China and the West

Dewey, John. The new leaven in Chinese politics [ID D28477].
To the student of political and social development, China presents a most exciting intellectual situation. He has read in books the account of the slow evolution of law and orderly governmental institutions. He finds in China an object lesson in what he has read. We take for granted the existence of government as an agency for enforcing justice between men and for protecting personal rights. We depend upon regular and orderly legal and judicial procedure to settle disputes as we take for granted the atmosphere we breathe. In China life goes on practically without such support and guarantees. And yet in the ordinary life of the people peace and order reign.
If you read the books written about China, you find the Chinese often spoken of as the 'most law-abiding people in the world'. Struck by this fact, the traveler often neglects to go behind it. He fails to note that this law-abidingness constantly shows itself in contempt for everything that we in the West associate with law, that it goes on largely without courts, without legal and judicial forms and officers; that, in fact, the Chinese regularly do what the West regards as the essence of lawlessness—enforce the law through private agencies and arrangements. In many things the one who is regarded as breaking the real law, the controlling custom, is the one who appeals to the 'law'—that is, to governmental agencies and officers. A few incidents of recent history may illustrate the point.
The Peking Government University students started the agitation last May which grew into that organized movement which in the end compelled the dismissal of some pro-Japanese members of the cabinet and forced the refusal to sign the peace treaty. The movement started with a procession. The parade passed by the house of an offensive member who was ordinarily referred to as 'traitor'. And the Chinese equivalent of the word traitor literally means thief-who-sells-his-country. In a fit of absent-mindedness the policeman on guard opened the gate into the compound. The leading students took this as a hint or an invitation. They rushed in. During the following scrimmage, the offender was beaten severely and his house was set afire.
This incident is now ancient history. What is not so well known is that public opinion compelled the release of the students who were arrested. To have tried and condemned them for crime would have had more serious consequences than the government dared face. The heads of the schools gave assurance the students would not engage in further disorder; and they were let go, nominally subject to summons later. But when in the autumn the government, having recovered its nerve somewhat, made a demand upon the heads of the schools to submit the students for trial, their action was regarded as a breach of faith. When the school officials replied that the students had not returned to their respective schools, nothing further happened. There was a general feeling that the summons for trial did not represent the real wish of the officials, but was taken because of pressure exercised by some vengeful person.
To western eyes, accustomed to the forms of regular hearings and trials, such a method seems lawless. In China, however, the moral sense of the community would have been shocked by a purely legal treatment. What in western law is compounded felony is frequently a virtue in China. The incident also illustrates the principle of corporate solidarity and responsibility which plays such a large part in Chinese consciousness. The school group to which the students belonged assumed liability for their future conduct, and gave guarantees for their proper behavior.
As the Peking students were the authors of the movement, they were regarded as its chief abettors. It was desirable for the militaristic reactionaries to discredit them. A meeting of a few actual students, together with some old students and some who intended entering the University, was planned. Resolutions had been prepared which stated that a few noisy, self-seeking students, anxious for notoriety, had fostered the whole movement, coercing their weaker fellows. The resolutions declared, in the alleged name of a thousand students, that the real student body was opposed to the whole agitation. The liberal students got wind of this meeting, entered with a rush, took the thirty dissenters prisoner, obtained from them a written statement of the instigation of the meeting by the reactionary clique, and then locked them up as a punishment. When they were released from confinement by the police, warrants were sworn out and the ringleaders of the invading liberal students were arrested. Great indignation was aroused by this act, which was regarded as highly unsportsmanlike—not playing the game. An educational leader, a returned student, said to me that officials had no business interfering in a matter that concerned only the students.
Yet this seeming absence of public law—this apparent lack of concern for the public interest in peace and orderly procedure— does not mean that opinion would support any individual in starting out to redress his own wrongs. It means that troubles of importance are regarded as between groups, and to be settled between them and by their own initiative.
It is easy to imagine the denunciation of lawlessness that a report of such acts may excite in clubs and editorial rooms. They are here related, however, neither to condemn nor to approve. They are illustrative incidents, fairly typical. They show that the entire legal and judicial background which we take for granted in the West is rudimentary in China. Law and justice, as they should be, are not deliberately challenged in such episodes. There is merely a recurrence to traditional methods of settling disputes. The incidents are also instructive because they suggest the underlying cause. There is no confidence in government, no trust in the honesty, impartiality or intelligence of the officials of the state. Families, villages, clans, guilds—every organized group—has more confidence in the willingness of an opposed group to come to some sort of reasonable settlement than it has in the good faith or the wisdom of the official group.
The following incident illustrates one reason for the lack of confidence in the government. One of the new liberal weeklies in Peking was a thorn in the side of the reactionary officials. Not that it was a political journal, but it was an organ of free discussion; it was connected through its editorial staff with the intellectual element in the Government University which the reactionaries feared, and it was serving as a model for starting similar Journals all over the country. The gendarmerie in Shanghai complained to the Provincial Military Governor in Nanking that the journal was creating unrest. Bolshevism has become the technical term in China as well as elsewhere for any criticism of authority. The Military Governor reported this statement to the Minister of War in Peking, who reported it to his colleague the Minister of Justice, who reported it to the local police, who took possession of the newspaper office and shut down the paper.
Note the official House That Jack Built, and the impossibility of locating responsibility anywhere in any way that would secure the shadow of legal redress. Vagueness, overlapping authority, and consequent evasion and shifting of responsibility are typical of inherited governmental methods. Back of the incident lies, of course, the fact that government in China is still largely personal—a matter of edicts, mandates, decrees, rather than of either common or statute law. If we in the West sometimes suffer from the extreme to which the separation of administrative from legislative and judicial powers has gone, a slight study of oriental methods will reveal the conditions which created the demand for that separation. A few days ago, for example, the Minister of Justice in the Peking Cabinet issued a decree that all printed matter whatsoever must be submitted to the police for censorship before publication. There was no crisis, political or military. There was no legislative enabling act. It suited his personal wishes and his factional plans. The order was calmly received with the comment that it would be obeyed in Peking, because the government controlled the Pekingese police, but no attention would be paid to it in the rest of China. In many cases, the Republic's writ does not run beyond the city walls of the capital.
It has been repeatedly pointed out that the acute problems of Chinese existence and reconstruction are due to the fact that methods which worked well enough in the past are now sharply challenged by the changes that have linked China up to the rest of the world. China faces a world that is differently organized from itself in almost every regard; a world, for example, that prizes the forms of justice even when it neglects its substance; a world in which governmental action is the source and standard of redress of wrongs and protection of rights. The habitual method of China, though it has accomplished a great measure of law-abidingness among the Chinese in their own affairs, appears from without as total absence of law, when foreign relations come under consideration.
This is true of China's relations to practically all foreign nations. But Japan lies closest and has the most numerous and varied contacts, and hence has the most sources of complaint. She has borrowed and improved the technique of other nations in making these causes of friction the basis for demands for all sorts of concessions and encroachments, to the constant bewilderment and growing resentment of China. In enforcing the boycott against Japan, for example, the student unions have frequently taken matters into their own hands. They have raided stores in which Japanese goods are sold, carried the stocks off and burned them. When these things are reported in Japan, there is no scrupulous care taken to say that the goods are always the property of Chinese dealers, and that the Japanese themselves are not interfered with.
A succession of such incidents skilfully handled by the Japanese government through the press has bred among the mass of the Japanese people a sincere belief that the Chinese people are lawless, irresponsible and aggressively bumptious in all their dealings with the Japanese, who, considering their provocations, have acted with great forbearance. Thus the Imperial Government assembles behind it the public opinion that is necessary to support a policy of aggression. The feeling that China is in a general state of lawlessness is used, for example, as a reason for keeping Shantung.
The matter is further complicated by the large measure of autonomy enjoyed by the provinces, which historically are principalities rather than provinces. A well-informed English resident writing shortly before the downfall of the Manchu dynasty said: 'Each of China's eighteen provinces is a complete state in itself. Each province has its own army and navy, its own system of taxation, and its own social customs. Only in connection with the salt trade and the navy do the provinces have to make concessions to one another under a modicum of Imperial control'. In spite of nominal changes, the situation is not essentially different today. The railways and telegraphs have brought about greater unity; hut on the other hand the system of military governors, one for each province, has in some respects increased the effective display of States' rights.
During the last few months there have been repeated rumors of the secession of the three Manchurian provinces, of the Southern provinces, and of the Yangtze provinces. These rumors, like the threats of governors here and there to withdraw when matters are not going to suit them, are largely part of the game for political prestige and power. But we know in the United States how our measure of independent action on the part of one state in the Union may complicate foreign relations. Given a greater measure of independence and a weak central state, it is easy to see how many cases of foreign friction may arise which give excuse for an aggressive policy.
Moreover, there is a constant temptation for an unscrupulous foreign power to carry on intrigues and bargains with provincial officials and politicians at the expense of the National State. The recent history of China is largely a history of this sort of foreign intervention, which naturally adds to dissension and confusion and weakens the national government still more. Whether justly or not, the Chinese believe that militaristic Japan has deliberately fomented every movement that would keep China divided. As I write, rumors are current of an attempt to restore the monarchy with Japanese backing.
The bearing of neglect of legal process and judicial forms upon the problem of extra-territoriality is obvious. At present, if commercial and other relations between China and foreign powers are to continue, some kind of extra-territoriality is a necessity, and this involves the existence of 'concessions'. Nevertheless, their existence is galling to national pride. Returned students have brought the idea and the word 'sovereignty' home with them. No word issues more trippingly from the lips.
Yet the existing system has its present advantages for the Chinese themselves. The concessions in Shanghai and Tientsin, which are under foreign jurisdiction, are veritable cities of refuge for Chinese liberals and for political malcontents. As censorship and suppression of newspapers have increased under the present reactionary Ministry of Justice, there is a marked tendency for newspapers to form corporations under nominal foreign ownership and with foreign charters in order to get legal protection. Progressive Chinese business houses flock to the concessions. At present, without the Chinese element they would be mere shells. It is said that 90 per cent of the population of the International Settlement in Shanghai is Chinese and that Chinese pay 80 per cent of its taxes. Tares proverbially grow with the wheat. Corrupt officials protect their funds from confiscation by keeping them in foreign banks. As you ride through the Tientsin concessions, you have pointed out to you the houses of various provincial governors and officials who have thoughtfully provided a place of safety against the inevitable, though postponed, tide of popular indignation.
A Chinese friend said to me that one of the next patriotic movements on the part of the Chinese would be a wholesale exodus from foreign concessions. Except for investors in foreign real estate, it will be amusing to watch when it occurs. The concessions will be left a mere shell. The foreign interest in the maintenance of concessions would completely disappear in this contingency were there some other way of maintaining consular jurisdiction.
I would not give the impression that nothing is going to change the legal situation. The contrary is the case. There is a competent law codification bureau, presided over by a Chinese scholar whose works on some aspects of European law are standard texts in foreign law schools. A modem system is building up. An effort is being made to secure well trained judges and to reform and standardize judicial procedure. The desire for the abolition of extra-territoriality is hastening the change. But it is one thing to introduce formal changes and another to change the habitudes of the people. Contempt for politics and disregard of governmental jurisdiction in adjusting social and commercial disputes will die hard.
It is to be doubted whether China will ever make the complete surrender to legalism and formalism that western nations have done. This may be one of the contributions of China to the world. There is little taste even among the advanced elements, for example, for a purely indirect and representative system of legislation and determination of policy. Repeatedly in the last few months popular opinion has taken things into its own hands and, by public assemblies and by circular telegrams, forced the policy °f the government in diplomatic matters. The personal touch and the immediate influence of popular will are needed. As compared with the West, the sphere of discretion will always be large in contrast with that of set forms. Western legalism will be short-circuited. Along with apathy on the part of the populace at large to political matters, there is extraordinary readiness to deal with such questions as a large number are interested in, without going through the intermediaries of political formality.
The liberals in the existing national Senate and House of Representatives make no pretense of attending meetings and trying to influence action by discussion and voting. They make a direct appeal to the country. And in effect this means appeal to a great variety of local organizations: provincial educational associations to reach scholars and students, industrial and mercantile guilds, chambers of commerce (whose powers are much larger than those of like bodies in our country), voluntary unions and societies, religious and other.
It is not at all impossible that, in its future evolution, China will depart widely from western constitutional and representative models and strike out a system combining direct expression of popular will by local group-organizations and guilds with a large measure of personal discretion in the hands of administrative officials as long as the latter give general satisfaction. Personal government by decrees, mandates and arbitrary seizures and imprisonments will give way. Its place will be taken by personal administration such as already exists in the railway, post office, customs, salt administration, etc., where the nature of the constructive work to be done furnishes standards and tests, rather than by formal legislation.
Roughly speaking, the visitor in China is likely to find himself in three successive stages. The first is impatience with irregularities, incompetence and corruptions, and a demand for immediate and sweeping reforms. Longer stay convinces him of the deep roots of many of the objectionable things, and gives him a new lesson in the meaning of the words 'evolution' and development'. Many foreigners get stranded in this stage. Under the guise of favoring natural and slow evolution, they become opponents of all things and of any development. They even oppose the spread of popular education, saying it will rob the Chinese of their traditional contentment, patience and docile industry, rendering them uneasy and insubordinate. In everything they point to the evils that may accompany a transitional stage of development. They throw their weight, for example, against every movement for the emancipation of women from a servile status. They enlarge upon the dignity and power some women enjoy within the household and expatiate upon the evils that will arise from a relaxation of present taboos, when neither the old code nor that existing in western countries will apply. Many western business men especially deplore the attempts of missionaries to introduce new ideas. But the visitor who does not get arrested in this second stage emerges where he no longer expects immediate sweeping changes, nor carps at the evils of the present in comparison with an idealized picture of the traditional past. Below the surface he sees the signs of an intellectual reawakening. He feels that while now the endeavors for a new life are scattered, yet they are so numerous and so genuine that in time they will accumulate and coalesce. He finds himself in sympathy with Young China. For Young China also passed through a state of optimism and belief in wholesale change; a subsequent stage of disillusionment and pessimism; and, in a third stage, has now settled down to constructive efforts along lines of education, industry and social reorganization.
In politics, Young China aims at the institution of government by and of law. It contemplates the abolition of personal government with its arbitrariness, corruption and incompetence. But it realizes that political development is mainly indirect; that it comes in consequence of the growth of science, industry and commerce, and of the new human relations and responsibilities they produce; that it springs from education, from the enlightenment of the people, and from special training in the knowledge and technical skill required in the administration of a modem state.
The more one sees, the more one is convinced that many of the worst evils of present political China are the result of pure ignorance. One realizes how the delicate and multifarious business of the modem state is dependent upon knowledge and habits of mind that have grown up slowly and that are now counted upon as a matter of course. China is only beginning to acquire this special experience and knowledge. Old officials brought up in the ancient traditions, and new officials brought up in no traditions at all, but who manage to force themselves into power in a period of political break-up, will gradually pass off the scene. At Present the older types of scholars, cultivated, experienced in the archaic tradition, are usually hesitant, if not supine. They are largely puppets in the hands of vigorous men who have found their way into politics from the army, or from the ranks of bandits; men without education, who know for a large part no law but that of their own appetite, and who lack both general education and education in the management of the complex affairs of the contemporary state.
But in the schools of the country, in the Student Movement, now grown politically self-conscious, are the forces making for a future politics of a different sort.