THE YELLOW MAN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 174, 22 January 1912, Page 3

THE YELLOW MAN.

SOME CHARACTERISTICS. CHINESE VISITOR SAYS THERE IS NO "PERIL." LEADERS OF THE REVOLT. Auckland, January 18. ] In view of the developments which | have taken place of recent years in' China, and which are still stirring that country to its depths, the opinions of a well-informed citizen of the Chinese Empire should at the present juncture prove both interesting and instructive. This .gentleman is Mr. 0. Aong, who has spent many years in the Middle | Kingdom and its tributary parts. To. an interviewer to-day he gave some of his impressions. "We hear the expression 'China is awakening,'" Mr. Aong remarked, "hut there is really not much more warrant for it, so far as the mass of the people is concerned, than to say a sleeping ox is waking up because it flicks off a fly with its tail. The whole movement has been engineered by a few men of enlightened and Westernised ideas, and they have had to use the Manchu red fla" for all it is worth in order to stir up°enough sympathy to start the wheels <roing round. One is reading a lot now about Manchu massacres, but take any country in the world where the passions of the people have been let loose, and the same thing will happen. THE HATED MANCHU. "The Chinaman is not a quarrelsome fellow. The peasant is a tolerably nice man so long as he does not have too much experience of the foreigner, and especially of the foreign missionary; but remember, that these. Manchus, who neither toil nor spin, and have fattened on the stolid, patient Chinaman for centuries, are the 'anathema maranatha' to the industrious, hard-working Chinese, who are now in patches taking back a little—a very little change. If the Chinaman were a fighter he would have been done with the Manchus pretty well from the beginning, but it is the hardest thing in the world to get him to have anything to do with it. He abhors fighting just as the Jap revels in it, and for this reason, no matter how China may consolidate and nationalise under a new order of things, I don't think the yellow peril will ever be a military one so far as the Chinaman is concerned.

"Personally, I doubt very much whether the Chinese Republic will be much more of a cohesive success than the Chinese monarchy. No one can really say what will be the ultimate outcome, but I think it will end probably ,by China splitting up into a conglomeration of semi-independent provinces, more or less loosely held together, perhaps, by some central government. But, in any case. 1 do not believe the rule of the republic will be any more than nominal. The Chinaman is the most insular and conservative of men, and has no notion whatever 'of a national spirit. A river is enough to cut him oil' entirely from anything in common with bis countrymen. On the other side, the only way to get him to act in the lump is to wave the Manchu bait at his nose, and when that can no longer be done he will relapse into bucolic indifference, and see politics and every other' variety of invention go hang. LEADERS COMPARED. '•You can imagine, therefore, the task that such men as Liao Ting Fan and Dr. Sun Yat Sen have got ahead of them. Both these men, whom I have frequently met. have the welfare of their country as their first and only inspiration, and will probably work their lives out in trying to see their hopes for her bear fruit. "As for Yuan Sbih-Kai, whom I also know well, and who, I see by the papers, is now mentioned as likely to become first President of the new republic, is a man of quite another stamp. As a matter of fact, the Chinese have very little time for Yuan Rhih-Kai. They distrust him, ami regard him as a traitor, for some years ago he deserted the cause which ho was then espousing in order to furthpr his own Pnds. The Chinaman doesn't easily forget or forgive, and there is no doubt about it that Yuan Shih Kai

goes where he thinks biß bread will get the most butter. If Sun Yat Sen becomes President I don't think he will retain the office, as he will want to work more actively for the weal and progress of his country than would be possible for him if he held the position of President. RUSSIA AND JAPAN. "There will surely be trouble between the Japs and the Russians over Mongolia. It would have been on before this had the Japanese Treasury not been so nearly bankrupt. For these Japs are about the. most swollen-headed people now under the sun, and believe thel have only to send their ships and men to anycountry they fancy to annex it. If any yellow peril comes along to Australia in the shape of fight it will be the Japs, not the Chinese. "Sooner or later the Chinaman will invade Northern Australia, I firmly believe, but it will be a peaceful invasion, and it seems to me it would be a good thing for Australia; for white folk will never do much with the north of the country, and you could not have a more industrious, law-abiding and orderly po-; pulation to develop the northern ports of the island continent than those same Chinamen." '