China and the West

Dewey, John. Shantung again [ID D28489].
Our last three weeks in China were spent in the province of Shantung. A year and a half had elapsed since our previous visit. Then it was the dead of winter; this time the heat of midsummer reigned. The social atmospheric changes were as great as the climatic. During the earlier period, Tsinan was under martial law, and militarism was literally at bayonets' points with the students' movement whose revolt was at its height. The Anfuites were in control at the national capital, and in the province. Even educational lectures were suspect. The provincial officials telegraphed the authorities at Peking to prevent our visit, as it would surely cause disturbance. The message never reached us, and we were in Tsinan before we even learned how dangerous was the visit. The prevailing excitement immediately revealed that something was up; newspapermen and assemblymen who were fighting the militaristic and pro-Japanese officials, provided an unusually warm welcome—and so did the officials. Soldiers lined the streets at intervals of twenty feet. The yard of the Provincial Assembly Hall was filled with companies of soldiers: machine guns were trained upon the building—all for fear that the students, then on strike as protest against the closing of their headquarters, might demonstrate in force. The chief of police occupied the position on the platform usually taken by an educational official.
This time everything was as quiet as in America when a teachers' institute is in progress. Only the ordinary number of armed policemen were in the streets. The provincial assemblymen were still engaged in fighting the provincial governor, but the struggle was a peaceful one; not a single soldier invaded the assembly hall. The present struggle is indicative of the political situation in China. The financial commissioner of the province was a Shantung man. As such he interested himself in protecting the people of the province by keeping expenditures confined to legitimate purposes. Since the office of provincial governor is prized because it is the shortest and quickest road to becoming a multi-millionaire, the governor removed the obnoxious treasurer-auditor. Hence the conflict with the provincial legislature. I call it characteristic of the present situation because while militarism is still rampant, the people of China are now learning the old lesson that political control goes with control of the public purse, and that soldiers in China are an effect as well as a cause of lack of legislative control of public funds. As this lesson is learned, the political development of China will begin to run parallel to the struggle for representative government in the western world. 'Republicanism' is slowly passing from an aspiration and a magic phrase to a matter of business.
Japanese relations as well as the domestic situation have assumed a much more tranquil aspect in the intervening year and a half. Direct acts of aggression have practically ceased, and the 'invasion' has now taken the form of a steady economic peaceful penetration. Provocative incidents still occur. For example, the governor was requested by the Japanese local authorities to forbid students' meetings and demonstrations on May 7th—the day of National Shame in commemoration of the signing of the Twenty- one Demands. The object was to provoke the students to some overt anti-Japanese move. But the order was passed on from the governor to the commissioner of education, from the commissioner to the principals, from them to the students—some time on the day after the anniversary. The meetings were held, and everything passed off peacefully. Again, on the spring holiday which is national tree-planting day, by some coincidence the garrison of Japanese soldiers in Tsinan appeared for manoeuvres on the same hill that had been selected by the students as the spot for planting trees. But the students are well organized; in this case the bull was educated to ignore the red rag however flaming, and the presumably desired provocation did not occur. But while such incidents still occur, the earlier outrages of arbitrary arrest and torture have ceased. In the main they are replaced by a conciliatory policy, so it is fair to presume that such incidents as occur are due to local bumptious Japanese who dislike the changed policy towards the Chinese. The change also affects foreigners in the province. There used to be more or less complaint about the brusque way in which passport regulations were enforced for travellers to Tsing Tao. Now a suave official, whose mouth might be a store-house for the provincial butter, asks if you are provided with one, and then informs you that since you are an American, it is not necessary to produce it. This trivial episode is characteristic of the way in which the traveller is now received, a way which is like the courtesy so uniformly found in Japan proper, instead of the rudeness which up to a short time ago reminded the visitor to Japanese possessions on the continent that he was an intruder, there only by the ungracious grace of the Japanese.
In the residential part of Tsing Tao as distinct from the industrial part, the impressions gained are of Germany rather than of Japan. And whatever one’s opinions of the origin and aims of German possession, one has to admit that she did a good job while in control. There is no part of the Far East so solidly and attractively built as this city which the Germans, in a few years, turned from a dirty fishing village of mud huts into the most cleanly city of China and into a port of enormous commercial potentialities. Here too the change of spirit on the part of the Japanese is evident. The whole outward aspect of things is clearly intended to minimize military occupation and emphasize civil administration. Pains are taken to attract foreign guests to a pleasant summer resort, and permanent foreign residents no longer complain of inquisitorial visits and vexatious interference, but only of the appalling amount of red tape that has to be unwound to get through any official business, such as a lease or paying taxes. It is, however, significant of the tenor of our Bryan period of Far Eastern diplomacy that old American residents have never received compensation for the systematic looting done by Japanese soldiers when they took possession, although British citizens have been attended to.
It cannot be truthfully said that the more conciliatory policy on the part of Japan has affected Chinese feeling or opinion. It would be enormously instructive to discover in full detail just why so little bitterness is felt toward prior German occupation and so much toward present Japanese control. The Japanese regard the contrast as part of the forward disposition of the Chinese people who characteristically decline to recognize their true friends. Idealization of a past that is done with, in contrast with a present that is acute, may have something to do with it. The friendly and tactful quality of German intercourse certainly had something to do with it also. So has the fact that German merchants mostly confined themselves to foreign trade while Japanese settlers are engaging in all kinds of retail trade, and, what is more serious, are getting hold of land. The fact counts also that the Shantung railway under German control was a private enterprise which freely used Chinese help and guards, while now it is a Japanese governmental enterprise with no use for Chinese except as coolie laborers. But I do not think that all these factors put together weigh in comparison with the fact that German possession seemed only one incident in a series of foreign aggressions which had to be dealt with as best they might, while Japanese control is a vast overshadowing threat of an engulfment which may become complete at any moment. Hence the depth and intensity of the feeling aroused.
As compared with a year and a half ago, immediate complaints now centre about the opium affair, and the furnishing of weapons to bandits and otherwise encouraging them. The establishment of a government opium monopoly in Tsing Tao is an officially acknowledged fact, not a piece of rumor. Official details are naturally not easy to get. It is known however that the business is handled by a Chinese, one Liu Tze Shan by name; that about two million and a half ounces a year are imported, and that the concessionaire pays two dollars an ounce to the imperial ad-ministration, so that the opium and morphine trade yields about five million a year toward the expenses of occupation. So far it may be said that Japan is only following British and French precedents in south China. But there is at least this difference. Hong Kong and Indo-China are actually under foreign sovereignty. The Chinese flag still flies over the Tsing Tao custom house, and regular duties are paid on all goods which go into the interior. Opium is of course contraband. It would not do to have it appear on the manifest of imports. So it is shipped in, labelled 'military stores', and is thus exempt from examination. It is also universally believed that aside from merchants who carry the stores as part of their luggage, the military railway guards act as distributing agents through the interior.
Definite facts about the distribution of arms to bandits are even harder to get at. One has to rely on what is generally stated by Chinese and foreigners alike. The objective fact is that the Japanese railway guards are sufficient to protect the zone, and that during German occupation even with Chinese guards the zone was entirely peaceful. Since then it has been much disturbed, sometimes to the extent of compelling the evacuation of whole villages. This state of things is of course impossible without the connivance of Japanese authorities. Making the waters troubled in order to fish in them is a policy which has good—or bad—precedents in plenty in Manchuria. Circumstantial stories tell of renting by the night of revolvers by Japanese soldiers, as well as of the direct sale of guns and ammunition—which are under strict official Japanese supervision. As near to statistics as one can come is that during a single month there were twenty cases of banditry within five miles of Tsing Tao, in territory leased to Japanese, and that the Japanese have never suffered.
The Japanese government has publicly pledged itself to the International Anti-opium Society to cancel the opium monopoly in Shantung, and the Chinese admit that there are already some signs of amelioration. When and if the Japanese military are with-drawn, banditry may reduce itself to the usual Chinese average, though the temptation to make trouble in order to have an excuse to interfere so as to protect Japanese subjects will remain. The remaining sore point is the economic question. Intelligent Shantungese who are convinced that Japan now intends to carry out her promise of withdrawal of troops at a fairly early date, say it will make no real difference in the situation, because in the meantime Japan has obtained such an economic stranglehold on the province. Even if this hold had been secured by superior economic efficiency, the Chinese would hardly welcome it more than do, say, Californians, especially when it affects land ownership which in China concentrates in itself all the emotions which in western countries are distributed also among religious and patriotic interests. But fraud and force are alleged as the means by which the economic position of Japan has been consolidated. The so-called auction of German properties in Tsing Tao was certainly a scandal as respects favoritism as to persons and prices. The means by which farmers have been compelled to part with their lands were reported in my former article. It is also stated that it is useless to appeal to the courts when disputes arise affecting leases or other economic interests, as it is an axiom that the Japanese litigant is always right. A number of combined Sino-Japanese companies have been started. According to Chinese opinion most of them are formed because of coercion, and the result is unequal treatment. But upon this point it is hard to find unbiased testimony.
In spite of the general Chinese belief that the economic control of Japan is too firm to be shaken by anything short of international pressure or a political upheaval, I do not believe that the industrial and commercial situation is satisfactory to Japan, especially in view of the glowing hopes which were at first entertained. I haven't, as I write, the figures for last year at hand, but the customs statistics for 1919 show no great increase in trade over the last year of German occupation, in spite of the large number of factories which the Japanese have built. This might be attributed to general depression, but from 1916 to 1919, the imports of Dairen, Japan’s northern port, almost trebled and exports more than doubled. Japanese plans when they took possession included the building of a number of railways to connect the interior with their railway at Tsinan. They indulged freely in predictions of the day when Tsing Tao would be the chief port of all central China, displacing Tientsin and rivalling Shanghai. Nor were the predictions based wholly on emotion, as is shown by the fact that the opposition of foreign commercial interests in China to Japanese occupation was openly based on the threat which their occupation conveyed of strangulation of the commerce of ports in which foreign firms were established. But in the intervening years Japan lavished her funds on unproductive political loans which won only the hatred of the people, and which made impossible the granting of the railway concessions. And now the projected railways come under the scope of the Consortium—a credit item in offset to the virtual omission of Manchuria from its scope. The gap between prospect and realization is so great that it inclines one to a belief that Japan would be willing to trade off some of her remaining privileges in Shantung for a Chinese and international solid acknowledgement of her 'special position' in Manchuria.
This brings us to the present diplomatic position of the Shantung question. It is quite true, as Japanese apologists state, that Japan has thrice approached China to open negotiations for the “return” of Shantung. These apologists when they are talking or writing for the benefit of those ignorant of conditions, say that Japan greatly deplores the absence of any government in China sufficiently stable to carry on negotiations, and say Japan longs for the time when such a government will come into existence. When they are more candid, they admit that no Chinese government dare enter into direct negotiations with Japan on the question. Even the Anfu government at its height dared not, knowing well that it would be the signal for an explosion and possible revolution. In part this unwillingness is grounded in the deepest psychology of the Chinese: 'When in doubt, don't. ' In this particular case, the policy of 'non-doing' had good reason in the uncertainty as to the intelligence, force and integrity of the officials who would have represented China in 'negotiations'. But there is also an objective ground for the refusal. The original Japanese request for negotiations was so worded as to commit the Chinese government, if it accepted it, to admitting the validity of the Versailles settlement as well as the treaties signed at the time of the Twenty-one Demands. Subsequent proposals repeat the original ground of offence. They refer to the 'formal agreement' by which 'the Chinese government pledged itself beforehand to acknowledge and consent to the transfer' of German rights to Japan. Of course the whole case of China lies in its refusal to admit the validity of these earlier treaties. The grounds of their refusal are threefold. First, they were made under duress; second, Germany's title forbade alienation to a third power; and, thirdly, when China entered the war as an ally her whole status was changed. The latter claim was admitted by implication in Japan’s efforts to prevent China's entering the war until after she had made her secret agreements with France and Great Britain to support her seizure of Shantung. Quite aside then from popular sentiment, for China to have entered into negotiations on the only basis proposed by Japan would be to stultify her recent diplomacy, and to surrender all hope of a rectification of the conditions growing out of the Twenty-one Demands. And the latter include much more than the Shantung question. For example, public opinion in the world seems as yet hardly awake to the fact that the original lease of Port Arthur and surrounding country to Russia expires in 1924, and that Japan's case for retention of its Manchurian possessions rests upon the validity of the treaties in which the Twenty-one Demands are embodied.
It is not surprising that the hopes and fears of China now centre about the Pacific Conference, and that it is the chief topic of conversation among intelligent Shantungese. It is hardly too much to say that its crucial issue is whether or not the treaties which embody the Twenty-one Demands are faits accomplis. If the conference regularizes Japan's position, one chapter in the fate of China is sealed. If it refuses to do so, the conference will doubtless be broken up unless Japan is willing to go further in compromise than now appears likely. The attempt was well worth making. But too great optimism about its outcome would be childish. It hardly requires Versailles to remind us that a peace conference may be as dangerous as war.