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complement to their possessions in Indo- China. We see no reason why any Power save China should grudge it to them if they really believe they could administer and develop it. At present it languishes under the most corrupt rule possible even in the Central Kingdom, and thero is but slender chance of the lot of the people being ameliorated. But if France wants Yunnan she would probably have to fight for it, and after all its possession would be a doubtful boon to her.
OFFICIAL CORRUPTION IN CHINA.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
nations professing to be civilised. An act of clemency for a political offence well becomes a monarch, the more so if aimed against him personally or his dynasty, but crimes against the state involving the loss of thous ands of lives and national disgrace certainly merit no leuity, and in some cases im- peratively demand that an example be made of the criminals,
CHANG CHIH-TUNG AND A
SQUEEZE ON HIS CARRIAGE ROAD.
Perhaps no official in China knows better how to get his plans carried out than is Excellency CHANG CHI-TUNG. Obstacles of the kind the Chinese people are so fond of raising to Western innovations vanish with amazing celerity when this energetic aud determined Viceroy starts a pet project he has set his heart on having put through. Feng-shui, that national bugbear trotted out on every occasion to thwart the foreigner in any scheme for material improvement hc has ever devised, is promptly brushed on one side by CHANG when it offers to cou- front him in the execution of his designs. Railways and roads can be made without more ado when he gives the order, mines may be opened, tall factory chimneys erected, and other innovations promoted, in defiance of this bugbear. No doubt is Excellency controls the local geomancers as readily as he does his servants, probably much more perfectly, for disorder and dirt were very conspicuous in his yamen when he governed the Two Kwang from Canton. But not only can ho make the geomancers bless his undertakings; he can silence the tongues of the gentry and literati, and stop the gossip or tirades which are sometiques set freely
[March 12, 1896;
REVIEWS.
*
The China-Japan War. Compiled from Japa- nese, Chinese, and Foreign Sources. By VLADIMIR, lately of the ☀
** Dip- lomatic Mission to Korea. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co. 1896. VLADIMIR professes a preference for Japanese Bources of information upon the war and is, we take it, a Japanese himself. The reasons for his preference are stated as follows:--"The Japanese have been uniformly fair to their adversaries, far more just than their own countrymen; and it has always been easier to find the truth in the histories of the victors than in those of the vanquished. The former have greater self-possession, see events more clearly, and can "We can honestly con- afford to be impartial." gratulate Vladimir on the way in which he has discharged his task and cordially recommend comprehensive account of the late war, the causes which led to it, and the negotia- tions which brought it to a conclusion. The author's nationality appears very plainly, but he has endeavoured to write with an impartial mind and has succeeded as well as the average European would succeed in writing a history of a war of his own country. What reasons he may have had for adopting a nom de plume we do not know, but on the whole it is to be regretted that he did not let his own name, or at least his nationality, appear on the title page.
his book to all who wish to have a
Though the reign of Li Hrno-CHANG and his venal protégés appears to be over at Tientsin, there seems little prospect of any real improvement in the administration either of the metropolitan or the southern provinces. The old gang has been dispersed, but a new one has taken its place. The squeeze system has been thoroughly exposed | as the primary cause of the recent national humiliation, but the lesson is almost for gotten, and will he completely effaced from official memory in a few years. Already there are signs that the disasters which at- tended the Chinese troops during the war through the incapacity and corruption of their commanders no longer arouse indigna- tion at Peking. Doubtless the old in- fluences are at work; the friends of the disgraced officiale havo probably worked hard to secure reversal or commutation of their sentences. Several high officers who have for a long period been lying under sentence of death have just had that sentence commuted to imprisonment for life in the prisons of the Board of Punishments at Peking. On the 17th ultime a special Im perial Decree was issued to this effect, the personages thus favoured being KuNG CHAO-going in the inns and public places. Whe-lish another book we would recommend him to
ir
ther this is due to his personal influence or whether it is brought about by experience of the uselessness of opposition to his will may be matter for speculation. That he is personally popular we can readily believe, for he is regretted to this day in the City of Ramis on account of the purity of his admin
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His book would then have com- manded more respect than it is calculated to do while the very title page is open to the charge of being misleading; it is put forward as the independent account of a European observer. whereas the discerning reader will discover before he has get very far into it that it is something different. This shakes his confidence a little, but on reading the book through, and looking at. it for what it is, the work of a Japanese, he will arrive at the con- clusion that the national bias of the author effort to give an impartial history has not been has been kept in due subjection and that his unsuccessful. If Vladimir has occasion to pub- give a little consideration to the ethics of noms de plume. A writer who does not wish to disclose his identity may legitimately adopt any designation not contrary to his real character. Lut it would be dishonest, for in- stance, for an Englishman to sign himself “A Japanese," or vice versa. This is a minor point of morals that we should think has never sng-
honesty of intention is a conspicuous feature and in striking contrast to the fiction of the title page.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part gives the history of the Korean ques- tion, the second is devoted to the Korean cam. paign, and the third to the campaign in China, while the appendices contain a useful collection of official documents, including, the diplomatic correspondence preceding the war and in connec- tion with the peace negotiations. In his history of the Korean question Vladimir carries us as far back as 1100 B.C., and, skimming over the inter- vening centuries, brings us down to modern times and the opening of the Hermit Kingdom to foreign intercourse. Here we make the following extract:-
vu, ex-Civil Conanandant of Port Arthur, HUANG SUID-LIN, one of the ex-Military Commandants of that fortress, ex-General YEH CHIII-CHAO, notorious for his disgrace ful pusillanimity at Yashan, and CHANG HSI-YI, ex-Commandant. UL Yingkow, Nothing has transpired to recommend these men to Imperial cleinency; the only cup-istration as compared with that of his pre-gested itself to Vladimir, for in his narrative position being that their family influence was strong enough to procure for them suc- cessive postponements of their sentence until the first heat of national and perhaps Imperial indignation had cooled down, and this same influence has now been strong enough to procure commutation of it from death to perpetual imprisonment. As our Shanghai contemporary very pertinently remarks:- "The next step will natur- 'ally be a complete reprieve sooner or later, in consideration of a large sum of money subscribed, by these malefie tors towards railways or the militar exchequer." That is to say, in consider; tion of their disgorging some of their ill gotten gains they will be permitted to swagger once more in public, possibly ev again be entrusted with place and power. In no other country would such glari" infamies against the state as these men have been guilty of be condoned, and iny China they would have stood no chance of escape from the capital penalty had the offenders not been able, through their friends, to bring to bear the talismanic effect of taol! It may be said with most absolute truth that in the Central Kingdom there exists one law for the rich and another for the poor. While this corruption exists in high places and the judiciary is in the hands of men who simply trade in the dispensation of the law, justice will continue to be unattainab e and rottenness and corruption serve to keelp China at the bottom of the scale among
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decessors and successors. But even CHANG Cmn-ruso it would seem cannot altogether prevent the understrappers in his yamen from playing the old gune of "squeeze.' CHANG has recently commenced the on- struction of a good carriage rond at Nanking which is to ho at once the wonder and the glory of the ancient capital of the Mings. A great many houses have had to be pulled down to make this grand highway, for which and compensation was paid to the owners, there are now about a score of carriages and a thousand jinrikshas running on the section so far completed, but it is reported that the owners of the vehicles are heing hampered and obstructed by the petty mandarins, who desire to exploit them by levying squeezes on the traffic. It is to be hoped the enter prising road maker will learn in good time of these exactions. Unfortunately CHANG has fits of abstraction from public agairs, during which he will shut himself up and compose cdes or bury himself in the classics. Perhaps the local mandarins have taken advantage of one of these intervals of pre- occupation on the part of the reformning magnate. It is to be hoped however, that he will detect and punish this attempt to handicap his new project for the improve- ment of Nanking.
Count Kabayama and party arrived at Hiroshima from Formosa on the 27th February. Mr. J. W. Davidson, the newspaper corres- ponda accompanied the party.
The old party denominations which had satisfied the Koreans for centuries and had sufficed to fill the country with bloodshed and strife, were inadequate to the new and strange conditions of the peninsula. A Progressionist and a Conservative party now arose, and each tried to find support in one of the neighbouring countries. The common name for China in Korea was Ta-kno (the Great Country), and we know that nations are often willing to endure the greatest sacrifices to keep such proud designations. The Chinese felt that they had responsibilities in the peninsula, and were disinclined that it should become a practis-
ing ground for that form of civilisation which the Japanese had imported from the West and were desirous to acclimatise in the Far East. China was irresistibly led to give sooner or later her support to the Korean Conserva- tive party. On the other hand, Japan felt herself bound to support the Progressive party. which aimed at continuing the policy in-
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