powers: it formed the Tsung Li Yamen with great regret, and stolidly held back in all negotiations for further power and influence to foreigners. The whole situation in China is complicated by the foreign possession of so many pieces of territory which the Chinese fondly suppose are theirs. To say nothing about Cochin-China, Hong Kong, Kowloon, Tsintau, Wei Hai Woi and Port Arthur are now in the possession of the Germans, the English and the Japanese; and the Japanese and Russians are occupying parts of Manchuria and Mongolia. That is, four of the six powers that are now engaged in the attempt to manage and control China, are at the present moment in possession of large territories, every square yard of which the Chinese look upon as filched from them. For a long time the powers engaged in single wars with China, each on its own account, and those wars were accompanied by a ruthlessness and destruction which can hardly be supposed to be a high moral lesson to the Chinese. If a foreign army should capture New York and plunder the Metropolitan Museum of Art and sell its irreplaceable treasures to peddlers, we should hardly think it a mark of Chinese civilization! Yet that was just what happened to the winter palace in 1860. Since 1900 the European powers have usually made it a point not to ask for individual privileges, but for joint privileges; so that the experience of China was that if Russia got a concession for a railroad, the French were instantly besieging for a like favor. And if Russia seized a piece of Chinese territory the Germans thought they must have a similar piece of stolen goods. Since the expedition to Peking in 1900 there has been a common military understanding. The Chinese have always resented this form of diplomacy. They look upon their European friends as the Russian hero looked upon the king of the sea when the sea monster said: ""Tis a long time since I have eaten fresh flesh, and lo! here it comes right into my very hands! Welcome, friend. Come here, and let me see at which end of you I shall begin!" Then the Tsarevitch began to say that among good people one behaved not so badly as to eat another up. "That is too much,' cried the sea monster, 'he comes to force his own rules and regulations upon the homes of other people.' Is it an exaggeration to say that the feeling of Europeans has been that any attempt of the Chinese to prevent the entry into and the commercial use of their country was regarded as an affront to Europe? More recently has developed a common responsibility, particularly shown in the negotiations for indemnities after the Boxer outbreak. One of the interesting things about this combination is that a new European power has joined it, and that is Japan. The Japanese claim the privileges granted to Western powers-such as the right of intervention, extraterritoriality, and the right to trade on the Yangtze in subsidized vessels. They have put up a magnificent group of buildings at Hankow. All this suggests the sublime purpose of the Holy Alliance, to do people good against their will; but the difficulty is increased by a commercial combination, the purpose of which is first of all to obtain concessions, for railroads, mines, and other needed enterprises. Anybody can see that China lacks capital, a need no more common there than on the Pacific slope of the United States, or on northwestern Canada. Such an infusion of borrowed wealth would enable the country rapidly to develop its means of transportation and its immense physical resources. The prime difficulty is that the powers conceive that they have an inherent right to invest money in China on terms which they themselves lay down; while in general the Chinese believe that the commercial agreements which they are asked to ratify are unfavorable to them. At the moment the burning question is that of loans. China has long been a borrower on not very favorable terms, and there is already a considerable national debt. The revolution has cost a lot of money and there is a demand for more loans first of all to pay off and disband troops. A group of bankers favored by the six powers have established themselves as a syndicate for this business, and propose terms on which they will place a $300,000,000 loan. The six-power loan under consideration in November, 1912, is practically the work of a commercial Holy Alliance formed to regulate Oriental affairs. The determination of the ministers of six great powers in consultation to push through a financial transaction which China does not like is an unseemly spectacle, not relieved by the undeniable fact that weak powers are frequently called upon to yield to stronger forces. A foreign administration of the loans is one of the conditions, though hard and humiliating—for it is urged that Orientals cannot conduct their native finances. The Japanese know better, for they have almost dispensed with foreign financial engineers and managers. The next demand, which is at least evidently favored by the powers, is that if money is lent it shall be lent only by a combination of the bankers of the six powers. I regret that the United States should be one of the partners in such an enterprise. The American bankers are justified in looking after their own interests, and in finding a profitable investment for their money; but it is a serious business for the bankers to insist that they will lend the money only in case a foreign administrator is to follow it. For the power to supervise the expenditure of that money includes the power to control much of the finances and the public works of China. It involves an inspection and regulation of the internal financial administration of the country. In the background the Chinese believe that they see the shadow of the armed man. A few years ago they gave Russia permission to build a railroad across Manchuria and to protect it with guards. The Russian conception of guards was an army of 50,000 men intending to stay on Chinese soil, and their descendants forever. The Chinese suspect that it is the intention of the powers, whenever they think it necessary, to send troops into the country to enforce the carrying out of conditions. In the six groups each group has its government behind it, which demands a share in the loan for its citizens as a matter of right. What is the reason for this pressure? Mainly that each group of bankers expects that the Chinese will spend at least a part of the loans for materials and supplies, and that the orders will go through the loaning bankers and to their friends and commercial connections. I speak subject to correction by those who are better acquainted with the subject, but when I was in China in 1909 that was the point stated to me; and the negotiations for the loan now appear to turn on that issue. Outside of finance, what is the relation of the New Holy Alliance to the Chinese republic? One reason for the present combination is undoubtedly that some of the powers are not pleased with the proposed democratic government of China. But it is no longer possible for any one European or American power seriously to affect the internal government of China, for the potential strength of that nation is coming to be more and more realized. Of the six powers, two are themselves democracies, the United States and France. On the other hand an Asiatic republic is on the face of things repugnant to both Russia and Japan. And there is perhaps no country in the world that is so genuinely democratic as China, no country in which the affairs of the local communities are more systematically regulated by the people themselves. This distrust of democracy is combined with a feeling that the republic cannot stand; and this objection is confronted by the fact that there is no other kind of national government now in ex stence or in prospect in China, no royal dynasty, no acknowledged oligarchy. Granted the weakness of the present republic is stronger than any government which could be established by external influence and pressure. The real objection is to the possibility of a permanent strong power in China which shall realize the inconvenience and national discredit through foreign domination. Any strong Chinese power will certainly address itself to the status of the concessions in the treaty ports in which the Europeans rule portions of Chinese territory. Equally acute is the question of the government of the European colonies within the Chinese boundaries. If the Chinese government, republic or kingdom, is once aroused to the possibility of expelling the foreigners, the era of European domination is over. Hence the unwillingness to allow the low scale of import duties to be changed for it is intimately related to the trade of the treaty ports. Of course the United States recognizes that a system of high duties on imports is inequitable to foreign powers and absolutely inconsistent with the principles of international law. The privileges of the interior, especially those of the Yangtse Kiang, are also involved. Admiral Mahan says: "The close approach and contact of eastern and western civilization, and the resultant mutual effects, are matters which can no longer be disregarded, or postponed from any arguments derived from the propriety of non-interference, or from the conventional rights of a so-called independent state to regulate its own affairs. They have ceased to be its own in the sense of Chinese isolation-as the nations have insisted that we shall be allowed to sell and buy without pretending that the Chinese subject should be compelled to trade with us-so they will have to insist that currency be permitted to our ideas, liberty to exchange thought in Chinese territory with individual Chinamen, though equally without any compulsion." This is substantially a doctrine that western powers have an innate right to exercise benevolent compulsion on the Chinese to compel them to receive foreigners on terms dictated by the foreigners. The immediate evidence of this spirit is the indifference to the substantial Chinese interests in Mongolia and in Manchuria. While unready or unwilling to prevent the virtual conquest of these provinces from China, the six powers pretend to make far-reaching decisions with respect to the future government of China. For if you are going to put in an administrator to superintend a loan, that means that you have a right to keep order and maintain the value of your security. You must suppress revolutions-not every revolution, of course; only such revolutions as you think are undesirable for your interests. The underlying principle of the present Holy Alliance in the East is to keep China weak politically, while trying to make her industrially strong; and to see that the results of commercial gain shall not get out of the control of those who now take responsibility for its finances. I submit that in such an Holy Alliance the United States has no rightful part. It is contrary to a century long policy |