4
March 29, 1909.]
THE CHINAMAN AS AN ENGINEER.
(Daily Press, March 26th.) Naturally the Chinaman is an Engineer; no people in the world, in fact, possess to the same degree the talent for construction. Everyone who has ever had to do with Chinese mechanics, or even the ordinary bearing coolie, knows with what instinctive readiness he masters the main principles of the task required, whether it be merely bearing a burden in the most effective manner, or whether the work required is connected with some apparently abstruse function of steam or electricity. No nation on the earth, again, has such facility in organising labour, as may be seen any day in the enormous and often uncouth loads carried about our streets any day; where the labour is so sub-divided that a task in other hands requiring long preparation, and probably a huge mass of machinery, to be dismantled immediately afterwards, is accomplished with seeming ease as if it were a thing every one understood, and wherein each falls at once into his allotted place. Withal this, it seems to one unaccustomed to the habits and mode of thought of China an incomprehensible enigma that engineering task undertaken by the Chinese people as a nation has utterly broken down; and the foreigner whom it was their boasted intention to oust has at the last moment, when imbecility and wrong-beadedness have exhausted the resources at command, to be recalled at a ruinous expense to undo the work of the native bungler.
every
|
CHINA. OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
The one exception here to the rule we have inentioned goes of itself to prove its truth. Quietly, and without ostentation, the rail- way from Peking to Kalgan has been advancing to completion under a Chinese engineer, who has shown himself competent for a difficult task. The talent and the power of applying to a useful end his own constructive instincts, are it is true, alto- gether Chinese; but the training has been as significantly foreign, and foreign of the best type. It has not here been a case of a smart missionary boy sent for a few months to a second-rate Western school to pick up some superficial information, just enough to confirm his own ignorance. The Chinese Engineer will in the future, as in the past, be able to achieve great things; but his entire system of training, his A. B. C. in effect, whether in literature or in physics, must be carried on on entirely different lines; and here we are sorry to have to add that by far the greater part of the so-called education" of the foreign school has little more tendency to develop the intellect than the soul-destroying mannerism of the arch- humbug CHURI, on whose mental incapacity must rest much of the blame for the general atrophy.
253
one of the worst faults of the new Regency that still makes use of the old weapon,- been talking freely about the iniquity of the provinces, and the Railway Directors, (wit spared. But who got the squeezes that ness the T'ientsin-Puk'eo line,) have not been forced dishonest administration on the Direc- utterly uselcas officials? It is no credit, tors; and who appointed the inefficient and either to the administration of the late Dowager, nor to the presumably purified Regency of to-day but it is notorious that the hangers-on of the yamens from the highest to the lowest, the panderers to the most filthy and disgusting vices, are of all others the selected ones to whom are per. mittted to flow the life-blood of the Empire; and who are at the instant the chief re- cipients of the loans provided by a confid- ing public at home, who with a confiding innocence worthy of a better object, fondly imagine that their contributions being utilised for the construction of rail- ways; and are thereby advancing the well being of China. The Times Correspondent might have usefully added this to his sug- gestive report on the Chihkiang Railway.
are
THE ANGLO-SIAMESE TREATY.
But an even more potent cause for the failure of Engineering enterprise in China,
(Daily Press, 27th March 80 characteristically described by the
The telegraphic summary of the new Times Correspondent, and to which Treaty made between Great Britain and ample testimony can be borne, is to be Siam, which we published some days ago, found in the false system of admini- admitted of the inference that British stration which the neglect of centuries has subjects now in Siam would not come under brought to a head, and which culminated the jurisdiction of the Siamese Courts, but under the late Empress Dowager. In most only those who rogister after the signature Of course for this condition of affairs countries-in a rudimentary state it may be of the Treaty. The full text of the Treaty, there is more than one contributing cause, allowed in some, some punishment is award- which was signed at Bangkok on the 10th all converging, however, to the one point. ed, nominally at least, for dishonesty. China inst., is not to be published until it has been One of these is the national failing of on the contrary has acted as if dishonesty submitted to the Imperial Government, and "cocksuredness," which renders every
were the virtue, and honesty the crime to
Mr. RALPH PAGET, His Majesty's Charge native so assured of his own self-inspiration be met with condign punishment. No d'Affaires in Siam, is now proceeding that asking for advice is superfluous, if not honest means existed in Peking for pro-
Home with the Treaty. The purpose of actually criminal. This is, however, not soviding for the actual expenses of admini- the Treaty so far as affects British extra- much a national as an acquired character.stration, but as they had to be provided dis- territorial jurisdiction in Siam, has, how istic. For centuries China undoubtedly honesty came to the front. A jealous Govern-ever, been communicated to the Bangkok took the lead in her own world; her wordment was not content to leave such important in politics, in law, and in culture, was all-organisations as Railways were likely to sufficient, and there existed no power to gainsay it. The situation was fatal to Chinese power of analysis, and the mathe- matical power naturally well developed in the race, from want of use became atrophied. The late ALEXANDER WYLIE, & competent judge, than whom no man knew better his Chinese, always held a high opinion of the Chinese people as mathematicians, evinced in the readiness with which the few who devoted themselves to the study could master the most difficult equation. With the great majority from want of use the faculty had become extinct. Engineering up to date has, of course, its foundations deep in mathematics, and the engineer who fails to grasp this vital fact can make but poor progress in the art. It is here mainly that the ordinary native Chinese fail. Put to solve a difficulty beyond the ordinary every day experience, the Chinese engineer in vain appeals to his rule of thumb formum and without the requisite groundwork of science to work out for him. self a new formula suited to the particular case, he flounders about in the darkness each instant wandering further from the true solution. The defect is not to be taken as congenital; the ability still exists but has been so overlaid with unwholesome wraps of disused garments, that the patient fails to respond to the stimulus. The so- called "education" of centuries, so far from acting to draw out the natural abilities of the Chinese people, has had the directly contrary effect, and has hopelessly entwined them in a net of confusion.
Press by the General Adviser to the Siamese Government, and from this we learn that the distinction created between British subjects settled in the country before the signature of the Treaty and those who register in the future will disappear when the Siamese Codes are completed. How soon that is expected to eventuate there is no indication in the published digest of the Treaty. Nor does it say whether the Treaty will come into force as soon as the ratifications are exchanged, or whether, as was the case when extra-territoriality was surrendered in Japan, its operation will be delayed for a few years. It was expressly provided in the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1894 that the agreement should not take effect until at least five years after its signature, and it did not in fact come into operation until the year 1899. By that time the Japanese Legal Codes were in force, and the interval of five years had been well spent in improv- ing the Judiciary generally Though it can hardly be said that Siam is any better qualified to assume jurisdiction over foreigners than was Japan in 1894, the nature of the Treaty made with Siam pre- cludes the expectation that it will contain any such provision as that indicated. For it looks very much as if extra-territorial pri. vileges have been bartered for territory, and if that be so the contracting parties would desire to effect the exchange as quickly as possible. We gather, however, from a Bangkok contemporary that in official circles this view of the Treaty is strongly resented; Of course it was easy to fling the stone at and emphatically declared to be erroneous. the directors; Peking has lately, and it is | But it widely prevails, nevertheless, among
become, in private hands;-that under an imperious ruler like the Empress Dowager was not to be thought of, so Peking con- cerned itself in appointing " directors." So far so good. But the Empress Dowager's satellites saw no difference between a rail. way director and a taot'ai (say) appointed to a lucrative post; both would have money passing through their hands, and it was all one to the shark concerned whether the money were to be squeezed out of the un- fortunate peasant, or was contributed, in trust to the directors by their shareholders, for the purpose of building the railway. There was money in sight, and the shark oaw it: that surely was sufficient. The lady at the helm could not be expected to trouble herself about such indifferent trifles, and reasoning from past experience, it was an incontrovertible fact that all officials were of necessity dishonest, and it was as well to punish them before the fact and more pro- fitable-thau to wait till something wrong had been actually done. The Railway directors, who willy-nilly had been turned into officials, were of course dishonest, and should be milked; Peking too had many impecunious relations, and it was a matter of piety that these should be provided for, so they were palmed off on the directors to do the best they could for them. It was true that for these purposes accounts had to be cooked, or suppressed altogether; but what of that? When did Peking ever trouble itself about accounts?