October, 24 1895.]
ANTI-FOREIGN LITERATURE.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
it
299
ments about the Japanese and foreigners in Formosa are given in a pamphlet which is sold and circulated at ten cents in the 'drum tower of the city and right under the noses of the officials. It sets forth that after peace had been declared between China and Japan, the island of Formosa was handed over to the later. So far there is some fact to go on and upon this base a superstructure of astounding lies has been built up. It is stated that General Lru, the Black Flag commander, had fought more than thirty battles and won them all, killing upwards of 30,000 Japanese troops and had destroyed more than thirty vessels of war, capturing some twenty besides! As if this were not sufficient the ingenious inventor of this fiction asserts that England, France, Russia, and the United States lent assistance to Japan and that they shared in the rout. He says, describing the final engagement :- Each country and Japan had thirty iron battleships and thirty or forty wooden ones. They were all filled with braves, 80,000 or "90,000 and more. They went to Taipeh-fu "and Anping-kow and fought a battle. "General Liu by the use of strategy began "the contest sixty li outside of Anping-kow in the sea on the sixth of the month in the evening. Suddenly fire started up on the "surface of the water. The foreigners made up their minds that they wanted to set sail "and depart.
But General Liu's marines "under the water bound fast all the ships "with iron chains so that they could not stir. On the seventh of the month the fire ceased, for the foreign ships and soldiers were all
case of opium cannot be taken as burned up. This battle was like the ancient establishing the contention that a similar "Red Wall of Fire' battle. Immediately agreement applied to foreign goods in general every foreign nation feared General Liu as would work with equal satisfaction. A four-in- one does a tiger." This childish rubbish is hand is more difficult to drive than a one horse unhestitatingly swallowed as gospel by the chaise, and there is a limit to the number ignorant peasants, few of whom have ever of horses that even the most expert driver seen a ship, and have no conception of what can manage. Attempts have been made to a man-of-war
The mischief done evade the Opium Agreement and it is cer- is incalculable, since it breeds contempt of tain that similar attempts would be made to the foreigner and teaches the native to re- evade any agreement for the exemption from gard China as invincible and immeasurably squeezing of foreign trade in general if superior to all the countries of the outside squeeze stations were still allowed to exist; world. No wonder that the lower officials and as the right of the Chinese Government are beyond measure rude and arrogant, and to tax as it thinks fit native trade carried in the marvel is that the peasantry are not native bottoms cannot be called in question more hostile to foreigners than is the case an agreement for the exemption from squeez- under normal conditions. The punishment ing of foreign goods would not of itself of the assassins at Kucheng and the bring about the abolition of the squeeze degradation of a disgraced mandarin instations. But as long as the squeeze stations Szechuen will not alone suffice to avert a renewal of the outrages on missionaries. The people must be brought into closer contact with the foreigner and learn for themselves that he is not the monster he has been painted by Messrs. CHOU HAN and Company.
ever, to commercial circles and the proposal came to nothing. It has now con- been revived by the writer of a tributed article in the China Mail, who amplifies it, and suggests that in considera- tion of an increase of the import tariff foreign goods should be exempted from inland taxation and that China should agree to open up new ports and trade routes, more,
There is particularly the West River. much to be said in favour of the pro- posal, provided reliance could be placed on the honesty of the Chinese Government and its provincial officers. But the Government and its officers are not honest. It is true the Opium Agreement has worked with satisfactory results, but strong pressure has been required to keep the Chinese up to the mark. In 1890 a determined attempt was made to levy additional duty at Canton, and again at Shanghai, quite recently, These another atempt has been made. attempts
were frustrated, but it is i not absolutely certain that in the remote interior illegal squeezes are not levied on opium without ever being heard of by foreigners. To all outward seeming, however, the agreement is duly carried out. The reason is not far to seek: if it is not duly carried out the agreement becomes at once null and void and the Chinese Government loses the very substantial advantages it enjoys thereunder. Peking therefore in this case keeps a tight hand on the provincial au- thorities, not as a matter of common honesty, but because it pays.
£
<<
(C
The spirit of the notorious CHOU HAN lives, it is to be feared, in the breasts of thousands of his fellow officials in China, but it was at least hoped that the author of the infamous publication known as "Death to the Devils' Réligion" had been rendered harmless. An Imperial Decree ordering that he should be temporarily cashiered and kept under surveillance, on the ground that he had "fits of insanity, was issued in 1892, and it was thought that for their own sake the Central Government would take good care to prevent any recrudescence of the Blood of obscene anti-foreign lite rature, of which he was the principal in- spirer. But, according to our Shanghai morning contemporary, CHOU HAN is once again unmuzzled, at a time, too, when" relations with foreign Powers have been strained to the utmost by the long series of outrages on and massacres of missionaries. Dr. GRIFFITH JOHN, to whose exertions was due the great exposure of the official connection with the incendiary literature published in Hunan án scattered broad- cast a few years ago throughout the central provinces of China, has discovered, and obtained satisfactory proof, that CHOU HAN is again engaged in the anti-foreign crusade and is as active as ever in disseminating the old slanders against the missions. His placards and tracts are being re-issued from the Hunan presses, and we shall hear presently, no doubt, that the Viceroy of the Hukwang is perfectly unconscious of the fact. Dr. JOHN, who knows better than anyone in China, perhaps, the effect this poison has on the minds of the natives, proceeding as it does from scholars and officials, writes:-"Is it a thing "to be surprised at that the people have got to fear us and hate us? Is it not a wonder "that riots and massacres are not more numerous? Let us not forget that CHOU HAN is not only a scholar but an official, "and not only an official but an intimate "friend of some of the greatest officials in "the land. Some of the highest officials have "been his abettors in this unholy crusade." This charge is not lightly made. Dr. JOHN makes it with the fullest sense of his re- sponsibility and is prepared to prove it. He well knows what he is writing about, and possesses a mass of evidence which would serve doubtless to convict those higher placed than CHOU HAN. The reverend gentleman suggests that, as the only means of staying the tide of libellous publications issuing from Changsha and other cities of Hunan, that province should be at once opened to foreign trade, that CHOU HAN should be dragged into the light of day, and that the issue of this mischievous literature should be made to cease. The people as a rule, if let alone, and not roused to frenzied hatred of the missionaries by abominable stories of their habits and ways, are frien lly enough to foreigners, and would, at all events, treat the missionaries fairly. They are simply roused to fury when the alleged crimes by the mis sionaries on their children are related in hideous detail, with all the semblance of truth, and illustrated by disgusting wood- outs.
It is not likely the people will believe foreigners in preference to their own officials. An instance of the utter rubbish the Chi- mese of the interior credit is given by a cor- respondent of the N. C. Daily News at Fen- chow-fu, in Shansi. Some mendacious state-
like.
THE OPENING OF THE WEST RIVER AND TARIFF REVISION.
.
In the early part of 1893 a proposal was made that in the Kwangtung province lekin should be paid on foreign goods at the same time as the import duty and that the goods should thereupon be free from all further taxation. The objection to the course proposed was that it would be equiva- lent to an increase of the import duty with- out any certainty that squeezing after the goods left the Customs sheds would not go on much the same as before. In reply to this the case of the Opium Convention was adduced, absolute immunity from additional taxation having been sequred by that agreement for opium, which now pays a fixed lekin due at the same time as the import duty. The idea of applying the same system to the import trade generally did not commend itself, how-
The
existed attempts would be made to levỳ squeezes on foreign goods as well as native, and the number of complaints that would reach the Legations at Peking of petty squeezes would probably be so great as to overwhelm the correspondence office, to say nothing of the Minister in his negotiations with the Tsungli Yamen. It is possible to keep a more or less effective watch on one important article of trade like opium; it would be quite a different thing to keep a watch on the hundred and one other articles.
that go to make up the total foreign import trade.
Foreign merchants would probably not object to a reasonable revision of the tariff in return for increased trading privileges, including the opening of new ports and the privilege of running steamers on the inland waterways, provided the squeeze system were entirely swept away. So long as that systefi is maintained all that can be done with the Chinese Government is to bring pressure to bear upon it to grant in- creased trading facilities without accord- ing it the right to levy increased duties. The preliminary step to tariff revision; if there is to be tariff revision, must be tho entire sweeping away of the squeeze system and the substitution in its place of some
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.