China and the West

Dewey, John. The sequel of the student revolt [ID D28475].
As I write, in late November, the Sino-Japanese fracas in Foo¬chow (in which several Chinese students lost their lives and in consequence of which the Japanese landed marines who have stationed themselves in the Chinese city as well as in the foreign concession), is inflaming public feeling in China as it has not been stirred since last May. The students are again engaging in public demonstrations, and are joining with Chinese Chambers of Commerce in demanding that the people cease all social and economic intercourse with the Japanese until the latter change their course. The waning boycott is revived. It is demanded that the government declare a policy of economic non-intercourse and an embargo on imports and exports, until Japan has radically altered its policies. It is impossible to forecast the outcome. Pessimists declare that Japan is taking advantage of the situation to bring Fukien directly within her sphere of influence—an intention expressed in the Twenty-one Demands, but temporarily held in abeyance.
There are no optimists in China in the extreme sense, but the more hopeful assert that in the present state of affairs, with the Shantung question unsettled, the Consortium in its bearing upon Manchuria under discussion, and with an acute Siberian trouble on hand, the Japanese government is not looking for more trouble—especially with the eyes of the world in general upon it, and those of the American Senate in particular. Pessimists counter with the remark that it is precisely the growing influence and prestige of the United States in China that has forced the hand of the Japanese militarist expansionists to take an aggressive step, and face the world with a fait accompli; that Japan will make use of the difficulty to demand that the Chinese government put a stop, once for all, to the boycott movement; that Japanese troops, once having obtained a footing, will never be withdrawn, and that Fukien is now to go the way of Manchuria and Shantung.
Perhaps the most sinister feature is the semi-official report from Tokyo that the disturbance was deliberately started by the Chinese in order to force the Japanese to land troops, and thereby increase the prejudice against them now existing throughout the world. Official reports from the American consulate agree with Chinese reports that unarmed Chinese students were attacked by armed Japanese and Formosans under conditions which give an appearance of a planned and organized movement with at least the connivance of local Japanese authorities. Judging from the past, the chief outcome will not be immediately to establish Japan in the Province of Fukien, but to strengthen her hands in other controversies by injecting an element to be reckoned with in making a 'compromise'. Such is Oriental diplomacy. The gathering, as I write, of ten thousand Pekingese students for a demonstration, after a period of quiescence, gives a good opportunity to take stock of what the Student Movement has accomplished in the six months of its existence. As an immediate political movement it has accomplished nothing beyond preventing the signing of the Peace Treaty by China. The reasons for the relative political failure are not hard to see in retrospect, however difficult it was to perceive them in the excitement and stir of last May and June. The youth and inexperience of the students; the fear of some excess which would undo what had been effected; the fear in Peking, where the movement began, that government officials (who regarded the movement not as patriotic but as a pestilential disturbance headed toward Bolshevism) would make demonstrations an excuse for abolishing the University and the Higher Schools that are the centres of liberal thought; the difficulty in maintaining continuous organized cooperation with the mercantile guilds; the natural waning of enthusiasm when the crisis was past—all these things entered in.
But it would be a great mistake to think the movement died. The active current was diverted from breaking against the political and militaristic dam. It was drawn into a multitude of side streams and is now irrigating the intellectual and industrial soil of China. In Canton and Foochow the economic boycott has been active; in Tientsin, the political ferment has retained its vitality. Otherwise the students' organizations have gone into popular education, social and philanthropic service and vigorous intellectual discussion. China has never been anything but apathetic towards governmental questions. The Student Revolt marked a temporary exception only in appearance. The hopelessness of the political muddle, with corrupt officials and provincial military governors in real control, is enough to turn the youth away from direct politics. In addition a universal feeling operates that the comparative failure of the Revolution is due to the fact that political change far outran intellectual and moral preparation; that political revolution was formal and external; that an intellectual revolution is required before the nominal governmental revolution can be cashed in. Patriotism in China has centered about the maintenance of the existence of the nation against external aggression. The Student Revolt holds that national existence can best be secured by building up China from within, by spreading a democratic education, raising the standard of living, improving industries and relieving poverty.
The external phase of the movement centres in the creation of new schools supported and taught by the students, schools for children and adults; popular lectures and direct 'social service' movements; cooperation with shops to supply technical advice and expert assistance in improving old processes and introducing new arts. These activities protect the intellectual movement in getting away from all practical affairs, in getting away from politics, and guarantee it against becoming a cultural and literary side-show.
What is termed the literary revolution was under way before the Student Revolt. It aimed at a reform of the language used in books, magazines, newspapers, and public discussion. The outsider will jump to the conclusion that this means an attempt to encourage a phonetic substitute for ideographic characters. Not at all. There is a movement to supplement ideographs with phonetic signs to show their pronunciation, the aim being quite as much to standardize pronunciation as to make it easier to learn to read. But this movement arouses no such interest and excitement as the literary revolution. The latter is an attempt to make the spoken language the standard language for print. Literary Chinese is as far away from the vernacular as Latin is from English, perhaps further. It is the speech of two thousand years ago, adorned and frozen. To learn it is to learn another language. The reformers were actuated by the practical impossibility of making education really universal when in addition to the difficulties of mastering the ideographs, children in the elementary schools are compelled to get their education in terms of a foreign language. They are actuated even more by the belief that it was not possible to develop a literature which shall express the life of today unless the spoken language, the language of the people, is used. Apart from employing and enriching the vulgar tongue, it is not possible to develop general discussion of the issues of today, social, moral, economic.
Fortunately the new movement was 'advertised by its loving enemies'. The literary classicists saw in it the deathblow to the old moral classics, upon which China was built. They argued that the history of China is the history of its literary classics. Its unity resides in acceptance of the moral traditions they embody. To neglect them is to destroy China. The fight merged into one between conservatives and liberals in general, between the representatives of the old traditions and the representatives of western ideas and democratic institutions. Young China rallied as one man to the support of the literary revolution. It is stated that whereas two years ago there were but one or two tentative journals in the vulgar tongue, today there are over three hundred. Since last May the students have started score upon score of journals, all in the spoken tongue and all discussing matters in words that can be understood by the common man. In the columns of one of the older Chinese dailies in Peking there has lately been a discussion carried on by voluntary correspondents about a single particle that is used freely in colloquial speech—a discussion already running into ten thousands of words.
Those who know what the change from a learned language to the vernacular meant for the transition from medieval to modem Europe will not despise this linguistic sign of social change. It is more important by far than the adoption of a new constitution. Conservatism in China is not native or natural. It is largely the product of an inelastic system of memoriter education. This education has its roots in the use of a dead language as the medium of instruction. A national education conference held in October last passed a resolution in favor of having all text-books hereafter composed in the colloquial language. After this course has been followed for a generation, the judicious historian may see in it an event of greater importance than the downfall of the Manchu dynasty.
According to published summaries, social questions are uppermost in the new press. Eloquent testimony to the new-found unity of the world is seen in the amount of discussion devoted to economics and labor questions, which as yet do not exist in any acute form in China itself. Although Marx is hardly more pertinent to the present industrial situation in China than Plato, he is translated and much discussed. All the new 'isms are discussed. Ideal anarchism has many followers partly because of the historic Chinese contempt for government, partly because of the influence of French returned students who came in contact with communistic ideas in Paris. A friend who made a careful study of some fifty of the students' papers says that their first trait is the question mark, and the second is the demand for complete freedom of speech in order that answers may be found for the questions.
In a country where belief has been both authoritatively dogmatic and complacent, the rage for questioning is the omen of a new epoch. More than westerners realize, the interest of the Orient in the west has centered in the material progress of Europe and America, in machines for industry and war. There was no belief that the west was superior in other respects. Only within the last year or two has the idea become general that western ideas and modes of thought are more important than western battle-ships and steam-engines. This belief is concentrated in the intellectual side of the Student Movement, though it shows itself not in any great zeal for western ideas, as such, but in a desire for such knowledge of them as will facilitate discussion and criticism of typical Chinese creeds and institutions. One incident out of a multitude must suffice to show that the demand for freedom of thought and speech has a definite practical significance. China took over from Japan the law for assemblies which Japan had taken over from Germany. A discussion club applied to the Peking police authorities for a permit, stating that the object was consideration of the newer currents of world thought. The authorities refused the permit on the ground that newer currents must mean Bolshevism, anarchism and communism and that consideration of such topics was dangerous.
As is always the case, official opposition stimulates the movement of ideas. The menace of autocracy from within and without gives edge and fire to the hunger for new ideas. The eagerness grows for knowledge of the thought of liberal western countries in just the degree in which the powers near at hand in Tokyo and Peking seem to symbolize an intellectual creed which the world has outgrown. The more the so-called political revolution exhibits itself as a failure, the more active is the demand for an intellectual revolution which will make some future political revolution a reality. The thing that time makes stand out most in the Student Revolt is its spontaneity. The students met discouragement on all sides. Even their teachers and advisers among the returned students from America were inclined at first to wet-blanket their ardor. Its spontaneity is the proof of its genuine and inevitable nature. When most political in its outward expression, it was not a political movement. It was the manifestation of a new consciousness, an intellectual awakening in the young men and young women who through their schooling had been aroused to the necessity of a new order of belief, a new method of thinking. The movement is secure no matter how much its outward forms may alter or crumble.