CHINA'S FUTURE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 155, 29 December 1911, Page 5

CHINA'S FUTURE.

A NEW FORCE. CHINA'S HOPE. A PRESIDENT-ELECT. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright. Rcccivid 29, 12.30 a.m. Shanghai, December 28. Sun-Yat-Sen's arrival has introduced a new and forceful element into the revolutionaries' councils. It is understood that Sun-Yat-Sen will be forthwith elected president of the Provisional Government of the United Provinces of China, to form a Cabinet and to issue a proclamation embodying the terms offered to the Manchus and rourt in the event of a peaceful .surrender, failing which the campaign will proceed and Pekin be taken. ELECTION OF PRESIDENT. Melbourne, December 28. The local branch of the Young China League has been invited to send a representative to the Shanghai conference for the purpose of electing a President of the Republic. A JAPANESE COMMANDER. Tokio, December 27. General Shiba will assume command at Hankau. MANCHUS' MISDEEDS. LIST OF CHINESE GRIEVANCES. The following proclamation issued bthe revolutionaries during the riots at Canton, is interesting, as showing the rebels' attitude towards the Manchus—against whom the present outbreak appears to be wholly directed:— Sons of China—We are not robbers; treat us not as such. We, the Chinese proper, are governed by foreigners, for are not the Manchus, usurpers of the Throne, foreigners? They have not ruled us with justice, they do not hear the groaning of the mr.sses, the people's grievances are not redressed, their mandarins are a mass of corrupt officials, they have sold parts of China to Western nations, they have declared war upon nations without our knowledge or consent, and now demand of ns Southerners increased j taxes to meet the payment of in- ; demnities incurred by them. j Why should we be'the sufferers?

We are nothing to do with them. Why have we allowed ourselves to be trampled upon thus? True sons of China, and vou of the south, we pray you well to consider these things, and read our propaganda : Firstly. The overthrow of the ■ present Manchu dynasty. Secondly.—The founding of a new dynasty, with a Chinese Emperor on the Throne. Thirdly. —The succouring of the needy and oppressed. Fourthly. The introduction of many much-needed reforms. HOW WILL IT END. SOME VIEWS OF CHINA'S FUTURE. Nothing like, this Westernising movement in China, writes the Rev. Lord William Oascoyne-Cccil in the Daily Mail, has been since the Reformation altered the whole history of Europe. A few years ago if you had told an old Chin-> h:T.d that < iiina was going to follow Western and not Confucion teaching he would have laughed. Then it seemed as improbable as it now seems that a Mohammedan should eat pork chops or a Sikh should shave his beard, or a Brahmin should embrace an outcast. Yet the improbable has once more come to pass in the history of the world. 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

What is going to be the end? After having just pointed out how wrong all prophets have been, I am not going to prophesy, but we can 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 .-. Magna "Charter." a declaration of independence, a summoning of the StatesGeneral—in fact, with all the incidents of Western constitutional history that all Young China has learnt to admire and to confuse in the Western college. His future ideal is to have a President, or a Prime Minister, whose efforts will be neutralised by a Leader of Opposition, and who will carry on the government with all the loquacity that modern democracy adores. But he 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. T 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 be the foundation of a German Chinese Empire. Russia perhaps thinks that Tientsin would do nicely as an outlet for Siberian commerce.

A FACTOR IX WESTERN CIVILISATION.

These and many other contingencies seem possible. Tint it seems certain that China in one way or another will become Western; she may make mistakes, she may fall under the complete or partial domination of other countries, but she Mill 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 deathdealing shells as its greatest benefit to humanity, if she looks on sweated industrv as a necessary and healthy feature of commercial development, she will depress the world by her mighty weight, and to avoid such misunderstanding she must be efficiently taught. A misunderstanding will produce a mongrel civilisation having the vices of the East and West. What China needs at the present critical juncture of her history is a university where her youth may attain to a thorough knowledge of Western thought. From that university will go out light ti the Chinese, but the teachers must themselves first learn. The moment is important for the whole world; the yellow man is entering into the white man's civilisation; what has begun in Japan is being completed in China. It is in the interest of all nations that at this crisis in the history of civilisation Chinese

I thought shall receive every enlightenment. When Japan accepted Western civilisation the world was incredulous. Russia greeted her action with scornful laughter. Russia does not laugh now; neither will Europe be indifferent to what is happening in China in a decade.