CHANGES IN CHINA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 34, 23 January 1912, Page 3

CHANGES IN CHINA.

(By the Rev. Lord William Gascoyne j Cecil.) ' ' It has come at last. When we were i in China in 1907 everybody said a re- i volution would come when the Dow-ager-Empress’s strong hancl was re- j moved. But the prophets wore wrong, i When she died nothing happened, i When we returned in 1909 it had not ! yet come: there were rumours—that : was all. The powder seemed damp and would not light. But now it has come with a loud explosion that is reverberating, throughout the world, with bloodshed, arson, mutiny, mas- ; sacros, intrigue-—in fact, all things ne- i cessary to a terrible revolution after i the French model. Yet this is not the 1 revolution that is really interesting. Another that preceded it, though less ' noisy, was far more important, and 1 one that went far more deeply into its national life than any change of Government could do: I mean the i wonderful peaceful revolution that is I altering Chinese civilisation and con- ■ verting China into a Western conn- - try after the Japanese fashion. i The Real Revolution. I It is hard for us to realise here what this peaceful revolution means. Perhaps we shall realise it more if wo imagine that just the reverse has happened, and instead of the Chinese having accepted Western civilisation we have accepted Chinese civilisation. What should ws say if in England we were, for instance, adopting Chinese dross? If the business men who sit opposite to us in the train turned up one morning in blue gowns and began to cultivate pigtails, or if our wives appeared in bound foot, loose trousers, and unbound waist..' What should we say if, when we carao to the City, we found everyone crowding in to hoar a Chinese teacher and buying copies of the works of Confucius? And what should we say if edicts appeared forbidding the use of alcohol and summarily abolishing public-, houses? What, again, should we say if the whole of the British Constitution was being Orientalised, if every municipality were introducing Chinese methods, if the whole moral code of England were in a state of flux? Yet this is what has happened in China. The followers of Confucian civilisation have determined to accept Western civilisation and put their Confucion civilisation with its vices and virtues on the scrap-heap. So they arc abolishing opium-smoking and are unbinding their daughters’ feet, learning military science (a thing abominable to Confucius), listening to Christian teachers, sending their children , to mission schools, cutting off their queues, and adopting Western ;lress. The movement is affecting a nation which boasts itself on having ■i quarter of the population of the globe, and which has certainly onefifth. .Nothing like this has been seen since the Reformation altered the whole history of Europe. I told an American missionary that in the university scheme (which, I hope, will shortly be an actuality) Confucian learning would be encouraged as not inconsistent with Christianity. He answered that I might say that in England, but among the young Chinese “Confucius cuts no ice.” Voting China’s Hopes. What is going to be the end ? After having just pointed out how wrong all prophets have been, I am not going prophesy, but we cau see what

others expect the end to be. Young China expects that a Western nation will be born in a day, and that China will be able to Westernise with as much ease as a Chinaman can cut off his queue and put on a Western dress: that his country is to be a Republic, Western fashion, with a Magna “Charter,” a declaration of independence, a summoning of the States-General—in fact, with all the incidents of Western constitutional history that all young China has loarnt to admire and to confuse in the Western college. His future ideal is to have a President or a Prime Minister whose efforts will bo neutralised by a leader of the Opposition, and who will carry on the Government with all the loquacity that modern democracy adores. But lie mainly hopes that this Westernised China will defeat Japan and Russia, yes, and even France and Germany, too, till China shall again belong to the Chinese. Young Japan ,on the other hand, I will not say expects, but I think I may say hopes, that somehow or other Japan will find herself mistress of a large part of China, if not of all, with a purse big enough to buy a navy which will make the Pacific Ocean her lake and make Australia and New Zealand rather anxious and very loyal to England. The German colonial party now expects Shantung to bo the foundation of a German Chinese Empire. Russia perhaps thinks that Tientsin would do nicely as an outlet for Siberian commerce. The Dangers of'Transition.

These and mfmy other contingencies seem possible. 1 But it seems certain tliat China in on© way or another will become Western. .She may make mistakes, she may fall under the complete or partial domination of other countries, but she will never again be the Oriental country to whom the West was a matter of indifference, and who had no effect on Western life, except to teach them to make porcelain and to drink tea. New China is going to be a factor in the history of Western civilisation for good or for evil, and it is certain she will be a factor for evil if she fails to understand it. If she regards a telephone wire or an aeroplane as its most beautiful production or the invention of death-dealing shells as its greatest benefit to humanity: if she looks on sweated industry as a necessary and healthy feature of commercial development, she will depress the world by her mighty weight, and to avoid such jn i suii d e I'st amli n g she must be efficiently taught. A loading Chinese statesman, whoso name has lately been before the public, said to mo in 1 private conversation when I nresSed on him the Reality or Christiinity, “Yes, I know, all that is good in the 1 'West comes from Christianity.” What' is therefore needed now men who shall educate the young Chinese to enable them to understand how closely Christianity and the good side of Western civilisation are allied, uul that the second cannot be made r reality until the first is accepted. What China needs at the present critical juncture of .her history is a universityn where her youth may attain to ai thorough knowledge of Western thought. From that university will go out light to all China. China must be taught by the Chinese, hut the teachers must themselves irst ffiarn. When Japan accepted Western civilisation the world was incredulous. Russia greeted her action with scornful laughter: Russia does not laugh now. Neither will Europe dbe indifferent to what is happening in China in' a decade or so.