482
A YEAR OF ALLIED POLICY IN
CHINA.
(Daily Press, 12th June.)
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
in Shensi reached its culmination, and above all the provinces of China, Shensi is the most subject to famine. It is notorious that the population is yearly decreasing, and that nearly every year thousands within it die of famine. For the last twenty years these scourges have been increasing, and Shensi has been alternately ravaged by rebellion or decimated by famine. It remained for the Dowager to give it is final blow. The ordinary demands on the productions of the valley of the Wei were in excess of its capabilities, but the last blow was struck when last autumn the Court flying from Peking settled down like a flight of locusts. The country produced little enough at the best of times for its ordinary inhabitants. Cut off from the rest of the Empire by impassable tracks, the Court found itself at times almost without the necessaries of life; the old imperial buildings had long ago vanished, and even the modern yamens were for the most part in ruins. It was little wonder that the presence of the Emperor 80 far from introducing life into the deserted city was really the harbinger of ruin, and was succeeded by a famiue worse than even Shensi was accustomed to. It is then no marvel that the Court is just as anxious now to return to Peking as it was before to leave it; yet we should be deluding ourselves did we attribute this wish to return to any im proved feeling or to any regret for the crimes of the past. As a fact the Dowager is still surrounded by the same flatterers as before the hegira from Peking. The pre- tended eunuch LI LIEN-YING is still as dear to his mistres as before, and the trusted councillor is still the notorious YUNG LU. More even than these is the influence of Lu CHUAN-LIN still in the foreground, so that the old reactionary WANG WENSHAO, as we were accustomed to call him, has after a year of struggle and difficulty come to be looked upon ns the apostle of progress.
It cannot be said that the supposed settlement of difficulties in China is very satisfactory, nor indeed is it apparent that anything has been done in the way of prevention of like troubles again. Yet it is clear that all sides are practically tired out, and somehow or other, if nothing external occur to upset the tacit pact, that affairs may go on till the next uprising much as usual. This seems to be the best that can be said, and meanwhile we can only hope that in the general outcome of affairs we shall be permitted to live in peace and comparative quietness. It is not a great victory to boast of; yet, we suppose it is something to be thankful for. If the course of affairs, has taught the Powers something, it has apparently taught the ignorant crew who surround the central government of China that there are luxuries too high for it to grasp at, and that its iden of being able to live by itself and for itself is a thing beyond its reach. It has apparently also taught it that it cannot govern China from the west, and that to all appearances the whole of China beyond the sea-coast provinces is practically unable to keep itself, much less to be able to dicta'e its will to the others. Hsianfu has proved an utter failure, and so far from enabling the Dowager Tsz'HI to be independent, it has actually emphasised the fact that the Dowager is more than ever a mere pensioner of the Yangtsze Viceroys. It is well known to those who have been making a study of Chinese economics, that with the exception of Szechuen, for many purposes outside China, and never in harmony with the rest of the Empire, the west of China does not pay its own expenses and has to be kept going at the cost of the coast provinces. Of course the woman who has been essay ing for years past to sway the Empire has not troubled herself to examine into This is not inuch to boast of, yet it seems the financial aspects of the state. For to reckon up the results of a year of foreign her it was sufficient to express the desire, statesmanship. The question of China is and it was nothing to her where the money evidently left for our successors to lick into was to be found, that was the affair of the some sort of tangible shape. Doubtless it provinces. The game was a pleasant one, will be the making of some future states- as long as it lasted, and next to the Dowagerman, and it is a comfort in this age of per- the person most responsible was LI HUNG- fection to find that there is still left for CHANG, who in the days before the Japan some of our followers an untrodden road to war was foremost in pandering to her greatness. woman's greed Of late years there have been unequivocal signs that the old milch- cow was running dry, and the crew of eunuchs and others who had possession of the avenues of the Court did not fail to attribute the failure to the presence of foreigners and the foreign trade that was sending the money out of the country. Logically the remedy was to get to a spot removed at once from the hated foreigner and foreign trade; and long before the late movement had assumed any consider able proportions it was well known that the Dowager Empress was plotting to remove her entourage to Hsian. To her Hsian was represented as a place where all the delights of Chinese life were to be found, where the people were respectful, and where the land was flowing with plenty. Hsian she knew had been, in the days when China was a light to the rest of the world, the seat of Empire, and tradition spoke of the delights and the luxuries of the court in those days and doubtlessexaggerated the stories. Recent travellers in Sheusi speak of the city as little better than a heap of ruins, and
the
Bas
[June 17, 1901.
then practised, and indued with that tradi- tional courage which only the practice of war for generations can imbue. Nowadays while the Cossack, in the hands of a succes - sion of monarchs who have raised aggressive warfare to a cult, has become a menace to the civilisation of the world from his blind obedience to orders, however barbaric, the other, equally incapable of civilisation, has sunk to such utter insignificance that in China's lowest stage, when rebellion within and aggression without threatened her very existence, not one of her supposed Manchu troops was in a case to come forward in defence of the degenerate descendants of the chiefs who had so often led his ancestors to victory. Yet it was not for want of numbers, hor apparently for want of organisation for all these so called Manchu troops, of which the number counts up to the hundreds of thousands, are placed in a few large garrisons is nominally under the command so-called garrisons; and each of these of a Manchu officer of the first rank-the equivalent indeed of a Viceroy. Moreover, the names of each individual at his birth is carefully registered; while during life he is kept under surveillance, and not permitted to dissociate himself from his fellows, nor engage in trade with his Chinese neighbours. - When the Manchus had succeeded in com- pleting their conquest of China, SHUNCHI, the first Emperor of the new line, in order to maintain the ascendency of the race, fixed nineteen different garrisons in the chief strategic positions in the provinces. Of these, nine were placed in the chief provincial capitals from Canton to Hsianfu; while the remaining ten were located at other prominent points, as Chapu at the entrance of Hangchow Bay, Chinking at the crossing of the Yangtsze by the Imperial Grain Canal, and Kingchow and Hupeh to guard the entrance to the Tungting Lake, &c. Separate fuuds were set apart for the sustenance of these garrisons, who were supposed to retain their military organisation, were divided into companies and brigades, and forbidden to intermarry or have any social relations with the Chinese in their vicinity. So well kept were the latter of these rules that till the breaking out of the first war with up England, these garrisons were maintained intactas far as their numbers and their perfect distinction from their Chinese neighbours were concerned; but apparently owing to the jealousy of the Chinese officials who had come by their astuteness in trade into
MILITARY SYSTEMS OF RUSSIA possesion of most of the administrative
AND CHINA.
(Daily Press, 8th June.)
It is curious as well as instructive to notice the very different results which the different military systems of Russia and China respectively have had in the case of the two nations. With practically the same material to work on, and beginning to all intents and purposes contemporaneously, the Russian sars have come to dominate the entire north of Asia, and even to be a standing menace in Europe; while the Empire of the Manchu chiefs, which two and a half centuries ago dictated its will to its northern neighbour, has now become little better than a ball at the feet of its once despised competitor. Though so different now, during the early half of the seventeenth century, in their Manchu and Cossack retainers respectively, the Hwangti and the Tsar were from a military point of view on an equality; inasmuch as each had at his disposal a body of heredi ary soldiers,
offices in the state, their military effective- ness had been utterly neglected. The men themselves, as they showed in the ineffec- tive defence of Chapu when attacked by the British, preserved the native courage of the race, but in the absence of any military training or organisation their efforts were hopeless; and foiled in their attack on the English and reduced to despair, the men committed suicide rather than submit to the disgrace of surrender. This was the last stand that Manchus, as Manchus, seem to have made, and in the next period of trouble, when the Empire was almost on the verge of destruction at the hands of the Taiping rebels, on not one occasion were the forces in these garrisons utilised. Under very s
similar conditions as
a people bound by tradition and long prac tise to military service were the early Tsars situated, with respect to their hereditary defenders. The Cossacks of the southern portions of their dominions along the Don and Volga had early been formed
into
adjace as relapsing to a personally attached to the monarch, bound formidable body of warriors; nud on the
desert. The
of the trees, the result of centuries of bad government, has
by long established custom to military ser- vice, and both skilled in the arts of war ng
settlement of the Imperial power every care was taken to perfect the organisation.
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