China and the West

Russell, Bertrand. The Chinese Amritsar : extracting wealth from blood and tears [ID D28422].
The first necessity in this Chinese crisis is to be clear about the facts, which have, as usual, been distorted by the Press, the telegraph agencies, and the Government. The Professor of the National University of Peking have issued a statement in which they have endeavoured to counteract these distortions ; so has the Chinese Information Bureau ; so have various American missionaries. These accounts are universally believed, and have the effect of rousing humanitarian sentiment against Great Britain. But in England almost the whole Press boycotts the truth.
The trouble began with a strike in a Japanese mill in Shanghai. One of the strikers was shot by the Japanese. [The fuller information given in our leader of last week (i.e., 2 killed, 13 wounded) is, we believe, correct. Ed. New Leader]. Some Chinese students paraded the streets as a protest against this unjustifiable homicide. The students were, as the Professor state, 'armed with nothing more than pamphlets and handbills'. Many of them were arrested by the British police, whereupon the remainder marched to the police station to demand the release of their comrades. Terrified by this unarmed mob of boys and girls, the British authorities ordered the police to fire upon them, killing six and seriously wounding over forty. As the students continued to demonstrate, the police continued to kill them for six days, until 70 were killed and 300 wounded. To justify their action, the British asserted that the mob was armed and advanced with cries of 'kill the foreigner'. If such cries were uttered, it must have been by 'agents provocateur'.
The students who demonstrated were the kind of young men and young women of whom I saw a great deal when in China – eager, enthusiastic, idealistic, unable to believe that justice, however clear, is powerless against brute force. Chinese students are like the best of our sons and daughters, but slightly more naïve as regards the wickedness of the world. Confucius taught that human nature is naturally good, and one of the difficulties of our missionaries has been that they cannot get the Chinese to accept the doctrine of original sin. In this task they are receiving valuable assistance from the British police.
The rest of the Chinese population of Shanghai has resented this massacre, and has been engaged in a gradually growing strike. There is also a beginning of a boycott of British and Japanese goods throughout China. There have been simultaneous disturbances in other places in China. The navies of the world have assembled in Shanghai harbor so as to be ready to shoot more boys and girls.
To understand the situation it is necessary to say a word about the government of Shanghai. Shanghai is a city comparable in size to London, divided into three parts : the Chinese City, the French concession, and the International concession. The last, where the trouble has occurred, is governed by the capitalists exclusively : there is not the faintest hint of democracy. The capitalists are mainly British and Japanese, with a fair sprinkling of Americans. The British police are Sikhs (except the officers), who play the same part as the Cossacks played in Tsarist Russia. Whenever the capitalists of Shanghai get into trouble, warships of all 'civilised' countries hasten to their assistance, as in the present instance.
Where Young Life is Cheap
The right of the foreigners in Shanghai is the right of conquest – the same right that the Germans had in Belgium from 1914 to 1918. They arrived there in the first instance as a result of the Opium War of 1842. There is no justification whatever for their presence, except that the Chines are not a match for the foreigners in military and naval power.
Shanghai is an important industrial centre, and the labour conditions are quite as bad as they were in England 100 years ago. Young children work twelve hours a day for seven days in the week ; sometimes they fall asleep at their work, and roll into the unfenced machinery and are killed. Other children are employed in making matches. They get phosphorous poisoning, and most of them die young. There was a proposal before the Shanghai Municipal Council to introduce some slight regulation of child labour (at present there is none). This came forward during the first days of the present trouble, but fell through because there was no quorum – fortunately, according to the 'Times', as it might have encouraged the strikers. The conditions of adult workers are such as these facts would lead us to expect. They work from 12 to 13 ½ hours a day, and their wages vary from 16s. to 30s. a month. It is to prevent any improvement in these conditions that we are shooting unarmed boys and girls – usually in the back.
The Capitalist Mind
The issue which has been raised has two aspects ; one industrial, the other national, though it is impossible to keep the two quite separate. As regards the industrial aspect, we have the singular fact that in the Treaty Ports the workers have no voice in the government, which is an undisguised tyranny of the rich. Naturally, they use their power as they always do when they have it : to extort wealth out of the blood and tears of their victims. I do not pretend that Chinese capitalists would be more humane than those who are Christians or Japanese ; a capitalist, of whatever country, will be as cruel as is compatible with saving his skin, often more so. But Chinese capitalists would not long be able to call overwhelming military and naval force to their assistance. Left to themselves, the Chinese would develop industrialism very slowly, and would learn to control it by democracy to the extent that it is controlled in the West.
If we do not desire an irresistible growth of anti-foreign feeling in China, we must radically alter our ways. It would be a good thing if the authorities were to discourage white men from beating coolies whenever they are out of temper. They never beat Japanese coolies, however angry they may be ; the sole reason is that Japan has a powerful army and navy.
It would be a good thing to introduce factory legislation on Western lines. It would be a good thing if white men were to practice ordinary courtesy towards the Chinese. But none of these things will be done so long as the foreigners living in the Treaty Ports have the government exclusively in their own hands. We shall not, of course, evacuate the Treaty Ports except as the result of superior force, which the Chinese are likely to display within the next twenty years. But if we wish to delay the militarisation of China as long as possible, we shall be wise to control the foreign residents in Treaty Ports, and compel them to conform to those laws of elementary humanity which have been forced upon capitalists at home. This would, of course, be in the interests of British workers, who suffer by the competition of ill-paid labour. It would not be in the interests of British capitalists, who mean to invest their money abroad, starve out the British workers, and convert England into a country of parks and pheasant preserves.
Assuming that foreigners do not radically alter their policy towards China, it is easy to predict what must happen. Nationalist feeling will grow more and more inflamed, Feng or some other will put himself at the head of it, and with the help of the Soviet Union every Englishman, Frenchman and American in China will be driven into the sea.
Administering 'Justice'
At present, the movements which are taking place are not properly described as 'anti-foreign'. There are Labour movements, aiming at less intolerable conditions. There is the Young China movement, which wants to recover some degree of national independence. But these movements are not inspired by any hatred of individual foreigners. We are told that whatever crimes our countrymen may have committed in Shanghai, we must support them for fear they should be murdered. This is as yet a groundless fear. No policeman employed by Europeans, and only one European has been killed. But if the Europeans persist in claiming the right to shoot innocent Chinese whenever they feel so disposed, they must expect that, sooner or later, the Chinese will begin to think of retaliation. All the British in China who have not actively protested against recent occurrences are morally guilty of murder. They cannot be hanged, because the administration of 'justice' is in their hands. But if, ultimately, they provoke reprisals, which I profoundly hope will not be the case, they cannot be regarded as innocent victims. They have forced themselves, at the point of the bayonet, upon a country which did not want them, and they have used their military strength solely to grow rich by incredibly cruel exploitation.
There has been, ever since the November Revolution in Russia, a curious intertwining of the struggle between Capital and Labour on the one hand, and the struggle between West and East on the other. Russia was formerly dominated by foreign capitalists, and reed herself by an incredibly painful process. India and China are still where Russia was formerly. Western Labour cannot obtain full emancipation while it remains an accomplice in the profitable exploitation of the East by those who are its enemies at home. To talk of Bolshevik propaganda is nonsense : it is Western Governments and capitalists who have done the propaganda for the Bolsheviks. It is they who have persuaded young China that no spark of justice or humanity is to be expected from Western nations. Unless our democracies take hold of the Asiatic question, and insist upon seeing it handled according to Socialist principles, not according to the maxims of a ruthless capitalist imperialism, there is no hope for the white man in Asia, and no way of avoiding a clash which will be more terrible than any that mankind has yet known.