IF CHINA AWAKES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 331, 25 January 1909, Page 4

IF CHINA AWAKES

iMOBLEMS OF THE PACIFIC. LACK OF ORGANISATION. (By Prolessor J. Maemillan Brown, in tho .Wellington Post.) The chance of conquest and absorption by a race with higher ethics is as distant and as far out of the sphere of practicality. No race that comes by sea will ever master tho Empire, except on the coast-line. And there is no rase that neighbors it in territory capable of absorbing it when conquered; whilst there is none that has a higher civilisation or much more advanced ethical code. China will have to work out her salvation in sections. She is not a unity except in 'the central government and administration, and that is an accretion, an alien thing. It was only the northern provinces that had any interest iu war with Japan or that felt any humiliation from the result; in fact, it was only the central government and the mandarinate that felt it. Droughts or famines or plagues occur hi one province and slaughter their tens of thousands; the other provinces do not feel that their interests or sympathies are thereby involved; they hear the new? as : f it cam* from some distant country that was not kin to them. Not even between neighboring districts or villages is there any possibility of sympathy or co-opera-tion. One baa only to travel in the rural districts to see what an utter lack of organisation there is; the roads ansuccessions of pits, and in summer canals that are neither navigable nor traversable. In the north the roads, or rather tracks, arc often deep ravines that are the beds ol" torrents in wet weather: the owners of the land over which they pass would be the. last to mend them or fill them, and it is neither the interest nor the. duty of any one else, to look after them. In the south thev are mere footpaths made through , other people's tie Ids, and hi tiood they j are impassable, so that for months great i number* of villages are isolated unless ; they have boats.' The only sign of organisation is the high embankments that confine rivers and check Hood 1 waters: and these, like the Crand Canil and the Great Wall, are the work of the central power. The roads of China are a 4-pmplete proof of her lack of unity and incapacity for co-operation or organisation. It! is the village that is the only unity in l the Empire; and its elan or family council does all the true government and organisation. And it is this that has prevented, ami will prevent. any wider unity of the national or patriotic type. The boycotts were movements amongst the trading guilds, and not in the nation at large. And the traders, though the wealthiest section of the community, form but a small proportion of the people. China is the least urbanised of all Eastern nations, if not of all nations; it is rural and agricultural, and its population is collected into villages for protection against each other. The walls of so many of the towns and villages reveal clearly the disunity of China; they are there to protect tho inhabitants against the Chinese. When this state of affairs passes away, it will be time to speak of the awakening of China from the side of the people. U is true that railways are demanded: hut it is only V.y the trading classes, a small wealthy sretion. And it is equally true that whilst shouting "China for the Chinese," and calling for the construction of the railways by tins Chinese, they will not subscribe for the purpose? or take shares in anv railway company; thev are afraid'the Administration may get to know of their wealth ami squeeze it out of them. There is the appearance of public spirit, but not the reality. The dishonesty of the Administration stops all How of public benevolence, and tenders patriotism impossible. Nothing can be done permanently to awaken China till honesty and justice are the aim of all the ofiicials. THE RADICAL REFORM.

If ill-is radical reform were carried out, and till' Administration were male sufficiently salaried and incorruptible, all other things would lit' possililo for China. Her Treasury would be full and able tn meet all the expenditure demanded to make tin; proponed reformefficient and permanent. Her people would trust the officials anil the Ciovernmnit lis their best friends, anil then would pass away that atmosphere oi suspicion which broods over China and renders all attempts, even the most unselfish nnil philanthropic attempts, at amending her futile. Sympathy and cooperation between village and village, distract and district, province anil pr.v vinee, woulil appear, mill the public spirit anil patriotism would be possible. Kdiieation might become real and universal, and the vices of opium-smoking anil gambling might have some chance of getting rooted out by menus of honest, efficient, and modernised officials. The national conceit tbnt stops all the pores of the race against foreign influence might be modified by true knowledge of other peoples and their history, and thus there might begin some change ill their ethical outlook anil in their attitude to polygamy and domestic slavery. A real unity might be the result, 'and a real progress, a progress from within, anil not from without, a progress of the nature and inner culture, anil' not, merely of the armour anil me.nis of transport and communication. HOW WOULD C'lnXA THifS KEFORMIiO A I'TECT J3CBOPK? When this miraculous revolution was accomplished, the world might then have cause to tremble as it never had before. The conquests of Alexander, or X.ipoleon, or Uenghis Khan would be mere temporary raids to the. advance of this great and united Empire. Waves of its prosperous and prolific people, now unchecked by famine and plague and calamity, would precede, its armies iuto neighboring countries and siiiify them so "that the result would be no mere military subjugation. Every territory as the "frontier advanced would become, a true part of China. There would be uo mere accretion of compiest 011 conipiest. as there was in Alexander's _or the. Roman or the Napoleonic Empire. China would grow by colonisation as the British Empire has grown, only the colonisation would not be mere obliteration of the. primitive, or less cultivated peoples, but complete, absorption of them. Their very polygamy and their institution of domestic slavery would help them in the process. They would slowly sinify the world. But there would be many eenturylong stages in the process. Tliev would Hood with their labor or the results of their labor the markets of civilised nations. First, the products of their cheap toil would bring other industrial peoples to their knees. With modern machinery and modern methods and their capacity to do most work 011 the least food, they could make, everything that modern man needs or produces at the minimum cost. The result would be the gradual defeat and demoralisation of Western industry. Tile production of tht! raw material would be all that would Iki left to other peoples. For China has the coal and the minerals anil the water-power that give superiority to a modern industrial civilisation. Her coalfields and mineral deposits have been as yet uuexploited. When those of the West are within sight of exhaustion of all but the unprofitable parts of them, what chance would any country have against such advantages backed by the cheapness of etlieient labor?