China and the West

Dewey, John. What holds China back [ID D28478].
The longer one stays in China, the more the question of what holds China back impresses itself, and the more difficult it becomes to answer. There is 'if' in almost every answer which your Chinese friends give to the question; and the 'if' generally only restates the difficulty.
The remark heard most often is perhaps the most superficial of all. 'If we had a stable government we could do this and that'. But why isn't there a stable government? Its absence is much more of an effect than a cause. The country is still divided, both north and south having their own government, and each at loggerheads with the other. Yet every Chinese friend tells you the country is united although the government is divided, and everything you can learn confirms the statement. Why do not the people then enforce their feeling and will? Japanese intrigue and interference is an obvious answer. But again you are given an effect, a symptom, instead of a cause. Others tell you that the source of the difficulty is lack of ability and experience in organization. This answer goes further below the surface. But it still needs explanation. The Chinese have both experience and ability in some kinds of organization, as the long history of the guilds and of village self-government shows. Why should they not show at least as much capacity for organization as the Japanese, who have only recently emerged from feudalism with all the personal suspicions, jealousies and class division that feudalism opposes to organization? And no one who knows the Chinese can believe that the difficulty is intellectual, that the people have not the mental gifts required in successful organization.
To say (as is so often said) that the Chinese do not progress more systematically and rapidly because they are a conservative people is clearly repeating in other words the thing that needs to be explained. Conservative they doubtless are. But nevertheless their history is not a history of stagnation, of fixity, as we are falsely taught, but of social as well as dynastic changes. They have tried many experiments in their day. Centuries ago they had a statesman who induced the emperor to commit the kingdom to something as near to modern socialism as was possible considering the absence of steam and electricity. China has undergone as many barbarian invasions as any country in Europe. Its survival and its absorption of its invaders do not argue conservatism of the inert kind. No country whose conservatism came from sheer routine, from lack of imagination, from mental rigidity, could have maintained and extended its civilization as China has done. And experience shows that the Chinese are supple, pliant, accommodating and adaptive—neither rigid nor dull.
It may strike the western reader as simply funny, but more than one Chinese friend has assured me that it is the Japanese people who are really conservative. And they back up their assertion by evidence other than the way in which Japan has clung, through all historic vicissitudes, to a primitive theocracy. They point out, for example, that a thousand years ago the Japanese borrowed their present style of clothing and of household furnishings, of sitting and sleeping on mats, from China; that China has changed several times, moving constantly in the direction of practical utility, of ingenious adaptation of means to needs. The Chinese cuisine is another argument. It is doubtless the most extensive in the world in the variety of material employed for food, and also the most varied in its combinations. Academic analysis may despise arguments drawn from food, clothing, shelter and furnishings. But when one notes the variety and ingenuity of the processes and appliances used in daily life and in the crafts, one is certain that the Chinese mind is naturally observant and adaptive. But it seems unnecessary to labor the question. Many charges have been brought against the Chinese, but no one has ever accused them of stupidity. Their undoubted conservatism is something to be explained rather than an explanation of anything.
It may well be doubted whether there is any single key to the mystery. Certainly the present observer has no final solution to proffer. But there is one fact which I am quite sure must be taken into the reckoning and which counts for much. It is beyond question that many traits of the Chinese mind are the products of an extraordinary and long-continued density of populations. Psychologists have discovered, or possibly invented, a 'psychology of the crowd' to account for the way men act in masses, as a mob at a lynching bee. They have not inquired as to the effect upon the mind of constant living in close contact with large numbers, of continual living in a crowd. Years ago an enthusiastic American teacher of the Chinese in Honolulu told me that when the Chinese acquired Anglo-Saxon initiative they would be the greatest people in the world. I wonder whether even the Anglo-Saxons would have developed or retained initiative if they had lived for centuries under conditions that gave them no room to stir about, no relief from the unremitting surveillance of their fellows? Possibly they would then have acquired a habit of thinking of their 'face' before they thought of the thing to be done. Perhaps when they thought of a new thing they would have decided discretion and hesitation to be the better part of invention. If solitude or loneliness exists in China it is only among the monks who have retired into the mountain fastnesses; and until I have ocular evidence to the contrary I shall believe that even monks in China are sociable, agglutinative beings. Until the recent introduction of rapid transportation, very few Chinese ever enjoyed even the possibility of solitude that comes from being in a crowd of strangers. Imagine all elbow-room done away with, imagine millions of men living day by day, year by year, in the presence of the same persons (a very close presence at that), and new light may be shed upon the conservatism of the Chinese people.
An English author, long resident in China, wrote a book which, aside from a wealth of picturesque incident, gossip and rumor, was a long diatribe against Young China—against, that is, the Chinese who favor the introduction of western institutions, inventions, methods. His way of arguing was sufficiently simple. China suffers from an excess of population. Great masses live just on the edge of subsistence. A flood, a disabling pestilence, a season's bad weather, plunges millions over the edge. Equilibrium is then restored. But a long succession of prosperous years produces an over-population which finds vent in rebellion, civil war, a killing off of a very large number, and possibly the overthrow of a dynasty. Chinese history is and must be a succession, a cycle, of such episodes. Meantime Confucian ideas, ancestor worship, family and clan organization, transmit Chinese civilization intact. This, Young China would destroy, robbing China of its moral foundations. Since it cannot alter the basic facts of the struggle for existence, Young China therefore offers nothing of value to the country.
The logic is not close-knit; non sequiturs abound. But it is a good example of the way in which foreigners become infected with a belief that in China things must in the future be about as they have been in the past, and that efforts to make a change only result in making things worse. In my experience, most foreigners who have been long in China and who think at all, acquire this attitude in some degree. You hear solemn warnings on every hand that this and that cannot be done, although next day you learn from some Chinese friend that it is being done and the heavens have not fallen. Many are more Confucianist—in a kind of vague belief that Confucius contributed something without which China cannot endure—than the younger generation of Chinese. After a few years some foreigners find themselves hypnotized by the thickness, the compactness, of a civilization forced upon people living closely crowded together. They acquire the fear that if one strand is touched, the whole will unravel, and the belief that the safe thing is to leave things alone. Young American teachers and social workers, recently over from America, tell me that the older missionaries frequently admonish them against their innovating zeal, and tell them that as they grow older and wiser they will learn conservatism. Most of the older British residents are reported to have no sympathy with the Revolution, to mourn the departed days of monarchy, and to point to many increased present evils as proofs of their belief that as China has been, so she must be.
If China 'gets' so many foreigners who come with the opposed tradition of the initiative of Anglo-Saxons, then what must be the case with those brought up from infancy in thick, dense, inbred civilization? Live and let live is the response to crowded conditions. If things are fairly well off, then let well enough alone. If they are evil, endure them rather than run the risk of making them worse by interference. In western countries, the doctrine of laissez faire has flourished because a policy of hands off was thought to encourage individual energy and enterprise. In China it flourishes because any unusual energy or enterprise on the part of anybody may work untoward results. Not to rock the boat is wisdom the world over. In a crowded country, not organized along the lines of utilization of natural resources, any innovation is likely to disturb the balance of the social boat.
The reformer does not even meet sharp, clear-cut resistance. If he did, he might be stimulated to further effort. He simply is smothered. Stalling has become a fine art. At a recent national educational conference a returned student holding an official position moved that the public middle schools (corresponding to our high schools) be made co-educational. He was inspired by sound consideration. China suffers from lack of educated women. Funds are short. The effective thing is to admit girls to the schools already existing. But the proposition was a radical innovation. Yet it was not opposed. A resolution in favor was duly passed. But at the same time it was made subtly understood that this was done out of courtesy to the mover, and that no steps to carry the resolution into effect need be expected. This is the fate of many proposed social reforms. They are not fought, they are only swallowed. China does not stagnate, it absorbs. It takes up all the slack till there is no rope left with which to pull.
The weak points of a people, like those of an individual, are the defects of their qualities. Vices are not far removed from virtues; they are their reverse side. The Chinese believe themselves the politest people on earth. They are probably right in their belief. In comparison even the best of western manners often appear either crude or else overdone, affected. Nothing can exceed the amenity of the Japanese in personal intercourse. But they learned their etiquette as well as so much else from China, and it remains somewhat formal, a cultivated art. In China the ages have toned down and mellowed the forms of intercourse till they no longer seem forms. High and low are so easy and unconstrained in their bearing toward one another, that one is tempted, in spite of scientific authority, to believe in the inheritance by later generations of the manners acquired by previous generations. Cheerfulness and contentment amid the most trying conditions are a part of good manners. Yet there is none of that rigidity, to say nothing of glumness and fanaticism, which we ordinarily associate with stoicism or fatalism. There is no flourish of self-control which betrays that the self-control is maintained with difficulty. Fate is welcomed with a smile, perhaps a jest, not with a frown, nor yet with heroics. Such courtesy and cheerfulness are undoubted products of long-continued close face-to-face crowded existence. The unremitting impact of a thick civilization has impressed the folly of adding to the burdens of life by friction or repining. Politeness and cheerfulness are the lubricants by which the closeness and constancy of personal contacts are made endurable. Circumstances admit of but two alternatives: either ruthless competition, war to the bone, or an easygoing peace. Having chosen the latter way out, the Chinese have carried it to its logical conclusion.
Yet personal consideration for others in direct face-to-face intercourse is quite compatible with what in the western world would be regarded as unfeeling cruelty and lack of active aid to others. The other day in Peking a passing carriage knocked down a man in the street, and rolled by unheeding. The man was so badly injured that he was unable to rise. No passer-by made a move; all literally passed by on the other side, until some foreigners came to the rescue. A few months ago Mr. Baillie was set upon by bandits in Manchuria. The other persons present not only offered no aid, but they ran aside and shut their eyes so that they could not be called upon to testify. The further point of this incident lies in the fact that Mr. Baillie had taken poor and miserable persons from the more crowded parts of China to Manchuria where there was plenty of land, and by colonizing them had greatly improved their conditions. These men who closed their eyes that they might not know what was going on were men whom he had aided; they were personal friends.
This does not mean that Chinese habitual politeness is insincere. I have never heard the Chinese accused of hypocrisy, though I have heard of many bitter complaints of their unwillingness to carry things through. I have never seen anyone who did not regard genuine friendliness as one of the chief Chinese traits. But where there is a complete manifestation of the Malthusian theory of population, friendliness develops with great difficulty to the point of active effort to relieve suffering. Where further increase in population means increase in severity of the struggle for subsistence, aggressive benevolence is not likely to assume large proportions. On the contrary, when the cutting off of thousands by plague or flood or famine means more air to breathe and more land to cultivate for those who remain, stoic apathy is not hard to attain. A foreigner interested in the prevention of cruelty to animals after many discouragements approached with some hopefulness a Buddhist monk. He thought that the doctrine of universal pity would have prepared the way for sympathetic reception. But his message was coldly greeted. He was told that the animals, when they were abused, were justly suffering for the sins of some ancestor and that it was not for man to interfere. Such Buddhism only formulates the fatalism which is a general natural response to surroundings.
Most of the oriental traits of lack of active sympathy and relief which missionaries have cited as due to heathenism seem to have a simpler explanation. On the other hand, western philanthropy makes a great appeal. Missionaries and Y.M.C.A. workers took a large part of the burden of recent flood-relief work. The Chinese in the devastated region who had remained calmly impervious to prior preaching, were so impressed with the exhibition of kindness that was gratuitous that they flocked into the churches. The latter had to sift and choose very carefully to keep from being themselves flooded. And this result was not a 'lively expectation of favors to come'. The population had been deeply touched by the unprecedented display of sympathy and help. I was told on good authority that the Governor of Shansi, the most respected provincial governor in China, said that up to the time of the outbreak of bubonic plague, he had thought that western civilization was good only for battleships and machinery. But the unpaid devotion of physicians, teachers and missionaries, at the risk of their own lives, had convinced him that there was another side to western civilization.
The incidents of personal disregard of others have the same spring as the absence of organized relief. To do anything is to assume a responsibility. To have helped the man knocked down would have done more than involve a loss of time. Those helping would have implicated themselves with the authorities. They might be accused of complicity. Mind your own business, don't interfere, leave things to those whose express business it is to look after them, is the rule of living. Don't make a nuisance of yourself by meddlesomeness, to say nothing of getting yourself into incalculable trouble by leaving the beaten track. Practical in-difference in matters that do not directly concern one is but the obverse side of exquisite consideration in immediate personal relations. Where the latter are concerned everything suggests the superior claims of an immediate smoothing over of things rather than an adjustment on the basis of actual objective consequences. Effect on 'face' is more significant than consequences upon outer facts. It is contrary to the proprieties, for instance, for a government school to accept private gifts. It reflects upon the government, which then loses 'face'. The head of a Peking school recently said he would accept gifts, that he was willing to sacrifice his 'face' to the good of his school and the country. This was a more genuine sacrifice than westerners might believe.
When people live close together and cannot get away from one another, appearances, that is to say the impression made upon others, become as important as the realities, if not more so. The ulterior consequences of, let us say, a diplomatic transaction with a foreign nation seem of less consequence than the immediate conduct of negotiations in such a way as to avoid present trouble and graciously to observe all the proprieties. When evasion and delay no longer suffice, it is better to surrender and to permit the other side to be rude and brusque than to lose 'face' one's self. The Japanese knowledge of this trait accounts very considerably for their diplomatic methods with China. It is known as the policy of the strong hand. Concede anything to the Chinese and they think you are afraid of them, and they at once become presumptuous and demand more—this is a commonplace in Japanese newspaper discussion of Chinese affairs. So far as immediate dealings with officials are concerned, the Japanese seem to have decided wisely as to the methods which give results. What they failed to count upon was the immense backwash of resentment among the people at large.
In fine, the crowded population has bred those habits of mind, which, as the common saying goes, make the Chinese individually so companionably agreeable and attractive and collectively so exasperating to the outsider. Innovation, experimentation, get automatically discouraged, not from lack of intelligence, but because intelligence is too keenly aware of the mistakes that may result, the trouble that may arise. 'Keep out of trouble' comes to be the guiding principle. In an evening pleasantly spent with ex-President Sun Yat-sen, he set forth his theory as to the slow change of China as compared with the rapid advance of Japan. It seems some old Chinese sage once said, 'To know is easy; to act is difficult'. The Chinese had taken this adage to heart, so Mr. Sun explained. They did not act because they were afraid of making mistakes; they wanted to be guaranteed in advance against any failure or serious trouble. The Japanese, on the other hand, realized that action was much easier than knowing; they went ahead and did things without minding mistakes and failures, trusting to a net balance on the side of achievement. I am inclined to think the old sage was influential because his teaching was reinforced by effects of the ever-close and ever-thick environment.
Only the superficial think that to give the causes of an unfortunate state of affairs is to excuse them. Any state of affairs has to be judged on the basis of the consequences it produces, not on the basis of the causes that explain its existence. But if the causes are those described, they cannot be remedied by expostulation, exhortation and preaching. A change of conditions, an alteration of the environment, is needed. This cannot take place by reducing the population, although part of Young China is now shocking archaic China by preaching birth-control. An introduction of modem industrial methods is the only thing that will profoundly affect the environment. Utilizing energy and resources now untouched will produce an effect that will be the same as an enlargement of the environment. Mining, railways and manufacturing based upon China's wealth of unused resources will give a new outlet for energies that now cannot be used without the risk of causing 'trouble'. The impersonal and indirect effects of modern production and commerce will create habits that will lessen the importance of appearances and 'face', and increase the importance of objective consequences of facts. A way will be discovered with the increase of wealth and of constructive appliances to turn personal friendliness, unfailing amiability and good-humor into general channels of social service.