China and the West

Dewey, John. Militarism in China [ID D28471].
"The effect of the decision of the Allies at the Peace Conference to guarantee the claims of Japan strengthens the hold of the militarist party upon the Chinese government and also increases the hold which a neighboring militarist country has upon the determination of Chinese policies." This sentence, with slight verbal changes, can be found over and over again in every liberal paper in China. It comes with a shock to an American who has learned to identify China with inveterate pacifism, and who, under the tutelage of Mr. Roosevelt, believes that Chinafication and supine pacifism are synonymous. China a militarist country? Impossible!
A few statistics may be cited. At the present time, the Chinese government is supporting an army of a million and three hundred thousand at the lowest estimate. And China does not have conscription. This is a paid, standing, professional army. And China sent no troops to Europe and trained no troops to go there. The nearest approach to the war zone was connected with the propaganda for intervention in Siberia after the Russian debacle. Nor is the civil war in China anything more than nominal at present, and in any case the great mass of soldiers never had part in it. From the standpoint of the size of its standing army, then, China is not "Chinafied."
The budget of China tells the same story. The central government spent for ordinary military purposes last year two hundred and ten millions of dollars and for 'extraordinary' purposes thirty millions more. Percentages are even more eloquent. This amount is fifty per cent of the entire annual expenditures of the government. And since the total income of the nation, barring loans, is but three hundred and seventy millions, this means that sixty-five per cent of the total state income goes to the army. Figuring still another way, leaving payments for interest on the national debt out of account, China spent almost twice as much for military purposes as for all other ends put together, fifty times as much as she spent, from the side of the central government, for schools and six times as much as the central government and all the provinces together spent for public education. Moreover China is now spending, in the eighth year of the republic, much more than twice as much on the army as was spent in the last year of the Manchu dynasty. These facts do not point to undue addiction to pacifism.
Still, something more than large military expenses are needed to justify calling a government militaristic. For the term implies a subordination of civil to military control in political affairs generally. This is a matter which cannot be settled by statistics; but it is this matter even more than the size and expense of the army which is referred to in the sentence quoted at the beginning of the article. This militarism goes back to the earlier days of the republic, especially to the ambitions of Yuan Shih-kai. It is hardly a coincidence that the leaders in present Chinese policies are former lieutenants and disciples of the 'strong man' who attempted to convert the fruits of the revolution into a family perquisite of a new imperial dynasty. But in its present form it dates actively from two years ago, and particularly from conditions connected with China's declaration of war against Germany. Quite likely the full history of this episode cannot as yet be written by any one. But even a tyro in Chinese history like the present writer may report certain facts which could not be stated and which were not stated in the West—and in the Far East only under the breath—when the war was still on. And the outstanding fact with respect to the growth of militarism is that its present swollen fortunes date from the circumstances under which China entered the war on the side of the Allies. And if this fact is not brought out in books dealing with the recent years of Chinese history it is partly because the writers were so interested in the righteous cause of the Allies that they hardly allowed themselves to perceive the fact, and partly because to have dwelt upon this fact while the war was still going on would have been pro-German in effect, to say nothing of subjecting writers to the charge of promoting German intrigue.
One does not have to go far to find explanations for the opposition in China to entering the war. There existed every reason that operated to bring about the delay on the part of the United States—except the presence of a large population of German descent—and there was in addition a genuine fear of German victory and subsequent German reprisals of whose nature China had already had sufficient warning. Moreover the German nationals in China were upon the whole more popular personally than those of any other country unless perhaps those of the United States. For however arrogant Germany was as a nation, Germans taken individually were sufficiently bent on successful business to be unassuming, friendly, and attentive to native wishes and customs. Against all the reasons for not declaring war against Germany there were in fact but two intrinsic reasons for so doing. A portion of the genuinely liberal and republican sentiment of China was truly convinced after the United States entered the war that the war was between democracy and autocracy; between a new, just, international order which would guarantee the rights of weak nations, and the old, rapacious, nationalistic imperialism. Thus the historic humanitarian idealism of China actually urged liberal China into the war. Self-interest pointed in the same direction, for participation in the war would give China representation at the peace board, permit her to present her claims for the restoration of Shantung, and in general enable her to start even as a partner in the new international ordering of diplomacy which so many, besides the Chinese, ardently believed in, only two years ago. Immediately after the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, China followed, the Cabinet and Parliament acting in unison. This was done in direct response to the invitation of President Wilson and China was the first nation to make a favorable response.
Then followed weeks and months of intrigue before China on August 14th finally declared war against Germany. What took place during those months was, first, the displacement of the American auspices evident in a severance of relations early in February by Japanese auspices; and, secondly, the struggle between the Premier, Tuan Chi-jui, and Parliament—a struggle ending in the forced dissolution of Parliament and in the outbreak of the still unhealed civil strife between the North and the South. The extent of the diplomatic defeat of the United States by Japan is seen in the fact that on June 7th a warning was communicated to China from the United States that the entrance of China into war was a 'secondary consideration' compared with the reestablishment of a tranquil and united China, while on June 12th a mandate was issued at the dictation of military leaders and with the approval of the Japanese legal adviser dissolving Parliament. The immediate outcome was the farcical restoration for ten days of the Manchu boy Emperor. The final outcome was the ousting of President Li, and the defeat, through the coerced dissolution of Parliament, of Constitutionalism, and the beginnings of a civil war which in turn played into the hands of the militaristic cliques.
For the Premier was then, as he is still though now out of political office, the head of the militarist, anti-constitutional and anti-parliamentary faction. The liberal Parliament, which, whatever its defects, was still devoted to republican constitutionalism, grew more and more lukewarm in the cause of breaking irreparably with Germany. Ready to follow promptly in the wake of the United States when American and democratic prestige seemed to be uppermost, it hesitated when diplomatic leadership went over to the Japanese, and when it came to believe that the Cabinet was not thinking so much of the defeat of Germany as of an excuse for building up an army and a military regime which would insure their own continued power.
By one of the ironies of fate, the militarist and anti-democratic factions became the professed spokesmen of the Allies, and a constitutionally inclined Parliament was put in the position of being pro-German. The wheat and the tares were so mixed that even the liberally minded foreign press, tired of the delay and intriguing, welcomed the 'strong' action of Tuan Chi-jui in dissolving Parliament simply because it hastened the day when China was officially arrayed with the Allies and when German commercial interests would get a hard if not fatal blow in the Far East. When one sees how wrong was foreign liberal sentiment— with a few notable exceptions—in the case of the Yuan Shih-kai adventure in imperialism and again how wrong it was in the inception of the regime they are now all cursing, in spite in both cases of the warnings of liberal native Chinese thought, one receives a marked lesson in the extent to which Chinese events have been interpreted to the world in the light of supposed foreign interests, and how little consideration has been given to the actual effect of the events in question upon the development and destiny of China itself. One sometimes wonders that the Chinese have retained any faith in the political intelligence of the foreign interpreter of her contemporary history.
At present the militaristic faction whose power was confirmed by the happenings of the summer of 1917 is still in control of the government. There is no doubt that all its members are patriotic enough to have welcomed the restoration of Shantung. But still human nature is human nature, and they have also welcomed the demonstration offered at Paris that might still makes right in the case of weak nations, so that in a strange and subtle way the diplomatic victory of Japan in particular and of imperialism in general has been a vindication of their own anti-democratic and militaristic policy. If the humanitarian international and democratic ideals profusely proclaimed in the war had been realized at Paris, no observer in China doubts that a vast domestic political realignment would already have taken place. The demonstration that national self-interest was on the side of the democracies of the world would have had an irresistible reflex effect upon domestic policies. And few doubt that the realization of this fact was, in addition to the concrete economic advantages at stake in Shantung, one of the reasons why Japan was so insistent at Paris. While her newspapers exaggerated in saying that her national existence was involved in securing a diplomatic victory, the exaggeration covered the fact that her diplomatic defeat, following upon the collapse of autocratic Germany, would have ended for the time being the prestige of militarism in the Far East, and compelled a reconsideration of home policies in China and of foreign policy in Japan. This moral reverberation seems to have been completely ignored at Paris and it may be doubted whether it is receiving the attention it deserves in Washington.
The specific signs of the continuance of the militarist regime in China are many. In the provinces the Tuchuns, military governors, still override civil governors and interests and sacrifice the crying need for education and better transportation to the pelf and power that go with command of a large number of troops. In remote provinces they encourage the growth of opium either for direct revenue or for levying hardly disguised blackmail. They discourage the development of natural resources in mines and manufacturing because their cohorts give them an effective power to demand a large interest in the business. In spite of the universal desire for reconciliation between the North and South, the militarists on both sides (and it would be a great mistake to think they are confined to the North) block all final settlement. The last few weeks have seen the beginnings of a mysterious adventure in Mongolia and an attempt of a Tuchun to obtain a virtual dictatorship of the three Manchurian provinces. But, especially, it is militarist control which keeps China in a condition that invites and rewards foreign intrigue and secret unacknowledged interventions.
No observer thinks that the present condition can last a great while longer. The equilibrium is too uncertain. No sensible person attempts to prophesy what the nature of the change will be when it comes. But if the reader will return to the statistics given early in the article he will note that at present the expenses of China exceed its available income by one hundred and ten millions a year. This means, of course, borrowing money—and when China borrows money she borrows it from some foreign nation by pledging some definite asset. In other words, cut down the army one-half and China's accounts balance. Continue the present army, and the responsibility lies with some foreign nation or group of nations through the loans it—or they—are willing to make for an army which is not and will not be a source of strength to China abroad, and which is eating up China at home. In the case of the continuation of China's militarism, the economic interpretation of history is more than ordinarily obvious. Hence it is hardly prophecy to say that what happens next in China will be determined by financial considerations, and that the decision is in the hands of those who have the power to control the making of loans. As long, however, as some one nation can serve its own interests by making loans, the situation cannot be adequately met on the part of other nations by merely a laissez-faire policy of declining to make loans. Something positive is needed.