China and the West

Dewey, John. China's nightmare [ID D28479].
The world has been so satiated with extraordinary events in the last few years, that what would have been a miracle five years ago now hardly attracts attention. What a sensation would once have been created by an announcement that Russia was offering to return to China without compensation all Russian interest in the Chinese Eastern Railway, all mining and timber concessions in Manchuria or other Chinese territory; to renounce all extraterritorial rights as well as all further payments of the Boxer indemnity account! Make all the discount you wish on the ground that the offer comes from the Soviet government; and the transformation is still as extraordinary as if the Germans had without war offered France the voluntary return of Alsace-Lorraine and the return of the war indemnity of 1870. In many respects the proposal is even more sensational than that would have been; more indicative of the incredible levity of history. Twenty years ago no one doubted the intention of Russia to control the entire northern part of China and the Asiatic sea coast at least as far south as Tsingtao; and until Russia’s defeat by Japan few doubted the success of her plans.
Read almost any of the books about China written twenty years ago, and you will find that you have only to substitute Japan for Russia, in order to have a fairly accurate description of the situation of today, so far as its spirit is concerned. Geographical details vary, but the objects and general technique of exploitation are the same. Lord Beresford visited China on a commercial mission in 1898. His report is contained in his book on The Break-up of China. In it he says: 'I hardly ever made a suggestion to any prominent Chinese official which I thought might tend to the security of British trade and commerce, that I was not met with the question, ‘But what would Russia say to that? ' or words to that effect. The idea is gaining ground all over China that Great Britain is afraid of Russia.”
In the Willy-Nicky letters are found the congratulations of the Kaiser to the Tsar upon having established himself as the dominant power in Peking. In the biography of John Hay there is an account of the denials by Cassini, then Russian minister at Washington, of the report of demands made by Russia upon China which were at the expense of other nations as well as of China. The denials were positive. At the same time Hay, as Secretary of State, was in possession from three different capitals of transcripts of the demands. One might readily imagine that he was reading the diplomatic history of the Twenty-one Demands. Both the wholesale critics of Japan and the wholesale apologists for her would probably change their tone if they realized how closely copied after the Tsarism of Russia is the imperialism of Japan.
The imitative capacity of the Japanese is notorious. Is there anything surprising that Japan should have followed in the wake of Russia in that feature of foreign policy which is most vital to her—the control of China? I have not the slightest doubt that the great part of the militarists and bureaucrats who have dictated her Chinese policy sincerely believe, with the pattern of Russia always before their eyes, that they are conforming strictly to the proper models of western diplomacy. Wholesale bribery, secrecy, force and fraud were regular parts of the Oriental diplomacy of Russia. It is natural for Japanese officials to believe that the outcry from America or England against similar methods on the part of Japan, is purely hypocritical or else itself a part of the regular diplomatic game.
The more thoroughly the history of the international relations of China for the last twenty years is studied the more apparent is it that Japan has been the heir of Russian aims and methods as well as of, since the great war, Russian achievements. It was Russia that evolved the technique of conquest by railway and bank. She consolidated if she did not wholly originate the sphere of influence politics with its favoritism and its dog-in-the-manger tactics. Russia discovered the value of police boxes as a means of insinuating semi-military and semi-civil administrative control in territory over which her legitimate claims, stretched to the utmost, were purely economic. Many of the Twenty-one Demands are almost verbatim copies of prior Russian requests, such as the exclusive right to train the army, etc. Russia evolved to the uttermost the doctrine of military occupation as a means of protecting nationals. She posed as the protector of China against 'western' Powers, and prided herself (strangely enough with better reason and more success than Japan) upon understanding Chinese psychology, and knowing how to manage the Chinese. In the secret Cassini protocol made at St. Petersburg in 1896 with Li Hung Chang (the prototype of Chinese statesmen bought with foreign money) will be found the magna charta of subsequent Japanese diplomacy. It even includes a conditional provision for the Russian naval and military occupation of Kiaochou Bay.
In the earlier period of Chino-Russian-Japanese relations, that is up to the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, Japan could use in good faith the claim of self-defense in her dealings with China. For certainly Russia with her enormous undeveloped territory had much less excuse for aggression in Korea and northern China than had Japan. Moreover, every new aggressive step of Russia in China was followed at once by demands for compensating concessions and spheres by other Powers, especially by Great Britain and France. There is every reason for thinking that Germany's claim to Kiaochou was stimulated by Russia to give a colorable pretext to her claim for Port Arthur and Dalny, while the yielding of China in both these matters was immediately followed by demands from Great Britain in the Yangtze region and from France in the south.
This was the period which gave Beresford's book its title of Break-up though he himself was an ardent expositor of the doctrine of the Open Door. And it was this situation which enabled Japan in reasonable good faith to set herself up as the defender of the integrity and sovereignty of China against European aggression. Such feelings and claims have a remarkable historic inertia. There is nothing surprising in the fact that they still persist among the mass of the Japanese people, and supply the conditions which enable Japan to continue a policy of aggressive exploitation of China with popular support and sanction. There was a time when the Japanese had every reason to feel that their future destiny depended upon getting enough power to control China as the only sure way to keep China from falling into European hands. Times have changed; the sentiment of the Japanese people lags behind the change in facts and can still be exploited by the militarist party. And in the meantime (especially after the outbreak of the great war) Japan's own policy became less and less defensive and more and more flagrantly offensive.
If there had been in the United States an adequate knowledge of Russian diplomatic methods in their Oriental aspect and in their bearing upon Japan's fortunes and her Asiatic aims and methods, American gullibility would never have fallen an easy victim to Japan’s propaganda for western consumption. As it was, American ignorance secured almost universal approval for the Portsmouth Treaty with its 'supplementary clauses' which in spite of their innocent appearance meant that the settlement was really a truce concluded at the expense of China's rights in Manchuria. One foreign publicist in China is inclined to hold President Roosevelt responsible for China's international ills since 1905. He takes the ground that he ought to have insisted that since the war had been practically fought on Chinese territory, China should have been a party to the settlement, and that the peace conference was the one great opportunity for effective foreign protection of China against both aggressors. As a matter of fact, the actual outcome was certainly to make both Russia and Japan interested in trading with each other at China's expense. If it had not been for Great Britain's navy, it would doubtless have long ago led to a definite Russo-Japanese understanding regarding the division of northern China. But hindsight is proverbially easy, and it must be doubted whether President Roosevelt is to blame for a lack of foresight which no one else possessed at that date.
All this matter is by way of merely sketching the background of the next important epoch probable in Chinese foreign relations. It is not likely that China will accept the Soviet's offer in its present form. It is not probable the Allies will permit it even if China wanted to assume the risks of such a course. But none the less the offer symbolizes the opening of a new era. Even if the present Russian government is overthrown, any new government that takes its place will have every reason for coming to some good understanding with China. After all, their territories are contiguous for three thousand miles. Both countries are on a continental scale. Japan, when all is said and done, is an island, and the history of insular conquests on a continent afford no very good augury for Japan’s future success in Asia. The Siberian situation is still confused. But to all appearances the Japanese militarist party that favors a forward policy of adventure in Siberia is for the time being dominant. China can again chuckle about the Providence that always seems to come to her rescue when things are at the worst. The Russians are not pacifists; they are still expansive, and they have an enormous land hunger, due to the agrarian history of Russia. The deeper the Japanese get themselves involved in Siberia, the surer, in Chinese opinion, is her final checkmate, even though for some years she may get virtual possession of Eastern Siberia even up to Lake Baikal. There is much to be said for the belief that China's international future is to be decided in Siberia. The situation shifts rapidly. The idea, already broached privately, of an armed conflict between Japan on one side and Russia, Korea and China on the other, may have nothing in it. But whether Russia returns to monarchy or becomes an established republic, it seems a safe prophecy that China’s Russian relations will be the ultimate decisive factor in her international status. The diversion of Japan from China into Siberia probably marks the culmination of her influence in China. It is not improbable that the last five years will soon, as history counts years, be looked back upon as the years of China's nightmare.