he has shown his determination merely to sit on the fence waiting for the result." And General Li held up his hands and rocked to and fro in his chair to make his meaning clear.
"Who are your political associates at this time?"
His Excellency, at first not seeming to understand my meaning, said that he had none, but afterwards told me that his great friend was Admiral Sah. The subsequent references which he made to the Admiral were touching. "He is my teacher!" he affectionately exclaimed. "He is now gone to Shanghai, but after the fighting is over he will come to advise the Republic on naval matters. Admiral Sah is a good man, his heart is very warm." In further conversation General Li declared that they had now the strongest men in the country, and the men who had not turned were hardly worth the having. He paid eulogistic references to the statesmanship of Wu Ting Fang, several of the Ministers of the old Government, whom he hoped to retain in office, and to Sun Yat Sen especially.
Continuing, the General said his idea was that China's foreign representatives should be retained, and that in no way was he desirous of altering the representation anywhere, in China or out of it, if officials were willing to serve—granted, of course, that their retention in office gave satisfaction and they were returned by public vote. "We wish to retain all who will work conscientiously for China's welfare, so that there shall be no disruption of trade and commerce or of China's diplomatic connections all over the world. Roughly, the scheme that I should favour would be:—
"1. Expulsion of the Manchus outside the Great Wall to Mongolia (excepting those who are willing to join the Republican party).
"2. Establishment of a Republic on lines after the style of America, with exclusive government for each State and one great National Assembly.
"With these points decided, we shall be able to call together all popular reformers from all the provinces and form our Government. But this will be the time that I shall resign."
At this juncture of the conversation the General looked wistfully out of the window, speaking almost to himself. By then, he said, he should have accomplished his part for the winning of China back into the hands of her own people, and he should throw the cloak of control on to other shoulders. His quiet, unostentatious manner as he proceeded humbly to compare his own powers with other men in China showed a spirit of true greatness. Here was the hero of China, the man above all men who had guided her public life into safe channels and upon whom the eyes of the diplomatic, social, and political world were riveted—and he was talking of giving way to better men. Presently, as if coming out of a reverie, he turned towards me again, smiling heartily, as I suggested that that would probably not be allowed. But he was determined.
"No, there can be no place for me; I am a military man, but China has many better administrators. We have plenty of men." And then he added, as an afterthought, "Of course, if they want me, they can always have me." And he smacked the table as if he had joked unconsciously.
And although I tried to impress upon his Excellency the fact that had there been no General Li there would probably have been no such success as was attending the Revolution, he would have none of it. He preferred to wander on in confidential tones, telling me that his personal wishes were not to be taken into account at all. What he personally was anxious to do was to control the initial stages of winning over the country; then his part was the planning of the defences and the organisation of the military; after that whatever the new Government wished him to do he would endeavour faithfully to carry out, not for his own sake but for the sake of the country of which he was proud and which he loved.
He did not seem inclined to enter into conversation much about the monarchical style of government which many declare more favourable to China as a country which had always looked to one head, the Emperor, as the Son of Heaven. Referring to England and comparing that country with the United States, Li Yuan Hung said that the style of the Monarchical Government of England was best for her people, but he did not believe it to be the best for the Chinese; and now that China was breaking away from all old systems and customs he thought the Republican control better suited to China's needs. In the course of conversation I attempted to raise several questions which would probably go against the establishing of a Republic when the Senate met, but General Li did not pursue the conversation, and seemed disinclined to talk until I mentioned the religion of the country, quoting the annual Sacrifice at the Temple of Heaven—how would that be carried out? Then again his eyes shone. He came closer to me, raised his hand a little as if to convince me in what he was going to say, and spoke slowly:—
"All sacrifices will probably be stopped, but the religion of the people will be Confucianism."
"But Confucianism is not a religion. Do you not think, General Li, that Christianity will become more popular among the people as the country is opened up more?"
"Oh, yes, missionaries are our friends. Jesus is better than Confucius, and I am strongly in favour of more missionaries coming to China to teach Christianity and going to interior provinces. We shall do all we can to assist missionaries, and the more missionaries we get to come to China the greater will the Republican Government be pleased."
The General then went on in very simple language to say that he was personally very pleased with all the labours of the missionaries, and that China would not be to-day were it not for the missionaries, who had gone into out-of-the-way places and opened up the country.
"But as a matter of fact we feel that we want as many foreigners to come to China as possible. The opening up of the country can only properly be accomplished by the united efforts of Chinese and foreigners, and in this new Republic we realise that it is only by mingling more freely with the other nations of the world that China will have her resources developed. Of our military and navy, our defences, our schools and colleges I have no fear, but one of the most important items in our Republican programme is that which will enable us to develop our wealth."
