China and the West

Dewey, John. The international duel in China [ID D28470].
Everybody knows that before the war the territory and re¬sources of China were the scene of contention among five great Powers. During the war the situation completely altered. Russia and Germany ceased to exist as influential factors. Great Britain and France had their energy, attention and capital mortgaged in a life and death struggle. This left Japan mistress of the field. In accordance with the rules of established international diplomacy, she took full advantage of the unique opportunity to improve her national position. It is hardly sportsmanlike of other nations who have been engaged in the same game to whine about her success. Anyway, they have been her accomplices. Something like an offensive and defensive alliance between Japan and Russia was consummated while the latter seemed to be still a Power. Great Britain and France made secret arrangements with her. In every case, the consideration given Japan was at the expense of China. Until the circumstantial reports of the activities of Ota in Stockholm are confirmed or refuted, the question remains whether Germany, the fifth contender, had not also already entered into negotiations with Japan, also at the expense of China but this time with Russia also as a prospective victim.
Apparently Japan had the field to herself. Yet for over two years a duel has been in progress, a duel which concerns both China's internal policy and her international relationships. The duel concerns the ideas and ideals which are to control China's internal political development. Is it to become a genuine democracy or is it to continue in the traditions of autocratic government?—whether under the name of a republic or an empire being a secondary consideration. Internationally, the question is whether China's integrity can be regained and maintained under some sort of temporary international supervision, or whether China is to follow the course which in the past has made Japan the only Asiatic nation capable of protecting herself against European en-croachments and sure of the effective respect of western nations. A duel between ideas and ideals needs, however, to be embodied. The United States and Japan are the bodies through which the duel of ideals is carried on. Force of circumstances, not conscious choice, has determined the figures of the duel.
In details, Japan may perhaps have been a peculiarly adept pupil in the way of secret diplomacy practiced by the western Powers. But she has a right to claim that her ultimate object, controlling every particular step, has never been concealed. Her announced aim has been to free Asia, at least eastern Asia, from foreign, that is, European control. The Monroe Doctrine for Asia, Asia for the Asiatics, is a doctrine as public as it is sweeping. Any Japanese is entitled to claim that if the foreigner has ever taken Japanese guarantees of the territorial integrity of China in other sense than as against the European intruder, the foreigner has only his own stupidity to blame. Japan would still hold that she has kept her guarantees of the territorial integrity of Korea—kept them by the only means which under the conditions are effective. In other words, the standing minor premise of the conclusion of the recovery of China by China is the protectorate of weak, unorganized and unprogressive China by organized, militarized Japan—Japan which has adopted western methods in science, industry, education and arms in order to turn them against the West and to preserve the culture and territory of the East, of Asia, intact. Behind every word of the twenty-one demands and of the other negotiations of Japan with China lies the clamorous and luminous unuttered word: Put yourself under the complete protection of Japan, and you shall be guaranteed the same international prestige, the same immunity from projects of partition, concessions, spheres of influence and economic servitudes that Japan enjoys. In no other way can you secure integrity, freedom and respect.
Incidentally of course, great material and industrial advantages would accrue to Japan, to say nothing of the military advantage of command of unnumbered man power. But only the blindness of extreme national prejudice will fail to see that the grandiose scheme has as many ideal aspects as those which have ever clothed the plans of any western Power to fulfill its national destiny and mission. As between Japanese and European domination of Asia, a disinterested and cynical American, barring an eventual menace to his own country, might easily remain a neutral spectator. As it now stands, Japan has won official and governmental China—at least that of the internationally recognized government of the North. This does not mean that assent has been given to the basic idea, or that the very officials who are now playing the game of China do not hope that some time or other something will happen which will loosen the hold of Japan over China. But they do accept the particular acts by which Japan is making her approaches to the realization of her goal, even though they protest vigorously, as in the case of the twenty-one demands, when the pace is too much forced. Patriotism aside, all the interests of their own pockets and of their own local power and prestige require that each specific step forward should be met with obstructions and resistance until Japan is ready to pay the specific price exacted.
The extent to which Japan has won over the officially governing clique of China is evidenced in the circumstances surrounding the refusal of the Chinese peace delegates to sign the peace treaty. With all the concessions which the government made to the students’ movement, it never agreed to instruct the delegates to refuse to sign, until a semi-promise was made to an insistent incursion from Shantung to Peking; and instructions in accord with this vague promise did not reach Paris till after the delegates, on their own responsibility and with the moral backing of the country set over against their official instructions, had refused to sign. The government is now putting the best face possible upon the matter and trying to get popular credit on the one hand while it placates Japan upon the other. Quite likely it is still urging the Paris delegates to make a belated signature. But the militarist, imperialist pro-Japanese group has had an almost deadly blow dealt to its moral authority, and it is even conceivable that a signature forced at this time would be a signal for a popular revolution.
In short, the grandiose scheme of Japan failed to reckon with the most essential factor in the situation—the Chinese people. The extent of this failure may be calculated from the fact that Japanese propagandists in the United States sometimes compare their mission in China to that which they benevolently assign to the United States in Mexico. China with her four hundred million population and the author of the civilization of Japan does not see herself as a Mexico waiting for salvation from Japan. Call it pride or ignorance or national conceit or self-respect or a true sense of comparative national values on the part of China, call it what you will, the fact remains that Japan has so misjudged the psychology of China that she has made an implacable enemy of the people while she has been winning over the officials. One thing, and one thing only, can throw China back into the hands of Japan. Let there be a resumption of the old diplomacy of the western nations with respect to China, and it is conceivable that bitter as would be the dose, China would accept the domination of Japan as the lesser of two evils. And it is not enough that the western nations should have good intentions. They must avoid even the appearance of evil, for ingenious propaganda is always at hand to explain to the Chinese how westerners are trying to exploit them. Even avoiding the appearance of evil is not enough. No task more difficult can be found than the discovery and institution of ways and means by which China can be given the assistance which she imperatively needs, which must be given from outside herself without arousing her national jealousies, suspicions, fears, antagonisms and opposition and thus inviting the aid of Japan against the foreigner.
This brings us naturally to the other figure in the duel of ideas and moral influence—the United States. In the main of course it is the logic and especially the psychology of the situation that has put the United States into this position, not anything she has actually done. If the American idea has for the moment won the people as effectually as the Japanese practice has imposed upon the most influential official clique, it is by way of rebound. Idealization is most active when contrasting emotions are deeply stirred. Fear of Japan has bred trust in the United States; dislike of Japan a pathetic affection for America. It is no wonder that Japan with her poor reading of national psychology is bewildered by the present pro-American outburst of China, and can find in it only proof of superhuman ability in intrigue and of the expenditure of countless millions in propaganda. But in fact the situation has made itself. China in her despair has created an image of a powerful democratic, peace-loving America, devoted to securing international right and justice, especially for weak nations. The heroic legend that unified the United States for the war she still accepts, and she has added paragraphs and chapters of her own.
How trustingly naive is the faith in the United States may be gathered from various addresses of congratulation which were proffered to representatives of the United States on the Fourth of July. Shanghai was the real centre of the patriotic students' movement, and the following are extracts from some of the Shanghai addresses: "Your great nation is now introducing into the international relations of the world those principles of justice and right which have always been the guiding lights of its own national life. This is Platonic enough, but the concrete meaning appears a few sentences further on: "We look forward to the day when China and the United States shall both be in a position to maintain the peace of the Pacific as your country together with that of Great Britain have maintained the peace of the Atlantic." The Canton Guild congratulated the United States upon her leadership of the cause of human rights in the Councils of the Nations, and left no doubt as to its understanding of the character of this leadership by saying "China and America must have the same ideals. China and America must maintain the peace of Asia. We look to America to help in our battle for justice." Another address (this time from women and girls) is even more specific. After remarking that the American navy has never been used to wrest liberty from any people, it goes on to say that "if ever the day comes when China will have to drive the aggressor from its soil, the American navy will throw its influence in the cause of right." The Commercial Federation sounded the same note in a different key: "On this day of independence we call upon the American people to assist us to be independent, to develop our railways, our waterways, our resources, to join with the capital of China to make us free from the commercial bondage under which we have been living."
Of course through all these lines runs the hope of actual assistance against the country believed by the people to be bent upon dominating China under the pretext of helping her. But while the desire for material aid, naval, military, diplomatic, financial, is plainly there, the spirit behind these addresses is something more than national self-interest. The international appeal is bound up with national aspiration for a truly democratic China— an aspiration up to the present tragically frustrated. For the same situation which has given Japan the role of a despoiler and assigned to America the role of a rescuer, has also made Japan the symbol of autocratic and militaristic government in China itself, while the United States symbolizes the free democracy that progressive China would be and is not. No one can understand the present idealization of the United States by China who does not see in it the projection of China's democratic hopes for herself. 1 cannot quote again at length but each of the addresses to which reference has been made contains a touching reference to the fact that America's Fourth of July signalizes an accomplished fact, while the nation that offers the congratulations has for eight years fought a battle for a republic and has not yet won her victory. Deceived by the traditional officialism of the ruling clique, Japan has so far failed to see the enormous gulf that exists between her own centralized autocracy and the democratic modes of life of the Chinese masses. This perhaps is no wonder when representatives of western nations have so frequently misconceived China's essential democracy and have longed for some strong ruler to bring her the blessings of peace and order. Although this democracy is articulately held only by a comparative handful who have been educated, yet these few know and the dumb masses feel that it alone accords with the historic spirit of the Chinese race. And this fact has done for the United States what she could never have done for herself in making her the popular counterfoil to the bureaucratic and autocratic government of Japan.
The situation is one that imposes humility rather than self-glorification upon Americans. Our country will have a hard time living up to the role for which she has been cast. The difficulties are intellectual and moral as well as matters of practical judgment and tact in action. Have we the required fibre and virility? Or shall we once more fall between a clever commercialism on the one hand and a futile phrase-making idealism on the other? Above all it demands stamina and endurance of intelligence to think out a consistent and workable plan and to adhere to it.
So far as the Far East is concerned, the whole question of the attitude of the United States to the peace settlement, including the League of Nations, is how America's action is going to affect her freedom and force of action in behalf of the international democratic ideals she has professed. In China at least there is fear lest America in making the world safe for democracy be herself compromised by too close association with nations who in international matters are not as yet moved by democratic ideals. If the United States in working with the Allies was obliged to surrender at Paris her own convictions on the Shantung question, China prefers to trust a United States which is free from such commitments and entanglements. After all, democracy in international relations is not a matter of agencies but of aims and consequences. Under certain conditions, a United States which was going it alone would, so far as the Far East is concerned, be a much more effective instrument of true internationalism than a United States in a League the other members of which had no belief in American ideals. But League or no League, the task of the United States in the problems of the Far East is not an easy one. The first requisite is a definite and open policy, openly arrived at by discussion at home and made known to all the world. Then we need to be prepared to back it up in action. Idealism without intelligence and without forceful willingness to act will soon make us negligible in the Far East—and surrender its destinies to a militaristic imperialism. We can't, to take one minor illustration, go on loaning money freely to France if France is at the same time supporting the policies of Japan regarding the composition and functions of an International Consortium. This perhaps is but a hypothetical illustration. But it may well be questioned whether the United States has as yet awakened to the enormous power which is now in her hands. That which most impresses a visitor to the Far East is the extent of this power— accompanied by a query whether this same power is not largely being thrown away by reason of stupidity and ignorance.