China and the West

Dewey, John. Four principles for China [ID D28496].
If the four principles regarding China, adopted by the Wash-ington Conference, concluded discussion instead of beginning it, they would be most discouraging. They would show that the old tactics of diplomacy had been victorious and that general formulae, susceptible as Admiral Kato is reported to have said of various interpretations, were to be again handed out to China as they have been in the past.
It is not necessary to say that China needs definite action, as concrete as the proposals regarding limitation of armament, not kind words and pious phrases. But coming at the outset instead of at the end, it is only fair to assume that the principles represent the framework of a chart which subsequent decisions will develop into a detailed scheme of action.
Regarded as a basic outline, two questions arise. Are the principles exclusive of all matters not directly touched upon? Or do they admit of additions as well as interpretation? Unless the latter is the case, they do not directly affect past actions. The fundamental question is whether they only concern acts to be performed in the future or whether they are to be applied also to the rectification of acts committed in the past.
If the former, then Japan has won a large part of her case. Certain things very important to her will be treated as accomplished facts not open to revision. China will have gained certain securities against similar acts in the future, which is something. But accomplished facts are stubborn things and they will have a way of going on and influencing the future in comparison with which general guarantees will be rather impotent.
It is hard to reconcile this interpretation, however, with the sweeping terms of the first and third principles. To respect the administrative integrity of China and to use influence for effectually establishing and maintaining equal opportunity for all na-
[First published in Baltimore Sun, 23 November 1921.] tions mean, if words mean anything, an opportunity to examine existing commitments and privileges which violate these principles. In this case, China has gained a virtual recognition of her point requiring an examination of existing commitments of all sorts. The teeth of the Chinese proposals will then begin to bite.
The third point regarding the enforcement of the open door and the fourth pledging all nations to refrain from taking advantage of the troubled condition of China to secure special privileges and rights, will, if acted upon, at least prevent the granting of industrial and commercial monopolies in the future. They will also prevent such demands for special advisers, financial and military, for special police and for rights to make loans for railway undertakings and ports, such as have played havoc with China in the past. But there are so many ways of infringing upon these principles without openly violating them that they will be likely to become a dead letter unless provision is made, as suggested in the tenth Chinese point, for a continuing commission or recurrent conferences and for continuing official publicity.
The four principles have apparently been framed to dodge or postpone one important matter. Just what is China geographically? What about its relations to Manchuria, Mongolia and Thibet? And Japanese claims to special rights in Mongolia are complicated by the fact that at present Russians, rather than either Chinese or Japanese, are in practical control there.
China, south of the Great Wall, sounds like a complete entity. But one look at the map will decide how slight is the probability that it would maintain its political and administrative integrity with a great power in command of the territory to the north as well as of the seas. The Great Wall itself is evidence of the difficulty of doing this when China was in contact with only barbaric hordes and when railways and steamships were not in existence.
Congratulations on what has been accomplished are premature. There is a promising start. But the start only indicates the lines whose further development must be closely watched. The tug will come when the attempt is made to define the territory of China; when it is shown whether the four principles are to be limited to future actions to the exclusion of accomplished facts, and when we find out whether provision is to be made for some agency of continuing conference, arbitration and publicity.
Till we know these three things we shall not know whether the demands of the Chinese points have been met in fact or only in polite phrases to the evasion of the real issues. Further developments on these three points will decide whether a genuine attempt is being made to help China or whether diplomats are leading us into the old trap, where burning affairs are settled in words, only to be evaded and postponed in fact by the use of vague and ambiguous formulae. Let us wait and see.