“Old China and new” (Publication, 1921.05)
Year
1921.05
Text
Dewey, John. Old China and new. In : Asia ; vol. 21, May (1921). In : New Republic ; vol. 26, March 16 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). (DewJ29)
Type
Publication
Contributors (1)
Dewey, John
(Burlington 1859-1952 New York, N.Y.) : Philosoph, Pädagoge, Psychologe
Subjects
History : China
/
Periods : China : Republic (1912-1949)
/
Philosophy : United States of America
Chronology Entries (1)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1921.05 |
Dewey, John. Old China and new [ID D28485]. There exists on the globe—the real globe, not the papier-mâché one—a country with a population of perhaps one-sixth of this world's inhabitants. The history of this country extends over four thousand years. Nowhere else does the earth show such a record of continuity and stability. Yet the story is not one of monotony or stagnation. Within its continuity there is at least as much variety and change as in the history of Europe for two thousand years preceding the seventeenth century. Invention, industrial art, philosophy, poetry and painting of the first order adorn the civilization of this country. At no other time and in no other place have moral ideas, apart from ecclesiastic reinforcement and theological support, been so widely disseminated. Over a thousand years ago, this country gave morals, literature, art and the elements of culture to a neighbor that now ranks among the 'Great Five' of modem nations. Outside of farming, its social order was never very efficient. With an exceedingly small number of exceptions its rulers were corrupt and incompetent. But it got along somehow; it endured. It maintained itself with so little government, in any modern sense of the word, that it is surprising that anarchists have not taken it as their stock example of what can be done on a no-government basis. But it got along in seclusion. Sea, desert and mountains hemmed it in. It was sufficient unto itself, complacent in a conceit of superiority bred of isolation. But at last the industrial revolution made its barriers of no avail. Steam and electricity eliminated distance. The country found itself confronted with forces with which it was utterly unable to cope. Century-old weaknesses were no longer mere domestic incidents. They were a menace of destruction within and an invitation to imperial wolves from without. Contact with new forces produced flagrant exhibition of all accumulated defects and corruptions while at the same time a new and better organized civilization brought with it strange and irresistible temptations to new evils. In writing of this country—China—faced as it is with the most difficult problem of reconstruction any civilization has ever known, Mr. J.O.P. Bland selects a small group of individuals as being personally responsible for most of its woes. The group he selects to bear the burden of responsibility he calls “Young China,” specifically those men who have experienced the destructive effects of western education. And to meet all evils, Mr. Bland has a panacea. It is international foreign control of governmental finance. To any one with a slight knowledge of the facts in the situation, combined with the rudiments of a social imagination, this bare statement makes superfluous any detailed reply to Mr. Bland, although it will be necessary to point out in the course of this article some specific misstatements. An independent analysis of the elements of the problem of transition and transformation in China is, however, on its own account, well worth making. Simply as an intellectual spectacle, a scene for study and surmise, for investigation and speculation, there is nothing in the world today—not even Europe in the throes of reconstruction—that equals China. History records no parallel. Can an old, vast, peculiar, exclusive, self-sufficing civilization be born again? Made over it must be, or it cannot endure. Yet it must accomplish the making over in the face of facts and forces profoundly alien to it, physically, politically, industrially, intellectually, spiritually. All of the forces are strange, unprecedented. Many of them—aggressively hostile—are directed by those who seek to batten upon China’s decay. Much in her past, in her traditional customs, actually lames her in her effort to cope with new conditions. It puts great obstacles in the way of every endeavor to brace herself to her task, so that one meritorious attempt after another lapses into impotency. There are many good things in the old order, just as there are many in the tentative new one. But there is a social as well as a physical chemistry in accordance with which elements good in themselves give rise to explosive or poisonous com-pounds. History may be ransacked to furnish a situation that so stirs interest, that keeps a spectator so wavering between hope and fear and that presents so baffling a face to every attempt to find a solution. One is constantly reminded of the Chinese puzzles of one's childhood, in which the complexity and variety of interlocking parts seemed to defy every attempt to form a coherent whole. There was a clue, a method for those puzzles, and perhaps a way that leads to successful solution of the enormous present puzzle may yet be found. It is no wonder that wherever a few are gathered together in China the favorite indoor sport is 'saving China'. But after, whether at the same time or on different occasions, the whole gamut from optimism to pessimism has been struck, the honest-minded give it up as a problem far beyond the size of their intellects. 'If this' and 'If that' are the last word. Many have their favorite 'ifs': if there were a strong central government—which there never was, even in the palmiest days of absolutism; if there were honest officials—which harks back to the mythical days of Yao and Shun. And now a new 'if'. If the pestilential returned students would cease from troubling and China's financial administration could be reorganized by new Sir Robert Harts and Sir Richard Danes, all would be well. Model China after the Salt Gabelle and her troubles are ended. But the task of reorganization, of transformation, of union of old and new, is so vast, so appalling in its complexity, that neither any wholesale forecast of the future nor any simple remedy is worth the paper it is written on. The things that are certain, are few. Either failure or success will entail tremendous consequences for the rest of the world, so that no one can afford to be indifferent. A great number of specific enterprises and experiments, converging to a common end, will have to be undertaken. There is no situation in the world more calculated to justify distrust of panaceas and wholesale remedies. The moves to be made are of all sorts. Many are external, technical, changes in administration, adoption of modern ways of managing affairs. In certain moments of depression, one can picture the enormous benefit that would accrue from a simple regard for arithmetic and for modern systems of accounting and auditing. But unless China is to be rent asunder, even more than its neighbor, Japan, is spiritually rent today, changes of thought, of belief, of outlook on the world must come too. A new mind must be created. And the most important permanent result of all external administrative changes, whether in government or in industry, will be their effect upon the creation of a new mind and a new morale. Among the external changes needed is one in public finance. Thanks to her own ineptitude, combined with the greed of some foreign nations and the stupidity of others, the government of China is helplessly dependent upon foreign loans, which are accumulating a burden of interest to be met only by new loans. In China there is wealth in some quarters. But the home security is so poor that the merchants will not invest their money unless it be under the protection of foreign governments. And rich officials will not invest because they obtain their riches by investing foreign loans—in their own pockets. International control is necessary not merely as a means of securing Chinese capital for China but also as the only thing that will prevent the further disintegration of China by a system of concessions and spheres of influence and the pawning of natural resources to this nation or that. No unprejudiced observer has any doubt about these facts. But even superficially there is no sense in regarding this plan to secure international control of finance as antagonistic to the tendencies represented by the student movement in China. On the contrary, the leaders in explaining the plan to their countrymen, provided it is really drawn in the interest of the development of China and not of foreign financiers, must come from this movement. Mr. Lamont, who is probably quite as much interested in the success of the Consortium as is Mr. Bland, found it worth while, when in China, to give many hours to students and their leaders among teachers, for the sake of removing misconceptions and enlisting cooperation. It is common honesty to say that there is still much skepticism in China about the whole scheme. But any fair person will also acknowledge that the prior history of China's financial dealings with foreign bankers is conducive to the Missouri attitude. Mr. Bland's denial of any Japanese influence or bias in his recent writings must be accepted at its full value. But to attribute Chinese opposition to the Consortium to the student movement and to pass over in silence the extraordinary campaign carried on in China by Japanese agencies in league with Chinese venal politicians and newspapers—a campaign still waged in November, 1920—is precisely the sort of thing that awakens suspicion. Mr. Lamont's statement on the nature of the propaganda against the Consortium is too full and explicit to leave any doubt as to where responsibility lies. Let there be no mistake about one thing. The charges of corruption and intrigue that Mr. Bland brings against Chinese politicians and the statements he makes about the strictly factional character of civil strife in China, the absence of underlying principles, the greed for place and power—in fact, for money—are the a-b-c's, the platitudes of the situation. If he had stayed more than a few weeks in his hurried trip through a few of the coast towns, he could have found material for a far blacker and more disheartening picture than he has painted. In official circles, the present situation regarding the terrible famine, for example, is sickening beyond measure. Indifference and apathy joined to squeeze, intrigue for position and prestige combined with profiteering and exploitation of the starving, land-grabbing from honest and industrious peasants by black-hearted officials, refusal, on the ground that worse than useless soldiers must be transported, to provide cars to carry grain supplied by philanthropists—these are some of the outstanding facts. The question is not about the facts, but about their cause and remedy. In spite of his desire to leave the impression that the situation is somehow due to 'Young China', even Mr. Bland cannot avoid recognizing that all this is in accord with the traditions of Chinese officialdom. Whether things are worse than in the bad days of the Manchus, or only about as bad as things were then, it is impossible to say dogmatically. Many think them worse. Others think the appearance of greater evil is due to the fact that some degree of publicity has invaded China and the stirred cesspool spreads more noisome odors. In many respects, however, modem business conditions give new opportunities, and officialdom is no slower to grasp new chances than it is to take profit from old sources. The fact is that the state of affairs is so bad that it is hard to imagine it any worse. It constitutes a part, a considerable part, of that problem of reorganization, of transformation from the old to the new, to which reference has been made. It affords a striking example of what can happen when Old China is projected into the situation produced not by any one set of persons in China, but by the new world forces that have taken China unawares and unprepared. Of old, intrigues and corruptions only affected China domestically. Now they imperil her national being—as is evidenced by the record of $200,000,000 borrowed from Japan by venal politicians in two years, without any public value received, and at the loss of immense resources mortgaged in return. But the point is that this evil is due to Old China, not new, Old China wallowing unashamed in the trough of new opportunities. Such statements as Mr. Bland makes about 'Young China' as now in control of the government make one gasp: 'The militarist government is chiefly composed of the Young China of yesterday'; 'In the new game of democratic politics, which developed after the passing of the Dragon Throne, in 1911, it was the supermen of the educated class who made their way to the top. . . . And the real question in China to-day is how to limit the power and rapacity of these Tuchuns'. The fact is that there is not a Tuchun in China today who has the least smattering of western learning. Most of them have none of the old Chinese learning either. The one old scholar who is a governor today has declined to take the title of Tuchun. The nominal head of the Republic is an old mandarin, who served the Manchu dynasty. The western reader will hardly realize how contrary his holding office under the new régime is to the basic ethics of Chinese life, which dictates that the servant should retire absolutely to private life upon the overthrow or withdrawal of the master, provided he does not carry his loyalty to the point of killing himself. Another prominent leader is a former Shantung fish-seller. One Tuchun is a former hostler; another was once a lace-seller; one, upon whom Mr. Bland lavishes his praise as a type of the strong man China needs, is an ex-bandit. Some of these men cannot even read Chinese or write a Chinese character. These Tuchuns are Mr. Bland's educated supermen. These things are not said in defense of returned students or of 'Young China'—whatever that may be. They are not said in mitigation of the evil of China's present condition. They may make the situation appear even worse than Mr. Bland makes it. They are said because they are facts, and facts that indicate the nature and seriousness of the real problem of China today—that of adapting Old China to new world conditions, of creating what does not as yet exist except in the most fragmentary sense—a Young China. And in this connection it may be not amiss to state the real origin of the term 'Young China'. The Young China party was consciously modeled after Mazzini's Young that strove to create a new Italy, so those who rallied about the cry of 'Young China' asserted, not the existence of Young China, but the necessity of rejuvenating Old China, unless China itself was to disappear. And though they have not as yet succeeded in their efforts, every passing day makes it clear that they diagnosed the case aright. Everything said about the effect of financial maladministration in keeping China back is true. The loss of public revenues is serious in itself. But this is a mild evil compared with the encouragement of selling out or giving away the natural resources of China to foreigners who have political as well as economic designs on China. And this is what happened under the direct auspices of the followers, disciples and lieutenants of the late Yuan Shih-kai—that 'strongest, ablest and wisest' of recent Chinese statesmen! It is mild in comparison with the retardation of legitimate industry, commerce and railway development, due to the levyings of irresponsible officials in search of still more millions. It is mild in comparison with the spread of corruption from the official class to the mercantile class, which has dealings with the government and which is becoming infected with a like greed for money and a like unscrupulousness as to how it is got—an evil so serious that it may, if it goes on, empty of meaning the old saying about the Chinaman's word being as good as his bond. It is mild in comparison with the development, as an aid in money-getting, of a vast horde of undisciplined soldiers, forming habits of idleness, engaged in looting, depriving large sections in the north of needed agricultural labor, spreading venereal disease wherever they go, changing themselves upon a moment's notice from soldiery to bandits and back again. No intelligent person in China believes that reform in financial administration is going to come from within. Some kind of international foreign control of finance is not only a financial necessity, but a political, industrial and moral necessity. No true liberal in America will, if he is wise, oppose the scheme per se. But he will, if he is wise, scrutinize its terms most carefully and insist upon real justice and honesty. A recent minister of finance borrowed money just before settling-day. Credit was bad enough, heaven knows! But the minister and his friends instituted banks, from which to borrow money at eighty per cent in order to pay interest on what they had previously stolen. Then, to make sure the interest would continue to be paid, they sold the notes to a foreign (not Japanese) bank that has foreign governmental support. The incident illustrates the need of financial supervision. But it also indicates that foreign financiers are not proof against taking part in shady transactions when the profit is good. For the careful reader Mr. Bland answers and refutes himself. Thus, on occasion, when he drops rhetoric for facts, he says, 'It seems impossible to deny that most of China's present disabilities and dangers are due to no fault of its own, but to the sudden creation by the Western Powers of a new condition of things'. In similar fashion his pathetic picture of those 'older and wiser heads', mandarins and merchants, really desiring the imposition of foreign control of finance, but intimidated by the clamor of the student body from public expression of their secret desire, is sufficiently taken care of by his true picture of the mandarinate waxing fat and powerful on the present situation. During the three or four days spent by Mr. Bland in Peking in making deep-sea Chinese soundings, certain financiers of the so-called 'Old Communications Clique' were out of power. They generally professed in conversation with foreigners great sympathy with unification of the financial and railway system of China under international supervision. It was a convenient partisan weapon. Doubtless Mr. Bland heard them talk. If they had belonged to the student class, he would probably have been suspicious. Since they belonged to Old China, he took them at their word. Some of them are now in power and are secretly taking every means to block the measure that they professed to favor and that is now in danger of being realized at their expense. All this is said not for the sake of personal controversy with Mr. Bland but because of its bearing on the practical situation. Nothing would be more fatal to the success of the Consortium scheme than action based upon the belief that any influential part of existing officialdom is sincerely in favor of a measure that deprives it of money and power, and that the intellectual leaders toward a newer China are of necessity opposed to the scheme. It is significant that the charges that Mr. Bland so freely brings against the student movement are precisely the reports with which the officials of the Anfu stripe, who were in power during his visit, made thick the air of Peking. Officialdom knew what it was about. It knew that the patriotic movement was directed primarily against it. It knew also every resource of the clever Chinese politician in circulating reports to discredit the potential threat to its corrupt control. Mr. Bland was not the only foreigner to accept these reports at their face value. In spite of his evident knowledge of their corruption and utter unreliability, he believed them in this instance because they fitted in with his antecedent prejudices. Although this new movement came from students who had never been out of China, Mr. Bland's acquaintance with the situation was so superficial that he identified the new student movement with the returned student movement he had previously known and damned. So he fell an easy victim to the very wiles he so profusely exposes upon other occasions. His lack of familiarity with the new student movement may be measured by the fact that he says that Young China's 'indignation has never yet been publicly directed against the growing rapacity of the metropolitan and provincial officials'. As a matter of fact, the present student movement began on May 4 last year with precisely a protest against these officials and ended in the dismissal from the cabinet of three of its most corrupt members. It would have gone further if the military force of Peking and other places, provincial as well as metropolitan, had not crowded jails with students, closed their offices with brutal force, spied upon their every activity, filled their ranks with agents provocateurs and bribed freely the weaker among them. The story that Mr. Bland quotes with much relish of $200,000 given by one set of politicians to the Student Union of Tientsin to aid them in their movement against Peking officials at least proves that Mr. Bland knew better when he says the students have never turned upon their own officials. But in truth this is only one of the stories that were circulated by the officials in power to discredit the movement. 'Documentary evidence' to the contrary—which Mr. Bland has seen—was forged by this crowd as part of their game. This does not mean that politicians among the outs did not try to use the movement, or that the students made no mistakes or were wholly free from corrupt elements. But upon the whole, considering the inexperience of those engaged in it, the movement was surprisingly well managed and showed a power of organization that augurs well for the future. These facts are pertinent to the practical situation. In aid of the Consortium, as well as of other reforms, the students should be enlisted against the resistance, active and (still more dangerous) passive, of officialdom. Their patriotism is easily aroused to take a negative form, especially in view of the predatory career of foreign powers in China in the past. But they are the one self-conscious class in China wholly awake to the ills that flow from the recent system of 'government'. They are the enemies, natural and avowed, of both existing and would-be officials. They have seen Chinese officials before this time take advantage, to the detriment of the country, of the cupidity of foreigners, of their ignorance and their desire for immediate results. They have seen highly disinterested foreign professions in the past used as cloaks for rapacious encroachments upon Chinese resources and sovereignty. They are naturally apprehensive lest any new scheme be manipulated by officials (whose wiles they understand better than any foreigner understands them) into new means of confirming their power and wealth while at the same time increasing the bondage of China. But they also know how desperate the situation is, and in American leadership they have a faith that they have not in that of other foreign powers. What they fear is that, as in some previous cases, American energy and American intelligence will not, when it comes to execution, be equal to American good intentions. They fear that American leadership will be nominal rather than effectual; that something will be 'put over on' American ideas by the combined efforts of Chinese corrupt officials and non-disinterested foreign finance. It is therefore a most practical feature in the situation that pains be taken, not only that American ideas really rule the Consortium, but that every effort be made to make it clear to the intellectual leaders of public opinion that such is the fact. The evil of such outpourings as those of Mr. Bland is that they obscure this fact, and, by relying upon just the element that cannot be trusted and alienating the only element that can be employed to develop a sympathetic public opinion in China, they prejudice the success of the entire movement. The growing support of public opinion is essential to a reform anything more than superficial and external. But, though reform of financial administration is indispensable and can be secured only through foreign control over a period of years, it is only one of a multitude of factors in the change of Old China into a China adapted to modem conditions. New China is not a fad or device of a few half-baked enthusiasts. It is a necessity unless China is to rot, and unless its rotting carcass is to become in the end a menace to the peace of the world. The notion that, by the mere introduction of western economy, China can be 'saved', while it retains the old morality, the old set of ideas, the old Confucianism—or what genuine Confucianism had been petrified into—and the old family system, is the most utopian of sentimental idealisms. Economic and financial reform, unless it is accompanied by the growth of new ideals of culture, ethics and family life (which constitute the real meaning of the so-called student movement of today), will merely shift the sore spots. It will remedy some evils and create others. Taken by itself it is a valuable practical measure. But it is the height of absurdity to use it as a stick with which to beat the aspirations of men and women, old as well as young, for new beliefs, new ideas, new methods of thought, new social and natural science—in short, for a New and Young China. Years ago there were many Chinese who sincerely thought that the evils from which China suffered and the dangers that threatened her were due to the Manchu régime and would be remedied by the introduction of a republican form of government. Some doubtless favored the change from motives of self-interest. If there were none such, then the Chinese are more different from Westerners than I think they are. But with the mass of republicans it was a sincere belief, born of hope and inexperience. It is a matter of pathos and not one for ridicule. Probably even more numerous now than were the republicans in the old days are those who think that existing evils are due to the Republic and who would welcome a return to monarchy—just as great numbers twenty years ago thought the removal of the foreigner would heal all evils and so tried the Boxer panacea. If an attempt is made to restore monarchy, these will be disillusioned as others have been of their panaceas. But what shall we say of an experienced Westerner who still seeks for a cure-all and who says, 'Introduce foreign international control of finance, and all will be well'? It is not surprising that such a one is skeptical of the value of foreign education. There is in China a considerable class of foreigners, especially in the outports and political centres, who are frankly attached to Old China. The reasons are complex. In part they realize its virtues, and in other part they subconsciously rely upon its weaknesses to serve their own comfort and convenience. Such persons usually deprecate the efforts of missionaries and foreign educators, not usually because they are theoretically opposed to Christianity, but because the introduction of new ideas is disturbing to what they esteem and profit by. They also see new evils coming into China and a decay of some of its old virtues. Not having sufficient social and historical grasp to trace these changes to their source and see how inevitable they are in a period of social transition, they attribute all disintegration to the influence of foreign learning and ideas, introduced by missionaries and returned students. Leave Old China alone culturally and morally, they say in effect. It had its vices, but it had its stable virtues, and if the tares are uprooted, the grain also will be destroyed. Change China only in business and material ways. Give it the benefit of railways, mills, telegraphs, reformed currency, good financial administration; give it the external technique of western civilization free from disturbing western culture, and all will be well. This view, widely current, is as superficial as it is plausible. It is not worth while to argue whether a change merely industrial is desirable. For it is impossible. Even if it were abstractly desirable, it is sentimentally utopian, in spite of its professed allegiance to hard business facts. What is really undermining the family system, which was the basis of Old China? The teachings of returned students? The desire of a small number to select their own life companions, thereby breaking down parental authority; to have educated women as their wives, thereby revolutionizing China by changing the traditional status of women? No. These things are, at most, symptoms, not causes. The real cause is precisely the modem methods born of the industrial revolution, which fatuous observers would introduce while they dream of leaving old institutions unchanged. The railway and the factory system are undermining the family system. They will continue to do so, even if every student take the vow of eternal silence. Here is a village in the province of Chekiang, an actual, not an imaginary, one. For thirty generations the same families have lived and died there. They have been the leading spirits in maintaining farming, industry and social order and peace. The town was a centre of scholars and literary men of the old, dignified, leisurely sort. There was little poverty and much prosperity. Now ancestral homes and temples are in a state of decay. The leading men, whose presence assured light, order and welfare are not there. Farming is degenerating. Even education has gone backward in quality, if not in amount. The lower classes are more restless and disorderly, as well as poorer, than they used to be. The influence of returned students? Precisely as much and as little as is a somewhat similar decay in parts of New England. The town has no railway nor mills. But it is not far from Hangchow and from Shanghai. The abler and more enterprising men, representatives of the solidarity of the old family system, have moved away to places where there is more life and opportunity. This one is in Peking, that one in Shanghai, the other in Hankow. Some are teaching; some are in banks; some are interested in foreign trade, some in developing cotton mills. They are adopting new professions, establishing new relationships, forming new families in new places. It is difficult to be patient with the notion that the industrial revolution can come in China without exercising just such far-reaching political, moral, domestic and intellectual changes as it has wrought in Europe. Europe had its eighteenth century of 'enlightenment', its attack upon the old, its subversive thought and action. And China is beginning to have its century of change, involving destruction, even of good things, as well as introduction of new, good things. How shall we regard men who, in the face of this inevitable transformation, can think only of a few individuals, and who place all blame on the personal beliefs and activities of these few? Even the greatest reactionary can hardly expect to introduce the railway and the mechanical technique of modem industry, and at the same time prevent the introduction of scientific ideas and methods. A few weeks ago there was a total eclipse of the moon. It was celebrated with the usual salute of gongs and firecrackers to prevent the heavenly dog from swallowing the moon. What is the attitude of the small boy and girl who have studied even elementary geography toward the activities of their elders? They are normal enough youngsters to enjoy the racket, but they hardly learn from the ceremony respect for the intelligence and beliefs of their ancestry. The boy learns a little about elementary chemistry, if not in school, then in the modern shop. His belief in ghosts, which is emotionally and intellectually associated with his ancestral worship, is surely modified, and with its modification goes less rigorous adherence to the traditional moral code. These things are rudimentary. But they have a bearing on not only the whole topic of the so-called student movement, but even upon such a practical detail as foreign financial control. It is not necessary to try to assess the respective benefits and evils of the changes going on. It is enough that there are evils and dangers accompanying the transition, with its relaxation of old disciplines and codes. If schemes of reform are limited to financial and economic measures, these evils and dangers may only be increased. They can be remedied and the balance be made to fall heavily on the side of genuine progress, only as financial reform is accompanied by an intellectual and cultural renewal such as lies close to the heart of the student movement in China. Financial reorganization, under international control, will save enormous sums of money. These funds will go largely into railways and highroads and into mills and factories. It takes an unthinking optimist to imagine that along with undoubted benefits there will be no spread of new evils, and no further loosening of old ties. Only a comic opera can do justice to the theme of those who say, 'Restore Old China', and, when asked how it is to be done, reply, 'By building railways and introducing factories'. The decay of the traditional family system will be hastened. With factories, sexual morality will go on the down-grade. Respect for the old and for custom will decrease. Love of money will get new opportunities for expression. Men will lose the chief old moral restraint, which came from lifelong living in the immediate presence of members of the family and clan, to whom every personal act was public and who exercised unremitting pressure of approbation and reproof. Labor difficulties will increase. Child labor is already increasing, and the taking of women from the home. Workmen and employers traditionally in close personal contact will become separated and divided in thought and sentiment. All of these things will surely come along with effective international control and reform of financial administration and the consequent diversion of funds into new means of communication and production. These new evils do not, to be sure, preclude new great benefits or furnish any grounds for relaxing efforts at financial reform. But they suggest the utter ineptitude of schemes that depend wholly upon measures of financial reform, even admitting that they are carried out with complete wisdom, disinterestedness and honesty—as of course they will not be. They indicate that the leaders of the new culture movement in China who are interested in social, domestic and intellectual transformations are wiser, in the midst of all of their confusion, uncertainty and inevitable blundering, than are foreign critics who advise them to leave Old China morally and culturally alone and devote their energies to technical improvements. Here we have the background of the genuine student movement, or better, new culture movement, to some account of the aims and methods of which, my next article will be devoted. |
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Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2012 | Ethik-Zentrum Universität Zürich | Organisation / EZ |
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