China and the West

Dewey, John. The student revolt in China [ID D28469].
The depression that bore China down after the Paris decision to hand Shantung over to Japan was fraught with as much pessimism as bitterness. China knew her weakness as against any other large Power of the world. She knew that her political division, with a civil war not yet officially closed, her industrial backwardness, her financial chaos, put her in a position where she could not say a decisive No to any country bent on exploiting her. Accordingly, she hung pathetically and tremblingly upon the deliberations of the peace conference. Morning and night she kept up her hopes by repeating the assurances given by the Allied statesmen of the creation of a new international order and of the future protection of weak nations against the rapacity of the strong. And her hopes needed support, for they were mingled with fears. Better than western nations she knew how far Japan was prepared to go, for twice during the war she had yielded to Japan's barely disguised threat of war. She also knew more about the secret treaties and understandings than did the western nations. Hence it was that the Paris decision created despair rather than the bitter antagonism to America and the other Allies which might have been expected. The outcome just proved that Force still ruled; that Might still made Right in international affairs; that China was hopelessly weak and Japan threateningly strong.
On May 4th a thrill stirred this hopelessness. Somebody had done something. Students of the Peking University had demonstrated, and in the course of their demonstration had deliberately attacked and beaten up two of the three Chinese statesmen who are popularly known as traitors because of their part in negotiating various secret treaties and loans with Japan. A stir moved vitally through the national apathy. The weakness, possibly the corruption of Chinese officials, had had a responsible share in the Shantung decision (it is always the Shantung and never the Tsingtau question in China). If China could not count upon other nations, she might at least do something to put in order her own house. The students' act was received not as a chance act of lawless lynching, but as a gesture of righteous indignation. The air was again tense with expectation. Was the Peking event anything more than a passing gesture? Events followed quickly. The government arrested a number of students. Then their fellows protested; troops were thrown about the University buildings. The city was practically under martial law. The provinces were rife with rumors of the readiness of the Chinese militarist clique to go to any extreme in the way of slaughter to put down opposition; rife even with rumors of an impending coup d’état to fix irretrievably the hold upon the government of the militarist and pro-Japanese party. The Chancellor of the University, whom the militarists hated as the intellectual leader of the liberal elements, resigned and disappeared, because, according to report, not only his life but those of hundreds of students were threatened. Then came the news that all of the students in Peking in institutions above the rank of the elementary school had struck in protest against the action of the government. They had not only struck, but they had made definite demands (of which more below); and they had organized into bands of ten, who were everywhere making open-air speeches, defying the military police to arrest them, and trying to organize the public that listened to them into similar bands of ten to carry on propaganda.
This time the thrill throughout the country was electric. The seventh of May is the day kept as the Day of National Shame. Even the primary schools have banners in them, 'Remember the seventh day of the fifth month'. This day of national humiliation is the anniversary of the Japanese twenty-one demands. The coincidence of dates had a powerful effect. Students from the Peking University rapidly dispersed through the country, addressing themselves primarily to students in all the large centres. The latter became restless; then they struck; middle (high) school students, normal and technical schools; again everything above the elementary grade. Everywhere the bands of ten were organized, speakers were drilled in what to say and how to say it, and the Popular propaganda spread through the provinces. And the multitude heard it gladly.
The unorganized hostility to Japan took form in a boycott. That was one of the themes of the boy and girl orators. They did not content themselves with general exhortations. Lists of Japanese goods were printed and mimeographed by the thousand; classified lists of all Japanese products sold in China. Similar lists of substitute native goods were circulated. In some of the schools the industrial department set to work to discover what Japanese goods could be made in existing shops without additional capital. As soon as models were constructed they were taken to small shops and their mode of manufacture explained. Then, to create a market, other students took these goods and hawked them through the streets, lecturing, exhorting, explaining the political situation at the same time. And as the vacation period comes on these students are dispersing all over China peddling goods and speaking, speaking, speaking . . .
Meantime the government was not idle. Political speeches were forbidden, students' meetings were forcibly broken up, many scores of students in different parts of China were sorely injured, a few were killed. It is not difficult to foresee the future memorial meetings in honor of these martyrs of patriotism, or even the shrines wherein their memory will be reverenced. Then the government at Peking took more drastic measures. Mandates were issued condemning the students, ordering them under penalty of dissolution of schools to return to their studies, to disband their unions, and to cease concerning themselves with what was none of their business, praising by name the men popularly regarded as traitors, warning against the boycott, and in general saying that foreign affairs should be left in the hands of the government. Coincidently several hundred students were arrested in Peking for speaking. With the fatuity which affects militarists in China as well as elsewhere, it was promised that this would put an end to the students’ agitation. The next day the number of students speaking on the streets was more than doubled, and the arrests ran to above a thousand. The students planned to go on till every man was in jail. Girl students formed a procession (some of them had to break down gates to get out) to wait upon the President and request the freeing of students; they said they would remain praying for justice all night if he did not hear them. The jails could not hold the arrested students. These were shut up in the University buildings and left with little food and less water, with cordons of troops around them. The faculty met; protested against this military invasion; against the degradation of using halls of learning as jails; against the abuse of patriotic students; and they telegraphed their protest widespread. Events had been moving outside of Peking. This last arbitrary action was the beginning of the end. Merchants in Shanghai went on strike; shops were closed, including those selling food; the merchants in Tientsin and Nanking joined; those in Peking and other cities prepared to join. There was plenty of evidence that the students had practically succeeded in converting the merchants to their side; that they no longer stood alone, but had effected an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the powerful mercantile guilds. There was talk of a strike against paying taxes. The government capitulated suddenly if not gracefully. Troops were withdrawn from the University grounds and the students invited to come out. They declined, and announced that they would stay in till the students everywhere were guaranteed the right of free speech and until the government officially apologized to them. Two days more saw the end. The government sent delegates to make the required apology; a new mandate was issued saying that the country realized that the students were actuated by patriotic motives, and should not be interfered with if they kept within the law. The 'resignations' of the three men called traitors were accepted. Undoubtedly the spread of the strike to the merchants, and the fear of its further extension, were the actuating motives in the inglorious surrender. But the students had managed to get their propaganda into the army. Rumors were afloat that the armies could not be counted upon for further suppressions—especially as pay was far in arrears. After their triumphant march from out their self-made prison, students were heard to lament that the government changed the guards so often they had not been able to convert more than half their jailers.
The original demands made upon the government were few and simple. The students arrested for engaging in the beating-up enterprise must be freed and given immunity from prosecution; the Chancellor who was so obnoxious to the militarist clique must be reinstated. By the time the government was ready to meet these first demands (in outward form, at least), the demands had greatly increased. Instructions must be given to delegates in Paris not to sign the treaty except with reservations as to Shantung, all 'traitors' must be dismissed, all secret understandings with Japan abrogated, freedom of speech guaranteed. Within about a month the Student Movement had won all its points except the third and first; and with respect to the first the government had promised to do all that the international situation permitted; and fell back vaguely upon advice received from Great Britain, France and President Wilson to sign, with hopes of later readjustment. Yet there is no evidence that the students are deceived as to the amount of success they have achieved. The military clique is still in full command; the places of the three dismissed men will probably be filled by other men of the same pro-Japanese affiliations. Externally things are much as they were before. No successful revolution in government or in foreign affairs justifies giving this amount of space to the Student Movement. But the prestige of the militarist faction has received its first great blow—and prestige is the primary feature of Oriental politics. A negative boycott, sure to fail in the end, has been changed into a constructive movement for development of home industry— a movement still in its infancy but capable of effective development. The possibilities of organization independent of government, but capable in the end of controlling government, have been demonstrated. It is hard to estimate the significance of the fact that the new movement was initiated by the student body. Reverence for the scholar is traditional in China. It still holds over from the rank accorded the literati in former days. From the western standpoint it amounts to superstitious regard. Yet this is the first time that students have taken any organized part in politics. Beyond what their speaking and writing have done in organizing public opinion at the present emergency is the abiding effect for the future. Most of the outward signs of the movement—aside from hawking goods and teaching patriotism at the same time— have now subsided. But a National Students' Union has been formed and definite plans have been made for the future. Already attempts are making to unite the people of the divided north and south in a way that will cut under the militarists of both sides. It would be highly surprising if a new constitutionalist movement were not set going. The combination of students and merchants that has proved so effective will hardly be allowed to become a mere memory. Already in some cities it has been extended into a Four Group Union, and efforts are making to extend this larger organization throughout the country.
Probably a foreign observer would count as the most precious fruit of the movement the awakening of China from a state of passive waiting. A sharp blow has been given the idea that China itself is helpless and must be saved from without. In spite of the charges of which the Japanese newspapers are full that the movement was instigated, and even financed, by foreigners, especially Americans, it was a strictly native movement, showing what educated China can do, and will do, in the future. The spell of pessimism seems broken. An act has been done, a deed performed. Perhaps there is now a healthier, better organized, movement from within China itself for China's own salvation than at any time since the Revolution. Even if nothing more were to come of the movement, it would be worth observation and record as an exhibition of the way in which China is really governed—when it is governed at all. American children are taught the list of 'modern' inventions that originated in China. They are not taught, however, that China invented the boycott, the general strike and guild organization as means of controlling public affairs. In no other civilized country of the present day (leaving Russia out of account now as an exception to all rules) is brute force such a factor in official government as in China. But in no other country could moral and intellectual force accomplish so quickly and peaceably what was effected in China in the last five or six weeks. This formulates the standing paradox of China. But in the past the moral forces which fundamentally control have been organized only for protest and rebellion. When the emergency is past, the forces have again dissolved into their elements. If the present organization persists and is patiently employed for constructive purposes, then the fourth of May, nineteen hundred and nineteen, will be marked as the dawn of a new day. This is a large If. But just now the future of China so far as it depends upon China hangs on that If.