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First, the gains from such influx :-
(a.) Increase in customs revenue. The trifling land tax is insufficient to meet our vast expenditure, which leans chiefly on the revenue from foreign trade. This improves with influx of foreign capital, even under foreign control, which impairs our rights, and it covered the indemnity, to secure which duty free list was abolished and 5 per cent. duty made effective. This voluntary surrender of what foreigners had hitherto disputed was due to no change of teeling, but to fear of China's weakness endangering their vast investments in China.
(b) Opening up of sources of profit. China's official attitude had been to beware of speculation because of Sung and Ming dynasty disastrous experiments. So mines were left untouched and industries neglected." Intercourse with foreigners has changed all this and brought appreciation of mining, railways, machinery, and science, even though foreigners take the lion's share of the profits. The result is that mining and railway shares, which formerly were looked on askance, are now struggled for. Moreover, the provinces have learned zealously to conserve such rights even to the death. All this revolution is the effect of foreign capital being tendered.
(c.) The repression of outside aggression. Since trade was opened the occasional disputes have rarely resulted in hostilities, the exceptions being the Opium War, the Japanese War, and the Boxer trouble, which were severe blows. For if one nation breaks the peace all the others try to restore it and to minimize the spoils of war. It is not that they are wanting in power or unequal to the task, or doubtful of their right and not desirous of our territory, nor that they shrink from hurting us; it is simply that they have large mercantile interests at stake in China which suffer directly and indirectly from disturbance, so that war, while it may benefit one Power, hurts the rest. Thus our neatrality was sedulously kept in the recent war, Russia not daring to rouse general opposition by giving rein to her designs against us.
(d) The keeping of internal peace. In time of weakness rebels take the chance to rise and hope for foreign aid. Powerful neighbours are prone to play the fishermen's part when he found oyster and bird at loggerheads, and rebels hope thus to secure asylum in case of failure and are thus encouraged to risk all on one throw-as history shows in case of Pu-Ku Huai-en's inviting the Turfan, Li Ch'uan's dealings with the Mongols. Nowadays, however, the greatness of their stake, public and private, in China and the damage to trade caused by prolonged rebellion incline foreign nations to side with Government, as when Taiping's rebels threatened Shanghae, and the French and British, though at war with us, came to our aid with men-of-war and troops, and their General died in attack on Soochow. So foreign capital invested secures foreign aid against rebels and keeps off rebellions.
Nevertheless, gain and loss are constantly intermingled, and the greatest gain implies extraordinary hurt, so that if one looks only on the advantageous side one is apt to awake too late to its disastrous concomitant. It is possible, however, to take precautions, and in the present case the evils are four-namely, loss of control of profit, which affects the State; loss of livelihood, which affects the people; daily drain abroad of gold and silver, which affects the prices; opening of strategic points as marts, which makes the country defenceless. These four evils are especially obvious, and the writer will take them up generally in order to warn his brethren.
As to the first two, the old reliance on agriculture is now changed to reliance on trade, so manufacturing is the source of profit, mining its means; railways and steam- ships also are the medium for interchange of resources. On commercial interests depend livelihood and control. Formerly, foreign trade meant merely shipping of goods, and those who brought wealth for business in China confined themselves to importing and exporting, the import of machinery for industrial purposes being forbidden as prejudicial to sale of native produce. The Treaty of Shimonoseki opened the door for all to establish factories in China to the vast detriment of our people's livelihood. Piece-goods, provisions, utensils, drugs, all the needs of daily life, which used to be the main means of subsistence and profit to our people, daily decline in demand, and the employment of Chinese workmen by the foreign houses is quite inadequate compensa- tion; besides which, such employés are treated with the utmost harshness.
Our tameness under such treatment is due simply to pressure of poverty.
As to gold, silver, coal, and iron mines, our country is fuller of rich ones than any other, but the control of those opened and proved has passed to foreigners, e.g., in Manchuria to Russia, in Shantung to Germany, in Szechuan to England, in Kuan Hsien, Chien Wei, Wei Yuan, Chichiang, Hochou, and Chungking to France, in Shansi, Honan, and Anhui to England, in Hsuan-cheng to Japan, in Chehkiang to
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Italy, in Kueichou and Fukien to France. The capital runs to millions or tens of millions, but the benefits are manipulated by outsiders. As to railway construction, it (nis still vaster capital, but is still more beneficial. But outsiders know our insufficiency of means and of arts, so they pour in capital to wrest away our rights and grasp our railway administration. By their string of Agreements, the Eastern, Port Arthur-Dalny, Chengting-Taiyuan fell to Russia, the Yunnan-Tonquin (? Lackay), Kueilin-Tonquiu, Pakhoi (? to West River) to France, Kiaochow-Chinan to Germany, Shansi-Honan, Shanhaikuan-Newchwang, Shanghae-Nanking, Soochow-Ningpo-Hang- ehow, Nanking-Chehkiang, Canton-Kowloon, Yunnan-Szechuan, to England, Lu-han to Belgium, Yueh-han to England and America, Tien-tsin-Chinkiang to England and Germany. Even though in Railway and Mining Agreements the rule was to have chiefly Chinese shareholders, the control and management to be Chinese, or, if a term of years for redemption were fixed, the real grip would remain foreign, and Chinese, on the plea of inexperience or obstructiveness, would be put aside, however great their subscriptions. A greater danger is the incalculable disaster that would follow a casus belli, while, as to the term for resumption, plenty of excuses for extending it would always be trumped up. Happily, of late, men of spirit have come forward to collect capital and dispute foreign claims; but our Government, alas! considers its action fettered by the existence of the Agreements.
As to other points, the vast steam traffic on inner waters has long been accepted without objection. But our rights slip away; subsistence becomes very hard from day to day.
Alas! the Shimonoseki Treaty meant growth of foreign industries; the Secret Treaty with Russia encouraged foreign aggression; the Lu-Han Agreement opened the way for foreign capitalists' designs on our financial control; with the Boxer Treaty foreigners openly attacked our rights. Unless a remedy is found loss of rights will be followed by exhaustion of wealth, and that by extinction of the State, which nowadays means most cruel treatment of the people and the jeopardy of their race. Under these circumstances leaders of society should encourage to the utmost any who at the risk of their lives would struggle to recover our lost rights, and extendthe people's dying means of livelihood to the vast benefit of our millions and the eternal foundation of our Government. To look on as they do with hands in their sleeves on plea of strong precedents is to promote outsiders' evil greed, to nip in the bud our people's patriotism, and simply amounts to letting our rights and our livelihood be engrossed by foreign capitalists.
What is meant by the daily drain abroad of the precious metals raising prices and the establishment of ports at strategic points sapping our defence? Since trade was was opened the foreigners have constantly poured in their products, e.g., opium, yarn, and rice, in exchange for our gold and silver, while with their imported gold and silver they have bought cheaply our products for export abroad, whence they return trans- mogrified to do us out of our wealth and rob us of our livelihood. The Chinese are naturally fond of novelty, and foreign nice-looking novelties are eagerly bought, and when the shoddy nature of one sort is found out, they are ready to alter them into something and under another name, which Chinese rush to buy, to foreigners' vast gain. Any attempt to put our goods on foreign markets is obstructed in every way and our goods imitated, as in the case of imitation of our former staples, tea and silk, and the press campaign against their use, all with the object of making our traders lose their money. Thus gold and silver drain abroad and the price of silver rises, entailing higher prices for goods and growing difficulty for Chinese in keeping themselves in necessaries, while the increased influx of foreign capital intensifies our people's difficulties.
As to the last point, nowadays seaboard defence is more vital than inland, and the danger is not from the tribes on our north-west, but from oversea Powers; so our south-east coast and the Yang-tsze Valley are the chief strategic areas. The centres of trade and wealth are the arteries of the State. International help began with the Dutch help against Koxinga, and the English also traded at Amoy, &c., before the opium dispute led to the loss of Hong Kong, a big indemnity, and the opening of five ports. France and America claimed equal treatment, and oversea trade on the southern waters started. In 1858 France and England took advantage of the Taiping Rebellion to declare war, and raided Tien-tsin and Peking; Prince Kung was intrusted with Treaty- making, and new ports included three on the Yang-tsze. So it went on, more ports and more nations being added, until all our strong places are squatted on, and men-of- war are sent to them nominally to protect, but really to bully, as the Kiaochow, Port Arthur, Wei-hai Wei cases proved, until China is stripped of her dependencies and
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