China and the West

John Dewey leaves Beijing.

John Dewey stays at Beidaihe beach.

Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Albert C. Barnes
Pietaho Beach, China, | August 19th, 1920.
Dear Mr Barnes…
We are in a wonderful place here, out of that burning furnace of Peking where all life is just a struggle to breathe during these hot weeks. Mrs Crane gave us this house, wiring to me a few nights after I succeeded in running the gauntlet of Chang Tso Lin's soldiery who were almost blocking the line from Tiensin to Peking. It is was like a cup of water in the desert to get the hope of escaping, for Peitaho is crowded and expensive during these two months, and we came as soon as Evelyn could get her trunks packed. We live on the beach right in the sand and we look night and day, and listen to the white surf rolling from this blue water. The stars and the new moon are the objects of our adoration and our backs are turned to a corn field which is between us and the moving world of foreigners. Among all the strange experiences of China , this American life of luxury and ease and laziness emphasizes all the others.
I am sorry you are so sure you cant come to China. It is thrilling and reconstructive and revolutionary and reorganizing to know of a place where one can get nothing except the confirmation of the vague suppositions we call originality and realize that after all every thing is experience, experience we are feeling for in the newer world. Having that new world become remote, and this the real one, knowing the 'dead past' is not past at all, but simply the base on which we are resting our air castles, moving not so much in space as in time, having a ricsha man pull you two thousand years into that past in half an hour, realizing that one province here has as many people as the whole U.S. and that province no schools except a few elementary ones such as the missionaries have been able to start, and at the same time the province most representative of the most enduring of nations, understanding how wealth depends on poverty and so well knows that dependence, one can go on indefinitely. Perhaps you will be interested to know what we have just found out privately, that the soldiers in the recent struggle left about 800,000 people, farmers destitute in this year of famine, and the govt does not even find a way to give them food to keep off starvation, nor seed to plant for next years wheat and the foreigners here are getting money together to feed them immediately. Many of them are under the shelter of rocks in the mountains and most of them have the walls of theirs mud huts left to them, all their animals are gone to the war, they neither ask for food nor expect it, and the head of the agricultural experiment station who is also head of the Govt relief is at present trying without success to borrow money on their land to buy seed for them.,. All their trees, the most precious things in China are lyng on the ground, cut for the trenches of the Wu Pei fu soldiers, After the battle the looting left them not a pot nor a pan nor a bit of bedding, only the clothes on their backs, and this new govt can not even give them food; and the generals reply the animals have already been distributed and could not be returned without too great difficulty. All this is in a region round one city and sixty miles from Peking. Rates of interest at the banks that will take risks on the land, the land being as you know the surest security in China, are sometimes as low as 16% a month, but more often as high as 30% per month. The good farmer has about three mo of land under his control. In good years each mo yields 3½ bushels of wheat and the second crop I dont know about, but it is less than the first in value. For the propagation of poverty the genius of this country can hardly be outdone in India, Meantime, here, in this resort, the great houses of the officials are being built and the officials discuss eugenics and other modern doctrines, while the latest concubine exhibits the newest baby, as happened a few days ago during the call of a foreigner.
The undue length of this letter is result of its being the first one of the morning, but I am sorry you wont come to China with your psychology, for this China is a question for that science.
I didnt show your letter to the professor.
With regards, A. C. Dewey

Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes
Peitaho Sept 12 [1920]
Dear Barnes, …
We are going back to Peking on the 14th, as the university is opening, and Lucy as well as myself is going to teach this year, or rather she is going to teach and Im going to continue lecturing. The political upheaval has brought into the ministry of edn about the best man that ever held that job, a man who is a great friend of all our friends, and whom I saw considerable of last year. Last I heard however the teachers hadnt been paid since April, and I dont know whether he has succeeded in getting money. The new govt announced that in finances the schools would come first, but that is easier to say than do. In the old, they were a bad last, hardly in the running at all. Last year I was paid by private societies, but this year by the Govt University, so I have a personal interest in govt finance. The societies are getting Bertrand Russell over, I think the same societies that financed me last year. My star such as it was will set. This isnt a modest remark, nor a protective reaction. The students' [ink apostrophe] interest has been nroadening out naturally and properly from the intense interest in education which marked them last year to general social questions, and upon the whole B Russells writings are more popular than anybody elses— I don't ubt [w. caret] if Hobson is even known by name. It is said that fifteen thousands of the English edition of Roads to Freedom have been sold in Japan, and he is the great hero of radical thought in China. The whole temper among the younger generation is revolutionary, they are so sick of their old institutions that they assume any change will be for the better—the more extreme and complete the change, the better. And they seem to me to have little idea of the difficultyies in the away [ink del.] of any constructive change. Bertrand Russell's somewhat detached and mathematical way of proposing ideal reforms accordingly makes an immense appeal. The students in Peking are getting ready to start a Bertrand Russell magazine. Quite independently of R. and his influence, this is a wonderful chance to study the psychology of revolutionary idealism—if I could only read Chinese. I never realized before the meaning of the background we unconsciously carry around with us as a standard of criticism. Not having any such background as to modern institutions, to the liberals here anything is likely to be as true and valuable as anything else, only provided only it is different. The more extreme, the more likely upon the whole. Since the Chinese family system for example badly needs reform, the family ought to be completely done away with, promiscuous relations between the sexes set up of course they can hardly speak to one another now and all children cared for by public authorities. This is a little extreme instance, but there is a good deal of this sort of thing. Then every official is ex officio an object of fear and dread in China, his main function being to squeeze the people. Hence altho a good central govt is a necessity at present for reasons of internal development of railways, schools etc, as well as for external defense, anarchism is very strong. I see the Japanese indulge in considerable propaganda about the dangers from Bolshevism in China unless Japan makes a bulwark or whatever it is now fashionable to call it. Technical Bolshevism there is no basis for here, either economic certainly not industrial and only to a slight extent agrarian, tho the latter is growing by from the rapacity of the military governors. But psychological Bolshevism is fairly intense in the educated minority, especially if they have not been educated abroad, also among those educated in France. Japanese writers try to attribute the growth of radical thought in China to Russian propaganda, I think sincerely, as the Japanese cannot really imagine any indigenous intellectual movement, especially in despised China. I supose there is Russian propaganda tho Ive run across no signs of any, but it is certainly a negligeable factor. Of course the general influence of the fact of the Russian revolution was great, just as was that of the worldwar in general, The in trying to find some good in the outcome of the war, one can at least count to the credit side as a big item the overthrow of Prussian and autocratic prestige. Its effect in the Orient is certainly enormous even if we at home have got more or leess Prussianized. I hope you approved of the psychology of my article on How Reaction Helps. I have thot over that matter a good deal,
I shall write about [Laurence L.] Burmeyers article after getting back to Peking. My mind is still to full of the small book Im writing to do justice to it, tho Ive read it acoupla times.
Sincerely yours, J Dewey
Old address in Peking, 135 Morrison St

Letter from Johnson Yuan [Yuan Zhenying] 6 Yu Yang Li, Avenue Joffre, Shanghai, to Bertrand Russell ; 6 Oct. 1920. In : Xin qing nian ; 6. Okt. (1920).
Dear Sir, We are very glad to have the greatest social philosopher of world to arrive here in China, so as to salve the Chronic deseases of the thought of Chinese Students. Since 1919, the student's circle seems to be the greatest hope of the future of China ; as they are ready to welcome to have revolutionary era in the society of China. In that year, Dr John Dewey had influenced the intellectual class with great success.
But I dare to represent most of the Chinese Students to say a few words to you :
Although Dr Dewey is successful here, but most of our students are not satisfied with his conservative theory. Because most of us want to acquire the knowledge of Anarchism, Syndicalism, Socialism, etc. ; in a word, we are anxious to get the knowledge of the social revolutionary philosophy. We are the followers of Mr Kropotkin, and our aim is to have anarchical society in China. We hope you, Sir, to give us fundamentally the thorough Social philosophy, based on Anarchism. Moreover, we want you to recorrect the theory of Dr Dewey, the American Philosopher. We hope you have the absolute freedom in China, not the same as in England. So we hope you to have a greater success than Dr Dewey here.
I myself am old member of the Peking Govt. University, and met you in Shanghai many times, the first time is in 'The Great Oriental Hotel', the first time of your reception here, in the evening.
The motto, you often used, of Lao-Tzu ought to be changed in the first word, as 'Creation without Possession…' is better than the former translative ; and it is more correctly according to what you have said 'the creative impulsive and the possessive impulse'. Do you think it is right ?
Your Fraternally Comrade Johnson Yuan (Secretary of the Chinese Anarchist-Communist Association).

Dewey, John. A political upheaval in China [ID D28480].
Even in America we have heard of one Chinese revolution, that which thrust the Manchu dynasty from the throne. The visitor in China gets used to casual references to the second revolution, that which frustrated Yuan Shih-kai's aspirations to be emperor, and the third, the defeat in 1917 of the abortive attempt to put the Manchu boy emperor back into power. And within the last few weeks the (September 1920) fourth upheaval has taken place. It may not be dignified by the name of the fourth revolution, for the head of the state has not been changed by it. But as a manifestation of the forces that shape Chinese political events, for evil and for good, perhaps this last disturbance surpasses the last two 'revolutions' in significance.
Chinese politics in detail are highly complicated, a mess of personalities and factions whose oscillations no one can follow who does not know a multitude of personal, family and provincial histories. But occasionally something happens which simplifies the tangle. Definite outlines frame themselves out of the swirling crisscross of strife, intrigue and ambition. So, at present, the complete collapse of the Anfu clique which owned the central government for two years marks the end of that union of internal militarism and Japanese foreign influence which was, for China, the most marked fruit of the war. When China entered the war a 'War Participation' army was formed. It never participated; probably it was never meant to. But its formation threw power wholly into the hands of the military clique, as against the civilian constitutionalists. And in return for concessions, secret agreements relating to Manchuria, Shantung, new railways, etc., Japan supplied money, munitions, instructors for the army and a benevolent supervision of foreign and domestic politics. The war came to an unexpected and untimely end, but by this time the offspring of the marriage of the militarism of Yuan Shih-kai and Japanese money and influence was a lusty youth. Bolshevism was induced to take the place of Germany as a menace requiring the keeping up of the army, and loans and teachers. Mongolia was persuaded to cut her strenuous ties with Russia, to renounce her independence and come again under Chinese sovereignty.
The army and its Japanese support and instruction was, accordingly, continued. In place of the 'War Participation' army appeared the 'Frontier Defense' army. Marshal Tuan, the head of the military party, remained the nominal political power behind the presidential chair, and General Hsu (commonly known as little Hsu, in distinction from old Hsu, the president) was the energetic manager of the Mongolian adventure which, by a happy coincidence, required a bank, land development companies and railway schemes, as well as an army. About this military centre as a nucleus gathered the vultures who fed on the carrion. This flock took the name of the Anfu Club. It did not control the entire cabinet, but to it belonged the Minister of Justice, who manipulated the police and the courts, persecuted the students, suppressed liberal journals and imprisoned inconvenient critics. And the Club owned the ministers of finance and communications, the two cabinet places that dispense revenues, give out jobs and make loans. It also regulated the distribution of intelligence by mail and telegraph. The reign of corruption and despotic inefficiency, tempered only by the student revolt, set in. In two years the Anfu Club got away with two hundred millions of public funds directly, to say nothing of what was wasted by incompetency and upon the army. The Allies had set out to get China into the war. They succeeded in getting Japan into control of Peking and getting China, politically speaking, into a seemingly hopeless state of corruption and confusion.
The militaristic or Pei-Yang party was, however, divided into two factions, each called after a province. The Anwhei party gathered about little Hsu and was almost identical with the Anfus. The Chili faction had been obliged, so far as Peking was concerned, to content itself with such leavings as the Anfu Club tossed to it. Apparently it was hopelessly weaker than its rival, although Tuan, who was personally honest and above financial scandal, was supported by both factions and was the head of both. About three months ago there were a few signs that, while the Anfu Club had been entrenching itself in Peking, the rival faction had been quiedy establishing itself in the provinces. A league of Eight Tuchuns (military governors of the provinces) came to the assistance of the president against some unusually strong pressure from the Anfu Club. In spite of the fact that the military governor of the three Manchurian provinces, Chang Tso Lin, popularly known as the Emperor of Manchuria, lined up with this league, practically nobody expected anything except some maneuvering to get a larger share of the spoils.
But late in June the president invited Chang Tso Lin to Peking. The latter saw Tuan, told him that he was surrounded by evil advisers, demanded that he cut loose from little Hsu and the Anfu Club, and declared open war upon little Hsu—the two had long and notoriously been bitter enemies. Even then people had great difficulty in believing that anything would happen except another Chinese compromise. The president was known to be sympathetic upon the whole with the Chili faction, but the president, if not a typical Chinese, is at least typical of a certain kind of Chinese mandarin, non-resistant, compromising, conciliating, procrastinating, covering up, evading issues, face-saving. But finally something happened. A mandate was issued dismissing little Hsu from office, military and civil, dissolving the frontier defense corps as such, and bringing it under the control of the Ministry of War (usually armies in China belong to some general or Tuchun, not to the country). For almost forty-eight hours it was thought that Tuan had consented to sacrifice little Hsu and that the latter would submit, at least temporarily. Then with equally sensational abruptness Tuan brought pressure to bear on the president. The latter was appointed head of a national defense army, and rewards were issued for the heads of the chiefs of the Chili faction, nothing, however, being said about Chang Tso Lin, who had meanwhile returned to Mukden and who still professed allegiance to Tuan. Troops were mobilized; there was a rush of officials and of the wealthy to the concessions of Tientsin and to the hotels of the legation quarter.
This sketch is not meant as history, but simply as an indication of the forces at work. Hence it is enough to say that two weeks after Tuan and little Hsu had intimidated the president and Proclaimed themselves the saviors of the Republic, they were in hiding, their enemies of the Chili party were in complete control of Peking, and rewards from fifty thousand dollars down were offered for the arrest of little Hsu, the ex-ministers of justice, finance and communications, and other leaders of the Anfu Club. The political turnover was as complete as it was sensational. The seemingly impregnable masters of China were impotent fugitives. The carefully built up Anfu Club, with its military, financial and foreign support, had crumbled and fallen. No country at any time has ever seen a political upheaval more sudden and more thoroughgoing. It was not so much a defeat as a dissolution like that of death, a total disappearance, an evaporation.
Corruption had worked inward, as it has a way of doing. Japanese-bought munitions would not explode; quartermasters vanished with the funds with which stores were to be bought; troops went without anything to eat for two or three days; large numbers, including the larger part of one division, went over to the enemy en masse; those who did not desert had no heart for fighting and ran away or surrendered on the slightest provocation, saying they were willing to fight for their country but saw no reason why they should fight for a faction, especially a faction that had been selling the country to a foreign nation. In the manner of the defeat of the Anfu clique at the height of its supremacy, rather than in the mere fact of its defeat, lies the credit side of the Chinese political balance sheet. It is a striking exhibition of the oldest and best faith of the Chinese—the power of moral considerations. Public opinion, even that of the coolie on the street, was wholly against the Anfu party. It went down not so much because of the strength of the other side as because of its own rottenness.
So far the results are to all appearances negative. The most marked is the disappearance of Japanese prestige. As one of the leading men in the War Office said: 'For over a year now the people have been strongly opposed to the Japanese government on account of Shantung. But now even the generals do not care for Japan any more'. It is hardly logical to take the easy collapse of the Japanese-supported Anfu party as a proof of the weakness of Japan, but prestige is always a matter of feeling rather than of logic. Many who were intimidated to the point of hypnotism by the idea of the irresistible power of Japan are now freely laughing at the inefficiency of Japanese leadership. It would not be safe to predict that Japan will not come back as a force to be reckoned with in the internal as well as external politics of China, but it is safe to say that never again will Japan figure as superman to China. And such a negation is after all a positive result.
And so in its way is the overthrow of the Anwhei faction of the militarist party. The Chinese liberals do not feel very optimistic about the immediate outcome. They have mostly given up the idea that the country can be reformed by political means. They are sceptical about the possibility of reforming even politics until a new generation comes on the scene. They are now putting their faith in education and in social changes which will take some years to consummate themselves visibly. The self-styled southern republican constitutional party has not shown itself in much better light than the northern militarist party. In fact, its old leader Sun Yat Sen now cuts one of the most ridiculous figures in China, as shortly before this upheaval he had definitely aligned himself with Tuan and little Hsu.
This does not mean, however, that democratic opinion thinks nothing has been gained. The demonstration of the inherent weakness of corrupt militarism will itself prevent the development of any militarism as complete as that of the Anfus. As one Chinese gentleman said to me: 'When Yuan Shih-kai was overthrown, the tiger killed the lion. Now a snake has killed the tiger. No matter how vicious the snake may become, some smaller animal will be able to kill him, and his life will be shorter than that of either lion or tiger'. In short, each successive upheaval brings nearer the day when civilian supremacy will be established. This result will be achieved partly because of the repeated demonstrations of the uncongeniality of military despotism to the Chinese spirit, and partly because with every passing year education will have done its work. Suppressed liberal papers are coming to life, while over twenty Anfu subsidized newspapers and two subsidized news agencies have gone out of being. The soldiers, including many officers in the Anwhei army, clearly show the effects of student propaganda. And it is worth while to note down the name of one of the leaders on the victorious side, the only one whose troops did any particular fighting, and that against great odds in numbers. The name is Wu Pei Fu. He at least has not fought for the Chili faction against the Anwhei faction. He has proclaimed from the first that he was fighting to rid the country of military control of civil government, and against traitors who would sell their country to foreigners. He has come out strongly for a new popular assembly, to form a new constitution and to unite the country. And although Chang Tso Lin has remarked that Wu Pei Fu as a military subordinate could not be expected to intervene in politics, he has not as yet found it convenient to oppose the demand for a popular assembly. Meanwhile the liberals are organizing their forces, hardly expecting to win a victory, but resolved, win or lose, to take advantage of the opportunity to carry further the education of the Chinese people in the meaning of democracy.

Bertrand Russell arrives in Hong Kong.

Letter from The General Educational Association of Hunan, Changsha to Bertrand Russell ; 11.10.1920.
Dear Sir, We beg to inform you that the educational system of our province is just at infancy and is unfortunately further weakened by the fearful disturbances of the civil war of late years, so that the guidance and assistances must be sought to sagacious scholars.
The extent to which your moral and intellectual power has reached is so high that all the people of this country are paying the greatest regard to you. We, Hunanese, eagerly desire to hear your powerful instructions as a compass.
A few days ago, through Mr Lee-Shuh-Tseng, our representative at Shanghai, we requested you to visit Hunan and are very grateful to have your kind acceptance. A general meeting will therefore be summoned on the 25th instant in order to receive your instructive advices. Now we appoint Mr Kun-Chao-Shuh to represent us all to welcome you sincerely. Please come as soon as possible.
We are, Sir Your obedient servants The General Educational Association of Hunan.

Bertrand Russell arrived in Shanghai. Zhang Shenfu was on hand to welcome him to China. Zhang had, by that time, already made plans to go to France on the same boat as Cai Yuanpei. After the public meeting with Russell in Shanghai, Zhang and Russell continued conversation over tea in Beijing in November.

Reception for Bertrand Russell by educational associations at Da Dong Hotel in Shanghai.

Lecture by Bertrand Russell on "Principles of social reconstruction" in Shanghai.

Lecture by Bertrand Russell on "Uses of education" to the Jiangsu Education Society.

Bertrand Russell spends two days in Hangzhou to see the West Lake.

John Dewey received the Honorary degree, Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Beijing.

Lecture by Bertrand Russel on "Problems of education" at Zhejiang Normal School in Hangzhou.

Welcome party for Bertrand Russell by the Education Association at the Yipingxiang Restaurant in Shanghai.

Lectures by Bertrand Russell on "Einstein's new theory of gravity" to the Science Society in Nanjing.

Bertrand Russell takes the boat from Nanjing to Hankou.

John Dewey leaves Beijing.

Lectures by Bertrand Russell in Hankou.