BROKEN CHINA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 101, 19 October 1911, Page 4

BROKEN CHINA.

j To pretend to put a finger on the 'why I and wherefore'' of ;i Chinese revolution is to be a little overconfident of one's prescience. We do not understand the hopes and aspirations of the teeming millions in the great Empire; we know little of. their live? and characters, and must accept more or less highly colored i and always partial travellers' and correspondents' notes about happenings in I China. A "foreign devil's" view »f China is nearly always colored by the. | personal treatment he has received in "China, and his personal treatment depends absolutely on the- particular caste he has come in contact with. The mind of the Chinese, whether he be coolie or viceroy, is a closed book to the foreigner. We may form more or ' less erroneous conclusions by following 'Chinese, events, but we really know as ' much about the real China as Foster l''raser knows about the real Australia, i .We seem to know that the Manchu dynasty gained remarkable power, because of remarkable wit, strategy and prowess; that because it gained power with ease it misused it and directed its . influence to the great game of "squeeze." We seem to believe that this revolution that is now tearing Southern China is . a general uprising of a downtrodden lifty millions against the wicked tyranny ,of the Manchus. Bat there seems also to be a reason for believing that the ! Chinese in the : mass doesn't care two i '•'cash" whether then; is tyranny, or no, , and only moveth because someone tells him to, and offers to pay him for it. ,We have all heard that the Dowager Empress, who, was gathered in about ; three years ago, was a most aecomplish.ed woman who took great precautions against popular progress and fingered . every possible dollar. She was either a i wicked old woman or a wonderful old saint, according, as the narrator of . Chinese history had Avon or lost by her . tight hold on the reins. When she .was out of the way young China rose and promised reforms that hundreds of -niillions of Chinese subjects didn't care a jot about, and perhaps heard nothing of. for Chinese communities are self contained and the provincial viceroy, although responsible to the Crown, is the beginning and end of everything to the people under his command. The appalling fatalism of the mass of the Chinese was shown by their recent objection to being cured of the plague. The idea that a revolutionary, backed by "foreign devil'' finances, can make all China swim jn blood, because the Juxnchus are rob- ' bing China, may be a correct one, if it can be assumed that the Chinese millions' know what its all about. Again it is unlikely that British and American capital would be at the back of the revolutionaries if the possible fall of the Manchus was not "good for trade," the suggestion being that the present rulers of China are keeping too watchful an eye on the "foreign devil" financier and are hampering him in his operations. But at the best the knowledge we have of China and the Chinese is merely a 'complimentary title for ignorance, and as China during history that reaches back to infinity, making our history but an event of yesterday, has worried through uncountable revolutions, floods, famines and pestilences in her own way. if may be presumed that the "foreign devil" will not play so important a part the cablegrams suggest in this, the latest upset in the land of the Dragon.