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SZECHWAN.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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(Daily Press, 12th January.) While repudiation of engagements is only too common all over China, and may be said to have its headquarters in the Liangkwang, where under a series of incapable but truculent viceroys it has had abundant, opportunities of development, it cannot be said to be absent from any of the provinces and recently has been assuming a more than ordinarily virulent form in Szechwan. This is the more to be regretted that up till recently Szechwan was not only the most prosperous and well ordered province in China, but that the province as a whole had been entirely free from those occasional outbursts of ignorant fanaticisin which remain to show how little below the surface has penetrated the moderu affectation advance. This is doubtless not so much to be wondered at as to be regretted, the more so when we find that Japan with all her real grasp of modern science and cultivation is yet unable to free herself from the old | bonds of superstition, and would, so far as the mass of her people are concernel, willingly close all the avenues of approach from the rest of the world, and shut herself up as exclusively as she did in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. China, of course, still has dreams of the time when she was the acknowledged head of Oriental civilisation, and when without any open display of force she was able to dominate by the mere show of the superiority of her culture the whole of Asia east of the Pamirs, and north of the Himalayas. She, however, in all this forgets one essential thing. Although it is true that for centuries she maintaiued her position through the mere moral power of her superior culture, it was not by moral force that she originally gained it. She had bad to undergò a loug, and for centuries undecided, struggle for are existence at the hands of her Turkish neighbours, and it was only in the first century B.C.qwhen HAN WU-TI had put down by the superiority of his arms the last trace of hostile resistance, that China's moral ascendency cau he said to have commenced. Naturally the same causes which conduced to China's unchallenged superiority during medieval times, ceasel to act as 8000 as she was brought into contact with the relatively more powerful, physically and morally, culture of modern Europe. If during the reign of HAN WC-TI, China's warlike prestige enabled her to extend her influence up to the boundaries of Parthia, a very similar condition of affairs was seen but with the actors reversed, when in the first half of the nineteenth century the similar prestige of the European nations led the gradually to bring their influence to bear for the first time on China herself. China attempted to resent this interference in her dream of fancied superiority, but got sally worsted in the struggle. The reason she never succeeded in seeing. PYGMALION-LIKE she indeed attempted to make for herself a presentment of western arts and civilisation, but she omitted to pray to VENUS to inspire the atatue with life, and it still remains on her hauds lifeless and useless. Sullenly, how- ever, China found herself compelled to accept the situation, but never did it with any intention of accommodating herself to the new conditions, and always looking forward to a time when her foreign troublers, having themselves permitted their energies to flag, would become a ready prey to China's old world arts.
It was under these circumstances that she saw her neighbour in Japan, a petty little state as she always affected to call it, dare
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[January 21, 1907.
to thwart her views about suzerainty. European lines, they had introduced tram Such a preposterous claim could not, she lines underground and curried the product felt, be even for a moment taken into con- in regular wheeled carriages. Their tools sideration. China, at least NO her one
were made of well tempered steels admirably "statesman LA HENG-CHANG told her. alapted to the work, and all they needed, had ig armies, great guns and much they said, was to be permitted a more ammunition. True, like PYOMALION'S + genral employment of machinery, for statue, they were nothing but a hollow which they were quite prepared to pay. makebelieve--the army dressed up co lies, Such was the condition of the province two the guns wooden dummies, and the ammuni- years ago, and an intelligent interest was tion large'y loaded with coal-dust. They taken in every practical improvement in had been paid for as real, and were good working. Lately all this has been changed, enough to frighten Japan. A few weeks not in response to any anti-foreign feeling on showed the stuff of which China's armies the part of the people, but through the and China's generals
composed, influence of certain obstructionist officials and disaster after disaster dogged the sent down from Peking. The example of Chinese arms till she was compelled | Mr. LITTLE's coal mines is a case in point : to make a treaty abandoning for ever working entirely in accord with the native her claims to suzerainty, and giving proprietors the production of the mines had up much territory. Then her kind been largely increased, and the entire out- friend," Russia, stepped in and promised to put was being sold at Hankow under get her back-for a consideration--her pro-contract, largely to the railway and steamer vince of Shengking. She carried out her on the River, who found it profitable to pay programme so far as to get Japan out of much higher rates for the Szechwan cual The Shengking, but having got so far she over the ordinary Japanese product. fancied it so much that she thought she VICEROY who had in the interest of bis would like to stop there herself. China province at the beginning advanced by every had paid the money- so that was all right, means in his power the working of the mines, and the business was closed. China was was in the first iustance got round. The uative very well affected towards Russin all this banks, who were prepared to receive sub- while; though she was the sufferer, the scriptious from the, antive coal workers' trick was so exactly in accor lance with her were forbidden to associate themselves with own method of procedure that she could the starting of the company, and lately not but admire it. But a change came over the working of the mines has been practi- the scene; Japan in the long run succeede|cally stopped, and all surveying or boring in getting Russia out of Shengking, 80 shut down. The consequence is not only Chinese admiration turnel on Japan, and the
stoppage of a valuable export she was made the model for a new GALATEA. but the subscribed capital is lying It is quite true that China thoroughly hates useless in the bank. The same spirit Japan, but nevertheless her instinct points | is shown in regard to railway to her as momentarily the pattern for matter. Two years ago the arrange- astuteness. Japan has succeeded in circum-ments had proceeded almost to a heat for venting the foreigner; she has made her rail- commencing a much needed line of railway ways without foreign interference, her mine from the lower country to Chengtu, the are controlled only by her own people, and capital, and the needful capital was in she has succeeded in turning the arts of the sight. To meet the railway on the border foreigner altogether against himself. Such of the province CHANG CHIR-TUNG, the is the object lesson which momentarily is Viceroy of the Liang Hu. had arranged for most conspicuous in the eyes of China, but a loan oa favourable terms. Under the her new GALATEA is just as innocent of pretence that the line had been projected by flesh and blood as its predecessors. Japan foreigners, CHANG CHIH-TUNG has been got the foreigner out, it is true, but she did ordered from Peking to cancel his arrange- it by praying to VENUS, and so getting her ments, and all the projected improvements statue endued with flesh and blood. After have heeu thrown back into chaos. The loss all Japan hạd the grace actually to fall in here is not in any sense foreign, but is spread love with her own creation while China does all over the province; a profitable source of not conceal her batred. The result of wealth has been knocked on the head, the conse is that her new GALATEA is merely exports of the province thrown back for a alay figure on her hands, and like Li geueration, and the people, who subsist HENG-CHANG's dressed-up army, has not largely on imported food-stuffs and clothing, within its ranks the spirit of a louse made to pay more than double prices for the Some two years ago Szechwan seemed all commodities needed, owing to the present right for entering on the new civilisation difficulty of navigating the rapids of the more intelligent than their countryman in Yangtse. This is a fair example of the the other provinces, the Szechwanese were injury being done in China by the mock making considerable advances in the arts, patriotism of the Young China Party. partly through their native genius and partly by attentively stu ly ng what they ad seen done elsewhere. The Szechwanesi were rapidly becoming experts in cal mining; they were taking advantage of the (Daily Press, January 14th.) weakness of their fellow countrymen else- Mr. KENNETH Beaton, who writes an where, and improved on a great scale their article upon "Great Britain in North cultivation of the opium poppy; they care! China" in the Empire Review, may certainly fully improved too their production of silk, he congratulated upon the faculty of being and in return for all these commodities! thankful for small mercies. He sees sigus which she exported in enormous quantities of the preponderating influence of Great to the lower country, the Szeebwanese were Britain in the North of China which might living in a condition of comfort and pro escape the notice of less sanguine observers, sperity unknown in any of the other but which seem to form a consolation to provinces. No people in China were BO him for all the adverse circumstances that ready to adapt to their own convenience are dwelt upon by the “ pessimists for foreign methods, but not as mere imitators, whom he evinces a salutary contempt. He but from a clear understanding of the un-
** the starts off with the assertion that deriving principles involved. They had into influence and position of Great Britain in duced cupolas for smelting their iron ores: North China offer a striking illustration of their coal mines were worked almost on
that moral ascendency which she soquires
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GREAT BRITAIN IN NORTH CHINA.
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