DEBATE ON NATIONAL SALVATION:
HO KAI VERSUS TSENG CHI-TSE
CHIU LING-YEONG*
(A lecture delivered to the Branch on 22nd June, 1970)
In July 1886, Tseng Chi-tse the retiring Chinese Minister to Russia and Great Britain wrote a most controversial article which appeared in the January 1887 issue of the Asiatic Quarterly Review in London under the title 'China, the Sleep and the Awakening'. This was before he left London for China.1 It is believed that this article was written under the guidance of Sir Halliday Macartney, Tseng's interpreter and political adviser.
2
In his article, Tseng tried to explain that the weakness of China at that time was due to her sleepiness and had nothing to do with her old age or physical deficiency. Tseng began by quoting contemporary China Hands' opinion concerning the Ch'ing Empire:
There are times in the life of nations when they would appear to have exhausted their forces by the magnitude of efforts they had made to maintain their position in the endless struggle for existence; and from this, some have endeavoured to deduce the law that nations, like men, have each of them its infancy, its manhood, decline, and death. Melancholy and discouraging would be this doctrine could it be shown to be founded on any natural or inevitable law. Fortunately, however, there is no reason to believe it is. Nations have fallen from their high estate, some of them to disappear suddenly and altogether from the list of political entities, others to vanish after a more or less prolonged existence of impaired and ever-lessening vitality. Among the latter, until lately, it has been customary with Europeans to include China. Pointing to her magnificent system of canals silted up, the splendid fragments of now forgotten arts, the disparity between
* Dr. Chiu is Lecturer in the Department of Chinese, University of Hong Kong.
DEBATE ON NATIONAL SALVATION:
HO KAI VERSUS TSENG CHI-TSE
CHIU LING-YEONG*
(A lecture delivered to the Branch on 22nd June, 1970)
In July 1886, Tseng Chi-tse the retiring Chinese Minister to Russia and Great Britain wrote a most controversial article which appeared in the January 1887 issue of the Asiatic Quarterly Review in London under the title 'China, the Sleep and the Awakening'. This was before he left London for China.1 It is believed that this article was written under the guidance of Sir Halliday Macartney, Tseng's interpreter and political adviser.
2
In his article, Tseng tried to explain that the weakness of China at that time was due to her sleepiness and had nothing to do with her old age or physical deficiency. Tseng began by quoting contemporary China Hands' opinion concerning the Ch'ing Empire:
There are times in the life of nations when they would appear to have exhausted their forces by the magnitude of efforts they had made to maintain their position in the endless struggle for existence; and from this, some have endeavoured to deduce the law that nations, like men, have each of them its infancy, its manhood, decline, and death. Melancholy and discouraging would be this doctrine could it be shown to be founded on any natural or inevitable law. Fortunately, however, there is no reason to believe it is. Nations have fallen from their high estate, some of them to disappear suddenly and altogether from the list of political entities, others to vanish after a more or less prolonged existence of impaired and ever- lessening vitality. Among the latter, until lately, it has been customary with Europeans to include China. Pointing to her magnificent system of canals silted up, the spendid fragments of now forgotten arts, the disparity between
* Dr. Chiu is Lecturer in the Department of Chinese, University of Hong Kong.
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