China and the West

Dewey, John. China and the powers : intervention a challenge to nationalism [ID D28467].
General Crozier has furnished us with an interesting essay on the conditions in China which make it difficult for that country to establish a unified, stable and efficient Government. He has supplemented this account with a briefer essay on the comparative ease with which military conquest of that country could be accomplished. The two statements form the foundation for what is in effect a plea for intervention in China to be undertaken by preferably concerted action of several Great Powers. This intervention is to be wholly altruistic in character, based on desire to help China find her own unity, assist her in development of civil law and administration, free her from the rapacious interference by militarists and officials leagued with them, and is to terminate in turning over a smoothly running Government to the Chinese people. It reads like a dream. If tried, it might turn out a nightmare.
His account of conditions in China, even if once substantially correct as far as it goes, leaves out a fundamentally important fact. He fails to give weight in estimating the probable reception of benevolent intervention by the Chinese to the extraordinary development of national sentiment in recent years. I should not have believed it possible to write about Chinese political affairs and make as little reference as he has done to this feature of the situation. It is quite true that it is not sufficiently strong or well organized to create a unified Government. It may well be years before that goal is reached. But it is powerful enough to bring to naught any such scheme as that proposed.
The probability and the effectiveness of organized resistance to a Government resting upon foreign force is immensely under-estimated. It is true the Chinese still lack ability in positive and constructive combination. They have, however, an enormous capacity for negative organization, for resistance. The agitation against foreign interferences carried on in the last few years has already aroused that power into action. Increase of interference would render it an irresistible force. The Chinese are factional; but foreign intervention would weld them into a solid unit, as long as the foreigner was there. General Crozier thinks, apparently on the basis of reports from Hongkong, that they could not successfully unite for even a boycott without assistance from governmental powers, which naturally could not be had with the Government in the hands of foreign agents. Well, I happened to be in China eight years ago at the time the boycott against the Japanese was started. It was started by students. Instead of having support from the Government, the latter was pro-Japanese and set out to suppress the movement by force. In a few short weeks the Cabinet was overthrown; and it is commonly understood that the boycott was so harmful to Japanese interests that it is responsible for the change in Japan's attitude toward China.
Since then things have moved fast and far. The merchants, as well as students, are now organized, while in all industrial cen¬'tres the workingmen are an organized power. Quite aside from boycotts and means of passive resistance, the proposed scheme of government would be brought to naught by Chinese noncooperation. Its success would depend upon enlisting Chinese so that they might be educated in modern administrative and legal procedures. The only Chinese that would engage in service in a Government conducted by foreigners, having armed support, would be from the corrupt, self-seeking class. These would be regarded as traitors by their countrymen. The foreign Government would be a mere shell. It might last for years and the Chinese be no nearer self-government than they are today In fact, with irritation, hatred and union on the basis of hostility to the foreigner it would produce, the last state would be worse than the first.
General Crozier has himself stated so candidly the difficulties in the way of cooperative foreign intervention and of establishing an honest and intelligent Government really managed for the sake of the Chinese people, that it is not necessary to say much about that phase of the matter. As General Crozier says: "The only justification we admit for making use of our strength is the defense of our interests, of the lives and property of our nationals." He regards this as selfish. But it is the only recognized ground, and it is so because the political sense of nations knows how fantastic is the idea of a genuinely benevolent, self-denying, intelligent intervention. At that, interventions already conducted have too often been the causes of predatory aggression and exploitation of peoples subject to it. In the world in which we live General Crozier's ideal of a union of great and imperialistic Powers having the sole purpose of assisting another nation, a nation so unlike in customs and traditions as is China, is a dream.
It took centuries for Western nations to emerge from political conditions not unlike those of China into our present semblance of honest and efficient self-government. It will take time for China to make the transition. She needs our help. But it must come by patience, sympathy and educative effort, and the slow processes of commerce and exchange of ideas, not by a foreign rule imposed by military force.