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DECAY AND DISINTEGRATION.
[March 3, 1900.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
of such teachings are most seriously felt, | seized hold of, and this accounts for the cir- A ruler like LI HUNG-CHANG may be. cumstance that it is notoriously to the expected to have learnt the first prin- instigation of the Russophile party that the ciples of settled government, but affairs supercession of the Emperor is due. In have proceeded so far that Kwangtung is this respect the position of affairs in Peking in a blaze of rebellion, and authority is at the moment is not very unlike what it openly defied. It will need mensures was in the last days of the MINGs, when the stronger than the old. Viceroy has even in | progress of the Manchu arms was fostered his life taken to restore his province to more by treachery within than by prowess order It is through Shantung, however, without. This, too, explains the uncompro- that the elements of disorder are must mising hatred towards England displayed widely scattered. Twelve years ago Shan- by the Dowager Empress and her entourage. tung was probably the most contented and It is no secret that the French Government best governed province of the eighteen. has been sedulously supplying the Empress Life and property were secure, and the peo-Dowager, through the TSUNGLI YAMEN, ple coutented. Now we find the entire pro- with false telegrams carefully concocted at vince a hotbed of faction. The people are Paris with the assistance of the notorious turned one against another; fio mau's life or Dr. LEYDS. We have become used to the property is safe from day to day, and value of these and have learned to rate them government is openly defied. The result at their proper value. There is unfortun of all this is that one foreigner has been ately too much reason to suspect that only burbarously murdered, and the lives of a the milder are permitted to reach the public few more have been jeopardised. But, even
guze, while others even more truculent from the point of view of the Empress are carefully sent to the TSUNGLI YAMEN, Dowager and her supporters, this has been where they are gladly received. The idea dearly purchased by the destruction of life that England may be left out of considera- and property amongst the people at large. tion altogether was doubtless at the bottom The wolf once let loose has not confined his of the coup intended for the Chinese New attention to the black sheep, but has carried Year. It is also the actuating motive in the slaughter through the flock and now openly outrages that have occurred in Shangtung, threatens the shepherds with whose con- and we may, we fear, attribute to a like in- uivance be gained entry into the fold. Such apiration the last outrage in Yunnan. It is a state of affairs has ever ended in destruc- now within a few days a quarter of a cen- tion, and a government founded on rapine tury since MARGARY, on the 21st February, and plunder carries within itself the ele 1875 was murdered at Manwyne. There ments of dissolution. This, there is no was at the time no reason to doubt that secret, is the real reason why governments Peking was deeply compromised in the our minister but unfortunately like France and Russia abet the Empress affair, Dowager; and without their support, it is at Peking was more bent on exonerating the also no secret, the present monstrous fabric Chinese Government than in obtaining. would fill from its own innate rottenness. securities for the future, and was led into Unfortunately China in her long political the farce of the " Chefoo Convention." But, reer has never evolved any self-acting for some time the temper of the English check on misrule, and the sole remedy has people was dangerous, and however com- ever been rebellion or conquest. The al-placent the representative at Peking ternatives are not pleasant to contemplate, but the crimes of the present régime are rapidly making one or other inevitable.
(Daily Press, 26th February.) THE position of affairs in the north of China continues to cause as much uneasiness as it has ever done. Though for the moment dormant, there is little doubt that the intense hutred of the Dowager Empress to- wards the unfortunate Emperor continues with unabated venom, and that she is silently waiting to deliver her final blow, which, if delayed, will come at the end with all the greater malice. Nominally the young Emperor still sits on the dishonoured throne of his ancestors, but everything is being done to lower its prestige and to treat him as a mere intruder and usurper, while the Palace is filled with the most contemptible of men, whose sole recommendation is sub- servience to her whim of the moment, what ever it may be. And the Empress Dowager and her satellies are so little acquainted | with the first principles of authority that they fail to perceive that the very steps they are taking, in the vain hope of relieving themselves from the pressure of an approach- ing civilisation, are, one and all, hastening the dissolution of the Empire, Outrages on subjects of powerful states, though at the time they may seem a glorious asser- tion of independence, and may for a while go unpunished are he ping up materials for a conflagratior, which once started will be unextinguishable till the fabric of government is swept away. It was outrages of this sort which led to the first war of 1842, and the opening of the five ports. A renewal of those outrages led to the second and third wars, and the opening of the northern and Yangtze ports. The massacres in Syechuen and Fuhkien led to still farther demands and the attempts to oust the Japanese from Korea only ended in the loss of Formosa and Shingking Out- rages in Shantung led to the establishment of Germany in Shantung, and this to a military occupation by Russia of Manchuria and Linotung, the cession of Weihaiwei to England, and, as a counterpoise, of Kwang- chow to France. All these events have happened within the lifetime of the EMPRESS DOWAGER, and might have been supposed enough to have taught her and favourites sufficient wisdom to have dissuaded them from carrying on so losing a game. There seems, however, to attend the old age of un- tions, as of individuals, a period of dotage, when old habits become tyrants, and reason grows too feeble to arrest the inevitable decay. When China was young and vi-
and gorous ber envoys ships were be found all over Asia; she carried her trade even N8 far AB Zanzibar and the East Coast of Africa, and met on equal terms the Arab merchants, then the great traders of the world. She had then no pro nor anti-foreign party, and the wayfarer from abroad was hospitably received in her porta. While such is the aspect of China towards foreign nations, at home the present pretence of government is insidiously mapping the foundations of law and order. Both in the north and in the south it has been utceasingly fanning the flame of disflection. The mob in China, like the mob in every country under the sun. cares for nothing but plunder. It is easy to turu its cry against the foreigner as it is in other quarters to arouse its instincts against the Jews but the first taste of blood changes the willing tool into a wild unthinking beast. In the metropolitan province itself men like Junglu and Kangyi are not above in their wild and childish ignorance fomenting such troubles but it is in Shantung and Kwangtung that the effects
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personally was, his instructions were known, and we had not for some time another affair of the sort to deal with. It is, however significant that time when momentarily our hands are tied should be selected for two such outrages as the murder of Mr. BROOKES and the attack on the Boun- dary Commission. At present we still only (Daily Press, 27th February.) know from the brief summary supplied from There is little doubt from what we have Chinese official sources of the occurrence seen that the present impasse in China is (we quote a few more particulars elsewhere), really the result of the policy adopted two and must, of course, suspend our judgment But it is a centuries ago. Nations do not rapidly fall till fuller particulars arrive. into decay; and to the student of history suspicious circumstance that the cutrage who is accustomed to sift the evidence of should have occurred in close proximity to human actions there will seem little doubt the scene of MARGARY's murder, aud that that even in the more powerful days of the it should have been under somewhat similar Ts'ING dynasty the seeds of dissolution conditions. It is also indicative of the were already sown. The government has explosive nature of the agencies at work been one of distrust, and the Manchus have that a time should be selected for these been from the beginning a foreign element, outrages when Russia is notoriously mass They were, however, crafty enough to seeing her troops on the borders of Korea, how admirably the system of CONFUCIUS, amended by Cau H1, could be made to serve their end, and this, and not any admiration for the system itself or consideration for Chinese ideas, was the inciting motive for the acceptation by the Manchus of the Chinese philosophy in its entirity. In this affair the Chinese became willing slaves; and remained all unconscious of the fetters they had forged for themselves. So now, consistently enough, when at this last hour the Manchu party are seeking to tighten their grip on an unwilling people, it is by returning to the mind-constricting policy of CHU HI and invoking the prejudices of the official class that they hope to effect their purposes. It is this fact which, unconscious of its motives, the Powers most anxious to promote the disintegration of China have
and is strengthening her garrsion at Merv. On the other hand, it is more satisfactory to find a better understanding amongst the other Powers. The unnatural alliance of Russia and France at ordinary times would be permitted to expend itself and die its natural death, but as it is evidently intended as a cover for some strange advance in which the interests of the others are con- cerned, it is satisfactory in the cause of order to find a growing understanding. Still China is likely to be the body reserved for the next experiment, and with China is closely associated the whole question of the Pacific. In this respect Mr. Hay's diplomantic note, as leading up to the recog │nition of some settled policy, may eventually have a considerable influence on the turn of events.
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