Dewey, John
(Burlington 1859-1952 New York, N.Y.) : Philosoph, Pädagoge, Psychologe
Subjects
Index of Names : Occident
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Philosophy : United States of America
Chronology Entries (399)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1900-2000 |
John Dewey and China : general. 1956 Michael, Franz H. ; Taylor, George E. : John Dewey's message was that democracy could be achieved only through a slow process and that social objectives were relative. He was particularly interested in the scientific approach which he described as the search 'for concrete methods to meet concrete problems according to the exigencies of time and place'. In contrast to the apparent indefiniteness of his general social philosophy, the Communist theory provided the Chinese intellectuals with a system which also claimed to be scientific and to be based on a materialistic and antimetaphysical interpretation of human life… The pragmatists helped to prepare the way for the spread of materialism in the next decades. By joining in the attack against Confucianism they discredited the traditional value system, but themselves offered no system of values. They proposed solutions to the problems of the day according to what Dewey called 'exigencies of time and place'. Because the pragmatists themselves tend toward a materialistic and utilitarian interpretation they offered little resistance to communist doctrine. 1960 Thomas Berry : Dewey's influence in the philosophical order might be described as a further development of the positivism that began to dominate the intellectual life of China after Yan Fu published his translation of Thomas Huxley's 'Evolution and ethics' in 1898. We can follow the later development of this positivism, especially in the years just preceding Dewey's arrival, in the pages of the periodical Xin qing nian. Hu Shi from his earliest years as a student was responsive to the attraction of Western materialist philosophy. He saw in science and technology something more spiritual than material. He developed the religious enthusiasm for Dewey's pragmatism. Hu was in close contact with the intellectual life of China during the critical years of its transition. Through him the new conception of the human mind as the instrument of pragmatic adaption to reality was transplanted to China. Hu sought especially to relate Chinese philosophical systems to their historical and social setting. In the field of philosophy, other traditions have been stronger than that of Dewey and Hu Shi. As a special school of philosophy pragmatism was vigorous for only a few years. Since the middle 1920's, pragmatism as a system has been overshadowed by other Western philosophies. Pragmatists, including Hu, turned their attention to educational reform, social reconstruction and political revolution. The philosophical arena was taken over by neo-Realism, rationalistic and idealistic neo-Confucianism, and finally by Marxism. The Marxist challenge to Dewey proved to be more effective than the Confucian or the idealist. Marxism began to awaken in the Chinese a response of very great depth and enthusiasm. Positivism and Hegelian idealism, with their insistence on the progressive stages of development in the mind of man, had prepared the way. Neither Dewey nor his followers realized how powerful and influence Marxist-Leninist Communism would become. During the two years of his venture in China, Dewey made the greatest single effort ever made to bring China into the new age of Western liberalism in political life, of radical empiricism in philosophy, and of progressivism in education. Most important was the philosophical weakness of his position. It offered no satisfactory alternative to the traditional humanism that in former centuries had fashioned the Confucian virtues in the individual person and which had given inner vitality to the social structure. His educational program contained some excellent ideas which could be most beneficial in the training of the young, but only within a more adequate philosophical and religious context which his philosophy could not supply. His cause was in trouble from the lack of strength in the existing Chinese government. Liberalism can grow and develop only within an ordered society. Liberalism supposes order, it does not create order. His cause was in trouble from the existing antagonism toward the West rising from resentment against the colonial systems that had been imposed on so many Asian peoples. The greatest influence of Dewey in China has been in the field of education. An ideal situation existed for his work as educator, a situation much more favorable, than the situation in America, for Chinese students had a sense of political and social involvement lacking among students in America. Detached intellectual speculation was as impossible and as undesirable for them as for Dewey. 'Education for living' had a welcome meaning to students anxious to make their contribution to the welfare of their society. Dewey constantly encouraged the Chinese to take the initiative in bringing their nation into its proper place in the modern world. Dewey's confidence in the power of the human mind to find its own way and his opposition to indoctrination of though upon the mind of other persons were embodied in his insistence that the Chinese should administer their own affairs. The achievement of Dewey was to strengthen the bonds of American-Chinese association. After his visit, other professors from America, particularly educators, were invited to China to assist in establishing training centers for teachers and to develop research program to guide and promote the new effort at the universal education of the Chinese people in accord with modern standards. Three achievements of Dewey should be balanced against a consideration of the detrimental effects of his influence : 1) In accenting the positivistic approach in communication between China and America, Dewey created further difficulties in spiritual communication between the two countries. 2) In encouraging the Chinese people to an immediate and thorough adaptation to the modern age, he helped to turn them further dependence on the West. 3) In fostering a closer association between China and America on the philosophical basis of pragmatism, he helped to alienate the more humanistic forces of China and thereby created an area of antagonism as well as an area of agreement. 1960 Chow, Tse-tsung [Zhou, Cezong]. The May fourth movement : Intellectual revolution in modern China. (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1960). Chow notes on John Dewey : When Dewey classified in his lectures all social problems into three categories – economic, political, and intellectual – Dewey pointed out that economic problems were the most important, because, as he said, 'economic life is the foundation of all social life'. But the significant economic problem discussed by Dewey did not attract enough attention from his Chinese students and friends and other Chinese liberals. Chinese liberals at this time were preoccupied with educational reform, academic research, and the reevaluation of national classics. Few of them considered seriously the problem of the application of democray in China in terms of economic organization and practice. This was undoubtedly one of the major causes of their waning influence on the public following their dramatic role in attacking the traditional ideology and institutions. 1972 Ou Tsui-chen : For China, Dewey suggests some practical measures to realize the ideal of democracy. He does not think it necessary to follow the Western pattern to go through self-seeking individualism and then employ the power of state to equalize society. She may, he thinks, amalgamate these two steps at one stroke. Since in China political individualism has not made headway, traditional paternalism can be turned into the protection of its citizens by a democratic government. In dealing with cultural problems, Dewey proposes to attach great importance to the authority of science instead of the authority of tradition. He pleads for free thinking and free expression of thought. In addition to a prosperous material life, he advocates a free intellectual life. To fulfill this ideal, he stresses the importance of using education as an efficient tool. As the lectures were delivered shortly after the New Culture Movement had begun in Beijing and Chinese traditional morality was under severe criticism, Dewey's lectures often refer to the Movement and particularly to Chinese morality. Contrary to what might be expected, Dewey never advances any extreme view with regard to the then prevailing moral revolution. He takes a middle-of-the-road position vis-à-vis the conflict between the moralities old and new. At the end of his lectures, Dewey makes an excellent comparison between Eastern and Western ethical thought. He first states that morality is a function of the environment and varies with it. So it is difficult to judge which morality has more value than another. There is no doubt whatsoever that of all Western educators Dewey most influence the course of Chinese education, while his influence on Chinese thought, politics, and society in general is a controversial question difficult to resolve. A number of educational reforms and practices were introduced in China which reflected Dewey's influence : 1) Chinese educational aims were reconsidered in the light of Dewey's thought. 2) The national school system was reformed according to the American pattern. 3) Child-centered education was faced in the revision of the curriculum. 4) The new method of teaching according to the pragmatic theory was promoted. 5) Experimental schools were multiplied. 6) Student government as a mode of school discipline was promoted. 7) Literary reform and the adoption of textbooks for elementary schools written in the spoken Chinese language were encouraged. 1973 Robert W. Clopton ; Tsuin-chen Ou : Dewey's stay in China was one of the most significant and influential events in recent Chinese cultural history, but the Chinese have been so familiar with Dewey's influence that they have not bothered to analyze it, nor even to write extensively about it. Americans, on the other hand are largely unfamiliar with Dewey's impact on Chinese thought. In view of the reputation he established throughout the world, it is scarcely surprising that special attention to Dewey's Chinese sojourn should have been delayed. Yet there can be no doubt that China was the one foreign country on which Dewey exercised his greatest influence, particularly in the field of education. When we consider Dewey's impact on Chinese thought and education, we think first of the warmth of his reception in China. All who met him were impressed by his personality, his intellectual honesty, his enthusiasm, his simplicity of nature, his friendliness, and his sympathetic understanding of the Chinese people and their problems. All these characteristics contributed to his popularity both among the intellectuals and among the common people. On one occasion Cai Yuanpei, chancellor of National Beijing University, even likened him to Confucius. Another factor which contributed to Dewey's popularity among the Chinese was that, as an American, he represented the one great nation friendly to China and opposed to its partition by the great powers. Two important institutions were the main centers of Dewey's influence in China, both during his stay and after his departure. These were the National Beijing University and the National Nanjing Teachers College. Both had at their head men who had been Dewey's student : Chiang Monlin in Beijing and P.W. Kuo in Nanjing. Hu Shi involved Dewey in the New Culture movement. The other important institutions of higher learning helped to extend Dewey's influence throughout China : Beijing Teachers College of which Li Jianxun was president, and Nankai University in Tianjin, of which Zhang Boling was president. Dewey's impact was primarily on political and social trends. In his lectures he advocated democray – social, political, and economic. He opposed both laissez-faire individualism and Marxist Communism. While he proposed a general ideal, he refused to advocate any all-embracing ism or any concrete program for action. His principle of the primacy of method also dominated his social and political thinking. Dewey took an unequivocally anti-Communist position, severely criticizing and pointedly repudiating Marxism. In a speech delivered in Fujian he blamed the Communists for neglecting critical thought and for their blind obedience. Dewey most influenced the course of Chinese education, both in theory and practice. His philosophy of education dominated the teaching of educational theory in all teachers colleges and in university departments of education for many years. His textbook 'Democracy and education' was used everywhere, either as a text or as a work of reference. Dewey's disciples Dao Jixing and Chen Heqin (1892-1982) were the most responsible for spreading his influence in China. They developed her own system, taking Dewey's educational theory as her starting point. Dewey's influence in Chinese thought and education was dominant from1919 until1920. His influence first began to diminish after the May 30 incident in Shanghai in 1925. After the Nationalists came to power in 1927, Dewey's influence was seriously undermined. After 1949, the Chinese communists followed Soviet authorities and educators in their denunciation of Dewey and his followers. 1977 Barry Keenan : The most characteristic aspect of Dewey's lectures in China was his insistence that the fields of philosophy, education, and political theory incorporate modern science. He meant in particular the methodological importance of testing hypotheses with verifying evidence, and the implications of the Darwinian theory of evolution. The democratizing of society was linked by Dewey directly to the scientific revolution. His audiences in China were introduced to democracy and the philosophy of experimentalism, with both portrayed as related developments in the history of Western thought. Dewey's explanation of the role of the development of modern science in the West emphasized some points that were particularly designed for his Chinese audiences. One of these was the effect of science on human values and temperament. Dewey felt that the two or three hundred years in which the West had materialistically and morally undergone the effects of science accounted for the most evident differences between the East and West. Dewey's discussion of values extended to some criticism of the way ethics was taught in Chinese schools. In China the school system provided set course on 'ethical education' at the primary and secondary levels. Dewey attacked the theory behind such course, namely, that morality could be presented as a body of facts and knowledge. In his China lectures, Dewey felt it important to emphasize the child-centered curriculum – a turning away from classroom emphasis on subject matter to emphasis on the growth of the child. He dedicated one of his first lectures in Beijing to a discussion of the natural instincts and inherent dispositions of a child, which he considered 'the natural foundation of education'. Child-centered education should be a priority for China, Dewey felt, as a departure from the stratified society or authoritarian tradition that tended to promote the 'pouring in' of accepted subject matter as education. In the democratic society Dewey was told China was trying to create, there had to be equal opportunity for each child to develop his potentialities and become a participating citizen. It was important during a period of rapid social change, Dewey noted, that the younger generation be able to adapt to new conditions. Dewey's comments on reform in China were undoubtedly guided by his coaches and spokesmen, Hu Shi and Chiang Menglin. Many references appear in his lectures relating his educational ideas to social change and 'modernization' in China. Socialization of the child should not only give him or her a critical attitude toward tradition, but also develop his or her critical judgment about contemporary social and political conditions. Dewey and his followers in China felt that the school should be the basic unit in the reconstruction of China. Other institutions of social reform and betterment such as law and political parties, lacked the power of education to carry out deep and lasting change. The experience of going to school gave a child his first daily contact with an environment broader than the family. Dewey pointed out that it was the role of the school to present the world of human knowledge in order to extend the limits of the child's environment. Dewey's discussion of the nature of democracy in his China lectures were a kind of final equilateral component in the triangular connection of democracy, the experimental method, and the democratic education. The democratization of knowledge by science had led historically to an increase in the role of the common people in society, as Dewey saw it, and the connection between scientific knowledge and democracy remained close. As he said soon after arriving in Beijing : 'A person in a democratic country must have the power of independent judgment, the power to think freely, and the actual opportunity to experiment. He must be able to use his own ability to choose the direction of his ideas and his behavior.' In the process of formulating a pragmatic philosophy of politics Dewey discussed rugged individualism, Marxism, and socialism. He warned China to avoid the dangers of rugged individualism. Throughout his lectures he endorsed the idea that individuals should be able to develop themselves to their full potential. The dangers of uncontrolled individualism were emphasized by Dewey because he feared China, in the throes of liberating itself from the authority of the state and the family system, would be prone to fall into its opposite extreme of radical individualism. Dewey was critical of Marxism in his lectures. He pointed out that Marxian theory had failed on two counts : 1) although capital squeezed out competition as predicted, the workers came to fare better and better- the poor did not become poorer and poorer ; 2) the prediction regarding industrial nations being the first to change to socialism was erroneous and shed doubt on the rest of the theory. The question of labor discontent was taken very seriously by Dewey, but he addressed himself critically to Marx's theory of alienation. Dewey was not so critical of some non-Marxian types of socialism. Guild socialism in particular had several points Dewey thought appropriate to China's needs. The existence of guilds in China – for railroads, mines, forests, and roads – provided a natural organizational unit which could be useful in China's transformation from a handicraft to an industrial economy. Dewey called for Chinese reformers to retain a direct connection between the past and change. Dewey's views called for a re-evaluation of traditional customs and institutions, but not for their rejection. Intensive study of the past were encouraged, so that the indigenous cultural traits and institutions relevant to contemporary needs could be discovered and conserved. Dewey's lectures gave many liberal Chinese reformers an unusual opportunity to study and apply an extremely up-to-date and philosophically reliable formulation of the modern democracy. What Dewey said in these lectures, was his own first-draft attempt to see how well pragmatism might be applied to politics. 1995 Su Zhixin : Deweyan experimentalism – as a way of thinking, as a way of acting politically, and as a component of democratic education – offered no strategy Dewey's followers could use to affect political power. Without such a strategy, failure was the main consequence of his followers' pragmatic reform efforts. Their reformism was paralyzed by dilemma. Dewey himself recognized this failure after his visit to China, writing, "The difficulties in the way of a practical extension and regeneration of Chinese education are all but insuperable. Discussion often ends in an impasse : no political reform of China without education ; but no development of schools as long as military men and corrupt officials divert funds and oppose schools from motives of self-interest. Here are the materials of tragedy of the first magnitude". The experimentalist philosophy, conceiving in a rich, literature, industrial, and relatively serene America and propagated by well-intentioned, but somewhat sheltered, Chinese intellectuals, was finally not appropriate for a huge, varied, agricultural, particularistic country. Maybe this is an important reason for Dewey's silence about his historic visit to China, and his views on educational development in China in his later years. The American scholars conduct their evaluation in a purely academic manner, and they are not personally affected by the consequences of what they say or write because they are far detached from the Chinese reality. The Chinese scholars, on the other hand, have to pay attention to the political climate while conducting their evaluation of Western influence because what they say will directly affect their academic careers and personal lives – being 'politically incorrect' in academic discourse could result in the loss of jobs and alienation of families. In general, the Chinese do not differ from their American counterparts in their acknowledgment of the strong and widespread influence of Dewey's ideas on Chinese educational theory and practice. While the Americans do not question Dewey's sincerity in promoting the development of a democratic society or the worthiness of Dewey's ideas for Chinese schools and society ; some praise him as a saint, while others condemn him as an enemy. In many ways, it has been an ideological struggle between Dewey's pragmatism and experimentalism and Marxist-Leninist Communism. Deng Xiaoping's political and economic pragmatism paved the way for Chinese intellectuals to become infatuated once again with Western pragmatism. Under these circumstances, a serious reevaluation of Dewey's influence on Chinese education has begun to emerge among Dewey scholars and concerned educators in China. Some critics suggest that the worthiness of certain elements in Dewey's educational philosophy and its status in the history of philosophy should be reevaluated. They recommend that instead of totally denying Dewey, the Chinese should critically borrow and make use of Dewey's ideas in Chinese educational practices. 1999 David L. Hall ; Roger T. Ames : The New Culture Movement was initially anti-Confucian, and Dewey's thought was seen to be in radical opposition to traditional Confucian ideas. When Sun Yat-sen and the Guomindang promoted a return to many of the traditional Chinese values and institutions, Dewey's thought was deemed unacceptable due to its foreign origin. When the communists came to power, Dewey's thought was roundly condemned as an expression of Western imperialism. After the establishment of the People's Republic, a purge of Deweyan pragmatism was begun. Literally millions of words were written refuting Dewey's works. The reasons for Dewey's failure finally to influence China were largely associated with his refusal to take a wholesale approach to social problems. Always warning the Chinese against the uncritical importation of Western ideas, as well as the uncritical rejection of traditional Chinese values, Dewey, in spite of his radical reconstruction of the popular democratic ideal, was simply too moderate for a China in search of revolution. It was practically inevitable, that Marxism's wholesale ideology would replace Dewey's decidedly retail philosophy. Dewey's educational reforms, badly misunderstood and only partially applied from the beginning, have long since been effectively abandoned. His understanding of democracy was never altogether in the mainstream. In many ways, the opportunity to introduce a reconstructed idea of democracy seems to have been lost as surely in America as it was in China. 1999 Kim Bong-ki : Dewey traf in China zu einem Zeitpunkt ein, als sich das Land in nahezu allen Bereichen in einer Phase des Umbruchs befand, dessen Ursache externer wie interner Natur war. Die Probleme rührten vornehmlich von der Begegnung mit dem Westen her, der die wissenschaftliche Revolution und die darauf folgende industrielle Revolution früher in Gang gesetzt hatte. Hinzu kamen innere Schwierigkeiten in Form einer prekären Wirtschaftslage, grassierender Korruption und eines in weiten Teilen der Bevölkerung als ungerecht empfundenen Steuersystems. Angesichts der Vielzahl und der Schwere der Probleme erstellte Dewey auf der Grundlage seiner pragmatistischen Gesellschaftstheorie eine konkrete Diagnose und entwickelte Reformvorschläge für die Erneuerung der traditionellen chinesischen Gesellschaft. Die – in Deweys Sicht – hinreichende Ausstattung der chinesischen Kultur mit demokratischen Elementen : Abschaffung der Feudalherrschaft in der Antike, prinzipieller Zugang zur Bildung für alle, besondere Betonung der Erziehung führt ihn zu der Erwartung, China könne den Übergang zum Industrialismus noch kreativer und effektiver durchführen, als der Westen dies geleistet habe. Dewey These von der Verankerung demokratischer Elemente in der chinesischen Tradition findet ihre Bestätigung in den Konzeptionen des 'tian-ming' (Mandat des Himmels) mit einer verbindlichen Tugendlehre für die Herrscher, ihrer Machtbegrenzung und Fürsorgepflicht für das Volk, und des 'yanlu' (Wege der Kommunikation), eines Bestandteils der konfuzianischen Staatsauffassung, in dem Missstände der Beamtenschaft bis hin zur Kritik am Kaiser verzeichnet waren. Was den Erfolg im Sinne Deweys um eine Transformation Chinas anbetrifft, wird man, aufs Ganze gesehen, sagen können, dass der Pragmatismus sich nicht dauerhaft durchzusetzen vermochte, dass er am ehesten noch in der Erziehung zum Tragen kam. Wenn es überhaupt zu positiven Ergebnissen gekommen ist, lässt sich dies darauf zurückführen, dass Dewey die von ihm selbst vorgegebene Prämisse der Vermeidung eines geraden westlichen Transfers nach China ernstgenommen hat. Das amerikanische Konzept der Progressiven Schule wurde von Dewey modifiziert und auf die chinesischen Bedürfnisse zugeschnitten. So war zwar die 'Progressive Education' darauf gerichtet, den in der veränderten Lebenswelt aufgetretenen neuen Herausforderungen zu begegnen, die bewahrenswerten Elemente der chinesischen Tradition sollten aber für die Gegenwart fruchtbar gemacht, die spezifischen Bedingungen und Erfordernisse Chinas in das Bildungssystem eingebracht werden. Als größter einleitender Schritt für eine allgemeine elementare Erziehung kann die unter Deweys Einfluss von Hu Shi vollzogene Einführung einer an der Umgangssprache ausgerichteten Schriftsprache - 'baihua' - gelten, die seither landesweit im Gebrauch ist. Weitere erfolgversprechende Ansätze erbrachten die Schülerselbstverwaltung und die Dezentralisierung der Schulkontrolle und Schulsteuerung, derzufolge den Erfordernissen der örtlichen Umgebung besser entsprochen werden konnte. Deweys Pragmatismus hat es als einzige westliche philosophische Strömung unternommen, Reformvorschläge für die Behebung der chinesischen Kulturkrise in der Zeit nach dem ersten Weltkrieg auszuarbeiten. In zeitlicher Parallelität zur Rezeption und der Interpretation der Ideen Deweys durch die chinesischen Pragmatisten verlief die gesamte Reformbewegung, wobei der Themenkreis die Kritik an den traditionellen Wertmaßstäben, Gebräuchen und Institutionen, die Ordnung des nationalen Erbes durch kritische Interpretation der überlieferten Geschichte, Literaturkritik und die Sprachreform umfasste. Hinsichtlich des Versuches der Schüler Deweys, seine politischen Ideen in die Praxis umzusetzen, muss gesagt werden, dass es bei dem Versuch geblieben ist. Im Sommer 1919 brach eine In zeitlicher Parallelität zur Rezeption und der Interpretation der Ideen Deweys durch die chinesischen Pragmatisten verlief die gesamte Reformbewegung, wobei der Themenkreis die 'Debatte über Probleme und Ismen' bzw. 'Reform und Revolution' auf, die für die folgenden 30 Jahre der politischen Entwicklung Chinas von Bedeutung war, weil sie in der Öffentlichkeit eine intellektuelle Spaltung der Liberalen und Linken hervorrief, die nicht rückgängig gemacht wurde. Während Li Dazhao, Gründer der KPCh, die marxistische Theorie als Alternative zur grundlegenden Lösung für alle gesellschaftlichen Probleme befürwortete, lehnte Hu Shi einen allumfassenden Ismus oder ein konkretes Programm für Aktionen ab und plädierte nachdrücklich für die Reformidee des Pragmatismus, der wegen seiner kritischen Potenz und des Fehlens dogmatischer Züge von einer anderen Qualität ist: die gesellschaftliche und politische Erneuerung durch schrittweise Progressivität, den einzigen in seiner Sicht gangbaren Weg. 2001 Martina Eglauer : Die Wissenschaft stellt nach Deweys Auffassung für China während der Umbruchsphase eine wichtige, ja sogar die einzig mögliche konstruktive Hilfe zur Umgestaltung der Gesellschaft dar. Die solle die neue 'Autorität', im Sinne von 'any thought or belief which directs human behaviour', sein und die zukünftige Orientierung liefern. Die Wissenschaft könne in Zukunft die Rolle übernehmen, die die Tradition in der Vergangenheit einnahm. Seine radikaldemokratische Auffassung, die die Entwicklung und Förderung des wissenschaftlichen Geistes in einer demokratischen Gemeinschaft verankert, versucht Dewey auch in China zu vermitteln, denn wissenschaftliche Erziehung ist für ihn gleichzeitig auch demokratische Erziehung. Nachdem die Wissenschaft jedermann zugänglich sein solle, sei eine Erziehungs- und Bildungsreform erforderlich, welche die traditionellen Lehrmethoden durch neue Methoden ersetzt. Wissenschaft könne nur auf dem Boden intellektueller Freiheit optimal gedeihen. Dewey verweist darauf, dass Wissenschaft nicht einfach mit Technologie identifiziert werden dürfe. Im Hinblick auf den 'wissenschaftlichen Geist', der für die Entwicklung der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft eine wesentlich fundamentalere Rolle spiele, als einzelne Technologien und Errungenschaften, diagnostiziert Dewey einen Aufklärungsbedarf für China. China könne bei der Entwicklung der wissenschaftlichen Methode von den Erfahrungen des Westens profitieren, und gleichzeitig aus den Fehlern des Westens lernen. Dewey bescheinigt China zwar ein mangelndes Bewusstsein im Hinblick auf die Bedeutung des wissenschaftlichen Geistes, er geht aber von einer grundsätzlichen, verbindenden Rationalität aus. Der wissenschaftliche Geist gilt für ihn nicht als westliches Spezifikum, sondern als unviersales Vermögen, das allen Menschen zu eigen ist. Aus pragmatistischer Sicht ist die Situation in China stark veränderungsbedürftig. Das geistige Klima, welches Dewey vorfindet, ist noch vorwiegend von den alten Traditionen und Strukturen verhaftet und die traditionellen Werte und Gewohnheiten erweisen sich als gesellschaftsbestimmende Konstanten. Für das Reformprojekt in China übernimmt Hu Shi ungebrochen das pragmatistische Wissenschaftsverständnis seines Lehrers Dewey, das er als wirksame Methode für die kulturelle Erneuerung vorstellt. Umgekehrt wirken seine, unter pragmatistischer Perspektive getätigten Analysen auf die Diskussion in der westlichen Philosophie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte zurück. 2002 Jay Martin : After his trips to Japan and China, Dewey had become a changed person, an evolving person. His educational vision and his political understanding had broadened beyond American boundaries to include the world. Dewey was indeed transformed by his trip to the Far East from U.S. philosopher to a transnational philosopher. In addition, after his visit to China, Dewey maintained his noninterventionist approach to international politics. Dewey's visit to China and his efforts to help modernize China's schools, which were widely reported and recognized, led to many invitations from other foreign governments to inspect their education systems. 2003-2004 Sor-hoon Tan : Hu Shi was promoting Dewey's philosophy while he was still developing it. Hu's pragmatist work in China, his promotion of vernacular literature, was an important contribution because it made possible 'the means of communication and publicity required for democracy'. Dewey's views on the process of thought were extremely important in the development of Hu's intellectual method. And much of Hu's life was devoted to the social inquiry that Dewey argued has to be at the center of democratic life, even though the inquiry was necessarily imperfect given the circumstances, and Hu was inclined to a more individualistic view of inquiry than was warranted by Dewey's conception of democracy. Hu Shi, explaining Dewey's views on thinking, singles out 'the cultivation of creative intelligence' as 'the greatest aim of Dewey's philosophy ; it is creative intelligence that will enable human beings to respond satisfactorily to their environments, both physical and social. In his own way, Hu tried to realize Dewey's scientific method as intelligent practice, to transform his own experience and his country's. Hu believed that science could solve moral and political problems. These sentiments echo those in Dewey's 'Reconstruction of philosophy'. Dewey also believed that philosophy has much to learn from modern science, and that the lesson would improve philosophy's ability to handle what should be its central task, solving the problems of humanity, especially moral and social problems. Hu Shi was not misreading or misapplying Dewey when he defended the relevance of science to life, including its moral and political aspects ; but he was less sensitive than Dewey to the dangers of worshiping the achievements of the physical sciences, because he believed that China's backwardness rendered it much more in need of the benefits of science than at risk from science's evils. This does not mean that he would not have agreed with Dewey's clarification that there are important differences between physical sciences and social sciences. Hu's interpretation of pragmatism as method has considerable support from Dewey's writings, he sometimes exaggerated Dewey's own emphasis on method. Referring to Dewey's 1907 'What pragmatism means by practical', he claimed that 'Dewey, from beginning to end, only recognized pragmatism as a method'. Hu borrowed from Dewey much more than the mere formulation of an intellectual methodology. While he pointed out that Dewey's visit to China gave his Chinese audience 'no specific proposals such as communism, anarchism, or free love [but] a philosophical method which enabled [them], through its use, to solve [their] own special problems'. In Dewey's theory and practice, politics and education are integrated in the endeavor to bring about democracy. Dewey endorsed Hu Shi's strategic exclusion of political involvement only to the extent that the politics in question was of a variety that sill awaited reconstruction if it was to contribute to democratization. While Hu and Dewey were not against radical changes, they did not believe in 'revolutionary changes' that break completely with the past. The misplaced denial of the inherent continuity of experience even in the midst of the most drastic discontinuities would only lead to the destruction of not only obsolete customs and institutions but also the values those customs and institutions were originally intended to serve, values that may still be relevant to the new situation. What Dewey's experimentalism led Hu Shi to reject was an undemocratic power struggle that might ensure short-term political victory only at the cost of the eventual defeat of democracy. Hu's attempt to realize Dewey's pragmatism in China may not have succeeded in bringing about democracy, but we should not overlook the democratic significance and far-reaching effect of certain aspects of the education and cultural reforms he and other initiated. If Hu Shi seems a little selective in his presentation and interpretation of pragmatism, we must remember that he was promoting Dewey's philosophy even as Dewey was still developing it. Moreover, from a pragmatist perspective, his mentor's views are not absolute truths ; they are tools to be used appropriately in the circumstances. 2007 Jessica Wang : Many know that Dewey went to China to teach, but few know that he went because he wanted to learn. Dewey taught the Chinese a lot about the West and learned a great deal about China. Even though he may have had some exposure to Chinese culture through his Chinese students at Columbia University, it was not enough to prepare him to be a China expert. Most of Dewey's writings about China are the result of his own observations, assisted by his conversations with various people – his own students and translators, travel guides, missionary friends, academic acquaintances, and institutional hosts – and, most important, by his own study of Chinese history. In his sojourn, Dewey learned about the Chinese social psychology and philosophy of life. At the same time, he also came to understand the West and to question its Eurocentric worldviews. His presence in China opened his eyes to the dark realities of international politics, it also sheltered him from criticism for his idealistic support for the war. Coinciding with the well-known May fourth movement, Dewey's two-year visit demarcated a significant episode in the history of intellectual exchange between China and the United States. One of the most important episodes in the history of intellectual exchange was to grow out of the effort of the U.S. government to promote the education of China's young elites. The encounter between Dewey and China in the 1920s was characterized by ambivalences, uncertainties, and changes on both sides. Faced with challenges from the West, Chinese intellectuals had initially sought to acquire Western technology and implement Western institutions. Later, they realized that they had to study the ideas that inform Western development and practice. During the two years of his stay, Dewey came into contact with these contending ideologies. Although Chinese intellectuals had ambivalent attitudes toward the West, Dewey had his doubts about how the United States should respond to China, or rather, how the United States could help China. Dewey was trying to understand China and its precarious position in the international world, while Chinese intellectuals were trying to understand Dewey and his position in their ideological battles. In the 1920s, Chinese opinions of Dewey reflected their own vexed interests in liberalism, neo-traditionalism, and Marxism. In the 1930s and 1940s, as China underwent a series of domestic and international wars, a natural eclipse of interest in Dewey occurred. Since the establishment of the Communist regime in 1949, the dialogue between Dewey and China took a drastic turn. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Chinese Communist government launched a large-scale campaign to purge the pragmatic influences of Hu Shi and Dewey. During this period, pragmatism was eschewed as an evil influence of Western imperialism and capitalism. In the 1980s, due to the reform and open door policy of China, the dialogue about Dewey was revived. Since then, Chinese scholars have started to reevaluate Dewey and pragmatism. Dewey's experimental theory of inquiry made him qualified as 'Mr. Science'. His promotion of democratic ideals earned him the legitimate title of 'Mr. Democracy'. His concerns for the education of the masses contributed to his reputation as the common people's educator. The three topics on science, democracy, and education are chosen for many reasons. First, they constitute the major themes of Dewey's lectures ; second, they reflected the interests and concerns of his Chinese hosts ; and third, they evoked considerable responses and criticisms from his audience. Dewey knew that in their attempt to emulate Western technology, the Chinese tended to espouse a one-sided, mechanistic view of science, paying attention merely to the products, not the process of science. Therefore in his lectures, Dewey stressed science as a method of thinking, knowing, and acting that has a positive impact on morals and values. During his visit, Dewey was often asked about ways China could avoid the pitfalls of Western materialistic culture. He admitted that love of money, cruelty in military battles, and contention between capital and labor accompanied material progress in the West. He hoped that the Chinese would come to appreciate science as a method of intelligence for coping with problems and difficulties in ordinary life, rather than as a collection of objective truth. Knowing that such a view of science was not even widely shared in the West, he somehow hoped that the Chinese would consider his suggestions, particularly when they planned for education reform. Dewey was aware of the increasing trend toward individualism in China and was wary of its concomitant problems. He advised the Chinese not to follow the same path Western nations had taken – namely, going through a stage of self-seeking individualism to the next stage in which state power had to be used to ensure social equality. He believed that Chinese culture was endowed with democratic elements that would enable her to carry out the transition to industrialism more creatively and effectively than the West had done. Even though Dewey had great sympathy for the struggles of the Chinese and admired many unique qualities of Chinese culture, he was not uncritical of their weaknesses – their passivity and reliance on authority. Therefore, in his lectures, he often stressed the importance of spontaneity, creativity, and initiative, reminding his audience that they needed to reconcile partisan disputes and undertake practical tasks that demands large-scale organization and cooperation. Knowing that the Chinese had learned to organize themselves to operate on a national level, Dewey suggested that schools should cultivate a sense of public spirit extending beyond the students' immediate environments. Dewey's political activism often runs a sharp contrast to Hu Shi's conservatism. Dewey exerted little influence in Hu's pragmatist experiment in China, even though Dewey was also a participant. Dewey was aware that Hu's reform approach was not very practical, that intellectual, attitudinal changes still depended on concrete changes in economic and social conditions, but Dewey was in no position to intervene. Dewey acknowledged the New Culture group Hu led and was willing to 'give face' to their liberal ideals. 2007 Ding Zijiang : Dewey's philosophy was very attractive to Chinese intellectuals because he seemed to give them an 'easygoing' and also 'efficient' way to deal with many current issues. He taught the Chinese people (1) to pay more attention to practical effectiveness rather than man's knowledge of transmaterial being or all former illusions about transcendent truths ; (2) to concern themselves with those immediate problems of individual and social life rather than the past heritage of culture, which had limited the country's development, and any abstract and all-embracing 'ism' which was not urgent for today's actual life, and (3) to consider intelligence as an instrument for meeting and mastering the new social environment. Dewey's pragmatism was suitable for a certain aspect of Chinese thought patterns. Dewey's pragmatism as a method is congenial to the practical mentality and disposition of the Chinese people, and it is also a factor of fundamental importance among those that contributed to Dewey's popularity. The Chinese tradition, unlike the Greek one, has never exalted knowledge for its own sake, but rather for its usefulness to morality, society, politics, and culture. For this reason, leading Chinese intellectuals used Dewey Dewey's pragmatism was suitable for a certain aspect of Chinese thought patterns. Dewey's pragmatism as a method is congenial to the practical mentality and disposition of the Chinese people, and it is also a factor of fundamental importance among those that contributed to Dewey's popularity. Dewey's pragmatic experimentalism with telling effect as a weapon with which to criticize Chinese culture and the traditional value system. One of the reasons for Dewey's influence on China is the 'holistic' nature of his thought, which was thoroughly in tune with a similar position found in Chinese thought. For example, Chen Duxiu's totalistic attack on Confucianism resulted, among other factors, from his conception of the Confucian tradition as fundamentally a holism that rigidly directed all later developments of Confucianism. Dewey's real success in China was his educational thought. Dewey emphasized that there was nothing which one heard so often from the lips of representatives of Young China today as that education was the sole means of reconstructing China. Dewey's theories, such as the 'own experience-centered principle', the 'teaching-learning-doing combination principle', the 'school as a society principle', and the 'education for living principle' were extended and advances by his Chinese disciples, such as Tao Xingzhi, one of the most influential Chinese educators. For the new Chinese intellectuals, Dewey's leading principle was that education is an instrument of social change and development. Accordingly, students who have grown politically aware under the new educational regime can be considered as a force, who will in the future make politics of a different sort. The most important aspect of 'Deweyanization' is education. Dewey was a teacher of teachers. Teaching people how to life and think in the new age of science, technology, democracy, and social development was his mission. His School of education (1889) and Democracy and education (1916) were well known by Chinese edcators and intellectuals. Hu Shi accepted Dewey's idea that education is life and school is society. Importantly, political reform can only be achieved after a social and cultural transformation, which must be promoted by way of education. Dewey himself systematically explained the same views as Hu Shi's in his articles on China. As he correctly pointed out, since 'democracy was a matter of beliefs, of outlook upon life, of habits of mind, and not merely a matter of forms of government', it demanded 'universal education', and the first step towards achieving universal education was to establish the spoken language as a written literary language. In the 1920s, with Dewey's visit, the entire American educational system was transferred to China, and American aims, methods, and materials became dominant. Deweyanized experimental schools and training programs were popularized. Even the purpose of Chinese education was redefined according to Dewey's progressivism, such as learning by doing, developing abilities by capacities, and students themselves running schools. Dewey's educational influence on China : (1) Chinese educational aims were reconsidered in light of Dewey's thought ; (2) the national school system was reformed according to the American pattern ; (3) child-centered education predominated in the revision of the curriculum ; (4) new methods of teaching in accordance with Dewey's pragmatic theory were initiaded ; (5) experimental schools were expanded ; (6) student government, about which Dewey made a number of speeches, was widely extended as a mode of school discipline ; (7) literary reform was encouraged, and elementary school textbooks written in the vernacular were adopted. |
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| 2 | 1912.02 |
Cai, Yuanpei. "Proposals for educational policies". Cai Yuanpei recommended John Dewey and his pragmatic educational philosophy for the first time. He informed that 'pragmatism originated in North America and is now very popular on the European continent' and that 'Dewey from America is the representative of pragmatism'. |
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| 3 | 1914-1917 | Tao Xingzhi studiert Politische Wissenschaften an der University of Illinois, dann am Teachers College, Columbia University unter John Dewey, Paul Monroe und William Kilpatrick. | |
| 4 | 1915 |
International Education Conference in Panama. Cai Yuanpei submitted a report and he recommended John Dewey and his educational philosophy. |
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| 5 | 1917 |
Hu Shi promoviert am Department of Philosophy der Columbia University unter John Dewey und Friedrich Hirth. Hu selected two of Dewey's classes : social and political philosophy and schools of ethics. Three aspects of Dewey's teaching had a lasting impact on Hu, and were explicated in much of Hu's own writings : 1) Dewey's theory, which divided thinking into four evolutionary stages : the initial stage when beliefs were held fixed and static ; the Sophist stage where the certainty and static consistency of the previous stage was challenged ; the Socratic stage which transformed discussion into reasoning and subjective reflection into a method of proof ; and the inductive and empirical stage where thinking became research by way of the logical method. 2) Dewey's secular and instrumental approach to the study of the history of philosophy. 3) Dewey's idea of contextualism. |
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| 6 | 1918 |
Meeting about elementary education in Tianjin. Cai Yuanpei recommended John Dewey and his educational philosophy. |
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| 7 | 1919 May-July 1921 |
John Dewey hält Gastvorlesungen an der Beijing-Universität. Unter dem Titel Soziale und politische Philosophie legt Dewey zum ersten Mal die pragmatische Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung und Umformung, die der Bekämpfung des Marxismus als theoretische Grundlage diente, systematisch dar. Die Manuskripte werden in verschiedenen Zeitungen und Zeitschriften veröffentlicht und haben einen starken Einfluss auf die ideologischen und kulturellen Zirkel. Dewey bereist 11 Provinzen in China. |
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| 8 | 1919.03 | Suzanne P. Ogden : The immediate stimulus leading to the invitation to Bertrand Russell for a visit in China may have been the series of lectures given by John Dewey in Beijing in March 1919 on The three great philosophers of our day, James, Bergson, and Russell. |
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| 9 | 1919.10 |
Dewey, John. Transforming the mind of China [ID D28459]. The beginning of the modem age in China dates from that bloody episode, the Boxer Convulsion. Its outbreak signalized the supreme endeavor of old China to have done once for all with the unwelcome intruder, so that it might return untroubled to its self-sufficiency. Its close marked the recognition that the old China was doomed, and that henceforth China must live its life in the presence of the forces of western life, forces intellectual, moral, economic, financial, political. With its usual patience China set out to adapt itself to the inevitable. But in this case, something more than a patient passivity was necessary. China learned in 1900 that she had to adjust herself to the requirements imposed by the activities of western peoples. Every year since then she has been learning that this adjustment can be effected only by a readjustment of her own age-long customs, that she has to change her historic mind and not merely a few of her practices. Twenty years have passed and the drama does not seem to be advancing. China seems to be marking time. As with the drama of the Chinese stage, the main story is apparendy lost in a mass of changing incidents and excitements that lack movement, climax and plot. But the foreign interpreter comes to the scene with a mind adapted to the quick tempo of the West. He expects to see a drama unfold after the pattern of the movie. He is not used to history enacted on the scale of that of China. When he hastily concludes that nothing is doing, or rather that although something new and unexpected happens every day, everything is moving in an aimless circle, he forgets that twenty years is but a passing moment in a history that has already occupied its four thousand years. How can a civilization that has taken four thousand years to evolve, that has crept about and absorbed every obstacle hitherto encountered, that has countless inner folds of accumulated experience within itself, quickly find itself in new courses? We talk glibly about the importance of the problem of the Pacific, and even the school boy can quote Seward, Hay and Taft. But what do we suppose this problem to be? One that concerns a superficial waste of mobile waters? No, the real problem of the Pacific is the problem of the transformation of the mind of China, of the capacity of the oldest and most complicated civilization of the globe to remake itself into the new forms required by the impact of immense alien forces. Analogies, especially when they are obvious, are as deceptive in the field of political thinking as they long ago proved in natural science. The tempting comparison of the future of China, in its reaction to western ideas and institutions, to the record of Japan is misleading. The difference of scale between a small island and a vast continental territory makes the correspondence impossible. China emerged from feudalism two thousand years ago, but without at the same time becoming a national state in the sense familiar to us. Japan's emergence coincided with its opening to the West, so that its internal condition and the external pressure from other nations enabled it to take the form of an absolute state (with certain constitutional trimmings) externally similar to states produced in the evolution out of feudalism of modem Europe. The development of a strong centralized state, with unified administration and militaristic protection, was as easy for Japan as it is difficult for China. More fundamental is the difference in national psychology. Something over a thousand years ago Japan took on Chinese civilization via Korea and yet remained essentially Japanese. For the past sixty years it has been taking on western civilization. Yet the writers and thinkers most characteristically Japanese tell you that Japan is not westernized in heart or mind. Though it borrows wholesale western technique in science, industry, administration, war and diplomacy, it borrows them with the deliberate intention of thereby strengthening the resisting power of its own traditional policies. It acknowledges without reserve the superiority of western methods, but these superior methods are to be used to maintain eastern ideals intrinsically superior to the foreign. This may seem to the foreigner an evidence of the conceit often associated with Japan, but the retort is easy: Is the European complacent conviction of superiority anything more than the conceit of prejudice? At all events, this doubleness of Japanese life, its combination of traditional aims and moral ways with the externals of foreign skill and specialized knowledge, accounts for the impression of duplicity which so many carry away from contact with contemporary Japan. It is to be doubted whether such a dualism, such inconsistency of inner and outer life, can be long kept up. Yet its successful achievement marks the record of Japan in its relations to western civilization. And it is precisely this sort of thing which cannot happen in China. She has evolved, not borrowed, her civilization. She has no great knack at successful borrowing. Her problem is one of transformation, of making over from within. Educated Chinese will already tell you that if you wish intact survivals of old China, you must go to Japan—and Japanese tell you much the same thing, though with quite a different accent and import. The visitor is struck by the fact that it is in the public buildings and schools of Japan, not of China, that the eye everywhere sees the old Confucianist mottoes, especially those of the reactionary and authoritative type. China with all its backwardness and its confusion and weakness is more permeated today with western contemporary thought than is Japan. There is some significance in the fact that while the circulation of President Wilson's war speeches was legally forbidden in Japan, they have furnished for the past two years China's best seller. There will be many to say that Japan's retention of the ideas that she took from China in the best days of the latter's history, and then protected against deterioration, is the cause of Japan's strength, and that China's decay is precisely because she has permitted the infiltration of ideals and ideas that are foreign and consequently destructive. This may be true. I am not here concerned to deny it. In any case, it illustrates our proposition: China must run a course radically different from that of Japan. There will either be decay and disintegration, or thoroughgoing inner transformation. There will not be adoption of western external methods for immediate practical ends, because the Chinese genius does not lie in that direction. Japan's influence upon China has been enormous. The westerner who has not studied the situation is quite unaware of the extent to which China after the Russo-Japanese war in particular took over Japanese administrative and educational methods. But it is already obvious that they are not working here as they worked in Japan. A large part of the present intellectual and moral crisis in China is due to reaction against this factor in Chinese life. Doubtless it is artificially strengthened just now by immediate political causes. But beneath this surface there is a general intellectual ferment, and a belief that China must resort not to Japanese copies of western forms, but to the original sources of western moral and intellectual inspiration. And the recourse is not for the sake of getting models to pattern herself after, but to get ideas, intellectual capital, with which to renovate her own institutions. National conceit, national vanity, is a sealed book to the outsider. We are sure that our own is only just pride and self-respect, and that the foreigner's is either ridiculous or a mark of offensive contempt and dangerous hostility to our own cherished ways of life. But dubious as is generalization on such matters, one is struck by certain differences in the group self-consciousness of Japan and China. Its quality is perhaps suggested in certain comments which they pass not infrequendy upon each other. A Japanese will tell you that the Chinese do not care what other persons think of them. A Chinese says that Japan has no sense of its 'face'. The two criticisms are enough alike to be intriguing. But it may be suggested in explanation that Chinese complacency is the deeper seated and hence is not so acute. It is fundamental and taken for granted. It does not need to be asserted in special instances. As long as the Chinese retain unimpaired their own judgment of themselves, their own reputation with themselves, their face is saved, and what others think is negligible. On the other hand, it is humiliating to them to borrow as Japan does. It would be a confession of absence of inner resources. When Japan engages foreign experts, she is interested in results, and so gives them a free hand till she has learned what they have to give. China engages the foreign expert—and then courteously shelves him. The difference is typical of a difference in attitude toward western life. It is a large part of the cause of Japan's rapid progress and of China's backwardness. The Japanese naturally places himself in the stead of the western spectator and is acutely conscious of the criticisms the beholder might pass upon what he sees. He tries to make over the spectacle to satisfy the demands of the western onlooker. He reserves his deeper pride for his national ideals. The Chinese scarcely cares what the foreigner may think of what he sees. He even brings the skeletons in his closet cheerfully forward for the visitor to gaze at. The complacency or conceit involved in this attitude has enormously retarded the advance of China. It has made for a conservative hugging of old traditions, and a belief in the inherent superiority of Chinese civilization in all respects to that of foreign barbarians. But it has also engendered a power of objective criticism and self-analysis which is rarely met in Japan. The educated Chinese who dissects the institutions and customs of his own country does it with a calm objectivity which is unsurpassable. And the basic reason, I think, is the same national pride. His institutions may not stand the criticism very well, but the people who produced these institutions are intrinsically invulnerable. They produced them, and when they get around to it they will create some new ones better adapted to the conditions of present life. The faith of the Chinese in the final outcome of their country, no matter what the despair about the current state of things, reminds an American of a similar faith abounding in his own country. We are brought around to our main contention. China's slack¬ness with respect to borrowing the technique of the West in civil administration, public sanitation, taxation, education, manufacturing, etc., is quite compatible with an effort on her part to bring about a thoroughgoing transformation of her institutions through contact with western civilization. In this remaking she will appropriate rather than borrow. She will attempt to penetrate to the principles, the ideas, the intelligence, from which western progress has emanated, and to work out her own salvation through the use of her own renewed and quickened national mind. The task is an enormous one. Time is of the essence of the performance. Just because the task is to effect an inner modification rather than an outward adjustment, its execution will take a long time. Will the forces that are playing upon China from without, forces that have contemplated its territorial disintegration, that are desirous of dominating its policies and exploiting in their own behalf its natural resources, permit a normal evolution? Will they stand by to assist, or will they invade and irritate and deflect and thwart till there is a final climax of no one knows what tragic catastrophe? These are some of the elements in the great drama now enacting. The baffling and 'mysterious' character of China to the West is genuine enough. But it does not seem to be due to any peculiarly dark and subtle psychology. Human nature as one meets it in China seems to be unusually human, if one may say so. There is more of it in quantity and it is open to view, not secreted. But the social mind, the political mind, has been subjected for centuries to institutions which are not only foreign to present western customs, but which have no historic precedent. Neither our political science nor our history supplies any system of classification for understanding the most characteristic phenomena of Chinese institutions. This is the fact which makes the workings of the Chinese mind inscrutable to the uninitiated foreigner, and which makes it necessary to describe so many things in contradictory linguistic terms. The civilization itself is not contradictory, but in its own self-consistency it includes things which in western life have been sharply opposed. Then there are intermediate forms, political missing links, which to our grasp must prove elusive; they are vague because we have no comparable forms by which to define and interpret them. Yet the Chinese mind thinks, of course, as naturally in terms of its customs and conventions as we think in ours. We merely forget that we think in terms of customs and traditions which habituation has engrained; we fancy that we think in terms of mind, pure and simple. Taking our mental habits as the norm of mind, we find the ways of thinking that do not conform to it abnormal, mysterious and tricky. We can get the key to mental operations only by studying social antecedents and environment, and this truth holds pre-eminendy in an old civilization like the Chinese. We have to understand beliefs and traditions to understand acts, and we have to understand historic institutions to understand beliefs. It is clear enough that the Korean question is quite pivotal in many of the most urgent external political questions of Asia. Yet Mr. Holcombe has told how the question was complicated in earlier days by the misconceptions which formed the basis of dealing with it by western nations. They knew that there was something of a relation of dependency of Korea upon China. They assumed the kind of relationship with which the West was acquainted, that of suzerain and vassal. When China declined to bear the responsibility of enforcing certain demands upon Korea as being out of her authority, the western nations thought that China was either insincere or else disclaimed all political jurisdiction. That there should be a genuine relationship of dependency, but of an advisory, homiletic, grandfatherly type, was beyond the scope of western precedent and understanding. The early relations of western diplomacy with the Imperial Court at Peking are a record of simi¬lar misunderstandings. There were all the insignia of royalty over China, extending even to despotic power. In relation to happenings in the provinces, therefore, it was natural to endow the 'Government' at Peking with all the attributes of sovereignty as that is constituted in Europe. That the central government (beyond certain well-established relations of taxation and appointment of civil service) sustained mainly a ceremonial and hortatory connection with a large part of China was beyond conception. These grosser misunderstandings could be multiplied in considering almost every detail of Chinese institutional life. It has to be understood in terms of itself, not translated over into the classifications of an alien political morphology. The story of the difficulties that had to be overcome in the introduction of railways into China is perhaps the best known of Chinese incidents. But it bears retelling because it affords a typical illustration of the fact that the chief obstacle in the effective contact of West and East is intellectual and moral. Opposition to railways was not a matter of routine conservatism, blind sluggish opposition to the new just because it was new. The Chinese have the normal amount of curiosity, and perhaps even more than the normal amount of practical sense of the advantage to be gained by a novelty which does not conflict with traditional beliefs. A difficulty presented itself in getting a clear right of way for railways, on account of the graves, which, from the western standpoint, are scattered at random. But from the Chinese standpoint, they are located with the utmost science, and to disturb them is to throw out of balance the whole system of environmental influences that affect health and good crops. Moreover, the graves are the centre of the system of ancestral worship, and that is the centre of civic organization. The tale might have been invented to show how completely the forces to be reckoned with are intellectual and moral, and how completely they are bound up with the structure of life. Without a change of national mind it is hopeless to suppose that China can go forward prosperously because of intercourse with the West. It is a rash enterprise to form a generalization about the factors of the Chinese popular psychology that count most, whether positively or negatively, in the task of regenerating China. But the strong points of a people, as of individual character, lie close to its weak ones. So perhaps it is safe to say that the promise of China's rebirth into full membership in the modem world is found in its democratic habits of life and thought, provided we add to the statement another: the peculiar quality of this democracy also forms the strongest obstacle to the making over of China in its confrontation by a waiting, resdess and greedy world. For while China is morally and intellectually a democracy of a paternalistic type, she lacks the specific organs by which alone a democracy can effectively sustain itself either internally or internationally. China is in a dilemma whose seriousness can hardly be exaggerated. Her habitual decentralization, her centrifugal localisms, operate against her becoming a nationalistic entity with the institutions of public revenue, unitary public order, defence, legislation and diplomacy that are imperatively needed. Yet her deepest traditions, her most established ways of feeling and thinking, her essential democracy, cluster about the local units, the village and its neighbors. The superimposition of a national state, without corresponding transformation of local institutions (or better without an evolution of the spirit of local democracies into national scope) gives us just what we now have in China: A nominal republic governed by a military clique, maintained in part by foreign loans made in response to a bartering away of national property and power, and in part by bargainings with provincial leaders whose power rests upon their control of an army and the ability this control gives them to levy on industry and wealth. In fact, we have a state which, if it were taken statically, if it were frozen, would reproduce the evils of the old despotism with new ones added, and which can be saved only because it has released popular forces that make for something better. But it remains to organize these popular forces, to give them play, to build for them regular channels of operation. Up to the present western thought has confined itself to the more obvious, the more structural, factors of the problem. These are naturally the problems most familiar in occidental political life. They are such things as the adjustment of the power and authority of the central government to that of local and regional governments; the problem of the relations of the executive and legislative forces in the government; the revision of legal procedure and law to eliminate arbitrariness and personal discretion. But after all, such matters are symptoms, effects. To try to reorganize China by beginning with them is like solving an engineering problem by skilful juggling. The real problem is how the democratic spirit historically manifest in the absence of classes, the prevalence of social and civil equality, the control of individuals and groups by moral rather than physical force—that is, by instruction, advice and public opinion rather than definitive legal methods—can find an organized expression of itself. And the problem, I repeat, is unusually difficult because traditionally, in the habits of beliefs as well as of action, these forces out of which the transformation of China must grow are opposed to organization on a nation-wide scale. Take a conspicuous example. To maintain itself as a nation among other nations of the contemporary world, China needs a system of national finance, of national taxation and revenues. But the effort to institute such a system does not merely meet a void. It has to meet deeply entrenched local customs, so firmly established that to interfere with them may mean the overthrow of all central government. To put another system of taxation into force requires the operation of the very national organs which depend upon a national system of public revenues. This is a fair example of the vicious circles that circumscribe all short-cut systems of reform in China. It is another evidence that the development must be a transforming growth from within, rather than either an external superimposition or a borrowing from foreign sources. There are many, including a rather surprising number of Chinese as well as foreigners, who think that China can get set on her feet and become able to move for herself only by undergoing a period of foreign guardianship or trusteeship. The feeling is sedulously fostered by some persons in a neighboring island, and there is some undoubted response in China, though much less than there would be had the point of view not been unduly identified with the point of a bayonet. There are others who look to some western democracy or to the League of Nations to exercise the needed guardianship. We may waive the question whether at the present time there exists in the world a sufficient amount of disinterested intelligence to perform such a job of trusteeship. We stay on safe ground if we confine ourselves to saying that to be successful such a guardian would have to confine his efforts to stimulating, encouraging and expediting the democratic forces acting from within. And since such a task is almost entirely intellectual and moral, the guardianship is not necessary provided that China can be guaranteed time of growth protected from external attempts at disintegration. All that is necessary is a sufficient international decency and sufficient enlightened selfishness to give China the ad interim protection. She may have to sink deeper yet into the slough of confusion before she can get upon firm ground and move about freely. There is only harm in underestimating the seriousness of the task. The evolution of Japan, as I have already said, offers no fair precedent. The problem is even more perplexing than that of the change of feudal into modem Europe. For medieval Europe was not civilized in the sense in which old China is civilized. There was not the inertia and weight of institutions wrapped up in the deepest feelings and most profound thoughts of the people that is found in China. Moreover, the European transition could take its own time to work itself out. That of China has to be accomplished in the face of the impatient, mobile western world, which, if it brings aid, also brings a voracious appetite. To the outward eye roaming in search of the romantic and picturesque, China is likely to prove a disappointment. To the eye of the mind it presents the most enthralling drama now anywhere enacting. |
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| 10 | 1919.11 |
Hu, Shih [Hu, Shi]. Introductory note. [Dewey, John. Lectures in China, 1919-1920]. Nov. 1919. Dr. John Dewey has recently completed two series of lectures in Peking, one on “Social and Political Philosophy,” the other on “A Philosophy of Education.” Dr. Dewey’s philosophy of education is so well known that no introduction to it is required; but I do wish to make a few remarks about his lectures on “Social and Political Philosophy.” The philosophy of pragmatism, with which Dr. Dewey's name is iden¬tified, has been the subject of a number of systematic statements, among them the work of William James in psychology, the work of Dewey him¬self and of Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller in logic, the work of Dewey and James Hayden Tufts in ethics, and, of course, Dewey’s own monu-mental work in education. Only in the field of political philosophy has there not yet appeared any single systematic work which treats the subject from the viewpoint of pragmatism. It is true that the political theory of Graham Wallas and Harold Laski in England, and of Walter Lippmann in the United States of America, strongly reflects the influence of pragmatism; but, until now, a formal, coherent statement of a pragmatic philosophy of politics has been lacking. It was for this reason that I suggested to Dr. Dewey, earlier this year when he and I were discussing his forthcoming lecture series in China, that this might be an appropriate opportunity for him to formulate a coherent statement of a social and political philosophy based in pragmatism, elements of which have been suggested in his writings increasingly during the last decade. Dr. Dewey thought that my suggestion was a good one, and the result is this series of sixteen lectures. I hope that those who were in the audi¬ences when these lectures were delivered, as well as the readers of the printed version of the lectures herewith presented, are cognizant of their rare good fortune in sharing in Dr. Dewey's initial formal statement of his social and political philosophy. As Dr. Dewey delivered his lectures in English I interpreted them sen¬tence by sentence into Chinese for the benefit of members of his audiences who did not understand English. My Chinese interpretation was recorded by my friend, I-han Kao. Dr. Dewey intends to revise and expand his original lecture notes for publication in book form. When his manuscript is complete, I hope to translate it into Chinese, so that both English and Chinese versions can be published at the same time. It is inevitable that in material so complex as these lectures on-the-spot oral interpretation and simultaneous recording should result in certain inaccuracies and inadequacies. For such errors and omissions Professor I-han Kao and I offer our apologies, both to Dr. Dewey and to the read¬ing public. |
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| 11 | 1919 |
Shu, Xincheng. Jin dai Zhongguo jiao yu shi liao [ID D28674]. "Chinese educational aims were reconsidered in the light of Dewey's thought. The first Conference for Educational Investigation, held in April 1919, was attended by sixty outstanding education leaders, including Cai Yuanpei and Chiang Monlin [Jiang Menglin], all of whom were appointed by the Ministry of Education. Dissatisfied with the old educational aims which had been promulgated in 1912, and which had emphasized military education, the conference suggested that the aim and spirit of American education should be adopted. The new aim was to be 'the cultivation of perfect personality and the development of democratic spirit. The fifth annual meeting of the Federation of Educational Associations endorsed the new educational direction in the same year, and even went a step further in following literally Dewey's admonition that 'education has no ends beyond itself ; it is its own end', by advocating the abolition of all educational aims, and their replacements by a statement of the nature of education instead." |
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| 12 | 1919 | While lecturing at the Imperial University in Tokyo, John Dewey received a joint invitation from five Chinese academic institutions to lecture in Beijing, Nanjing, and other cities in China. This invitation was prompted by three of his former students : Hu Shi, P.W. Kuo (President of the National Nanjing Teachers College) and Chiang Monlin [Jiang Menlin] (Ed. of New Education magazine). |
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| 13 | 1919 |
Hu, Shi. Shi yan zhu yi. [ID D28586]. [Experimentalismus]. Hu Shi zitiert John Dewey in leicht gekürzter Form In fünf Punkten : 1) Die Vertreter der früheren Strömungen gehen davon aus, dass Erfahrung durch und durch Erkennen ist. 2) Früher vertrat man die Meinung, dass die Erfahrung etwas Psychisches und völlig 'Subjektives' sei. 3) Früher erkannte man über die gegenwärtige Situation hinaus nur eine Vergangenheit an und vertrat die Position, dass die Erfahrung letztlich aus Erinnertem besteht. 4) Die Erfahrung in ihrer früheren Form war partikular. 5) Traditionell betrachtete man die Erfahrung und das Denken als absolute Gegensätze. Er schreibt : "Die grundlegende Vorstellung der Philosophie Dewey besagt : 'Erfahrung ist Leben, Leben ist Auseinandersetzung mit der Umgebung', aber hinsichtlich der Auseinandersetzung (ying fu) mit der Umgebung gibt es unterschiedliche Niveaus… Der Mensch ist ein Lebewesen, das Wissen besitzt und denken kann ; wenn er den Weg verliert, klettert er weder nervös noch hektisch den Baum hinauf, er nimmt das Fernglas oder sucht den Bach und findet dem Wasser folgend den Weg hinaus. Das Leben des Menschen ist achtenswert, weil der Mensch die Denkfähigkeit besitzt, sich mit seiner Umgebung auf höchster Stufe auseinanderzusetzen. Deshalb ist die grundlegend Vorstellung der Philosophie Dewey : 'Das reflektierende Denken (zhi shi si xiang) ist das Werkzeug, mit dem der Mensch sich mit einer Umgebung auseinandersetzt'. Das reflektierende Denken ist ein täglich benötigtes, unentbehrliches Werkzeug des menschlichen Lebens, und keineswegs Spielzeug und Luxusartikel der Philosophen. Das Denken, von dem Dewey spricht, hat die Funktion, ausgehend von bereits Bekanntem auf andere Dinge, Angelegenheiten oder Wahrheiten zu schliessen. Diese Funktion wird in der Logik 'Schlussfolgerung' (inference) genannt. Schlussfolgerung bedeutet lediglich von bereits Bekanntem auf noch Unbekanntes schliessen…" Hu Shi folgt in der Darstellung der fünf Stufen des 'analytischen Denkens bei Dewey den Vorgaben seines Lehrers : a) Als Ausgangspunkt benötigt man eine verwirrende, schwierige Situation. b) Durch Überlegen und Sondieren versucht man neue Dinge oder neue Erkenntnisse herauszufinden, um diese verwirrende Schwierigkeit zu lösen. 1) Der Ausgangspunkt des Denkens ist eine schwierige Situation. 2) Festlegen, worin die Schwierigkeit tatsächlich liegt. 3) Verschiedene hypothetische Lösungsmethoden darlegen. 4) Eine Hypothese als geeignete Lösung bestimmen. 6) Der Beweis. Hu Shi concretely analyzed and explained the five steps in the ideological methodology of John Dewey : 1) knotty circumstances ; 2) pointing out exactly where the knotty points are ; 3) imagining the methods for resolving various knotty points ; 4) imagining the results of each such method to see which one can resolve the difficulties ; 5) proving this kind of solution is believable, or proving this kind of solution is wrong and unbelievable. |
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| 14 | 1919.03 |
Conference held by the Ministry of Education. Hu Shi made a detailed introduction to John Dewey's pragmatism. Such publicity and introduction has created a 'Dewey craze' even before Dewey came to China, and the far and wide spread of his educational philosophy could be predicted. Hu Shi found the 'practical philosophy' he was looking for in Dewey's pragmatism. His 1919 lecture introducing pragmatism, Hu refers approvingly to Dewey's comment that 'philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men'. |
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| 15 | 1919.03-04 |
John Dewey : Lecture 'The relation between democracy and education' at the Jiangsu Educational Association Building, Shanghai. = Ping min zhu yi, ping min zhu yi di jiao yu, ping min jiao yu zhu yi di ban fa. Jiang Menglin interpreter ; Pan Gongzhan recorder. In : Xue deng ; May 8-9 (1919) / In : Chen bao fu kan ; May 9 (1919). Zhou Youjin : Dewey's speeches were so popular that there was barely enough room for the audience. The speeches have already been published in both Chinese and English newspapers to that those who were not able to attend the speeches for various reasons could learn about Dewey's ideas. |
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| 16 | 1919.04.15 |
April 15, 1919 Professor John Dewey c/o The Government University Peking My dear Professor Dewey On the basis of the following telegram President Butler cabled to the Chancellor that you had been granted leave of absence in order to accept the suggestion that you lecture at the Government University Peking. President Butler Columbia University Professor Dewey consents lecture one year at Chinese Government University pending your concurrence. Kindly cable. Thaiyuenpei [Cai Yuanpei] Chancellor Government University President Butler is delighted that you will have the opportunity and is sure you can accomplish much of lasting good by work at this institution. Trusting that all is going well with you, I beg to remain Faithfully yours Frank D. Fackenthal |
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| 17 | 1919.04.15 | John Dewey received the notification from Columbia University that his leave of absence to China was approved. He did not promise to stay a year in China until he arrived there in person. |
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| 18 | 1919.04.22 |
Letter from John Dewey to Sabino Dewey Tuesday April 22. [1919] Dear Sabino, You have probably heard more than we have that Lucy is coming sailing May 20, and Mr Barry too. The latter was great surprise. As soon as we heard we decided to leave for China right away so as to get back sooner; we sail from Kobe the 27th, next sunday. It takes one day to go thru the Inland Sea, between the Japanese Islands and about three more I think to cross to Shanghai. My former Chinese students seem to be making as elaborate plans for our reception as we have nejoyed here. The only trouble is that I shall have to lecture all the time to help even up. I dont know the program exactly, but I know it calls for lectures in Shanghai, Nanking and Peking and I presume other places. You look up your geography and you will see how far apart the places are. When the Chinamen were here I got the impression Nanking was a kind of suburb of Shanghai, they talked so about running over there, but I see from the time table it takes five hours or more. I hope we can go up the Yangste River to Hankow, by boat, but that doesnt seem to be on my paid schedule, and it may be better to postpone it till next fall if should stay over. I have had a letter from the President of a missionary colllge in Nanking, [Rev. Arthur John] Bowen by name, inviting us to stay at their house while we are there. I dont know whether he is of the Bowen family well known in the Islands. Mama has written Lucy full particulrs if only she gets the letter before she leaves. Anyway she understands to about going to the Nitobes. We have written them so that they [in ink w. caret] will be on the lookout for her, if we are not back. We have also written her about the possibility of stopping over one steamer in Honolulu. Of course we dont know how that will fit in with circumstances including Mr Barry's plans, bu and so we dont urge it except if if she wants to and it is convenient all around… Tell Lucy to be sure to mail a letter postcard to us, care Dr Suh Hu [Hu Shi] Government University, Peking, to come [ink del.] by the Korea steamer, in case she stops over and a letter to mail in Yokahama when she leaves the steamer if she doesnt. In fact if she comes right thru she better cable us after she has got her mail at the Nitobes unless we write something different… Dad Professor Hu [Shi] is going to run down from Peking to Shanghai about a thousand miles to meet us when we arrive… |
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| 19 | 1919.04.30 |
John Dewey arrived in Shanghai. Letter from John Dewey : Shanghai, May 1 [1919]. "We have slept one night in China…" [A lot of people say, that he arrived on May 1]. |
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| 20 | 1919.05.01 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Shanghai, May 1. [1.5.1919]. We have slept one night in China, but we haven't any first impressions, because China hasn't revealed itself to our eyes as yet. We compared Shanghai to Detroit, Michigan, and except that there is less coal smoke, the description hits it off. This is said to be literally an international city, but I haven't learned yet just what the technique is; every country seems to have its own post office though, and its own front-door yard, and when we were given a little auto ride yesterday, we found that the car couldn't go into Chinatown because it had no license for that district. I shall be interested to find out whether in this really old country they talk about 'ages eternal' as freely as they do in Japan; the authentic history of the latter begins about 500 A.D., their mythical history 500 B.C., but still it is a country which has endured during myriads of ages. In spite of the fact that they kept the emperors shut up for a thousand years, and killed them off and changed them about with great ease and complacency, the children are all taught, and they repeat in books for foreigners, that the rule of Japan has been absolutely unbroken. Of course, they get to believing these things themselves, not exactly intellectually but emotionally and practically, and it would be worth any teacher’s position for him to question any of their patriotic legends in print. However, they say that in their oral lectures, the professors of history of the universities criticise these legends. In the higher elementary school we visited in Osaka, we saw five classes in history and ethics, in each of which the Emperor was under discussion—sometimes the Emperor and what he had done for the country, and sometimes an Emperor in particular. Apparently this religion has been somewhat of a necessity, as the country was so divided and split up, they had practically nothing else to unite on—the Emperor became a kind of symbol of united and modern Japan. But this worship is going to be an Old Man of the Sea on their backs. They say the elementary school teachers are about the most fanatical patriots of the country. More than one has been burned or allowed the children to be burned while he rescued the portrait of the Emperor when there was a fire. They must take it out in patriotism in lieu of salary; they don't get a living wage, now that the cost of living has gone up. |
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| 21 | 1919.05.01,02 |
Letter from John & Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey children May first Shanghai [1919] Dear children, We have slept one night in China, but we havent any first impressions of China, because China hsnt revealed itself to our eyes as yet. Mamma compares it to Detroit Mich, and except that there is less coal smoke, the descritpion hits it off, also like the suburban districts of London in the villa districts, where there is lots of land about every house. Certainly some foreigners have succeeded in making money out of China. This is said to be literally an international city, but I havent learned yet just what the technique is; every country seems to have its own postoffice tho, and its own front door yeard, and when we were given a little auto ride yesterday, we found that the car couldnt go into Chinatown because it had no license, for that district. We are haunted by a suspicion that t[h]e young men who have us in charge have more enthusiasm than wordly wisdom or official pull—in other words they belong to the younger generation who are trying to reform the established order, and are as popular as such people generally are. Howver we have little to go on so far. Altho the Univ of Peking cabled Butler three weeks ago, they havent had a reply yet, so we dont as yet know any more about our future than we doid in Japan I lecture here twice, saturday and sunday; monday we go to Hangchow which is said to be scencially one of the most beautiful places in Chin, and was I believe the capital during some one of the numerous dynasties that hve ruled over China… May 2 Now we have seen something of China, so far as Shanghai is China at all, and to day we are to see more, going to Chinatown. Our reception committee here consists of Suh Hu [Hu Shi], who took a thirty six hour trip from Peking to meet us, a man from Nanking Teahcers College, and a local Shanghai teacher, named Chinang who took his Ph D at T C a year or so ago. The "returned student" is a definite category here, and if and when China gets on its feet, the American university will have a fair share of the glory to its credit, and T C its due share in the pie. They came with a frinds auto and took us to a Chinese newspaper office where we inspected the building and type-setting as per usual, ctea and cake as per ditto, photo the same, then were taken to the biggest printing house in the east, prints most of the textbooks and verything else, including money for the Republic, then to the house of Mr Nieh, the man who lent the care aforesaid, a big house with a big garden, full of people, his mother and sisters being brought and introduced, the mother evidently a character who cant speak English, but who is the daughter of the greatest statesmen, so we are told, of the last dynasty, and who has ten children or more, on being at Columbia now, and forty grandchildren. She has recently offered a prize for the best essay on the method of abolishing concubinage, in reply to which eight hundred were sent in. More tea and a funny Chinese dish, called meat pie, then we go to sea the cotton spinning and ewaving factory owned by theis family—who are Christians. There is not even the pretence at labor laws here there is in Japan, some children six years old, not many thot, and wages of the operatives mainly women in the spinning dept 3o cents a day at the highest, 32 cwnts Mex, while in the ewaving dept they have piece wrok and get up to 4o cents. This is Papas and I cant take it out so I will tell you something of what we had to eat in one small afternoon. First lunch of all courses here at the hotel. Then we went to the Newspaper where we had tea and cake about four. From there to the h[o]use of the daughter of the leading statesman of the Manchus, she being the lady of the small feet and of the ten children who has offered a prize for the best essay on the ways to stop concubinage, which they call the whole system of plural marriage. They say it is quite unchanged among the rich There we were given a tea or rare sort, unknown in our experience. Two kinds of meat pies which are made in the form of little cakes and quite peculiar in taste, delicious, also cake. Then after the factory we went to the restaurant where we were to have dinner. First we got into the wrong hotel and there while we were waiting they gave us tea. We were struck by the fact that they asked for nothing when we elft and thanked us for coming to the wrong place Then we went to the right hotel across the street from the first. They called it the corner of Broadway and 42nd st and it is that. There is a big roof garden besides the hotels and they are both run by the Department stores wich have their places underneath. The Chinese are as crazy about dept stores as Jap. It may be a sad commentary on the human character that one can eat more than he can remember, but that is what we did last night. First of all when we went into the room which was all Chinese furniture, very small round table in the middle and the rows of stools along one side for the singing birls who do not dance here. These stools we did not use as all thse young Chinese are ashamed of that institution and want to get rid of it. On a side table were almonds shelled, nice little ones different from ours and very sweet. and beside them dried watermelon seeds which I could not crack so I did not taste. All the Chinese nibbled them with relish. Two ladies came, both of them had been in N.Y. to study. All these people speak and understand English in earnest. On the table were little pieces of sliced ham, the famous preserved eggs which taste like hard boiled eggs and look like dark colored jelly, and little dises of sweets shrimps etc. To these we helped ourselves with the chp sticks tho they insisted on Giving Pa and me little plates on which they spooned out some of each. Then followed such a feast as we had never experienced the boys taking off one dish after another and replacing them with others in the center of the table to which we helped ourselves. There was no special attempt at display of fine dishes such as you might have expected with such cooking and such expense and such as would have happened in Japan. We had chicken and duck and pigeon and veal and pigeon eggs in soup and fish and little oysters that grow in the ground, very delicious and delicate, and nice little vegetables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with the others, and we had shrims cooked and sharks fin and birds nest and this has no taste at all by itself but is cooked in Chicken broth to give it some and is a sort of very delicate soup but costs a fortune and that is its real reason for being, It is gelatine which almost all dissolves in the cooking We had many more things than these and the boy in a rather dirty white coat and an old cap om his head passing round the hot perfumed wet towels every few courses and for desert we had little cakes made of bean paste filled up with almond paste and other sweets, all very elaborated made and works of are to look at but with too little taste to appeal much to us, then we had fruits bananas and apples and pears cut up in pieces each with a tooth pick in it so it can be eaten easily. Then we had a soup made of fishes stomach, or air sac. Then we had a pudding of the most delicious sort imaginable made of a mould of rice filled in with eight different symbolic thinge that I dont know any thing about, but they dont cut much part in the taste. In serving this dish we were first given a little bowl half full of a sauce thickened and looking like a milk sauce. It was really made of powdered almonds. Into ths you put the pudding and it is so good that I regretted all that had gone before and I am going to learn how to make it. They say all the ladies in China learn how to cook and it is their business to look after the cooking and to know how to do it themselve and to do parts of it. They still have many children. We saw two little ones yesterday beisdes several bigger ones scampering out of sight. One little daughter of Mrs Chang of two and a half with a costume of crimson brocade made just like the suit of the small boy of four. We thought she was a boy as her hair was cut tight to her head. Also a baby of five months with the most wonderful costume of cap and shoes, slippers and socks, and some little trousers made with wide split in the middle, of a dark red plaid cotton. The baby was fat and cunning as could be and was already jumping on her feet. Well the little things that make up the interest here are endless. A Daughter Friday May 3rd. [2nd] This is pap again, and as I dont know about the daughter, I will return briefly to the factory. Mamma remarked that the manager was the only person in a fact[o]ry who had ever told the truth in answering questions, and Hu [Shi] replied that lying showed that a moral consciousness had begun to dawn, while here thatre was not even a consciousness of anything wrong yet. He and his firneds have given up politics I judge as a bad job, and are devoting themselves to what they call a litterary revolution, which isnt as purely literary as it sounds, since it means using the spoken current language for writing, and without this modern questions cannot really be discussed… We are going to see more of the dangerous daring side of life here I predict We are very obviously in the hands of young China. What it will do with us makes us laugh to anticipate— Evedently they are having the time of theri lives and evidently they do not see what it is exactly best to do. But nothing woies us. We are not getting rich, but we are to have our expenses and we ought to have a very good time. Here in Shanghai we are in the hands of some educatiional association of this whole region or districs or whatever they call it. There is a normal school in Hangchow but chiefly sightseeing they say. We saw big men with queus, they said they are from the north and every one scrambling and fighting for a job like N.Y. Quite unlike any thing in Japan. And a sp[?]al streets also smae. Our men are coming. [John Dewey] |
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| 22 | 1919.05.01 | Shen bao published a brief note : "Dr. Dewey arrives in Shanghai". [He arrived on April 30]. |
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| 23 | 1919.05 |
John Dewey : Lectures 'The real meaning of education in a democracy' at the Beijing National Academy of Fine Arts. 1) 'The natural foundations of education'. 2) 'The new attitude toward knowledge'. 3) 'The socialization of education'. |
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| 24 | 1919.05 |
John Dewey : Lectures at Beijing National Academy of Fine Arts. 1) 'Trends in contemporary education'. = Xian dai jiao yu di chu shi. Han Lu, Tian Feng recorder. In : Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 3 (July 15, 1919). 2) 'The natural foundations of education' 3) 'The new attitude toward knowledge' 4) 'The socialization of education' |
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| 25 | 1919.05.02 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Shanghai, May 2. [2.5.1919]. We have been taken in hand by a reception committee of several Chinese gentlemen, mostly returned American students. The 'returned student' is a definite category here, and if and when China gets on its feet, the American university will have a fair share of the glory to its credit. They took us to see a Chinese cotton spinning and weaving factory. There is not even the pretense at labor laws here that there is in Japan. Children six years of age are employed, not many though, and the wages of the operatives in the spinning department, mainly women, is thirty cents a day, at the highest thirty-two cents Mex. In the weaving department they have piece work and get up to forty cents. I will tell you something of what we had to eat in one small afternoon. First, lunch of all courses here at the hotel. Then we went to the newspaper where we had tea and cake at about four. From there to the house of the daughter of a leading statesman of the Manchus, she being a lady of small feet and ten children, who has offered a prize for the best essay on the ways to stop concubinage, which they call the whole system of plural marriage. They say it is quite unchanged among the rich. There we were given a tea of a rare sort, unknown in our experience. Two kinds of meat pies which are made in the form of little cakes and quite peculiar in taste, delicious; also cake. Then after we went to the restaurant where we were to have dinner. First we got into the wrong hotel and there, while we were waiting, they gave us tea. We were struck by the fact that they asked for nothing when we left, and thanked us for coming to the wrong place. Then we went to the right hotel across the street from the first. They called it the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, and it is that. There is a big roof garden besides the hotels, and they are both run by the Department stores which have their places underneath. It may be a sad commentary on the human character that one can eat more than one can remember, but that is what we did last night. First of all we went into the room which was all Chinese furniture; very small round table in the middle and the rows of stools along one side for the singing girls, who do not dance here. Those stools were not used, as all the young Chinese are ashamed of that institution and want to get rid of it. On a side table were almonds shelled, nice little ones, different from ours and very sweet. Beside them were dried watermelon seeds which were hard to crack and so I did not taste them. All the Chinese nibbled them with relish. Two ladies came, both of them had been in New York to study. All these people speak and understand English in earnest. On the table were little pieces of sliced ham, the famous preserved eggs which taste like hard-boiled eggs and look like dark-colored jelly, and little dishes of sweets, shrimps, etc. To these we helped ourselves with the chop sticks, though they insisted on giving us little plates on which they spooned out some of each. Then followed such a feast as we had never experienced, the boys taking off one dish after another and replacing them with others in the center of the table, to which we helped ourselves. There was no special attempt at display of fine dishes such as you might have expected with such cooking and such expense, and such as would have happened in Japan. We had chicken and duck and pigeon and veal and pigeon eggs and soup and fish and little oysters that grow in the ground (very delicious and delicate) and nice little vegetables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with the others, and we had shrimps cooked, and shark's fin and bird's nest (this has no taste at all and is a sort of very delicate soup, but costs a fortune and that is its real reason for being). It is gelatine which almost all dissolves in the cooking. We had many more things than these, and the boy in a dirty white coat and an old cap on his head passing round the hot perfumed wet towels every few courses, and for dessert we had little cakes made of bean paste filled up with almond paste and other sweets, all very elaborately made, and works of art to look at, but with too little taste to appeal much to us; then we had fruits, bananas and apples and pears, cut up in pieces, each with a toothpick in it so it can be eaten easily. Then we had a soup made of fish’s stomach, or air sac. Then we had a pudding of the most delicious sort imaginable, made of a mold of rice filled in with eight different symbolic things that I don't know anything about, but they don't cut much part in the taste. In serving this dish we were first given a little bowl half full of a sauce thickened and looking like a milk sauce. It was really made of powdered almonds. Into this you put the pudding, and it is so good that I regretted all that had gone before, and I am going to learn how to make it. |
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| 26 | 1919.05.03 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Shanghai, May 3. [3.5.1919]. Some one told us when we were on the boat that the Japanese cared everything for what people thought of them, and the Chinese cared nothing. Making comparisons is a favorite, if dangerous, indoor sport. The Chinese are noisy, not to say boisterous, easy-going and dirty—and quite human in general effect. They are much bigger than the Japanese, and frequently very handsome from any point of view. The most surprising thing is the number of those who look not merely intelligent but intellectual among the laborers, such as some of the hotel waiters and attendants. Our waiter is a rather feminine, ultra refined type, and might be a poet. I noticed quite a number of the same Latin quarter Paris type of artists among the teachers whom I addressed to-day. The Japanese impressions are gradually sinking into perspective with distance, and it is easy to see that the same qualities that make them admirable are also the ones that irritate you. That they should have made what they have out of that little and mountainous island is one of the wonders of the world, but everything in themselves is a little overmade, there seems to be a rule for everything, and admiring their artistic effects one also sees how near art and the artificial are together. So it is something of a relaxation to get among the easy-going once more. Their slouchiness, however, will in the end get on one's nerves quite as much as the 'eternal' attention of the Japanese. One more generalization borrowed from one of our Chinese friends here, and I'm done. 'The East economizes space and the West time'—that also is much truer than most epigrams. |
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| 27 | 1919.05.03 |
Letter from John Dewey to Nicholas Murray Butler Shanghai, May 3 '19 President Nicholas Murray Butler, My dear Mr Butler, I wrote Dean Woodbridge from Japan speaking among other things of the possibility of my being invited to remain in China for educational work next year, and my desire to do so, if it could be arranged. Later Dr Suh Hu [Hu Shi] cabled you, after writing me to secure my consent. On my arrival here I was met by him from Peking as well as by educators from here and Nanking. They all feel that the present in quite a critical time in the educational and intellectual development of China, and that a representative of Western and especially American thought can be more useful now than at any other time for a long period. As for myself, I prize highly the unusual opportunity to get some acquaintance with Oriental thought and conditions. I hope therefore that it will be possible to grant the official request which I understand the Minister of Education is about to make of you and the Columbia authorities. I shall be more useful in the future to Columbia because of this experience, and incidentally I hope my presence here will have the effect of increasing the number of students from Japan and China who go to Columbia. Of course you must hear frequently of the present great influence of Columbia in China particularly. There are is a Columbia Alumni Association here of about forty. Many persons have assured me that the present influence of Columbia men in China is greater than that of the graduates of any other American or European University. In my visit here now I am giving lectures to the public schools teachers of Hangchow, Nanking, [ink comma] and Peking besides this city. In Japan beside giving philosophical lectures in the Imperial Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, I spoke to teachers in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe. Sincerely yours, | John Dewey. Permanent address Care Yokahama Specie Bank Tokyo; Till June 15th, Care Government University, Peking. |
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| 28 | 1919.05.04 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Shanghai, May 4. [4.5.1919]. I have seen a Chinese lady, small feet and all. We took dinner with her. She did not come into the room until after dinner was over, having been in the kitchen cooking it while the servant brought things in. She has one of those placid faces which are round and plump and quite beautiful in a way, a pretty complexion, and of course a slow, rocking, hobbling way of walking. Yesterday after the lecture we went there again and she showed us all over her flat. It is well kept, with not many conveniences from our point of view, but I think it is regarded as quite modern here. It has a staircase, and a little roof where they dry clothes or sit. The bath is a tin tub, warmed by carrying water from the little stove like our little laundry stoves. It has an outlet pipe to the ground, no sewers as usual in the Orient. The kitchen has a little stove of iron set up on boxes and they burn small pieces of wood. It has three compartments, two big shallow iron pots for roasting and boiling and a deep one in the middle for keeping the hot water for tea. Only two fires are needed as the heat from the two end fires does for the water in the middle. There is no doubt that the Chinese are a sociable people if given a chance. Of course, men like the husband of our hostess are the extreme of ability and advanced ideas here. But it is remarkable that he shows us things as they are. When we visited schools he did not arrange in advance because he did not want us to see a fixed up program. When we went out to lunch he took us to a Chinese place where no foreigners ever go. Yesterday we went to a department store to buy some gloves and garters. Gloves were Keyser's, imported, so were the stockings, so were the garters and suspenders, etc. The gloves were from $1 to $1.60 and the suspenders were a dollar. I bought some silk, sixteen inches wide, for fifty cents a yard. The store was messy and the floors dirty, but it is a popular place for the Chinese. We paid three dollars for a book marked 1sh. 6p. in England, and everything here is like that. Gloves and stockings are made in Japan, and good and cheap there; fine silken stockings $1.60 a pair. But still the Chinese do not buy of them, but from America. We have visited a cotton mill. The Chinese cotton and silk are now inferior, owing to lack of scientific production and of proper care of seed. In weaving, they sometimes mix their cotton with ours. |
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| 29 | 1919.05.04 |
4. Mai Bewegung = May fourth movement : John Dewey was as sympathetic to the workers as he was to the students. His Chicago colleagues' disapproval of the strike correlated with Hu Shi's negative opinion about the student revolt. Hu insisted that the students should devote themselves to their studies rather than to politics ; Dewey endorsed the student's revolt as a gesture of righteous indignation. Dewey was glad for young China because it now realized, that it did not need to be saved from without. Nonetheless, Dewey knew that merely resorting to protests and rebellions would not bring about constructive change. In the new press, all kinds of Western social and political theories were translated and discussed, including anarchism, liberalism, socialism, Marxism and Dewey's own pragmatism. Even though Dewey questioned the students' interest in Marxism, he acknowledged their overall intellectual enthusiasm. Even though Dewey recognized the importance of cultural reform, he had doubts about such a single-minded approach. Unlike the Chinese intellectuals, he did not establish an arbitrary dualism between cultural and political reform. He acknowledged the importance of Western learning and sensed a more pressing need for China to develop her industry. He thought that Chinese intellectuals were too preoccupied with absorbing new thoughts and new theories to accomplish any effective political or practical change. Dewey's dream for a true political revolution following the May fourth student demonstration did not materialize. He understood that the salvation of China depended not so much on the few intellectuals in the cities as on the ordinary men and women throughout China. |
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| 30 | 1919.05.05 | John Dewey : Lecture John Dewey : Lecture 'The essence of populist education' at the Zhejiang Association for Education in Hangzhou. Zheng Zonghai interpreter. |
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| 31 | 1919.05.07 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The real meaning of education in a democracy' at the Zhejiang Education Association in Hangzhou. = Ping min jiao yu zhi zhen di. Zheng Zonghai interpreter ; Zhu Yukui recorder. In : Jiao yu chao ; vol. 1, no 2 (June 1919). |
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| 32 | 1919.05.08-09 (publ.) |
John Dewey : Lecture 'The relation between democracy and education' at the Jiangsu Educational Association Building, Shanghai. = Ping min zhu yi, ping min zhu yi di jiao yu, ping min jiao yu zhu yi di ban fa. Jiang Menglin interpreter ; Pan Gongzhan recorder. In : Xue deng ; May 8-9 (1919) / In : Chen bao fu kan ; May 9 (1919). Zhou Youjin : Dewey's speeches were so popular that there was barely enough room for the audience. The speeches have already been published in both Chinese and English newspapers to that those who were not able to attend the speeches for various reasons could learn about Dewey's ideas. |
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| 33 | 1919.05.08 | Alice Chipman Dewey : Lecture 'A new interpretation of women's education' in Hangzhou. Zhang Tianzuo interpreter. |
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| 34 | 1919.05.09 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children May 9 [1919] Dear children, Im writing from Hangchow, a city some four or five hours south from Shanghai, and the thermometer at half past four p.m stands in the house at 94, and I dont know that it has been much below this day or night for three days. Mamma is now speaking to the girls of various schools in the big hall here, and she hasnt slept much the aforesaid three nights Im afraid she will be too used up. We came here sunday and this p m is about the first free time Ive had; I use this paper because I havent any other and because you may learn seomthing from what's on the other side, and we are staying with the Barnetts, he being the Y M C A secy who wrote the appeal. Japan was rather baffling and tanatslizing. China is overpowering, and the size of the difficulties and obstacles to be overcome, in modernizing China and even in maintaining its continued existence as an independent nation are I think depressing to most, the educated Chinese who realize the situation included. One could write more easily in Japan, because in spite of the reserve over everything, the unlifted screen, things are more or less tied up in packages and ticketed, while here one only ctaches separet glimpses of a vast panoramic kaleidoscope. I doubt if the Chinese are personally as much as sealed mystery as reported sometimes, but the country is so vast, and the parts of it so different, and the accumulations from the past so enormous, and one would have to live here so long to begin to get hold of even the most important which are hneeded to understand things, that theit is easy to see how and where the idea of China as an impenetrable mystery came from. Here is one incident which personally concerns us, and also seems typical. The other day the Peking univ students started a parade in protest of the Paris Peace Conference action in turning the German interests in China over to the Japanese. Being interfered with by the police they got more unruly and beat up the Chinese minister to Japan who negotiated the treaties that sold China out, he having been bribed; they burned the house where he was staying,5 and he went to the hospital, in fact was reported dead. Well, in one sense this || was a kind of Halloween students spree with a somewhat serious political purpose attached. In another sense, it may be—tho probably not—the beginning of an important active political movement, out of which anything may grow. All the educated japanese [ink del.] Chinese [in ink] regard the beating not as lynching but as just expression of social disapprobation; they are sorry the man wasnt killed. Some twenty students were arrested; practically every organization in China is sending telegrams to the government requesting that they be not punished If they should be, [pencil comma] there may be a kind of revolution directed against the present government in form and the Japanese in reality. This way of going at things seems typical of the way China acts, and it is equally typical that no one will guess which way things are going to turn whether this ais a temporary excitement or the beginning of the new political movement China needs. And the most typical thing is that tho the Chinese have known the facts for some years, they have done nothing—except hate the japanese and hope that America and japan would get into war and the U S lick Japan. In fact during this time they have allowed things to go from bad to worse so far as internal division and disorganization are concerned, and so far as wholesale graft by the political authorities—not quite all—is concerned. The only reason for not believeing the stories along this line you hear of is because they come so far short of the fatcs. In fact if anyone put down the things that are alluded to in passing and taken as a matter of course no one in [pencil underline] America would believe them; he would think we had been gulled by some one—Governors [G in ink] who in the last few years who have got title to all the mines in their provinces as big and rich in coal as perhaps Penn—others who own onetenth of the land in a province bigger than NY and so on. Well, they stood by and allowed all this to go on, including the selling out to Japan, and did nothing—but the students row may set them off. If you can figure this out, you will understand the country better than I do. I am pretty sure however that China is the country of pure original human nature, just as Japan is the high-||ly cultivated, trained, over-trained, country. Well, where it affects [in ink] us is this. Accordinding to etiqueete here, the Chancellor of the University is "responsible" for the students action. If the government punishes them he will doubtless reisgn on the ground that he is the one really to blame. He is a liberal, and if he goes I think our invitation to the University will doubtleas be lost and forgotten. They were planning a conference of the chief educational officials in Peking for the last two weeks in June, and this will probably be called off to, if the liberals lose out. In that case we shall beack in Tokyo or Japan as according to recent letters, whereas according to this other plan, developed I think since we wrote last, we should be here two weeks longer than we expected. Our guide and friend who wrote had charge of us in Sh and who piloted ^us^ down here and was to have interpreted here, left suddenyl for Sh on receipt of the Peking news to see what had happenned, and how it was going to affect the plans made for us. We have been to two dinner parties here, and two lunch parties since we came Monday—nor Friday, almost all Chinese guests. There are fewer American returned students here, mostly the authorities here having been educated in Japan—which they hate, and whose educational system they have slavishly copied, in because of the hate, because they havent seen anything else and because they have an idea that it was Japan' system that has enabled Japan to put it over on them. But the scheme is as unfitted for big sprawling go as you please China as it is fitted for compact and obeyful Japan. The impressive thing about their hatred for Japan is that it isnt loud and boisterous; it is just as much a matter of fact as the weather, and it is combined with great moral contempt. There was a rumor in Sh sunday that Wilson was assisinated, Every Chinaman who spoke of it said the Japanese had started the story. When asked why, the answer was always because that is the way they do everything—the point being that here assasination is resorted to only when a man has become an object of universal detestation and only then. Hangchow is a city of six or seven hundred thousand and the centre of both the best tea—which is much like the best green tea of Japan near Kyoto and of the best silks. We have been to a big silk filature,9 quite modrenized and run by Chinese and also a silk school where mamma was delighted by seeing absolutely everything in the line of worms, coconns the care of them—this is just the tail end of the season, and we had been told before we shouldnt see them feeding. But they had em, including the wild kind that makes the Pongee silk, brought from another district for experimentation. They live not on oak trees but on what seemed to be a kind of chestnut. They are experimenting crosing with japanese, french and Italian breeds. It is said the quality of their own coccons has deteriorated. In the factory we say the treads drawn the cocoons—girls in charge and very skilful. Thank the Lord a rain has set in since we I began and perhaps the weather will change before we give up thr ghost. Hangchow is on a Lake known as West Lake, one of the most spots in China, scenically and historically, quite beautiful though not over three or four feet deep anywhere, hills and mts about. We have been taken out and around on it some three times, once to visit a missionary American college on the hills overlooking the big Hangchow river, the situation is wonderful when you get to itn like Pacific Heights in Honolulu as mamma pointed out after I had feebly compared it to the outlook from Berkeley hills. We go back to Shanghai sunday, then in a day or two to Nanking where we stay two weeks, unless everything is upset. I have given but one lecture to about eight or nine hundred, and had a conference with about fifty—called a conference, in fact a series of brief lectures on various topics—and another conference tomorrow. In many ways they are pathetic, so genuinely openminded and anxious to learn many of them, and yet so up gaainst conditions, that it seems hopeless to make suggestions and preach theories. It is significant that they thing they respond to most is the idea of making the child rather the lesson the centre. In Japan in spite of the uniform love of children, I doubt if they could grasp the idea. [John Dewey] |
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| 35 | 1919.05.12 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Shanghai, Monday, May 12. [12.5.1919]. The Peking tempest seems to have subsided for the present, the Chancellor still holding the fort, and the students being released. The subsidized press said this was due in part to the request of the Japanese that the school-boy pranks be looked upon indulgently. According to the papers, the Japanese boycott is spreading, but the ones we see doubt if the people will hold out long enough—meanwhile Japanese money is refused here. The East is an example of what masculine civilization can be and do. The trouble I should say is that the discussions have been confined to the subjection of the women as if that were a thing affecting the women only. It is my conviction that not merely the domestic and educational backwardness of China, but the increasing physical degeneration and the universal political corruption and lack of public spirit, which make China such an easy mark, is the result of the condition of women. There is the same corruption in Japan only it is organized; there seems to be an alliance between two groups of big capitalists and the two leading political 'parties'. There the very great public spirit is nationalistic rather than social, that is, it is patriotism rather than public spirit as we understand it. So while Japan is strong where China is weak, there are corresponding defects there because of the submission of women—and the time will come when the hidden weakness will break Japan down. Here are two items from the Chinese side. A missionary spoke to Christian Chinese about spending the time Sunday, making chiefly the point that it was a good time for family reunions and family readings, conversation and the like. One of them said that they would be bored to death if they had to spend the whole day with their wives. Then we are told that the rich women—who have of course much less liberty in getting out than the poorer class women—spend their time among themselves gambling. It is universally believed that the attempt to support a number of wives extravagantly is one of the chief sources of political corruption. On the other hand, at one of the political protest meetings in Peking a committee of twelve was appointed to go to the officials and four of them were women. In Japan women are forbidden to attend any meetings where politics are discussed, and the law is strictly enforced. There are many more Chinese women studying in America than there are Japanese—in part, perhaps, because of the lack of higher schools for girls here, but also because they don't have to give up marriage here when they get an education—in fact we are told they are in especial demand not only among the men who have studied abroad, but among the millionaires. Certainly the educated ones here are much more advanced on the woman question than in Japan. 'You never can tell' is the coat of arms of China. The Chancellor of the University was forced out on the evening of the eighth by the cabinet, practically under threat of assassination; also soldiers (bandits) were brought into the city and the University surrounded, so to save the University rather than himself, he left—nobody knows where. The release of the students was sent out by telegraph, but they refused to allow this to become known. It seems this Chancellor was more the intellectual leader of the liberals than I had realized, and the government had become really afraid of him. He has only been there two years, and before that the students had never demonstrated politically and now they are the leaders of the new movement. So of course the government will put in a reactionary, and the students will leave and all the honest teachers resign. Perhaps the students will go on strike all over China. But you never can tell. |
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| 36 | 1919.05.13 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Tuesday A.M. [13.5.1919]. Ex-President Sun Yat Sen is a philosopher, as I found out last night during dinner with him. He has written a book, to be published soon, saying that the weakness of the Chinese is due to their acceptance of the statement of an old philosopher, 'To know is easy, to act is difficult'. Consequently they did not like to act and thought it was possible to get a complete theoretical understanding, while the strength of the Japanese was that they acted even in ignorance and went ahead and learned by their mistakes; the Chinese were paralyzed by fear of making a mistake in action. So he has written a book to prove to his people that action is really easier than knowledge. The American sentiment here hopes that the Senate will reject the treaty because it virtually completes the turning over of China to Japan. I will only mention two things said in the conversation. Japan already has more troops, namely twenty-three divisions, under arms in China than she has in Japan, Japanese officered Chinese, and her possession of Manchurian China is already complete. They have lent China two hundred millions to be used in developing this army and extending it. They offered China, according to the conversation at dinner, to lend her two million a month for twenty years for military purposes. Japan figured the war would last till '21 or '22, and had proposed an offensive and defensive alliance to Germany, Japan to supply its trained Chinese army, and Germany to turn over to Japan the Allies' concessions and colonies in China. As an evidence of good faith, Germany had already offered to Japan its own Chinese territory, and it was the communication of this fact to Great Britain which induced the latter to sign the secret pact agreeing to turn over German possessions to Japan, when the peace was made. These men are not jingoists; they think they know what they are talking about, and they have good sources of knowledge. Some of these statements are known facts—like the size of the army and the two hundred million loan—but of course I can’t guarantee them. But I'm coming to the opinion that it might be well worth while to reject the treaty on the ground that it involved the recognition of secret treaties and secret diplomacy. On the other hand, a genuine League of Nations—one with some vigor—is the only salvation I can see of the whole Eastern situation, and it is infinitely more serious than we realize at home. If things drift on five or ten years more, the world will have a China under Japanese military domination—barring two things—Japan will collapse in the meantime under the strain, or Asia will be completely Bolshevikized, which I think is about fifty-fifty with a Japanized-Militarized China. European diplomacy here, which of course dominates America, is completely futile. England does everything with reference to India, and they all temporize and drift and take what are called optimistic long-run views and quarrel among themselves, and Japan alone knows what it wants and comes after it. I still believe in the genuineness of the Japanese liberal movement there, but they lack moral courage. They, the intellectual liberals, are almost as ignorant of the true facts as we are, and enough aware of them to wish to keep themselves in ignorance. Then there is the great patriotism, which of course easily justifies, by the predatory example of the Europeans, the idea that this is all in self-defense. |
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| 37 | 1919.05.13 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Shanghai, May 13. [13.5.1919]. I closed up abruptly because there seemed a possibility of mail going out and now it is a day after and more to tell, with a prospect of little time to tell it. China is full of unused resources and there are too many people. The factories begin to work at six or earlier in the morning, with not enough for the poor to do, and they have the habit of not wanting to work much. Two shifts work in factories for the twenty-four hours. They get about twenty to thirty cents a day and the little children get from nothing up to nine cents, or even eleven cents after they get older. Iron mines are idle, coal and oil undeveloped, and they cannot get railroads. They burn their wood everywhere and the country is withering away because it is deforested. They made the porcelain industry for the world and they buy their table dishes from Japan. They raise a deteriorated cotton and buy cotton cloth from Japan. They buy any quantity of small useful articles from Japan. Japanese are in every town across China like a network closing in on fishes. All the mineral resources of China are the prey of the Japanese, and they have secured 80 per cent of them by bribery of the Peking government. Talk to a Chinese and he will tell you that China cannot develop because she has no transportation facilities. Talk to him about building railroads and he tells you China ought to have railroads but she cannot build them because she cannot get the material. Talk to him about fuel when you see all the weeds being gathered from the roadsides for burning in the cook stoves, and he tells you China cannot use her mines because of the government's interference. There are large coal mines within ten miles of this city with the coal lying near the surface and only the Japanese are using them, though they are right on the bank of the Yangste River. The iron mines referred to are near the river, a whole mountain of iron being worked by the Japanese, who bring the ocean ships up the river, load them directly from the mines, the ore being carried down the hill, and take these ships directly to Japan, and they pay four dollars a ton to the Chinese company which carries on all the work. The last hope of China for an effective government passed away with the closing of the Peace Conference, which has been working hard here for weeks. It seems the delegates from the south could act with plenary power. The delegates from the north had to refer everything to the military ministers from Peking, and so at last they gave up. Despair is deeper than ever, and they all say that nothing can be done. We have gone round recommending many ways of getting at the wrong impressions that prevail in our country about them, such as propaganda, an insistence upon the explanation of the differences between the people and the government. But the reply is, 'We can do nothing, we have no money'. Certainly the Chinese pride has been grounded now. An American official here says there is no hope for China except through the protection of the great powers, in which Japan must join. Without that she is the prey of Japan. Japanese are buying best bits of land in this city for business, and in other cities. Japan borrows money from other nations and then loans it to China on bleeding terms. The cession of Shantung has, of course, precipitated the whole mess and some Chinese think that is their last hope to so reduce them to the last extremity that rage will bring them to act. The boycott of Japanese goods and money has begun, but many say it will not be persistently carried out. The need for food and clothes in China keeps everybody bound by the struggle for a livelihood, and everything else has to be forgotten in the long run. The protests of the Faculty on behalf of the students seem to have been received by the government in good part. Students here are in trouble also to some extent and there is a probability of a strike of students in all the colleges and middle schools of the country. The story at St. John's here is very interesting. It is the Episcopalian mission school, and one of the best. Students walked to Shanghai, ten miles, on the hottest day to parade, then ten miles back. Some of them fell by the way with sunstroke. On their return in the evening they found some of the younger students going in to a concert. The day was a holiday, called the Day of Humiliation. It is the anniversary of the date of the twenty-one demands of Japan, and is observed by all the schools. It is a day of general meetings and speechmaking for China. These students stood outside of the door where the concert was to be held and their principal came out and told them they must go to the concert. They replied that they were praying there, as it was not a time for celebrating by a concert on the Day of Humiliation. Then they were ordered to go in first by this principal and afterwards by the President of the whole college. Considerable excitement was the result. Students said they were watching there for the sake of China as the apostles prayed at the death of Christ and this anniversary was like the anniversary of the death of Christ. The President told them if they did not go in then he would shut them out of the college. This he did. They stood there till morning and then one of them who lived nearby took them into his house. Therefore St. John's College is closed and the President has not given in. I fancy the Chinese would be almost ready to treat the Japanese as they did the treacherous minister if it were not for the reaction it would have on the world at large. They do hate them and the Americans we have met all seem to feel with them. Certainly the apparent lie of the Japanese when they made their splurge in promising before the sitting of the Peace Conference to give back the German concessions to China is something America ought not to forget. All these, and the extreme poverty of China is what I had no idea of before coming here. A wonderfully solemn and intent old pedlar has made his appearance most every day, and much the same ceremonies are gone through. For instance, there was a bead necklace—the light hollowed silver enamel—he wanted fourteen dollars for; he seemed rather glad finally to sell it for four, though you can't say he seemed glad; on the contrary, he seemed preternaturally gloomy and remarked that he and not we would eat bitterness because of this purchase. The funniest thing was once when, after getting sick of bargaining, we put the whole thing down and started to walk away. His movements and gestures would have made an actor celebrated—they are indescribable, but they said in effect, 'Rather than have any misunderstanding come between me and my close personal friends I would give you free anything in my possession'. The blood rushed to his face and a smile of heavenly benignity came over it as he handed us the things at the price we had offered him. The students' committees met yesterday and voted to inform the government by telegraph that they would strike next Monday if their four famous demands were not granted—or else five—including of course refusal to sign the peace treaty, punishment of traitors who made the secret treaties with Japan because they were bribed, etc. But the committee seemed to me more conservative than the students, for the rumor this A.M. is that they are going to strike to-day anyway. They are especially angered because the police have forbidden them to hold open-air meetings—that's now the subject of one of their demands—and because the provincial legislature, after promising to help on education, raised their own salaries and took the money to do it with out of the small educational fund. In another district the students rioted and rough-housed the legislative hall when this happened. Here there was a protest committee, but the students are mad and want action. Some of the teachers, so far as I can judge, quite sympathize with the boys, not only in their ends but in their methods; some think it their moral duty to urge deliberate action and try to make the students as organized and systematic as possible, and some take the good old Chinese ground that there is no certainty that any good will come of it. To the outsider it looks as if the babes and sucklings who have no experience and no precedents would have to save China—if. And it’s an awful if. It’s not surprising that the Japanese with their energy and positiveness feel that they are predestined to govern China. I didn't ever expect to be a jingo, but either the United States ought to wash its hands entirely of the Eastern question, and say 'it's none of our business, fix it up yourself any way you like', or else it ought to be as positive and aggressive in calling Japan to account for every aggressive move she makes, as Japan is in doing them. It is sickening that we allow Japan to keep us on the defensive and the explanatory, and talk about the open door, when Japan has locked most of the doors in China already and got the keys in her pocket. I understand and believe what all Americans say here—the military party that controls Japan's foreign policy in China regards everything but positive action, prepared to back itself by force, as fear and weakness, and is only emboldened to go still further. Met by force, she would back down. I don't mean military force, but definite positive statements about what she couldn't do that she knew meant business. At the present time the Japanese are trying to stir up anti-foreign feeling and make the Chinese believe the Americans and English are responsible for China not getting Shantung back, and also talking race discrimination for the same purpose. I don't know what effect their emissaries are having among the ignorant, but the merchant class has about got to the point of asking foreign intervention to straighten things out—first to loosen the clutch of Japan, and then, or at the same time, for it's the two sides of the same thing, overthrow the corrupt military clique that now governs China and sells it out. It's a wonderful job for a League of Nations—if only by any chance there is a league, which looks most dubious at this distance. The question which is asked oftenest by the students is in effect this: 'All of our hopes of permanent peace and internationalism having been disappointed at Paris, which has shown that might still makes right, and that the strong nations get what they want at the expense of the weak, should not China adopt militarism as part of her educational system?' |
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| 38 | 1919.05.15 |
Letter from John Dewey to K. J. Koo Nanking, May 15, 1919. My dear Mr. Koo: I enjoyed my visit to the office yesterday very much, and am grateful to you for your great kindness. I was much impressed by the very beautiful character of the work your Press is doing. I do not know any country where such fine stone color reproductions are made. I saw my American friends last evening and advised them to go at once to the office and see the pictures. I shall continue to speak of your work, and shall feel I am doing Americans a great favor in calling their attention to the fact that artistic reproductions are available. I have long been a great admirer of Chinese painting, and I cannot tell you what a great pleasure it is to know that the masterpieces are available in reproductions. I do not know whether you have an American market or an American agent, but if I can be of any use to you when I return to New York, I hope you will let me know. Again, please let me and Mrs. Dewey thank you for your very thoughtful suggestion and your great kindness in carrying it out. We appreciate your generosity very highly and shall esteem the pictures for their intrinsic beauty and as a souvenir of our visit to Shanghai. Sincerely yours, John Dewey |
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| 39 | 1919.05.18 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Nanking, May 18. [18.5.1919]. There is no doubt we are in China. Hangchow, we are told, was one of the most prosperous of the strictly Chinese cities, and after seeing this town we can believe it. It has a big wall around it, said to be 21 miles and also 33—my guess is the latter; nonetheless there are hundreds of acres of farm within it. This afternoon we were taken up on the wall; it varies from 15 to 79 feet in height, according to the lay of the ground, and from 12 to 30 feet or so wide; hard baked brick, about as large as three of ours. They always had a smaller walled city inside the big one, variously called the Imperial and Manchu city. But since the revolution they are tearing down these inner walls, partly I suppose to show their contempt for the Manchus, and partly to use the brick. These are sold for three or four cents apiece and carted all around on the big Chinese wheelbarrow, by man power, of course. The compound wall of this house is made of them, and they have several thousand of them stored at the University grounds. They scrape them off by hand; you can get some idea of the relative value of material and human beings. I started out to speak of the view—typical China, deforested hills close by, all pockmarked at the bottom with graves, like animal burrows and golf bunkers; peasants' stone houses with thatched roofs, looking like Ireland or France; orchards of pomegranates with lovely scarlet blossoms and other fruits; some rice fields already growing, others being set out, ten or a dozen people at work in one patch; garden patches, largely melons; in the distance the wall stretching out for miles, a hill with a pagoda, a lotus lake, and in the far distance the blue mountains—also the city, not so much of which was visible, however. One of the interesting things in moving about is the fact that only once in a while do I see a face typically Chinese. I forget they are Chinese a great deal of the time. They just seem like dirty, poor miserable people anywhere. They are cheerful but not playful. I should like to give a few millions for playgrounds and toys and play leaders. I can't but think that a great deal of the lack of initiative and the let-George-do-it, which is the curse of China, is connected with the fact that the children are grown up so soon. There are less than a hundred schools for children in this city of a third of a million, and the schools only have a few hundred—two or three at most. The children on the street are always just looking and watching, wise, human looking, and reasonably cheerful, but old and serious beyond bearing. Of course many are working at the loom, or when they are younger at reeling. This is a good deal of a silk place, and we visited one government factory with several hundred people at work; this one at least makes out to be self-supporting. There isn't a power reeler or loom in the town, nor yet a loom of the Jacquard type. Sometimes a boy sits up top and shifts things, sometimes they have six or eight foot treadles. A lot of the reeling isn’t even foot power—just hand, though their hand reeler is much more ingenious than the Japanese one. There seem so many places to take hold and improve things and yet all of these are so tied together, and change is so hard that it isn't much wonder everybody who stays here gets more or less Chinafied and takes it out in liking the Chinese personally for their amiable qualities. Just now the students are forming a patriotic league because of the present political situation, Japanese boycott, etc. But the teachers of the Nanking University here say that instead of contenting themselves with the two or three things they might well do, they are laying out an ambitious scheme covering everything, and their energy will be exhausted when they get their elaborate constitution formed, or they will meet so many difficulties that they will get discouraged even with the things they might do. I don't know whether I told you about the clerk in the tailor shop in Shanghai; after taking the usual fatalistic attitude that nothing could be done with the present situation, he said the boycott was a good thing but 'Chinaman he got weak mind; pretty soon he forget'. In various places there are lots of straw hats hung up painted in Chinese characters where they have stopped passersby and taken their hats away because they were Japanese made. It is all good natured and nobody objects. There are policemen in front of Japanese stores, and they allow no one to enter; they are 'protecting' the Japanese. This is characteristic of China. The policemen all carry guns with bayonets attached; they are very numerous and slouch around looking bored to death. The only other class as bored looking is the dogs, which are even more numerous, and lie stretched out at full length, never curled up, and never by any chance doing anything. We visited the old examination halls which are now being torn down. These are the cells, about 25,000 in number, where the candidates for degrees used to be shut up during the examination period. Said cells are built in long rows, under a lean-to roof, mostly opening face to face on an open corridor, which is uncovered. Some of them face against a wall which is the back of the next row of cells. Cells are two and one-half feet wide by four long. In them are two ridges along the wall on each side, one at the height of a seat, the other at the height of a table. On these they laid two boards, two and a half feet long, and this was their furniture. They sat and wrote and cooked and ate and slept in these cells. In case it did not rain, their feet could stick out into the corridor so they might stretch out on the hard floor. The exams lasted eight days, divided into three divisions. They went in on the eighth day of the eighth moon in the evening. They wrote the first subject until the afternoon of the tenth. Then they left for the night. On the afternoon of the eleventh they came in for the second subject and wrote till the afternoon of the thirteenth, when there was another day off. On the evening of the fourteenth they re-entered the cell for the third period and that ended on the evening of the sixteenth. They had free communication with each other in the corridors, which were closed and locked. No one could approach them from the outside for any reason. Often they died. But if they could only get put into a corridor with a friend who knew, the biggest fool in China could get his paper written for him, and he could pass and become an M.A., or something corresponding to that degree. Thus were the famous literati of China produced. Preparation for the exam was not the affair of the government, and might be acquired in any possible way. The houses of the examiners are still in good condition and might be made into a school very easily. But do you think they will do that? Not at all. The government has not ordered a school there, and so they will be torn down or else used for some official work. You can have no conception of how far the officialism goes till you see it. We also visited a Confucian Temple, big and used twice each year. It is like all temples in that it is covered with the dust of many years' accumulation. If you were to be dropped in any Chinese temple you would think you had landed in a deserted and forgotten ruin out of reach of man. We went to the Temple of Hell on Sunday, and the gentleman who accompanied us suggested to the priest that the images ought to be dusted off. 'Yes', said the priest, 'it would be better if they were'. |
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| 40 | 1919.18-19,21,24-26 | John Dewey : Lectures at Nanjing Teachers' College in Nanjing. Tao Zhixing [Tao Xingzhi] : Interpreter. |
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| 41 | 1919.05.20 | John Dewey visits Zhenjiang. |
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| 42 | 1919.05.22 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Nanking, Thursday, May 22. [22.5.1919]. The returned students from Japan hate Japan, but they are all at loggers with the returned students from America, and their separate organizations cannot get together. Many returned students have no jobs, apparently because they will not go into business or begin at the bottom anywhere, and there is strong hostility against them on the part of the officials. As a sample of the way business is done here, we have just had an express letter from Shanghai which took four days to arrive. It should arrive in twelve hours. People use express letters rather than the telegraph because they are quicker. You may spend as much time as you like or don’t like, wondering why your express letter did not reach you on time; you do it at your own risk and expense. The Chinese do not juggle with foreigners as the Japanese do, in the conscious sense, they simply drift, they juggle with themselves and with each other all the time. This house is four miles from the railroad station. There is no street car here; there are many 'rickshas, a few carriages, still fewer autos. There are no sedan chairs, at least I don't remember seeing any, but at Chienkiang, where we went the other day, the streets are so narrow that chairs are the main means of conveyance. The 'ricksha men here pay forty cents a day to the city for their vehicles, which are all alike and very poor ones. They make a little more than that sum for themselves. In Shanghai they pay ninety cents a day for their right to work, and earn from one dollar to a possible dollar and a half for themselves. I said to a young professor, the other day, that China was still supporting three idle classes of people. He looked surprised, though a student and critic of social conditions, and asked me who they were. When I asked him if that couldn't be said of the officials, the priests, and the army, he said yes, it could. Thus far and no further, seems to be their motto, both in thinking and acting, especially in acting. |
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| 43 | 1919.05.23 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Nanking, May 23. [23.5.1919]. I don't believe anybody knows what the political prospects are; this students' movement has introduced a new and uncalculable factor—and all in the three weeks we have been here. You heard nothing but gloom about political China at first, corrupt and traitorous officials, soldiers only paid banditti, the officers getting the money from Japan to pay them with, no organizing power or cohesion among the Chinese; and then the students take things into their hands, and there is animation and a sudden buzz. There are a hundred students being coached here to go out and make speeches, they will have a hundred different stations scattered through the city. It is also said the soldiers are responding to the patriotic propaganda; a man told us that the soldiers wept when some students talked to them about the troubles of China, and the soldiers of Shantung, the province turned over to Japan, have taken the lead in telegraphing the soldiers in the other provinces to resist the corrupt traitors. Of course, what they all are afraid of is that this is a flash in the pan, but they are already planning to make the student movement permanent and to find something for them to do after this is settled. Their idea here is to reorganize them for popular propaganda for education, more schools, teaching adults, social service, etc. It is very interesting to compare the men who have been abroad with those who haven’t—I mean students and teachers. Those who haven't are sort of helpless, practically; the height of literary and academic minds. Those who have studied abroad, even in Japan, have much more go to them. Certainly the classicists in education have a noble example here in China of what their style of education can do if only kept up long enough. On the other hand, there must be something esthetically very fine in the old Chinese literature; even many of the modern young men have a sentimental attachment to it, precisely like that which they have to the fine writing of their characters. They talk about them with all the art jargon: 'Notice the strength of this down stroke, and the spirituality of the cross stroke and elegant rhythm of the composition'. When we visited a temple the other day, one of the chief Buddhist shrines in China, we were presented with a rubbing of the writing of the man who is said to be the finest writer ever known in China—these characters were engraved in the rock from his writing some centuries ago—I don't know how many. It is very easy to see how cultivated people take refuge in art and spirituality when politics are corrupt and the general state of social life is discouraging; you see it here, and how in the end it increases the decadence. I think we wrote you from Shanghai that we had been introduced to all the mysteries of China, ancient eggs, sharks' fins, birds' nests, pigeon eggs, the eight precious treasures, rice pudding, and so on. We continue to have Chinese meals; yesterday lunch in the home of an adviser to a military official. He is very outspoken, doesn’t trim in politics, and gives you a more hopeful feeling about China. The most depressing thing is hearing it said, 'When we get a stable government, we can do so and so, but there is no use at present'. But this man's attitude is rather, 'Damn the government and go ahead and do something'. He is very proud of having a 'happy, Christian home' and doesn't cover up his Christianity as most of the official and wealthy class seem to do. He expects to have his daughters educated in America, one in medicine and one in home affairs, and to have help in a campaign for changing the character of the Chinese home—from these big aggregates of fifty people or so living together, married children, servants, etc., where he says the waste is enormous, to say nothing of bickerings and jealousies. In the old type of well-to-do home, breakfast would begin for someone about seven, and someone would have cooking done for him to eat till noon; then about two, visitors would come, and the servants would be ordered to cook something for each caller—absolutely no organization or planning in anything, according to him. |
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| 44 | 1919.05.19 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Nanking, Monday, May 26. [26.5.1919]. The trouble among the students is daily getting worse, and even the most sympathetic among the faculties are getting more and more anxious. The governor of this province, capital here, is thought most liberal, and he has promised to support these advanced measures in education. Last Friday the assembly passed a bill cutting down the educational appropriation and raising their own salaries. Therefore the students here are now all stirred up and the faculties are afraid they cannot be kept in control until they are well enough organized to make a strike effective. At the same time our friends are kept busy running up to the assembly and the governor. The latter has promised to veto the bill when it is sent to him from the senate. But the students are getting anxious to go to the senate themselves. Our friends say it costs so much for these men to get elected that they have to get it all back after they get into office. A missionary says: 'Let’s go out and shoot them all, they are just as bad as Peking, and if they had the same chance they would sell out the whole country to Japan or to anyone else'. Certainly China needs education all along the line, but they never will get it as long as they try in little bits. So maybe they will have to be pushed to the very bottom before they will be ready to go the whole hog or none. Yesterday a Chinese lady had a tea for me and asked the Taitai, as the wives of the officials are called, corresponding to the court ladies of previous times. As a function this was interesting, for every woman brought her servant and most of her children. Some appeared to have two servants, one big-footed maid for herself and one bound-footed as a nurse for the children. Her own servant hands her the cup of tea. All the children are fed at the same time as the grown-ups, and after their superiors the servants get something in the kitchen. I don't know yet what that something is, but probably an inferior tea. The tea we drank is that famous jasmine tea from Hangchow. It costs something like fifteen dollars a pound here. It is very good, with a peculiar spicy flavor, almost musky and smoky, from the jasmine combined with the tea flavor, which is strong. It is a delicious brown tea, but I do not like to drink it so well as I like the best green tea. Well, I wish you could see the Taitai. The wife of the governor is about twenty-five, or may be a little more. She is a substantial young person, with full-grown feet, a pale blue dress of skirt and coat scalloped on the edges and bound with black satin, her nice hair parted to one side on the right and pinned above her left ear with a white artificial rose. Her maid had black coat and trousers. She had some bracelets on, but her jewels were less beautiful than those of the other women. One very pretty woman had buttons on her coat of emeralds surrounded with pearls, and on her arm a lovely bracelet of pearls. After tea, the great ladies went into an inner room, with the exception of two. One of these two had a very sad face. I watched her and finally had a chance to ask her how many children she had. She said she had none, but she would like to have a daughter. I was told after that her husband was a Christian pastor and she was trying to be Christian. The other one who stayed was the pretty one with the emerald buttons. I finally decided the ladies had left us to play their cards and asked if I might go and see them. They were not playing cards, but had just gone off to gossip among themselves, probably about the foreigners. One of the ladies said she would take me some day to see their card games. It is said they play in the morning and in the afternoon and all the night till the next morning when they go to bed. It is commonly said this is all they do, and the losses are very disastrous sometimes. But they were not playing then and came back, some of them with their children, and sat in the rows of chairs, sixteen of them, and some amahs around the room, while I talked to them. I told stories about what the American women did in the war and they stared with amazement. I had to explain what a gas mask is, but they knew what killing is and what high class is. Their giggles were quite encouraging to intercourse. A nice young lady from the college interpreted, and when I stopped I asked them to tell me something about their lives. So the governor's wife was at last persuaded to give an account of how she brought up her children. They are all free from self-consciousness, and though they have little manners in our sense of the word, they have a self-possession and gentleness combined which gives a very graceful appearance. The governor's wife says she has two little boys, the eldest six years of age. In the morning he has a Chinese tutor. After dinner, she teaches him music, of which she is very fond. After that he plays till five-thirty, has supper, plays again a little while before going to bed, and then bed. At thirteen the boy will be sent away to school. I asked her what about girls, and she said that her little niece was the first one in her family to be sent to school, but this ten-year-old one is in Tientsin at a boarding school. |
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| 45 | 1919.05.29 | John Dewey and his group began their trip to Tianjin and Beijing. |
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| 46 | 1919.06.01 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, Sunday, June 1. [1.6.1919]. We met a young man here from an interior province who is trying to get money for teachers who haven’t received their pay for a long time. Meantime over sixty per cent of the entire national expenses is going to the military, and the army is worse than useless. In many provinces it is composed of brigands and everywhere is practically under the control of the tuchuns or military governors, who are corrupt and use the pay roll to increase their graft and the army to increase their power of local oppression, while the head military man is openly pro-Japanese. There is a lull in our affairs just now. We agreed yesterday that never in our lives had we begun to learn as much as in the last four months. And the last month particularly, there has been almost too much food to be digestible. Talk about the secretive and wily East. Compared, say, with Europe, they hand information out to you here on a platter (though it must be admitted the labels are sometimes mixed) and sandbag you with it. Yesterday we went to the Western Hills where are the things you see in the pictures, including the stone boat, the base of which is really marble and as fine as the pictures. But all the rest of it is just theatrical fake, more or less peeling off at that. However, it is as wonderful as it is cracked up to be, and in some ways more systematic than Versailles, which is what you naturally compare it to. The finest thing architecturally is a Buddhist temple with big tiles, each of which has a Buddha on—for further details see movie or something. We walked somewhat higher than Russian Hill, including a journey through the caves in an artificial mountain such as the Chinese delight in, clear up to this temple. The Manchu family seems to own the thing yet, and charge a big sum, or rather several sums, a la Niagara Falls, to get about—another evidence that China needs another revolution, or rather a revolution, the first one having got rid of a dynasty and left, as per my previous letters, a lot of corrupt governors in charge of chaos. The only thing that I can see that keeps things together at all is that while a lot of these generals and governors would like to grab more for their individual selves, they are all afraid the whole thing would come down round their ears if anyone made a definite move. Status quo is China's middle name, mostly status and a little quo. I have one more national motto to add to 'You Never Can Tell' and 'Let George Do It.' It is, 'That is very bad. ' Instead of concealing things, they expose all their weak and bad points very freely, and after setting them forth most calmly and objectively, say 'That is very bad.' I don't know whether it is possible for a people to be too reasonable, but it is certainly too possible to take it out in being reasonable—and that's them. However, it makes them wonderful companions. You can hardly blame the Japanese for wanting to run them and supply the necessary pep when they decline to run themselves. You certainly see the other side of the famous one-track mind of Japan over here, as well as of other things. If you keep doing something all the time, I don't know whether you need even a single track mind. All you have to do is to keep going where you started for, while others keep wobbling or never get started. Well, this morning we went to the famous museum, and there is one thing where China is still ahead. It is housed in some of the old palaces and audience halls of the inner, or purple, forbidden City. With the yellow porcelain roofs, and the blue and green and gold, and the red walls, it is really the barbaric splendor you read about, and about the first thing that comes up to the conventional idea of what is Oriental. The Hindoo influence is much stronger here than anywhere else we have been, or else really Thibetan, I suppose, and many things remind one of the Moorish. The city of Peking was a thousand years building, and was laid out on a plan when the capitals of Europe were purely haphazard, so there is no doubt they have organizing power all right if they care to use it. The museum is literally one of treasures, porcelains, bronzes, jade, etc., not an historic or antiquated museum. It costs ten cents to get into the park here and much more into the museum, a dollar or more, I guess, and we got the impression that it was fear of the crowd and the populace rather than the money which controls; the rate is too high for revenue purposes. |
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| 47 | 1919.06.01 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, June 1. [1.6.1919]. We have just seen a few hundred girls march away from the American Board Mission school to go to see the President to ask him to release the boy students who are in prison for making speeches on the street. To say that life in China is exciting is to put it fairly. We are witnessing the birth of a nation, and birth always comes hard. I may as well begin at the right end and tell you what has happened while things have been moving so fast I could not get time to write. Yesterday we went to see the temples of Western Hills, conducted by one of the members of the Ministry of Education. As we were running along the big street that passes the city wall we saw students speaking to groups of people. This was the first time the students had appeared for several days. We asked the official if they would not be arrested, and he said, 'No, not if they keep within the law and do not make any trouble among the people'. This morning when we got the paper it was full of nothing else. The worst thing is that the University has been turned into a prison with military tents all around it and a notice on the outside that this is a prison for students who disturb the peace by making speeches. As this is all illegal, it amounts to a military seizure of the University and therefore all the faculty will have to resign. They are to have a meeting this afternoon to discuss the matter. After that is over, we will probably know what has happened again. The other thing we heard was that in addition to the two hundred students locked up in the Law Building, two students were taken to the Police rooms and flogged on the back. Those two students were making a speech and were arrested and taken before the officers of the gendarmerie. Instead of shutting up as they were expected to do, the boys asked some questions of these officers that were embarrassing to answer. The officers then had them flogged on the back. Thus far no one has been able to see any of the officers. If the officers denied the accusation then the reporters would ask to see the two prisoners on the principle that the officers could have no reason for refusing that request unless the story were true. We saw students making speeches this morning about eleven, when we started to look for houses, and heard later that they had been arrested, that they carried tooth brushes and towels in their pockets. Some stories say that not two hundred but a thousand have been arrested. There are about ten thousand striking in Peking alone. The marching out of those girls was evidently a shock to their teachers and many mothers were there to see them off. The girls were going to walk to the palace of the President, which is some long distance from the school. If he does not see them, they will remain standing outside all night and they will stay there till he does see them. I fancy people will take them food. We heard the imprisoned students got bedding at four this morning but no food till after that time. There is water in the building and there is room for them to lie on the floor. They are cleaner than they would be in jail, and of course much happier for being together. |
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| 48 | 1919.06 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The real meaning of education in a democracy' at the Zhejiang Education Association in Hangzhou. = Ping min jiao yu zhi zhen di. Zheng Zonghai interpreter ; Zhu Yukui recorder. In : Jiao yu chao ; vol. 1, no 2 (June 1919). |
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| 49 | 1919.06.02 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, June 2. [2.6.1919]. Maybe you would like to know a little about how we look this morning and how we are living. In the first place, this is a big hotel with a bath in each room. On a big street opposite to us is the wall of the legation quarter, which has trees in it and big roofs which represent all that China ought to have and has not. The weather is like our hot July, except that it is drier than the August drought on Long Island. The streets of Peking are the widest in the world, I guess, and ours leads by the red walls of the Chinese city with the wonderful gates of which you see pictures. It is macadamized in the middle, but on each side of it run wider roads, which are used for the traffic. Thank your stars there are good horses in Peking; men do not pull all the heavy loads. The two side roads are worn down in deep ruts and these ruts are filled with dust like finest ashes, and all thrown up into the air whenever a man steps on it or a cart moves through. Our room faces the south on this road. All day long the sun pours through the bamboo shades and the hot air brings in that gray dust, and everything you touch, including your own skin, is gritty and has a queer dry feeling that makes you think you ought to run for water. I am learning to shut the windows and inner blinds afternoons. Isn't it strange that in the latitude of New York this drought should be expected every spring? In spite of all this the fields have crops growing, thinly, to be sure, on the hard gray fields. There are very few trees, and they are not of the biggest. The grain is already about fit to cut, and the onions are ripe. After a while it will rain and rain much and then new crops will be put in. The flowers are almost gone and I am sorry that we did not see the famous peonies. You will be interested to know that they keep the peonies small; even the tree kind are cut down till they are the size of those little ones of mine. The tuber peonies are transplanted each year or in some way kept small and the blossoms are lovely and little. I have seen white rose peonies and at first thought they were roses. The buds look almost like the buds of our big white roses and they are very fragrant. The peony beds are laid out in terraces held in place by brick walls, usually oblong or oval, something like a huge pudding mold on a table. Other times they are planted on the flat and surrounded by bamboo fences of fancy design and geometrical pattern, usually with a square form to include each division. The inner city has many peony beds of that sort, both the tree and tuber kind, but they have only leaves to show now. Yesterday we went to the summer palace and to-day we are going to the museum. That is really inside the Forbidden City, so at last we shall set foot on the sacred ground. The summer palace is really wonderful, but sad now, like all things made on too ambitious a scale to fit into the uses of life. There is a mile of loggia ornamented with the green and blue and red paintings which you see imitated. Through a window we had a peek at the famous portrait of old Tsu Hsu and she looks just as she did when I saw it exhibited in New York. The strange thing about it is that it is still owned by the Hsu family. Huge rolls of costly rugs and curtains lie in piles round the room and everything is covered with this fine dust so thick that it is not possible to tell the color of a table top. Cloissonné vases, or rather images of the famous blue ware stand under the old lady's portrait, and everything is going to rack and ruin. Meantime we wandered around, planning how it could be made over into use when the revolution comes. Get rid of the idea that China has had a revolution and is a republic; that point is just where we have been deceived in the United States. China is at present the rotten crumbling remnant of the old bureaucracy that surrounded the corruption of the Manchus and that made them possible. The little Emperor is living here in his palace surrounded by his eunuchs and his tutors and his two mothers. He is fourteen and it is really funny to think that they have just left him Emperor, but as he has not money except what the republic votes him from year to year, nobody worries about him, unless it is the Japanese, who want the imperial government restored until they get ready to take it themselves. It looks as if they might be ready now except for the nudge which has just been given to the peace conference. You had better read a book about this situation, for it is the most surprising affair in a lifetime. Yesterday we went to see a friend's house. It is interesting and I should like to live in one like it. There is no water except what the water man brings every day. This little house has eighteen rooms around a court. It means four separate roofs and going outdoors to get from one to another. When the mercury is at twenty below zero it would mean that just the same. All the ground floors have stone floors. We did not see all the rooms; there are paper windows in some and glass windows in some. In summer they put on a temporary roof of mats over the court. It is higher than the roofs and so allows ventilation and gives good shade. |
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| 50 | 1919.06.02 | John Dewey has dinner with the Minister of Education at the Oriental Hotel in Beijing. |
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| 51 | 1919.06.05 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. June 5. [5.6.1919]. This is Thursday morning, and last night we heard that about one thousand students were arrested the day before. Yesterday afternoon a friend got a pass which permitted him to enter the building where the students were confined. They have filled up the building of Law, and have begun on the Science building, in consequence of which the faculty have to go to the Missionary buildings to-day to hold their faculty meeting. At four yesterday afternoon, the prisoners who had been put in that day at ten had had no food. One of our friends went out and got the University to appropriate some money and they ordered a carload of bread sent in. This bread means some little biscuit sometimes called raised biscuit at home. I think carload means one of the carts in which they are delivered. At any rate, the boys had some food, though not at the expense of the police. On the whole, the checkmate of the police seems surely impending. They will soon have the buildings full, as the students are getting more and more in earnest, and the most incredible part of it is that the police are surprised. They really thought the arrests would frighten the others from going on. So everybody is getting an education. This morning one of our friends here is going to take us up to the University to see the military encampment, and I hope he will take us inside also, though I hardly think he will do the latter. As near as I can find out, the Chinese have reached that interesting stage of development when they must do something for women and do as little as they can, but in case they must have a girls’ school they find that a convenient place to unload an antiquated official who really can’t be endured any longer by real folks. No one can tell to-day what the students' strike will bring next; it may bring a revolution, it may do anything surprising to the police, who seem to be as lacking in imagination as police are famous for being. Everyone here is getting ready to flee for the summer, which is very hot during July. On the whole, the heat is perhaps less hard to endure than the heat of New York, as it is so dry. But the dryness has its own effect and when those hard winds blow up the dust storms it gets on the nerves. Dust heaps up inside the house, and cuts the skin both inside and outside of the body. This is a lucky day, being cloudy and a little damp as if it might rain. The Western Hill was an experience to remember. Stepping from a Ford limousine to a chair carried by four men and an outwalker alongside, we were thus taken by fifteen men to the temples, your father, an officer from the Department of Education, and I. The men walked over the paths in the dust and on stones which no one thinks of picking up. It was so astounding to call it a pleasure resort that we could only stare and remain dumb. We saw three temples and one royal garden. Five hundred Buddhas in one building, and all the buildings tumble-down and dirty. On top of one hill is a huge building which cost a million or more to build about four hundred years ago by someone for his tomb. Then he did something wrong, probably stole from the wrong person, and was not allowed to be buried there. Round the temple places the trees remain and give a refreshing oasis, and there are some beautiful springs. All the time we kept saying, 'Trees ought to be planted'. 'Yes, but they take so long to grow,' or, 'Yes, but they will not grow, it is so dry,' etc. Sometimes they would say, 'Yes, we must plant some trees,' or more likely, 'Yes, I think we may plant some trees sometime, but we have an Arbor Day and the people cut down the trees or else they did.' We would show that the trees would grow because they were there round the temples, and besides grass was growing and trees would grow where grass would grow in such dry weather, and they would say the same things over. It made the little forestry station in Nanking seem like a monumental advance, while that fearful sun was beating up the dust under the stones as the men gave us the Swedish massage in the motion of the chairs. Fifty men and more stood around as we got in and out of the car and five men apiece stood and waited for us as we walked round the temple and ate our lunch and spent the time sipping tea, and yet they cannot plant trees, and that is China. The whole country is covered every inch with stones. Nature has supplied them, and falling walls are everywhere. We saw one great thing, however. They are building a new school house and orphanage for the children of that village. Many of the children are naked everywhere hereabouts and they stand with sunburned heads, their backs covered only with coats of dirt, eating their bean food in the street. Everywhere the food is laid out on tables by the roadside ready to eat. In one temple, a certain official here has promised to rebuild a small shrine which houses the laughing Buddha, who is made of bronze and was once covered with lacquer, which is now mostly split off. At present the only shade the god has is a roof of mats which they have braced up on the pile of ruins that once made a roof. The President of the Republic has built a lovely big gate like the old ones, because it is propitious and would bring him good fortune. But he has decided it was not propitious, something went wrong with the gods, I did not learn what it was; anyway, he is now tearing down one of the big buttresses on one side of it to see if fate will treat him more kindly then. Just what he wants of fate I did not learn either, but perhaps it is that fate should make him Emperor, as that seems to be their idea of curing poverty and political evils. I forgot to say that they never remove ruins; everything is left to lie as it falls or is falling, so one gets a good idea of how gods are constructed. Most of them were of clay, a sort of concrete built up on a wood frame, and badly as they need wood I have never seen a sign of piling up the fallen beams of a temple. Instead of that, you risk your life by walking under these falling roofs unless you have the sense to look after your own safety. In most of these Peking temples they do sweep the floors and even some of the statues look as if they had some time been dusted, though this last I am not certain about. |
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| 52 | 1919.06.05 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, June 5. [5.6.1919]. As has been remarked before, you never can tell. The students were stirred up by orders dissolving their associations, and by the 'mandates' criticising the Japanese boycott and telling what valuable services the two men whose dismissal was demanded had rendered the country. So they got busy—the students. They were also angered because the industrial departments of two schools were ordered closed by the police. In these departments the students had set about seeing what things of Japanese importation could be replaced by hand labor without waiting for capital. After they worked it out in the school they went out to the shops and taught the people how to make them, and then peddled them about, making speeches at the same time. Well, yesterday when we went about we noticed that the students were speaking more than usual, and while the streets were full of soldiers the students were not interfered with; in the afternoon a procession of about a thousand students was even escorted by the police. Then in the evening a telephone came from the University that the tents around the University buildings where the students were imprisoned had been struck and the soldiers were all leaving. Then the students inside held a meeting and passed a resolution asking the government whether they were guaranteed freedom of speech, because if they were not, they would not leave the building merely to be arrested again, as they planned to go on speaking. So they embarrassed the government by remaining in 'jail' all night. We haven't heard to-day what has happened, but the streets are free of soldiers, and there were no students talking anywhere we went, so I fancy a truce has been arranged while they try and fix things up. The government's ignominious surrender was partly due to the fact that the places of detention were getting full and about twice as many students spoke yesterday as the day before, when they arrested a thousand, and the government for the first time realized that they couldn't bulldoze the students; it was also partly due to the fact that the merchants in Shanghai struck the day before yesterday, and there is talk that the Peking merchants are organizing for the same purpose. This is, once more, a strange country; the so-called republic is a joke; all it has meant so far is that instead of the Emperor having a steady job, the job of ruling and looting is passed around to the clique that grabs power. One of the leading militarist party generals invited his dearest enemy to breakfast a while ago—within the last few months—in Peking, and then lined his guest against the wall and had him shot. Did this affect his status? He is still doing business at the old stand. But in some ways there is more democracy than we have; leaving out the women, there is complete social equality, and while the legislature is a perfect farce, public opinion, when it does express itself, as at the present time, has remarkable influence. Some think the worst officials will now resign and get out, others that the militarists will attempt a coup d'état and seize still more power rather than back down. Fortunately, the latter seem to be divided at the present time. But all of the student (and teacher) crowd are much afraid that even if the present gang is thrown out, it will be only to replace them by another set just as bad, so they are refraining from appealing to the army for help. Later.—The students have now asked that the chief of police come personally to escort them out and make an apology. In many ways, it seems like an opéra bouffe, but there is no doubt that up to date they have shown more shrewdness and policy than the government, and are getting the latter where it is a laughing stock, which is fatal in China. But the government isn't inactive; they have appointed a new Minister of Education and a new Chancellor of the University, both respectable men, with no records and colorless characters. It is likely the Faculty will decline to receive the new Chancellor unless he makes a satisfactory declaration—which he obviously can't, and thus the row will begin all over again, with the Faculty involved. If the government dared, it would dissolve the University, but the scholar has a sacred reputation in China. |
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| 53 | 1919.06.07 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. June 7. [7.6.1919]. The whole story of the students is funny and not the least funny part is that last Friday the students were speaking and parading with banners and cheers and the police standing near them like guardian angels, no one being arrested or molested. We heard that one student pouring out hot eloquence was respectfully requested to move his audience along a little for the reason that they were so numerous in statu quo as to impede traffic, and the policeman would not like to be held responsible for interfering with the traffic. Meantime, Saturday the government sent an apology to the students who were still in prison of their own free will waiting for the government to apologize and to give them the assurance of free speech, etc. The students are said to have left the building yesterday morning, though we have no accurate information. The Faculty of the University met and refused to recognize or accept the new Chancellor. They sent a committee to the government to tell them that, and one to the Chancellor to tell him also and to ask him to resign. It seems the newly-appointed Chancellor used to be at the head of the engineering school of the University, but he was kicked out in the political struggle. He is an official of the Yuan Shi Kai school and has become a rich rubber merchant in Malay, and anyway they do not want a mere rubber merchant as President of the University, and they think they may so explain that to the new Chancellor that he will not look upon the office as so attractive as he thought it was. There is complete segregation in this city in all public gatherings, the women at the theaters are put off in one of those real galleries such as we think used to be and are not now. The place for the women in the hall of the Board of Education is good enough and on one side facing the hall so that all the men can look at them freely and so protect that famous modesty which I have heard more of in China than for many years previously. Gasoline is one dollar a gallon here and a Ford car costs $1900. Ivory soap five for one dollar. Clean your dress for $2.50. Tooth paste one dollar a tube, vaseline 50 cents a small bottle. Washing three cents each, including dresses and men's coats and shirts; fine cook ten dollars a month. They have a very good one here, and I am going right on getting fat on delicious Chinese food. The new Rockefeller Institute, called the Union Medical College, is very near here, and they are making beautiful buildings in the old Chinese style, to say nothing of their Hygiene. They have just decided to open it to women, but I am rather suspicious the requirements will prevent the women’s using it at first. Peking is still much of a capital city and is divided into the diplomats and the missionaries. It seems there is not much lacking except the old Dowager Empress to make up the old Peking. |
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| 54 | 1919.06.10 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, June 10. [10.6.1919]. The students have taken the trick and won the game at the present moment—I decline to predict the morrow when it comes to China. Sunday morning I lectured at the auditorium of the Board of Education and at that time the officials there didn't know what had happened. But the government sent what is called a pacification delegate to the self-imprisoned students to say that the government recognized that it had made a mistake and apologized. Consequently the students marched triumphantly out, and yesterday their street meetings were bigger and more enthusiastic than ever. The day before they had hooted at four unofficial delegates who had asked them to please come out of jail, but who hadn't apologized. But the biggest victory is that it is now reported that the government will to-day issue a mandate dismissing the three men who are always called traitors—yesterday they had got to the point of offering to dismiss one, the one whose house was attacked by the students on the fourth of May, but they were told that that wouldn't be enough, so now they have surrendered still more. Whether this will satisfy the striking merchants or whether they will make further demands, having won the first round, doesn't yet appear. There are lots of rumors, of course. One is that the backdown is not only due to the strike of merchants, but to a fear that the soldiers could no longer be counted upon. There was even a rumor that a regiment at Western Hills was going to start for Peking to side with the students. Rumors are one of China's strong suits. When you realize that we have been here less than six weeks, you will have to admit that we have been seeing life. For a country that is regarded at home as stagnant and unchanging, there is certainly something doing. This is the world's greatest kaleidoscope. Wilson's Decoration Day Address has just been published; perhaps it sounds academic at home, but over here Chinese at least regard it as very practical—as, in fact, a definite threat. On the other hand, we continue to get tales of how the Washington State Department has declined to take the reports sent from here as authentic. Lately they have had a number of special agents over here, more or less secret, to get independent information. In talking about democratic developments in America, whenever I make a remark such as the Americans do not depend upon the government to do things for them, but go ahead and do things for themselves, the response is immediate and emphatic. The Chinese are socially a very democratic people and their centralized government bores them. |
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| 55 | 1919.06.14 | John Dewey visits the Qinghua College in Beijing. |
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| 56 | 1919.06.16 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. June 16. [16.6.1919]. Chinesewise speaking, we are now having another lull. The three 'traitors' have had their resignations accepted, the cabinet is undergoing reconstruction, the strike has been called off, both of students and merchants (the railwaymen striking was the last straw), and the mystery is what will happen next. There are evidences that the extreme militarists are spitting on their hands to take hold in spite of their defeat, and also that the President, who is said to be a moderate and skillful politician, is nursing things along to get matters more and more into his own hands. Although he issued a mandate against the students and commending the traitors, the students' victory seems to have strengthened him. I can't figure it out, but it is part of the general beginning to read at the back of the book. The idea seems to be that he has demonstrated the weakness of the militarists in the country, while in sticking in form by them he has given them no excuse for attacking him. They are attacking most everybody else in anonymous circulars. One was got out signed 'Thirteen hundred and fifty-eight students', but giving no names, saying that the sole object of the strike was to regain Tsingtao, but that a few men had tried to turn the movement to their own ends, one wishing to be Chancellor of the University. |
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| 57 | 1919.06.20 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, June 20. [20.6.1919]. Some time ago I had decided to tell you that here I had found the human duplication of the bee colony in actual working order. China is it, and in all particulars lives up to the perfect socialization of the race. Nobody can do anything alone, nobody can do anything in a hurry. The hunt of the bee for her cell goes on before one's eyes all the time. When found, lo, the discovery that the cell was there all the time. Let me give you an example. We go to the art school for lectures, enter by a door at the end of a long hall. Behind that hall is another large room and in back of the second room somewhere is a place where the men make the tea. Near the front door where we enter is the table where we are always asked to sit down before and after the lecture, whereat we sit down to partake of tea and other beverages, such as soda. Well, the teacups are kept in a cabinet at the front end of the first room right near the entrance door. Comes a grown man from the rear somewhere; silently and with stately tread he walks across the long room to the cabinet, takes one teacup in each hand and retreads the space towards the back. After sufficient time he returns bearing in his two hands these cups filled with hot tea. He puts these down on the table for us and then he takes two more cups from the cabinet, and retires once more, returning later as before. When bottles are opened they are brought near the table, because otherwise the soda would be spoiled in carrying open, never to save steps. The Chinese kitchen is always several feet from the dining room, under a separate roof. Often you must cross a court in the open to get from one to another. As it has not rained since we have been here, I do not know what happens to the soup under the umbrella. But remember, the beehive is the thing in China, and it is the old-fashioned beehive in the barrel. When you look at the men who are doing it all they have the air of strong, quiet beings who might do almost anything, but when you get acquainted with them, how they do almost nothing is a marvelous achievement. At Ching Hua College, said being the famous Boxer Indemnity College, the houses are new and built by American initiative, and the kitchen is forty feet from the dining room door in those. I will not describe the kitchens, but when you see the clay stoves crumbling in places, no sink, and one window on one side of the rather dark room, a little room where the cook sleeps on a board and where both the men eat their own frugal meals, it is all the Middle Ages undisturbed. |
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| 58 | 1919.06.20 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, June 20. [20.6.1919]. Last weekend we went out about ten miles to Ching Hua College; this is the institution started with the returned Boxer Indemnity Fund; it's a high school with about two years college work; they have just graduated sixty or seventy who are going to America next year to finish up. They go all around, largely to small colleges and the Middle West state institutions, a good many to Tech and a number to Stevens, though none go to Columbia, because it is in a big city; just what improvement Hoboken is I don't know. China is full of Columbia men, but they went there for graduate work. No doubt it is wise keeping them away from a big city at first. Except for the instruction in Chinese, the teaching is all done in English, and the boys seem to speak English quite well already. It's a shame the way they will be treated, the insults they will have to put up with in America before they get really adjusted. And then when they get back here they have even a worse time getting readjusted. They have been idealizing their native land at the same time that they have got Americanized without knowing it, and they have a hard time to get a job to make a living. They have been told that they are the future saviors of their country and then their country doesn't want them for anything at all—and they can't help making comparisons and realizing the backwardness of China and its awful problems. At the same time at the bottom of his heart probably every Chinese is convinced of the superiority of Chinese civilization—and maybe they are right—three thousand years is quite a spell to hold on. You may come over here some time in your life, so it will do no harm to learn about the money—about it, nobody but the Chinese bankers ever learn it. There are eleven dimes in a dollar and six twenty-cent pieces, and while there are only eleven coppers in a dime, there are one hundred and thirty-eight in a dollar. Consequently the thrifty always carry a pound or two of big coppers with them to pay 'ricksha men with. Then there are various kinds of paper money. We are going to Western Hills tomorrow night, and under instructions I bought some dollars at sixty-five cents apiece which are good for a whole dollar on this railway and apparently nowhere else. On the contrary, the foreigners are done all the time at the hotels; there they only give you five twenty-cent pieces in change for a dollar, and so on—but they are run by foreigners, and not by the wily Chinese. One thing you will be glad to know is that Peking is Americanized to the extent that we have ice cream at least once a day, two big helpings. This helps. A word to the wise. Never ask a Chinese whether it is going to rain, or any other question about the coming weather. The turtle is supposed to be a weather prophet, and as the turtle is regarded as the vilest creature on earth, you can see what an insult such a question is. One of their subtle compliments to the Japanese during the late campaign was to take a straw hat, of Japanese make, which they had removed from a passerby’s head, and cut it into the likeness of a turtle and then nail it up on a telephone post. I find, by the way, that I didn't do the students justice when I compared their first demonstration here to a college boys' roughhouse; the whole thing was planned carefully, it seems, and was even pulled off earlier than would otherwise have been the case, because one of the political parties was going to demonstrate soon, and they were afraid their movement (coming at the same time) would make it look as if they were an agency of the political faction, and they wanted to act independently as students. To think of kids in our country from fourteen on, taking the lead in starting a big cleanup reform politics movement and shaming merchants and professional men into joining them. This is sure some country. |
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| 59 | 1919.06.23 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, June 23. [23.6.1919]. Last night we had a lovely dinner at the house of a Chinese official. All the guests were men except me and the fourteen-year-old daughter of the house. She was educated in an English school here and speaks beautiful English, besides being a talented and interesting girl. Chinese girls at her age seem older than ours. The family consists of five children and two wives. I found the reason the daughter was hostess was that it was embarrassing to choose between the two wives for hostess and they didn’t want to give us a bad impression, so no wife appeared. We were given to understand that the reason for the non-appearance was that mother was sick. There is a new little baby six weeks old. The father is a delicate, refined little man, very proud of his children and fond of them, and they were all brought out to see us, even the six weeks older, who was very hot in a little red dress. Our host is the leader of a party of liberal progressives, and also an art collector. We had hopes he would show us his collection of things. He did not, except for the lovely porcelain that was on the table. The house is big and behind the wall of the Purple City, as they call the old Forbidden City, and it looks on the famous old pagoda, so it was interesting. We sat in the court for coffee and there seemed to be many more courts leading on one behind another as they do here, sometimes fourteen or more, with chains of houses around each one. As for the dinner, I forgot to say that the cook is a remarkable man, Fukien, who gave us the most delicious Chinese cookery with French names attached on the menu. Cooking is apt to be named geographically here. Most everyone in Peking came from somewhere else, just as should be in a capital city. But they seem to keep the cooks and cook in accordance with the predilections of the old home province. They have adopted ice cream, showing the natural sense of the race, but the daughter of our host told me that they do not give it to the sick, as they still have the idea that the sick should have nothing cold. They are now thrashing the wheat in this locality. That consists of cutting it with the sickle and having the women and children glean. The main crop is scattered on the floor, as it is called, being a hard piece of ground near the house, and then the wheat is treaded out by a pair of donkeys attached to a roller about as big as our garden roller. After it is out of the husk, it is winnowed by being tossed in the breeze, which takes the time of a number of people and leaves in a share of the mother earth. The crops are very thin round this region and they say that they are thinner than usual, as this is a drier year than usual. Corn is small, but there is some growing between here and the hills where we went, always in the little pieces of ground, of course. Peanuts and sweet potatoes are planted now, and they seem to be growing well in the dust, which has been wet by the recent day of rain. |
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| 60 | 1919.06.24 |
Dewey, John. The student revolt in China [ID D28469]. The depression that bore China down after the Paris decision to hand Shantung over to Japan was fraught with as much pessimism as bitterness. China knew her weakness as against any other large Power of the world. She knew that her political division, with a civil war not yet officially closed, her industrial backwardness, her financial chaos, put her in a position where she could not say a decisive No to any country bent on exploiting her. Accordingly, she hung pathetically and tremblingly upon the deliberations of the peace conference. Morning and night she kept up her hopes by repeating the assurances given by the Allied statesmen of the creation of a new international order and of the future protection of weak nations against the rapacity of the strong. And her hopes needed support, for they were mingled with fears. Better than western nations she knew how far Japan was prepared to go, for twice during the war she had yielded to Japan's barely disguised threat of war. She also knew more about the secret treaties and understandings than did the western nations. Hence it was that the Paris decision created despair rather than the bitter antagonism to America and the other Allies which might have been expected. The outcome just proved that Force still ruled; that Might still made Right in international affairs; that China was hopelessly weak and Japan threateningly strong. On May 4th a thrill stirred this hopelessness. Somebody had done something. Students of the Peking University had demonstrated, and in the course of their demonstration had deliberately attacked and beaten up two of the three Chinese statesmen who are popularly known as traitors because of their part in negotiating various secret treaties and loans with Japan. A stir moved vitally through the national apathy. The weakness, possibly the corruption of Chinese officials, had had a responsible share in the Shantung decision (it is always the Shantung and never the Tsingtau question in China). If China could not count upon other nations, she might at least do something to put in order her own house. The students' act was received not as a chance act of lawless lynching, but as a gesture of righteous indignation. The air was again tense with expectation. Was the Peking event anything more than a passing gesture? Events followed quickly. The government arrested a number of students. Then their fellows protested; troops were thrown about the University buildings. The city was practically under martial law. The provinces were rife with rumors of the readiness of the Chinese militarist clique to go to any extreme in the way of slaughter to put down opposition; rife even with rumors of an impending coup d’état to fix irretrievably the hold upon the government of the militarist and pro-Japanese party. The Chancellor of the University, whom the militarists hated as the intellectual leader of the liberal elements, resigned and disappeared, because, according to report, not only his life but those of hundreds of students were threatened. Then came the news that all of the students in Peking in institutions above the rank of the elementary school had struck in protest against the action of the government. They had not only struck, but they had made definite demands (of which more below); and they had organized into bands of ten, who were everywhere making open-air speeches, defying the military police to arrest them, and trying to organize the public that listened to them into similar bands of ten to carry on propaganda. This time the thrill throughout the country was electric. The seventh of May is the day kept as the Day of National Shame. Even the primary schools have banners in them, 'Remember the seventh day of the fifth month'. This day of national humiliation is the anniversary of the Japanese twenty-one demands. The coincidence of dates had a powerful effect. Students from the Peking University rapidly dispersed through the country, addressing themselves primarily to students in all the large centres. The latter became restless; then they struck; middle (high) school students, normal and technical schools; again everything above the elementary grade. Everywhere the bands of ten were organized, speakers were drilled in what to say and how to say it, and the Popular propaganda spread through the provinces. And the multitude heard it gladly. The unorganized hostility to Japan took form in a boycott. That was one of the themes of the boy and girl orators. They did not content themselves with general exhortations. Lists of Japanese goods were printed and mimeographed by the thousand; classified lists of all Japanese products sold in China. Similar lists of substitute native goods were circulated. In some of the schools the industrial department set to work to discover what Japanese goods could be made in existing shops without additional capital. As soon as models were constructed they were taken to small shops and their mode of manufacture explained. Then, to create a market, other students took these goods and hawked them through the streets, lecturing, exhorting, explaining the political situation at the same time. And as the vacation period comes on these students are dispersing all over China peddling goods and speaking, speaking, speaking . . . Meantime the government was not idle. Political speeches were forbidden, students' meetings were forcibly broken up, many scores of students in different parts of China were sorely injured, a few were killed. It is not difficult to foresee the future memorial meetings in honor of these martyrs of patriotism, or even the shrines wherein their memory will be reverenced. Then the government at Peking took more drastic measures. Mandates were issued condemning the students, ordering them under penalty of dissolution of schools to return to their studies, to disband their unions, and to cease concerning themselves with what was none of their business, praising by name the men popularly regarded as traitors, warning against the boycott, and in general saying that foreign affairs should be left in the hands of the government. Coincidently several hundred students were arrested in Peking for speaking. With the fatuity which affects militarists in China as well as elsewhere, it was promised that this would put an end to the students’ agitation. The next day the number of students speaking on the streets was more than doubled, and the arrests ran to above a thousand. The students planned to go on till every man was in jail. Girl students formed a procession (some of them had to break down gates to get out) to wait upon the President and request the freeing of students; they said they would remain praying for justice all night if he did not hear them. The jails could not hold the arrested students. These were shut up in the University buildings and left with little food and less water, with cordons of troops around them. The faculty met; protested against this military invasion; against the degradation of using halls of learning as jails; against the abuse of patriotic students; and they telegraphed their protest widespread. Events had been moving outside of Peking. This last arbitrary action was the beginning of the end. Merchants in Shanghai went on strike; shops were closed, including those selling food; the merchants in Tientsin and Nanking joined; those in Peking and other cities prepared to join. There was plenty of evidence that the students had practically succeeded in converting the merchants to their side; that they no longer stood alone, but had effected an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the powerful mercantile guilds. There was talk of a strike against paying taxes. The government capitulated suddenly if not gracefully. Troops were withdrawn from the University grounds and the students invited to come out. They declined, and announced that they would stay in till the students everywhere were guaranteed the right of free speech and until the government officially apologized to them. Two days more saw the end. The government sent delegates to make the required apology; a new mandate was issued saying that the country realized that the students were actuated by patriotic motives, and should not be interfered with if they kept within the law. The 'resignations' of the three men called traitors were accepted. Undoubtedly the spread of the strike to the merchants, and the fear of its further extension, were the actuating motives in the inglorious surrender. But the students had managed to get their propaganda into the army. Rumors were afloat that the armies could not be counted upon for further suppressions—especially as pay was far in arrears. After their triumphant march from out their self-made prison, students were heard to lament that the government changed the guards so often they had not been able to convert more than half their jailers. The original demands made upon the government were few and simple. The students arrested for engaging in the beating-up enterprise must be freed and given immunity from prosecution; the Chancellor who was so obnoxious to the militarist clique must be reinstated. By the time the government was ready to meet these first demands (in outward form, at least), the demands had greatly increased. Instructions must be given to delegates in Paris not to sign the treaty except with reservations as to Shantung, all 'traitors' must be dismissed, all secret understandings with Japan abrogated, freedom of speech guaranteed. Within about a month the Student Movement had won all its points except the third and first; and with respect to the first the government had promised to do all that the international situation permitted; and fell back vaguely upon advice received from Great Britain, France and President Wilson to sign, with hopes of later readjustment. Yet there is no evidence that the students are deceived as to the amount of success they have achieved. The military clique is still in full command; the places of the three dismissed men will probably be filled by other men of the same pro-Japanese affiliations. Externally things are much as they were before. No successful revolution in government or in foreign affairs justifies giving this amount of space to the Student Movement. But the prestige of the militarist faction has received its first great blow—and prestige is the primary feature of Oriental politics. A negative boycott, sure to fail in the end, has been changed into a constructive movement for development of home industry— a movement still in its infancy but capable of effective development. The possibilities of organization independent of government, but capable in the end of controlling government, have been demonstrated. It is hard to estimate the significance of the fact that the new movement was initiated by the student body. Reverence for the scholar is traditional in China. It still holds over from the rank accorded the literati in former days. From the western standpoint it amounts to superstitious regard. Yet this is the first time that students have taken any organized part in politics. Beyond what their speaking and writing have done in organizing public opinion at the present emergency is the abiding effect for the future. Most of the outward signs of the movement—aside from hawking goods and teaching patriotism at the same time— have now subsided. But a National Students' Union has been formed and definite plans have been made for the future. Already attempts are making to unite the people of the divided north and south in a way that will cut under the militarists of both sides. It would be highly surprising if a new constitutionalist movement were not set going. The combination of students and merchants that has proved so effective will hardly be allowed to become a mere memory. Already in some cities it has been extended into a Four Group Union, and efforts are making to extend this larger organization throughout the country. Probably a foreign observer would count as the most precious fruit of the movement the awakening of China from a state of passive waiting. A sharp blow has been given the idea that China itself is helpless and must be saved from without. In spite of the charges of which the Japanese newspapers are full that the movement was instigated, and even financed, by foreigners, especially Americans, it was a strictly native movement, showing what educated China can do, and will do, in the future. The spell of pessimism seems broken. An act has been done, a deed performed. Perhaps there is now a healthier, better organized, movement from within China itself for China's own salvation than at any time since the Revolution. Even if nothing more were to come of the movement, it would be worth observation and record as an exhibition of the way in which China is really governed—when it is governed at all. American children are taught the list of 'modern' inventions that originated in China. They are not taught, however, that China invented the boycott, the general strike and guild organization as means of controlling public affairs. In no other civilized country of the present day (leaving Russia out of account now as an exception to all rules) is brute force such a factor in official government as in China. But in no other country could moral and intellectual force accomplish so quickly and peaceably what was effected in China in the last five or six weeks. This formulates the standing paradox of China. But in the past the moral forces which fundamentally control have been organized only for protest and rebellion. When the emergency is past, the forces have again dissolved into their elements. If the present organization persists and is patiently employed for constructive purposes, then the fourth of May, nineteen hundred and nineteen, will be marked as the dawn of a new day. This is a large If. But just now the future of China so far as it depends upon China hangs on that If. |
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| 61 | 1919.06.25 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, June 25. [25.6.1919]. Simple facts for home consumption. All boards in China are sawed by hand—two men and a saw, like a cross-cut buck-saw. At the new Hotel de Peking, a big building, instead of carrying window casings ready to put in, they are carrying big logs cut the proper length for a casing. Spitting is a common accomplishment. When a school girl wants excuse to leave her seat she walks across the room and spits vigorously in the spittoon. Little melons are now ready to eat. They come like ripe cucumbers, small, rather sweet. Coolies and boys eat them, skins and all, on the street. Children eat small green apples. Peaches are expensive, but those who can get the green hard ones eat them raw. The potted pomegranates are now in bloom and also in fruit in the pots. The color is a wonderful scarlet. The lotus ponds are in bloom—wonderful color in a deep rose. When the buds are nearly ready to open they look as if they were about to explode and fill the air with their intense color. The huge leaves are brilliant and lovely—light green and delicately veined. But the lotus was never made for art, and only religion could have made it acceptable to art. The sacred ponds are well kept and are in the old moats of the Purple City—Forbidden. There are twice as many men in Peking as women. Sunday we went to a Chinese wedding. It was at the Naval Club—no difference in appearance from our ceremony. Bride and groom both in the conventional foreign dress. They had a ring. At the supper there were six tables full of men, and three partly full of women and children. Women take their children and their amahs everywhere in China—I mean wherever they go and provided they want to; it is the custom. None of the men spoke to the women at the wedding—except rare returned students. Eggs cost $1.00 for 120—we get all we want in our boarding house. Men take birds out for walks—either in cages or with one leg tied to a string attached to a stick on which the bird perches. |
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| 62 | 1919.06.27 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, June 27. [27.6.1919]. It's a wonder we were ever let out of Japan at all. It's fatal; I could now tell after reading ten lines of the writings of any traveler whether he ever journeyed beyond a certain point. You have to hand it to the Japanese. Their country is beautiful, their treatment of visitors is beautiful, and they have the most artistic knack of making the visible side of everything beautiful, or at least attractive. Deliberate deceit couldn't be one-tenth as effective; it's a real gift of art. They are the greatest manipulators of the outside of things that ever lived. I realized when I was there that they were a nation of specialists, but I didn't realize that foreign affairs and diplomacy were also such a specialized art. The new acting Minister of Education has invited us to dinner soon. This man doesn't appear to have any past educational record, but he has pursued a conciliatory course; the other one resigned and disappeared when he found he couldn't control things. The really liberal element does not appear to be strong enough at present to influence politics practically. The struggle is between the extreme militarists, who are said to be under Japanese influence, and the group of somewhat colorless moderates headed by the President. As he gets a chance he appears to be putting his men in. The immediate gain seems to be negative in keeping the other crowd out instead of positive, but they are at least honest and will probably respond when there is enough organized liberal pressure brought to bear upon them. It cannot be denied that it is hot here. Yesterday we went out in 'rickshas about the middle of the day and I don't believe I ever felt such heat. It is like the Yosemite, only considerably more intense as well as for longer periods of time. The only consolation one gets from noting that it isn't humid is that if it were, one couldn't live at all. But the desert sands aren't moist either. Your mother asked the coolie why he didn't wear a hat, and he said because it was too hot. Think of pulling a person at the rate of five or six miles an hour in the sun of a hundred and twenty or thirty with your head exposed. Most of the coolies who work in the sun have nothing on their heads. It's either survival of the fittest or inheritance of acquired characteristics. Their adaptation to every kind of physical discomfort is certainly one of the wonders of the world. You ought to see the places where they lie down to go to sleep. They have it all over Napoleon. This is also the country of itinerant domesticity. I doubt if lots of the 'ricksha men have any places to sleep except in their carts. And a large part of the population must buy their food of the street pedlars, who sell every conceivable cooked thing; then there are lots of cooked food stores besides the street men. |
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| 63 | 1919.07 |
Hu, Shi. Wen ti yu zhu yi. [More talk of problems, less talk of Isms]. The article was directly based on John Dewey's pragmatic method of thinking. "All valuable thinking starts with this or that concrete problem. To study the many facts connected with our many-sided problems, to look for the specific ills, is the first step in thinking. And then, to propose different methods of solution, which are based on our accumulated life experiences and knowledge, to suggest the many ways of healing the illness, is the second step in thinking. Afterwards, to infer the results of every kind of possible solutions, as well as whether these results will really solve our present difficulties and problems, and to choose, on the basis of this inference, a hypothetic solution, and consider it to be my opinion, is the third step in thinking. All valuable thinking has to pass through these three steps. Here in China a number of people have asked me, 'Where should we start in reforming our society ? ' My answer is that we must start by reforming the component institutions of the society. Families, schools, local governments, the central government – all these must be reformed, but they must be reformed by people who constitute them, working as individuals – in collaboration with other individuals, of course, but sill as individuals, each accepting his own responsibility. And claim of the total reconstruction of a society is almost certain to be misleading. Social progress is neither an accident nor a miracle ; it is the sum of efforts made by individuals whose actions are guided by intelligence." |
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| 64 | 1919.07.02 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, July 2. [2.7.1919]. The rainy season has set in, and now we have floods and also coolness, the temperature having fallen from the late nineties to the early seventies, and life seems more worth living again. This is a great country for pictures, and I am most anxious for one of a middle-aged Chinese, inclining to be fat, with a broad-brimmed straw hat, sitting on the back of a very small and placid cream colored donkey. He is fanning himself as the donkey moves imperceptibly along the highway, is satisfied with himself and at ease with the world, and everything in the world, whatever happens. This would be a good frontispiece for a book on China—and the joke wouldn’t all be on the Chinese either. To-day the report is that the Chinese delegates refused to sign the Paris treaty; the news seems too good to be true, but nobody can learn the facts. There are also rumors that the governmental military party, having got everything almost out of Japan that is coming to them and finding themselves on the unpopular side, are about to forget that they ever knew the Japanese and to come out very patriotic. This is also unconfirmed, but I suppose the only reason they would stay bought in any case is that there are no other bidders in the market. |
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| 65 | 1919.07.02 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, Wednesday, July 2. [2.7.1919]. The anxiety here is tense. The report is that the delegates did not sign, but so vaguely worded as to leave conjectures and no confirmation. Meanwhile the students' organizations, etc., have begun another attack against the government by demanding the dissolution of Parliament. Meantime there is no cabinet and the President can get no one to form one, and half those inside seem to be also on the strike because the other half are there. |
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| 66 | 1919.07.04 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, July 4. [4.7.1919]. We are going out to the Higher Normal this morning. The head of the industrial department is going to take us. The students are erecting three new school buildings this summer—they made the plans, designs, details, and are supervising the erection as well as doing the routine carpenter work. The head of the industrial department, who acted as our guide and host, has been organizing the 'national industry' activity in connection with the students' agitation. He is now, among other things, trying to organize apprentice schools under guild control. The idea is to take the brightest apprentice available in each 'factory'—really, of course, just a household group—and give them two hours' schooling a day with a view to introducing new methods and new products into the industry. They are going to take metal working here. Then he hopes it will spread all over China. You cannot imagine the industrial backwardness here, not only as compared with us but with Japan. Consequently their markets here are flooded with cheap flimsy Japan-made stuff, which they buy because it's cheap, the line of least resistance. But perhaps the Shantung business will be worth its cost. The cotton guild is very anxious to co-operate and they will supply capital if the schools can guarantee skilled workingmen, especially superintendents. Now they sell four million worth of cotton to Japan, where it is spun, and then buy back the same cotton in thread for fourteen million—which they weave. This is beside the large amount of woven cotton goods they import. I find in reading books that the Awakening of China has been announced a dozen or more times by foreign travelers in the last ten years, so I hesitate to announce it again, but I think this is the first time the merchants and guilds have really been actively stirred to try to improve industrial methods. And if so, it is a real awakening—that and the combination with the students. I read the translations from Japanese every few days, and it would be very interesting to know whether their ignorance is real or assumed. Probably some of both—it is inconceivable that they should be as poor judges of Chinese psychology as the articles indicate. But at the same time they have to keep up a certain tone of belief among the people at home—namely, that the Chinese really prefer the Japanese to all other foreigners; for they realize their dependence upon them, and if they do not make common cause with them it is because foreigners, chiefly Americans, instigate it all from mercenary and political motives. As a matter of fact, I doubt if history knows of any such complete case of national dislike and distrust; it sometimes seems as if there hadn't been a single thing that the Japanese might have done to alienate the Chinese that they haven't tried. The Chinese would feel pretty sore at America for inviting them into the war and then leaving them in the lurch, if the Japanese papers and politicians hadn't spent all their time the last three months abusing America—then their sweet speeches in America. It will be interesting to watch and see just what particular string they trip on finally. It's getting to the end of an Imperfect Day. We saw the school as per program and I find I made a mistake. The boys made the plans of the three buildings and are supervising their erection, but not doing the building. They are staying in school all summer, however—those in the woodworking class—and have taken a contract for making all the desks for the new buildings—the school gives them room and board (food and its preparation costs about five dollars per month), and they practically give their time. All the metal-working boys are staying in Peking and working in the shops to improve and diversify the products. Remember these are boys, eighteen to twenty, and that they are carrying on their propaganda for their country; that the summer averages one hundred in the shade in Peking, and you'll admit there is some stuff here. This P.M. we went to a piece of the celebration. The piece we saw wasn’t so very Fourth of Julyish, but it was interesting—Chinese sleight of hand. Their long robe is an advantage, but none the less it can't be so very easy to move about with a very large sized punch bowl filled to the brim with water, or with five glass bowls each with a gold fish in it, ready to bring out. It seems that sometimes the artist turns a somersault just as he brings out the big bowl of water, but we didn't get that. None of the tricks were complicated, but they were the neatest I ever saw. There is a home-made minstrel show to-night, but it rained, and as the show (and dance later) are in the open, we aren't going, as we intended. You can't imagine what it means here for China not to have signed. The entire government has been for it—the President up to ten days before the signing said it was necessary. It was a victory for public opinion, and all set going by these little schoolboys and girls. Certainly the United States ought to be ashamed when China can do a thing of this sort. |
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| 67 | 1919.07.07 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Sunday, July 7. [7.7.1919]. We had quite another ride yesterday, sixty or seventy miles altogether. The reason for the macadam road is worth telling. When Yuan Shi Kai was planning to be Emperor his son broke his leg, and he heard the hot springs would be good for him. So one of the officials made a road to it. Some of the present day officials, including an ex-official who was recently forced to resign after being beaten up, now own the springs and hotel, so the road will continue to be taken care of. On the way we went through the village of the White Snake and also of the One Hundred Virtues. Y. M. C. A.'s and Red Crossers are still coming from Siberia on their way home. I don't know whether they will talk freely when they get home. It is one mess, and the stories they will tell won’t improve our foreign relations any. The Bolsheviki aren't the only ones that shoot up villages and take the loot—so far the Americans haven't done it. |
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| 68 | 1919.07.08 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, July 8. [8.7.1919]. This morning the papers here reported the denial of Japan that she had made a secret treaty with Germany. The opinion here seems to be that they did not, but merely that preliminaries had begun with reference to such a treaty. We heard at dinner the other day from responsible American officials here that, after America had completed the last of the arrangements for China to go into the war, the Japanese arranged to get a concession from Russia for the delivery on the part of the Japanese of China into the war on the side of the Allies. Well, the Japanese are still at it with the cat out of the bag. It looks now as if they are getting ready to break up the present government in Japan. This is interpreted to mean that that breakup will be made to look as if it were in disapproval of the present mistakes in diplomacy and of the price of rice; and then they can put in a worse one there and the world will not know the difference, but will be made to think that Japan is reforming. Speaking of constitutionality in Japan, I ceased to worry about that as soon as I learned the older statesmen never troubled at all about who was elected, but just let the elections go through, as their business was so assured in other ways that the elections made no difference anyway, and that the same principle worked equally well in the matter of passing bills. No bill can ever come up without the approval of the powers that be and they know how it is coming out in spite of all discussions. No wonder change comes slowly and maybe it will have to come all at once in the form of a revolution if it comes in reality. It is now reported that Tsai, the Chancellor of the University here, has said he will come back on condition that the students do not move in future in any political matter without his consent, and I am not able to guess whether that is a concession or a clever way of seeming to agree with both sides at once. The announcement of Tsai's return means that things will soon be back in normal shape and ready for another upheaval. We seem to be utterly stumped by the house situation. All the members of the Rockefeller Foundation get nice new houses built for them, and the houses are nice new Chinese ones but free from the poor qualities of those to be rented here. All the houses in Peking are built like our woodsheds, directly on the ground, raised a few inches from actual contact with the earth by a stone floor. The courts fill with water when the rains are hard and then they are moist for days, maybe weeks, and about two feet of wet seeps up the side of the walls. Yesterday we called on one of our Chinese friends here, and the whole place was in that state, but he did not seem to notice it. If he wants baths in the house it doubles the cost he pays the water wagon, and then after all the trouble of heating and carrying the water there is no way to dispose of the waste, except to get a man to come and carry it away in buckets. You would have endless occupation here just looking on to see how this bee colony can find so many ways of making life hard for itself. A gentleman at the Foundation has just been telling us how the coolies steal every little piece of metal, leftovers or screwed on, that they can get at. The privation of life sets up an entirely new set of standards for morals. No one, it appears, can be convicted for stealing food in China. |
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| 69 | 1919.07.08 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, July 8. [8.7.1919]. The Rockefeller buildings are lovely samples of what money can do. In the midst of this worn and weak city they stand out like illuminating monuments of the splendor of the past in proper combination with the modern idea. They are in the finest old style of Chinese architecture; green roofs instead of yellow, with three stories instead of one. One wonders how long it will take China to catch up and know what they are doing. It is said the Chinese are not at all inclined to go to their hospital for fear of the ultra foreign methods which they do not yet understand. On the other hand, there is no disposition on the part of the Institution to meet them half way as the missionaries have always done. There are a number of Chinese among the doctors and they have now opened all the work to the women. There is a great need for women doctors now in China, but evidently it will take a generation yet before this work will begin to be understood and will take its natural place in Chinese affairs. It is rather amusing that this splendid set of buildings quite surrounds and overshadows the biggest Japanese hospital and school that is in Peking, and they say the fact has quite humiliated the Japanese. At present the buildings are nearing completion, but all the old rubbishy structures of former times will have to be pulled down before these new ones can be seen in all their beauty. Among other things, they have built thirty-five houses also in Chinese style but with all the modern comforts, in which to house their faculty, and in addition to those there are a good many buildings which were taken over from the old medical missionary College, besides, perhaps, some that will be left from the palace of the Prince whose property they bought. Two fine old lions are an addition from the Prince, but no foreign family would stand the inconveniences and discomforts of the ancient Prince, in spite of all his wives. |
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| 70 | 1919.07.08 |
Dewey, John. The international duel in China [ID D28470]. Everybody knows that before the war the territory and re¬sources of China were the scene of contention among five great Powers. During the war the situation completely altered. Russia and Germany ceased to exist as influential factors. Great Britain and France had their energy, attention and capital mortgaged in a life and death struggle. This left Japan mistress of the field. In accordance with the rules of established international diplomacy, she took full advantage of the unique opportunity to improve her national position. It is hardly sportsmanlike of other nations who have been engaged in the same game to whine about her success. Anyway, they have been her accomplices. Something like an offensive and defensive alliance between Japan and Russia was consummated while the latter seemed to be still a Power. Great Britain and France made secret arrangements with her. In every case, the consideration given Japan was at the expense of China. Until the circumstantial reports of the activities of Ota in Stockholm are confirmed or refuted, the question remains whether Germany, the fifth contender, had not also already entered into negotiations with Japan, also at the expense of China but this time with Russia also as a prospective victim. Apparently Japan had the field to herself. Yet for over two years a duel has been in progress, a duel which concerns both China's internal policy and her international relationships. The duel concerns the ideas and ideals which are to control China's internal political development. Is it to become a genuine democracy or is it to continue in the traditions of autocratic government?—whether under the name of a republic or an empire being a secondary consideration. Internationally, the question is whether China's integrity can be regained and maintained under some sort of temporary international supervision, or whether China is to follow the course which in the past has made Japan the only Asiatic nation capable of protecting herself against European en-croachments and sure of the effective respect of western nations. A duel between ideas and ideals needs, however, to be embodied. The United States and Japan are the bodies through which the duel of ideals is carried on. Force of circumstances, not conscious choice, has determined the figures of the duel. In details, Japan may perhaps have been a peculiarly adept pupil in the way of secret diplomacy practiced by the western Powers. But she has a right to claim that her ultimate object, controlling every particular step, has never been concealed. Her announced aim has been to free Asia, at least eastern Asia, from foreign, that is, European control. The Monroe Doctrine for Asia, Asia for the Asiatics, is a doctrine as public as it is sweeping. Any Japanese is entitled to claim that if the foreigner has ever taken Japanese guarantees of the territorial integrity of China in other sense than as against the European intruder, the foreigner has only his own stupidity to blame. Japan would still hold that she has kept her guarantees of the territorial integrity of Korea—kept them by the only means which under the conditions are effective. In other words, the standing minor premise of the conclusion of the recovery of China by China is the protectorate of weak, unorganized and unprogressive China by organized, militarized Japan—Japan which has adopted western methods in science, industry, education and arms in order to turn them against the West and to preserve the culture and territory of the East, of Asia, intact. Behind every word of the twenty-one demands and of the other negotiations of Japan with China lies the clamorous and luminous unuttered word: Put yourself under the complete protection of Japan, and you shall be guaranteed the same international prestige, the same immunity from projects of partition, concessions, spheres of influence and economic servitudes that Japan enjoys. In no other way can you secure integrity, freedom and respect. Incidentally of course, great material and industrial advantages would accrue to Japan, to say nothing of the military advantage of command of unnumbered man power. But only the blindness of extreme national prejudice will fail to see that the grandiose scheme has as many ideal aspects as those which have ever clothed the plans of any western Power to fulfill its national destiny and mission. As between Japanese and European domination of Asia, a disinterested and cynical American, barring an eventual menace to his own country, might easily remain a neutral spectator. As it now stands, Japan has won official and governmental China—at least that of the internationally recognized government of the North. This does not mean that assent has been given to the basic idea, or that the very officials who are now playing the game of China do not hope that some time or other something will happen which will loosen the hold of Japan over China. But they do accept the particular acts by which Japan is making her approaches to the realization of her goal, even though they protest vigorously, as in the case of the twenty-one demands, when the pace is too much forced. Patriotism aside, all the interests of their own pockets and of their own local power and prestige require that each specific step forward should be met with obstructions and resistance until Japan is ready to pay the specific price exacted. The extent to which Japan has won over the officially governing clique of China is evidenced in the circumstances surrounding the refusal of the Chinese peace delegates to sign the peace treaty. With all the concessions which the government made to the students’ movement, it never agreed to instruct the delegates to refuse to sign, until a semi-promise was made to an insistent incursion from Shantung to Peking; and instructions in accord with this vague promise did not reach Paris till after the delegates, on their own responsibility and with the moral backing of the country set over against their official instructions, had refused to sign. The government is now putting the best face possible upon the matter and trying to get popular credit on the one hand while it placates Japan upon the other. Quite likely it is still urging the Paris delegates to make a belated signature. But the militarist, imperialist pro-Japanese group has had an almost deadly blow dealt to its moral authority, and it is even conceivable that a signature forced at this time would be a signal for a popular revolution. In short, the grandiose scheme of Japan failed to reckon with the most essential factor in the situation—the Chinese people. The extent of this failure may be calculated from the fact that Japanese propagandists in the United States sometimes compare their mission in China to that which they benevolently assign to the United States in Mexico. China with her four hundred million population and the author of the civilization of Japan does not see herself as a Mexico waiting for salvation from Japan. Call it pride or ignorance or national conceit or self-respect or a true sense of comparative national values on the part of China, call it what you will, the fact remains that Japan has so misjudged the psychology of China that she has made an implacable enemy of the people while she has been winning over the officials. One thing, and one thing only, can throw China back into the hands of Japan. Let there be a resumption of the old diplomacy of the western nations with respect to China, and it is conceivable that bitter as would be the dose, China would accept the domination of Japan as the lesser of two evils. And it is not enough that the western nations should have good intentions. They must avoid even the appearance of evil, for ingenious propaganda is always at hand to explain to the Chinese how westerners are trying to exploit them. Even avoiding the appearance of evil is not enough. No task more difficult can be found than the discovery and institution of ways and means by which China can be given the assistance which she imperatively needs, which must be given from outside herself without arousing her national jealousies, suspicions, fears, antagonisms and opposition and thus inviting the aid of Japan against the foreigner. This brings us naturally to the other figure in the duel of ideas and moral influence—the United States. In the main of course it is the logic and especially the psychology of the situation that has put the United States into this position, not anything she has actually done. If the American idea has for the moment won the people as effectually as the Japanese practice has imposed upon the most influential official clique, it is by way of rebound. Idealization is most active when contrasting emotions are deeply stirred. Fear of Japan has bred trust in the United States; dislike of Japan a pathetic affection for America. It is no wonder that Japan with her poor reading of national psychology is bewildered by the present pro-American outburst of China, and can find in it only proof of superhuman ability in intrigue and of the expenditure of countless millions in propaganda. But in fact the situation has made itself. China in her despair has created an image of a powerful democratic, peace-loving America, devoted to securing international right and justice, especially for weak nations. The heroic legend that unified the United States for the war she still accepts, and she has added paragraphs and chapters of her own. How trustingly naive is the faith in the United States may be gathered from various addresses of congratulation which were proffered to representatives of the United States on the Fourth of July. Shanghai was the real centre of the patriotic students' movement, and the following are extracts from some of the Shanghai addresses: "Your great nation is now introducing into the international relations of the world those principles of justice and right which have always been the guiding lights of its own national life. This is Platonic enough, but the concrete meaning appears a few sentences further on: "We look forward to the day when China and the United States shall both be in a position to maintain the peace of the Pacific as your country together with that of Great Britain have maintained the peace of the Atlantic." The Canton Guild congratulated the United States upon her leadership of the cause of human rights in the Councils of the Nations, and left no doubt as to its understanding of the character of this leadership by saying "China and America must have the same ideals. China and America must maintain the peace of Asia. We look to America to help in our battle for justice." Another address (this time from women and girls) is even more specific. After remarking that the American navy has never been used to wrest liberty from any people, it goes on to say that "if ever the day comes when China will have to drive the aggressor from its soil, the American navy will throw its influence in the cause of right." The Commercial Federation sounded the same note in a different key: "On this day of independence we call upon the American people to assist us to be independent, to develop our railways, our waterways, our resources, to join with the capital of China to make us free from the commercial bondage under which we have been living." Of course through all these lines runs the hope of actual assistance against the country believed by the people to be bent upon dominating China under the pretext of helping her. But while the desire for material aid, naval, military, diplomatic, financial, is plainly there, the spirit behind these addresses is something more than national self-interest. The international appeal is bound up with national aspiration for a truly democratic China— an aspiration up to the present tragically frustrated. For the same situation which has given Japan the role of a despoiler and assigned to America the role of a rescuer, has also made Japan the symbol of autocratic and militaristic government in China itself, while the United States symbolizes the free democracy that progressive China would be and is not. No one can understand the present idealization of the United States by China who does not see in it the projection of China's democratic hopes for herself. 1 cannot quote again at length but each of the addresses to which reference has been made contains a touching reference to the fact that America's Fourth of July signalizes an accomplished fact, while the nation that offers the congratulations has for eight years fought a battle for a republic and has not yet won her victory. Deceived by the traditional officialism of the ruling clique, Japan has so far failed to see the enormous gulf that exists between her own centralized autocracy and the democratic modes of life of the Chinese masses. This perhaps is no wonder when representatives of western nations have so frequently misconceived China's essential democracy and have longed for some strong ruler to bring her the blessings of peace and order. Although this democracy is articulately held only by a comparative handful who have been educated, yet these few know and the dumb masses feel that it alone accords with the historic spirit of the Chinese race. And this fact has done for the United States what she could never have done for herself in making her the popular counterfoil to the bureaucratic and autocratic government of Japan. The situation is one that imposes humility rather than self-glorification upon Americans. Our country will have a hard time living up to the role for which she has been cast. The difficulties are intellectual and moral as well as matters of practical judgment and tact in action. Have we the required fibre and virility? Or shall we once more fall between a clever commercialism on the one hand and a futile phrase-making idealism on the other? Above all it demands stamina and endurance of intelligence to think out a consistent and workable plan and to adhere to it. So far as the Far East is concerned, the whole question of the attitude of the United States to the peace settlement, including the League of Nations, is how America's action is going to affect her freedom and force of action in behalf of the international democratic ideals she has professed. In China at least there is fear lest America in making the world safe for democracy be herself compromised by too close association with nations who in international matters are not as yet moved by democratic ideals. If the United States in working with the Allies was obliged to surrender at Paris her own convictions on the Shantung question, China prefers to trust a United States which is free from such commitments and entanglements. After all, democracy in international relations is not a matter of agencies but of aims and consequences. Under certain conditions, a United States which was going it alone would, so far as the Far East is concerned, be a much more effective instrument of true internationalism than a United States in a League the other members of which had no belief in American ideals. But League or no League, the task of the United States in the problems of the Far East is not an easy one. The first requisite is a definite and open policy, openly arrived at by discussion at home and made known to all the world. Then we need to be prepared to back it up in action. Idealism without intelligence and without forceful willingness to act will soon make us negligible in the Far East—and surrender its destinies to a militaristic imperialism. We can't, to take one minor illustration, go on loaning money freely to France if France is at the same time supporting the policies of Japan regarding the composition and functions of an International Consortium. This perhaps is but a hypothetical illustration. But it may well be questioned whether the United States has as yet awakened to the enormous power which is now in her hands. That which most impresses a visitor to the Far East is the extent of this power— accompanied by a query whether this same power is not largely being thrown away by reason of stupidity and ignorance. |
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| 71 | 1919.07.11 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, July 11. [11.7.1919]. They have the best melons here you ever saw. Their watermelons, which are sold on the street in such quantities as to put even the southern negroes to shame, are just like yellow ice cream in color, but they aren't as juicy as ours. Their musk melons aren't spicy like the ones at home at all, but are shaped like pears, only bigger and have an acid taste; in fact they are more like a cucumber with a little acid pep in them, only the seeds are all in the center like our melons. When you get macaroons and little cakes here in straight Chinese houses you realize that neither we nor the Europeans were the first to begin eating. They either boil or steam their bread—they eat wheat instead of rice in this part of the country—or fry it, and I have no doubt that doughnuts were brought home to grandma by some old seafaring captain. These things are all the stranger because, except for sponge cake, no such things are indigenous to Japan. So when you first get here you can hardly resist the impression that these things have been brought to China from America or Europe. Read a book called 'Two Heroes of Cathay', by Luella Miner, and see how our country has treated some of these people in the past, and then you see them so fond of America and of Americans and you realize that in some ways they are ahead of us in what used to be known as Christianity before the war. I guess we wrote you from Hangchow about seeing the monument and shrine to two Chinese officials who were torn in pieces at the time of the Boxer rebellion because they changed a telegram to the provincial officers 'Kill all foreigners' to read 'Protect all foreigners'. The shrine is kept up, of course, by the Chinese, and very few foreigners in China even know of the incident. Their art is really childlike and all the new kinds of artists in America who think being queer is being primitive ought to come over here and study the Chinese in their native abodes. A great love of bright colors and a wonderful knowledge of how to combine them, a comparatively few patterns used over and over in all kinds of ways, and a preference for designs that illustrate some story or idea or that appeal to their sense of the funny—it's a good deal more childlike than what passes in Greenwich Village for the childlike in art. |
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| 72 | 1919 (publ.) |
John Dewey : Lectures at Beijing National Academy of Fine Arts. 1) 'Trends in contemporary education'. = Xian dai jiao yu di chu shi. Han Lu, Tian Feng recorder. In : Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 3 (July 15, 1919). 2) 'The natural foundations of education' 3) 'The new attitude toward knowledge' 4) 'The socialization of education' |
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| 73 | 1919.07.17 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Y.M.C.A., Peking, July 17. [17.7.1919]. A young Korean arrived here in the evening and he was met here on our porch by a Chinese citizen who is also Korean. The newly arrived could speak very little English and by means of a triangle we were able to arrive at his story. It seems there is quite a leakage of Korean students over the Chinese border all the time. To become a Chinese student requires six years of residence, or else it was three; anyway enough to postpone the idea of going to America to study till rather late in case one wants to resort to that way of escape from Japanese oppression. The elder and the one who has become a Chinese citizen seemed a good deal excited; I fancy they are dramatic by nature, and made many gestures. He urged on me the importance of our going to Korea and he is going to bring us some pictures to look at. Well, it all set me thinking, and so I have been reading the Korean guide book and reflecting on the wonderful climate there and wondering if we can get a reasonable place to stay. My first discovery of the real seriousness of the Korean situation came across me in Japan early in March, when we had a holiday on account of the funeral of the Korean prince, for the reason that after the funeral and gradually in connection with it the 'Japanese Advertiser' said it was rumored that the old Korean prince had committed suicide. Doubtless you may know the story there, and then again you may not. However, the facts have leaked one way and another and now it is known that the old man did commit suicide in order to prevent the marriage of the young prince, who has been brought up in Japan, to the Japanese princess. By etiquette his death, taking place three days or so before the date set for the wedding, prevented the marriage from taking place for two years, and it is hoped by the Koreans that before two years they could weaken the Japanese grip on Korea. We all know they have made a beginning since last March and the suicide did something to help that along. Now that Japan is advertising political reforms in Korea she would probably count on that reputation again to cover her real activities and intentions with the world at large for some time to come. The Japanese are like the Italian Padrones or other skillful newly rich; they have learned the western efficiency and in that they are at least a generation ahead of their neighbors. New knowledge to take advantage of the old experience which she has moved away from and understands so well, to make that experience contribute all it has towards building up and strengthening the new riches of herself. The excuse is the one of the short and easy road to success though in the long run it is destructive in its bearings. But a certain physical efficiency is what Japan surely has and she has made that go a little further than it really can go. It is just one more evidence of the failure of the Peace Conference to comprehend the excuses that Wilson is making for the concessions he has granted to the practical needs, as he calls them. We are now getting the first echoes from his speeches here. When I reflect on the changed aspect of our minds and on the facts that we have become accustomed to gradually since coming here I realize we have much to explain to you which now seems a matter of course over here. We discovered from reading an old back number somewhere that an American traveler had been given the order of the Royal Treasure in Japan when he was there. This order is said to be bestowed on the Japanese alone. Before he received it he had made a public speech to the effect that as China was down and out and needed some protector it was natural that Japan should be that, as by all historical reasons she was fitted to be. It appears to be true that the Militarists here who are causing the trouble for China and who are able to hold the government on account of foreign support have that idea so far as the 'natural' goes. The great man of China to-day is Hsu, commonly known as Little Hsu, which is a good nickname in English, Little Shoe. He has never been in the western hemisphere and he thinks it is better for China to give a part of her territory to the Japanese who will help them, than to hope for anything from the other foreigners, who only want to exploit them, and if once China can get a stable government with the aid of the Japanese militarists, then after that she can build herself into a nation. Meantime Little Shoe has gained by a sad fluke in the legislature the appointment of Military Dictator of Mongolia, and this means he is given full power to use his army for agricultural and any other enterprises he may choose. It means, in short, that he is absolute dictator of all Mongolia which is retained by China and which is bordered by Eastern Inner Mongolia which Japan controls under the twenty-one Demands by a ninety-nine-year lease under the same absolute conditions. These last few days since that act was consummated, nothing is happening so far as the public knows, and according to friends the government can go on indefinitely here with no cabinet and no responsibility to react to the public demands. The bulk of the nation is against this state of affairs, but with the support of foreigners and the lack of organization there is nothing to do but stand it and see the nation sold out to Japan and other grabbers. If you can get at 'Millard’s Review', look at it and read especially the recent act of the Foreign Council which licensed the press—I mean they passed an Act to do so. Fortunately the Act is not legal and will not be ratified by the Chinese Council at Shanghai. To this house come the officers of the Y.M.C.A. who are on the way home from Siberia and other places. The stories one hears here are full of horror and always the same. Our men are too few to accomplish anything and the whole affair is not any of our business anyway. Anyway the Canadians have a sense of virtue in getting out of it and going home, and well they may, say I. The Japanese have had 70,000 there at least and they may have shipped many more than that, for they have such a command of the railroads that there is no way of keeping track of them. I believe the conviction is they are taking in men according to their own judgment of the case all the time. Everybody agrees that the Japanese soldiers are hated by all the others and have generally proved themselves disagreeable, the Chinese being thoroughly liked. Meantime the dissatisfaction in Japan over rice in particular and food in general is quite evidently becoming more and more acute. And it is interesting to read the interviews with Count Ishii which all end up in the same way, that the fear of bomb-throwers in the United States is becoming a very serious alarm among all. The Anti-American agitation was hard for us to understand while we were there, but its meaning is less obscure now. Will it be effective? Is another world war already preparing? It is said here that the students were very successful during the strike in converting soldiers to their ideas. The boys at the High Normal said they were disappointed when they were let out of jail at the University because they had not converted more than half the soldiers. The guards around those boys were changed every four hours. It is raining most of the time and it is typical of the Chinese character that my teacher did not come because of the rain. You have to remember he never takes a 'ricksha, though he might have looked at it that it was better to pay a man than to lose the lesson. The mud in the roads here is much like the old days on Long Island before the gravel was put there, only it is softer and more slippery here, and the water stands. |
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| 74 | 1919.07.17 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, July 17. [17.7.1919]. We are pleased to learn that the Japanese censor hasn't detained all our letters, though since you call them incoherent there must be some gaps. I'm sure we never write anything incoherent if you get it all. The course of events has been a trifle incoherent if you don't sit up and hold its hands all the time. Since China didn't sign the peace treaty things have quite settled down here, however, and the lack of excitement after living on aerated news for a couple of months is quite a letdown. However, we live in hopes of revolution or a coup d’état or some other little incident to liven up the dog days. You will be pleased to know that the University Chancellor—see letters of early May—has finally announced that he will return to the University. It is supposed that the Government has assented to his conditions, among which is that the police won't interfere with the students, but will leave discipline to the University authorities. To resign and run away in order to be coaxed back is an art. It's too bad Wilson never studied it. The Chinese peace delegates reported back here that Lloyd George inquired what the twenty-one Demands were, as he had never heard of them. However, the Chinese hold Balfour as most responsible. In order to avoid any incoherence I will add that a Chinese servant informed a small boy in the household of one of our friends here that the Chinese are much more cleanly than the foreigners, for they have people come to them to clean their ears and said cleaners go way down in. This is an unanswerable argument. I hear your mother downstairs engaged on the fascinating task of trying to make Chinese tones. I may tell you that there are only four hundred spoken words in Chinese, all monosyllables. But each one of these is spoken in a different tone, there being four tones in this part of the country and increasing as you go south till in Canton there are twelve or more. In writing there are only 214 radicals, which are then combined and mixed up in all sorts of ways. My last name here is Du, my given name is Wei. The Du is made up of two characters, one of which means tree and the other earth. They are written separately. Then Wei is made up of some more characters mixed up together, one character for woman and one for dart, and I don't know what else. Don’t ask me how they decided that earth and tree put together made Du, for I can't tell. |
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| 75 | 1919.07.19 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, July 19. [19.7.1919]. I met the tutor, the English tutor, of the young Manchu Emperor, the other day—he has three Chinese tutors besides. He teaches him Math., Sciences, etc., besides English, which he has been doing for three months. It is characteristic of the Chinese that they not only didn't kill any of the royal family, but they left them one of the palaces in the Imperial City and an income of four million dollars Mex. a year, and within this palace the kid who is now thirteen is still Emperor, is called that, and is waited upon by the eunuch attendants who crawl before him on their hands and knees. At the same time he is, of course, practically a prisoner, being allowed to see his father and his younger brother once a month. Otherwise he has no children to play with at all. There is some romance left in China after all if you want to let your imagination play about this scene. The tutors don't kneel, although they address him as Your Majesty, or whatever it is in Chinese, and they walk in and he remains standing until the tutor is seated. This is the old custom, which shows the reverence in which even the old Tartars must have held education and learning. He has a Chinese garden in which to walk, but no place to ride or for sports. The tutor is trying to get the authorities to send him to the country, let him have playmates and sports, and also abolish the eunuch—but he seems to think they will more likely abolish him. The kid is quite bright, reads all the newspapers and is much interested in politics, keeps track of the Paris Conference, knows about the politicians in all the countries, and in short knows a good deal more about world politics than most boys of his age; also he is a good classical Chinese scholar. The Chinese don't seem to worry at all about the boy's becoming the center of intrigue and plots, but I imagine they sort of keep him in reserve with the idea that unless the people want monarchy back he never can do anything, while if they do let him back it will be the will of heaven. I am afraid I haven't sufficiently impressed it upon you that this is the rainy season. It was impressed upon us yesterday afternoon, when the side street upon which we live was a flowing river a foot and a half deep. The main street on which the Y.M.C.A. building is situated was a solid lake from housewall to housewall, though not more than six inches or so. But the street is considerably wider than Broadway, so it was something of a sight. Peking has for many hundred years had sewers big enough for a man to stand up in, but they don't carry fast enough. Probably about this time you will be reading cables from some part of China about floods and the number of homeless. The Yellow River is known as the curse of China, so much damage is done. We were told that when the missionaries went down to do flood relief work a year or so ago, they were so busy that they didn't have time to preach, and they did so much good that when they were through they had to put up the bars to keep the Chinese from joining the churches en masse. We haven't heard, however, that they took the hint as to the best way of doing business. These floods go back largely if not wholly to the policy of the Chinese in stripping the forests. If you were to see the big coffins they are buried in and realize the large part of China's scant forests that must go into coffins you would favor a law that no man could die until he had planted a tree for his coffin and one extra. One of our new friends here is quite an important politician, though quite out of it just now. He told a story last night which tickled the Chinese greatly. The Japanese minister here haunted the President and Prime Minister while the peace negotiations were on, and every day on the strength of what they told him cabled the Tokyo government that the Chinese delegates were surely going to sign. Now he is in a somewhat uncomfortable position making explanations to the home government. He sent a representative after they didn't sign to the above-mentioned friend to ask him whether the government had been fooling him all the time. He replied No, but that the Japanese should remember that there was one power greater than the government, namely, the people, and that the delegates had obeyed the people. The Japanese will never be able to make up their minds though whether they were being deliberately deceived or not. The worst of the whole thing, however, is that even intelligent Chinese are relying upon war between the United States and Japan, and when they find out that the United States won't go to war just on China's account, there will be some kind of a revulsion. But if the United States had used its power when the war closed to compel disarmament and get some kind of a just settlement, there would be no limit to its influence over here. As it is, they infer that the moral is that Might Controls, and that adds enormously to the moral power of Japan as against the United States. It is even plainer here than at home that if the United States wasn't going to see its 'ideals' through, it shouldn't have professed any, but if it did profess them it ought to have made good on 'em even if we had to fight the whole world. However, our financial pressure, and the threat of withholding food and raw materials would have enabled Wilson to put anything over. Another little incident is connected with the Chancellor of the University. Although he is not a politician at all, the Militarist party holds him responsible for their recent trials and the student outbreaks. So, although it announced that the Chancellor is coming back, the Anfu Club, the parliamentary organization of the militarists, is still trying to keep him out. The other night they gave a banquet to some University students and bribed them to start something. At the end they gave each one dollar extra for 'ricksha hire the next day, so there would be no excuse for not going to the meeting at the University. Fifteen turned up, but the spies on the other side heard something was going on and they rang the bell, collected about a hundred and locked the bribees in. Then they kept them in till they confessed the whole story (and put their names to a written confession) and turned over their resolutions and mimeographed papers which had been prepared for them in which they said they were really the majority of the students and did not want the Chancellor back, and that a noisy minority had imposed on the public, etc. The next day the Anfu papers told about an awful riot at the University, and how a certain person had instigated and led it, although he hadn't been at the University at all that day. |
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| 76 | 1919.07.24 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, July 24. [24.7.1919]. We expect to go to Manchuria, probably in September, and in October to Shansi, which is quite celebrated now because they have a civil governor who properly devotes himself to his job, and they are said to have sixty per cent or more of the children in school and to be prepared for compulsory education in 1920. It is the ease with which the Chinese do these things without any foreign assistance which makes you feel so hopeful for China on the one hand, and so disgusted on the other that they put up so patiently with inefficiency and graft most of the time. There seems to be a general impression that the present situation cannot continue indefinitely, but must take a turn one way or another. The student agitation has died down as an active political thing but continues intellectually. In Tientsin, for example, they publish several daily newspapers which sell for a copper apiece. A number of students have been arrested in Shantung lately by the Japanese, so I suppose the students are actively busy there. I fancy that when vacation began there was quite an exodus in that direction. I am told that X——, our Japanese friend, is much disgusted with the Chinese about the Shantung business—that Japan has promised to return Shantung, etc., and that Japan can’t do it until China gets a stable government to take care of things, because their present governments are so weak that China would simply give away her territory to some other power, and that the Chinese instead of attacking the Japanese ought to mind their own business and set their own house in order. There is enough truth in this so that it isn't surprising that so intelligent and liberal a person as X—— is taken in by it. But what such Japanese as he cannot realize, because the truth is never told to them, is how responsible the Japanese government is for fostering a weak and unrepresentative government here, and what a temptation to it a weak and divided China will continue to be, for it will serve indefinitely as an excuse for postponing the return of Shantung—as well as for interfering elsewhere. Anyone who knows the least thing about not only general disturbances in China but special causes of friction between China and Japan, can foresee that there will continue to be a series of plausible excuses for postponing the return promised—and anyway, as a matter of fact, what she has actually promised to return compared with the rights she would keep in her possession amount to little or nothing. Just this last week there was a clash in Manchuria and fifteen or twenty Japanese soldiers are reported killed by Chinese—there will always be incidents of that kind which will have to be settled first. If the other countries would only surrender their special concessions to the keeping of an international guarantee, they could force the hand of Japan, but I can't see Great Britain giving up Hong Kong. On the whole, however, Great Britain, next to us, and barring the opium business, has been the most decent of all the great powers in dealing with China. I started out with a prejudice to the contrary, and have been surprised to learn how little grabbing England has actually done here. Of course, India is the only thing she really cares about and her whole policy here is controlled by that consideration, with such incidental trade advantages as she can pick up. |
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| 77 | 1919.07.25 | John Dewey attended an educational conference in Beijing. |
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| 78 | 1919.07.27 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. (Later) July 27. [27.7.1919]. I think I wrote a while back about a little kid five years old or so who walked up the middle aisle at one of my lectures and stood for about fifteen minutes quite close to me, gazing at me most seriously and also wholly unembarrassed. Night before last we went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, under the guardianship of a friend here. A little boy came into our coop and began most earnestly addressing me in Chinese. Out friend found out that he was asking me if I knew his third uncle. He was the kid of the lecture who had recognized me as the lecturer, and whose third uncle is now studying at Columbia. If you meet Mr. T—— congratulate him for me on his third nephew. The boy made us several calls during the evening, all equally serious and unconstrained. At one he asked me for my card, which he carefully wrapped up in ceremonial paper. The restaurant is near a lotus pond and they are now in their fullest bloom. I won't describe them beyond saying that the lotus is the lotus and advising you to come out next summer and see them. |
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| 79 | 1919.07.28 |
Dewey, John. Militarism in China [ID D28471]. "The effect of the decision of the Allies at the Peace Conference to guarantee the claims of Japan strengthens the hold of the militarist party upon the Chinese government and also increases the hold which a neighboring militarist country has upon the determination of Chinese policies." This sentence, with slight verbal changes, can be found over and over again in every liberal paper in China. It comes with a shock to an American who has learned to identify China with inveterate pacifism, and who, under the tutelage of Mr. Roosevelt, believes that Chinafication and supine pacifism are synonymous. China a militarist country? Impossible! A few statistics may be cited. At the present time, the Chinese government is supporting an army of a million and three hundred thousand at the lowest estimate. And China does not have conscription. This is a paid, standing, professional army. And China sent no troops to Europe and trained no troops to go there. The nearest approach to the war zone was connected with the propaganda for intervention in Siberia after the Russian debacle. Nor is the civil war in China anything more than nominal at present, and in any case the great mass of soldiers never had part in it. From the standpoint of the size of its standing army, then, China is not "Chinafied." The budget of China tells the same story. The central government spent for ordinary military purposes last year two hundred and ten millions of dollars and for 'extraordinary' purposes thirty millions more. Percentages are even more eloquent. This amount is fifty per cent of the entire annual expenditures of the government. And since the total income of the nation, barring loans, is but three hundred and seventy millions, this means that sixty-five per cent of the total state income goes to the army. Figuring still another way, leaving payments for interest on the national debt out of account, China spent almost twice as much for military purposes as for all other ends put together, fifty times as much as she spent, from the side of the central government, for schools and six times as much as the central government and all the provinces together spent for public education. Moreover China is now spending, in the eighth year of the republic, much more than twice as much on the army as was spent in the last year of the Manchu dynasty. These facts do not point to undue addiction to pacifism. Still, something more than large military expenses are needed to justify calling a government militaristic. For the term implies a subordination of civil to military control in political affairs generally. This is a matter which cannot be settled by statistics; but it is this matter even more than the size and expense of the army which is referred to in the sentence quoted at the beginning of the article. This militarism goes back to the earlier days of the republic, especially to the ambitions of Yuan Shih-kai. It is hardly a coincidence that the leaders in present Chinese policies are former lieutenants and disciples of the 'strong man' who attempted to convert the fruits of the revolution into a family perquisite of a new imperial dynasty. But in its present form it dates actively from two years ago, and particularly from conditions connected with China's declaration of war against Germany. Quite likely the full history of this episode cannot as yet be written by any one. But even a tyro in Chinese history like the present writer may report certain facts which could not be stated and which were not stated in the West—and in the Far East only under the breath—when the war was still on. And the outstanding fact with respect to the growth of militarism is that its present swollen fortunes date from the circumstances under which China entered the war on the side of the Allies. And if this fact is not brought out in books dealing with the recent years of Chinese history it is partly because the writers were so interested in the righteous cause of the Allies that they hardly allowed themselves to perceive the fact, and partly because to have dwelt upon this fact while the war was still going on would have been pro-German in effect, to say nothing of subjecting writers to the charge of promoting German intrigue. One does not have to go far to find explanations for the opposition in China to entering the war. There existed every reason that operated to bring about the delay on the part of the United States—except the presence of a large population of German descent—and there was in addition a genuine fear of German victory and subsequent German reprisals of whose nature China had already had sufficient warning. Moreover the German nationals in China were upon the whole more popular personally than those of any other country unless perhaps those of the United States. For however arrogant Germany was as a nation, Germans taken individually were sufficiently bent on successful business to be unassuming, friendly, and attentive to native wishes and customs. Against all the reasons for not declaring war against Germany there were in fact but two intrinsic reasons for so doing. A portion of the genuinely liberal and republican sentiment of China was truly convinced after the United States entered the war that the war was between democracy and autocracy; between a new, just, international order which would guarantee the rights of weak nations, and the old, rapacious, nationalistic imperialism. Thus the historic humanitarian idealism of China actually urged liberal China into the war. Self-interest pointed in the same direction, for participation in the war would give China representation at the peace board, permit her to present her claims for the restoration of Shantung, and in general enable her to start even as a partner in the new international ordering of diplomacy which so many, besides the Chinese, ardently believed in, only two years ago. Immediately after the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, China followed, the Cabinet and Parliament acting in unison. This was done in direct response to the invitation of President Wilson and China was the first nation to make a favorable response. Then followed weeks and months of intrigue before China on August 14th finally declared war against Germany. What took place during those months was, first, the displacement of the American auspices evident in a severance of relations early in February by Japanese auspices; and, secondly, the struggle between the Premier, Tuan Chi-jui, and Parliament—a struggle ending in the forced dissolution of Parliament and in the outbreak of the still unhealed civil strife between the North and the South. The extent of the diplomatic defeat of the United States by Japan is seen in the fact that on June 7th a warning was communicated to China from the United States that the entrance of China into war was a 'secondary consideration' compared with the reestablishment of a tranquil and united China, while on June 12th a mandate was issued at the dictation of military leaders and with the approval of the Japanese legal adviser dissolving Parliament. The immediate outcome was the farcical restoration for ten days of the Manchu boy Emperor. The final outcome was the ousting of President Li, and the defeat, through the coerced dissolution of Parliament, of Constitutionalism, and the beginnings of a civil war which in turn played into the hands of the militaristic cliques. For the Premier was then, as he is still though now out of political office, the head of the militarist, anti-constitutional and anti-parliamentary faction. The liberal Parliament, which, whatever its defects, was still devoted to republican constitutionalism, grew more and more lukewarm in the cause of breaking irreparably with Germany. Ready to follow promptly in the wake of the United States when American and democratic prestige seemed to be uppermost, it hesitated when diplomatic leadership went over to the Japanese, and when it came to believe that the Cabinet was not thinking so much of the defeat of Germany as of an excuse for building up an army and a military regime which would insure their own continued power. By one of the ironies of fate, the militarist and anti-democratic factions became the professed spokesmen of the Allies, and a constitutionally inclined Parliament was put in the position of being pro-German. The wheat and the tares were so mixed that even the liberally minded foreign press, tired of the delay and intriguing, welcomed the 'strong' action of Tuan Chi-jui in dissolving Parliament simply because it hastened the day when China was officially arrayed with the Allies and when German commercial interests would get a hard if not fatal blow in the Far East. When one sees how wrong was foreign liberal sentiment— with a few notable exceptions—in the case of the Yuan Shih-kai adventure in imperialism and again how wrong it was in the inception of the regime they are now all cursing, in spite in both cases of the warnings of liberal native Chinese thought, one receives a marked lesson in the extent to which Chinese events have been interpreted to the world in the light of supposed foreign interests, and how little consideration has been given to the actual effect of the events in question upon the development and destiny of China itself. One sometimes wonders that the Chinese have retained any faith in the political intelligence of the foreign interpreter of her contemporary history. At present the militaristic faction whose power was confirmed by the happenings of the summer of 1917 is still in control of the government. There is no doubt that all its members are patriotic enough to have welcomed the restoration of Shantung. But still human nature is human nature, and they have also welcomed the demonstration offered at Paris that might still makes right in the case of weak nations, so that in a strange and subtle way the diplomatic victory of Japan in particular and of imperialism in general has been a vindication of their own anti-democratic and militaristic policy. If the humanitarian international and democratic ideals profusely proclaimed in the war had been realized at Paris, no observer in China doubts that a vast domestic political realignment would already have taken place. The demonstration that national self-interest was on the side of the democracies of the world would have had an irresistible reflex effect upon domestic policies. And few doubt that the realization of this fact was, in addition to the concrete economic advantages at stake in Shantung, one of the reasons why Japan was so insistent at Paris. While her newspapers exaggerated in saying that her national existence was involved in securing a diplomatic victory, the exaggeration covered the fact that her diplomatic defeat, following upon the collapse of autocratic Germany, would have ended for the time being the prestige of militarism in the Far East, and compelled a reconsideration of home policies in China and of foreign policy in Japan. This moral reverberation seems to have been completely ignored at Paris and it may be doubted whether it is receiving the attention it deserves in Washington. The specific signs of the continuance of the militarist regime in China are many. In the provinces the Tuchuns, military governors, still override civil governors and interests and sacrifice the crying need for education and better transportation to the pelf and power that go with command of a large number of troops. In remote provinces they encourage the growth of opium either for direct revenue or for levying hardly disguised blackmail. They discourage the development of natural resources in mines and manufacturing because their cohorts give them an effective power to demand a large interest in the business. In spite of the universal desire for reconciliation between the North and South, the militarists on both sides (and it would be a great mistake to think they are confined to the North) block all final settlement. The last few weeks have seen the beginnings of a mysterious adventure in Mongolia and an attempt of a Tuchun to obtain a virtual dictatorship of the three Manchurian provinces. But, especially, it is militarist control which keeps China in a condition that invites and rewards foreign intrigue and secret unacknowledged interventions. No observer thinks that the present condition can last a great while longer. The equilibrium is too uncertain. No sensible person attempts to prophesy what the nature of the change will be when it comes. But if the reader will return to the statistics given early in the article he will note that at present the expenses of China exceed its available income by one hundred and ten millions a year. This means, of course, borrowing money—and when China borrows money she borrows it from some foreign nation by pledging some definite asset. In other words, cut down the army one-half and China's accounts balance. Continue the present army, and the responsibility lies with some foreign nation or group of nations through the loans it—or they—are willing to make for an army which is not and will not be a source of strength to China abroad, and which is eating up China at home. In the case of the continuation of China's militarism, the economic interpretation of history is more than ordinarily obvious. Hence it is hardly prophecy to say that what happens next in China will be determined by financial considerations, and that the decision is in the hands of those who have the power to control the making of loans. As long, however, as some one nation can serve its own interests by making loans, the situation cannot be adequately met on the part of other nations by merely a laissez-faire policy of declining to make loans. Something positive is needed. |
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| 80 | 1919.07.28 | John Dewey attends a conference of heads of higher schools to consider reopening schools in Tianjin. |
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| 81 | 1919.07.29 (publ.) | John Dewey : Talk with the Education and Industry Observation Group in Guizhou. = Duwei bo shi yu Guizhou jiao yu shi ye can guan tuan tan hua ji lue. Hu Shi interpreter ; Han Lu, Tian Feng recorder. In : Xue deng ; July 29 (1919). |
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| 82 | 1919.08.01 |
Letter from John Dewey to Wendell T. Bush Care Y M C A Peking China Aug 1 '19 Dear Mr Bush, Your letter of early June came two or three days ago. Mails are uncertain here, especially as the technique of the Bank in Tokyo is of a primitively casual type. I am glad to have a permanent address here, for while we cannot stay where we are longer than a few weeks more (we are with a Princeton man, a Y M C A secy, whose family has gone to the seashore) mails will be recd. You are owed many apologies rega[r]ding all the troubles you had about our staying over. Yet it wouldnt be easy to tell from whom the apologies should come, unless it was the young Chinese men who saw us in Tokyo and said they would see Dean Woodbridge. They would have explained that it was not expected that Columbia would bear any expense unless a regular exchange was arranged. Other wise the difficulties were due to the upset in the university, and we had no idea till your last cablegram to Suh Hu [Hu Shi] came that there was any trouble except in the delay of the cables, as we didnt know that any return inquiry [in ink w. caret] had been recd. But there is no reason in the world why the cablegram should have come out of your pocket, and if you will only allow a reimbursement Im asking Evelyn to pay you for it. I wrote an article on the Students Movement for the N R which you may [in ink w. caret] have seen if they published it. It couldnt give the color of the thing however nor what it meant to the boys and girls, or even to the people of China . An after echo took place the other day. The militarists in present control of things here form what they call the Anfu Club, which has a majority in Parliament. They hate the Chancellor of the University whom they regard as morally responsible for the students taking an interest in politics—altho he himself is no politician—in fact is own interest is in esthetics and literature—Paris educated. So last week they bribed a few students, some ex-students and a few more who were just applying for admission to demonstrate agt the Chancellor. They got together about fifteen, when the other students heard of it and to the number of about a hundred attacked them, locked them up, and made them sign a written confession. Then a few days ago, some of the attacking students were arrested charged with assualt and battery. Now the interesting thing about the matter from our standpoint is that public opinion is entirely against this "interference" by the police. The matter is wholly one between students, not one for the courts. It wasnt at all sporty for the beaten (quite literally I think) party to appeal to the law. So some of the students who were dismissed by the trial judge as quite innovent decline to leave jail. They are staying there as a protest! [ink exclamation mark] This place [in ink w. caret] is really upside down on the globe as you can see, and it makes life very amusing not to say interesting. The other strange thing is the number of foreigners who get converted to the Chinese standpoint. Except in Shanghai and some of the other outports where many foreigners especially British pride themselves on having been in China twenty five years and never set foot in Chinese town—tho I cant quite see what good it does them as eighty to ninety percent of the population in the foreign settlements is Chinese. To go back to the student strike. I was invited last the first of the week to a conference of heads of higher schools in this province to consider the reopening of schools. The great majority of heads are very conservative and strongly opposed to the strike and to the students having any part in politics. So as the students have been saving the country all summer, and are probably somewaht cocky and unruly, there is much nervousness about what will happen when the schools reopen. The action of the peace conference as regards Shantung has done ^one^ thing that probably wasnt intended—it has stimulated in one summer [w. caret] the development of national consciousness in China as more than otherwise might have happened in ten years. Nationalistic consciousness in its early stages is apt to be rather blind, but tho the Japanese have tried to make out on one hand that the movement isnt national but instigated by American traders money, [ink comma] and on the other hand have tried to change it into a general anti-foreign movement, it has so far been quite restrained. Except that the illiterate and common people have got it in their heads that the Japanese are carrying on a food poisoning campaign, and when you recal how many Americans believed in the groundglass stores etc, it is easy to see that there may still be violent outbreaks, if the rumors keep up. It still isnt certain under just what auspices my lectures will be given, some of them under certain Chinese Societies for promoting modern learning, as they have guaranteed me a salary in case the University situation doesnt stay cleared up. We shall be here into March and then move southwards, to Nanking etc. It is very hard to get living accommodations; the Rockefeller Foundation which is putting in the big medical plant has had to build over thirty houses for its staff already. We are on the trail of the flat, almost the only one in Peking which is given up in Sept by a bank man ordered to the Phillipines, but have had to cable to the U S to the man from whom he subleases and are still waiting for a reply as cables are reported ten days behind. Lucy came a week ago, after a very pleasant month in Japan and we are living in earnest hopes that Evelyn will condescend to join us during the year. She brougt over with her the mss. of my University lectures there, which I had left for translation into Japanese. Im glad you liked the outline, and I hope you will like the lectures when they come out. I am going over the copy again and shall then send it on to Holt. I cant afford to waste so much good typewriting. I think it has one merit; it is reasonably free from philosophic partisanship, being an attempt to evaluate the modern spirit in general in contrast with that of classic philosophies. I am changing the order of some of the earlier lectures. Suh Hu is very influential here; the weekly magazine he edits has a circulation of five thousand which is large for this country, and would be in ours for an intellectual organ. The vernacular speech movement which he and some others started is taking widely. The students started twnety or thirty journals this summer, all printed in the spoken language, and there are now many other less ephemeral organs that use it. His history of Chinese philosophy is the first written on modern historic lines. He chafes under the conditions which divert so much of his time tofrom scholarship; he wants to study and write more. If Columbia wanted to offer him the Chinese professorship—if it still vacant—I think he would take it at least for a specified time. I dont see how China can spare him, but it is rather pathetic to see how many of the old students here long for life in the U S. It is a hard proposition they are up against. Many of the things that make it interesting to a mere visitor make it trying for them. I was glad to get a little gossip about university matters. Did [Roberts Bishop] Owen come back? I had heard Coss was not to, and waam glad to know he did. I hope you will have a good time in France. Do you spend the whole year there? We also hope you and Mrs Bush are having a good summer. Please accept the best regards of both of us to both of you. Two years is making a large hole in our New York life and at times we get quite homesick, but after all it is a wonderful experience, and we wish you were here to share it and talk it over with us. It was some comfort to know that some of our friends miss us. When I recal the pace at which New York moves I sometimes wonder whether anybody will remember us when we get back. We get the New York papaers in the Club reading room after they are a month old, and in that respect can follow matters better than we did formerly. Again with affectionate regards, Sincerely yours, John Dewey |
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| 83 | 1919.08 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The aims of science education'. = Li ke jiao yu zhi mu di. Jiang Qi yi. In : Xin jiao yu ; vol. 1, no 5 (Aug. 1919). Translation of a speech delivered at Tokyo Imperial University]. |
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| 84 | 1919.08.04 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Peking, August 4. [4.8.1919]. I went to Tientsin to an educational conference for two days last week. It was called by the Commissioner of this Province for all the principals of the higher schools to discuss the questions connected with the opening of the schools in the fall. Most of the heads of schools are very conservative and were much opposed to the students’ strikes, and also to the students’ participation in politics. They are very nervous and timorous about the opening of the schools, for they think that the students after engaging in politics all summer won't lend themselves readily to school discipline—their high schools, etc., are all boarding schools—and will want to run the schools after having run the government for several months. The liberal minority, while they want the students to settle down to school work, think that the students’ experiences will have been of great educational value and that they will come back with a new social viewpoint, and the teaching ought to be changed—and also the methods of school discipline—to meet the new situation. I had a wonderful Chinese lunch at a private high school one day there. The school was started about fifteen years ago in a private house with six pupils; now they have twenty acres of land, eleven hundred pupils, and are putting up a first college building to open a freshman class of a hundred this fall—it's of high school grade now, all Chinese support and management, and non-missionary or Christian, although the principal is an active Christian and thinks Christ's teachings the only salvation for China. The chief patron is a non-English speaking, non-Christian scholar of the old type—but with modern ideas. The principal said that when three of them two years ago went around the world on an educational trip, this old scholar among them, the United States Government gave them a special secret service detective from New York to San Francisco, and this man was so impressed with the old Chinese gentleman that he said: 'What kind of education can produce such a man as that, the finest gentleman I ever saw. You western educated gentlemen are spoiled in comparison with him'. They certainly have the world beat in courtesy of manners—as much politeness as the Japanese but with much less manner, so it seems more natural. However, this type is not very common. I asked the principal what the effect of the missionary teaching was on the Chinese passivity and non-resistance. He said it differed very much as between Americans and English and among Americans between the older and the younger lot. The latter, especially the Y.M.C.A., have given up the non-interventionalist point of view and take the ground that Christianity ought to change social conditions. The Y.M.C.A. is, he says, a group of social workers rather than of missionaries in the old-fashioned sense—all of which is quite encouraging. Perhaps the Chinese will be the ones to rejuvenate Christianity by dropping its rot, wet and dry, and changing it into a social religion. The principal is a Teachers College man and one of the most influential educators in China. He speaks largely in picturesque metaphor, and I'm sorry I can't remember what he said. Among other things, in speaking of the energy of the Japanese and the inertia of the Chinese, he said the former were mercury, affected by every change about them, and the latter cotton wool that the heat didn’t warm and cold didn't freeze. He confirmed my growing idea, however, that the conservatism of the Chinese was much more intellectual and deliberate, and less mere routine clinging to custom, than I used to suppose. Consequently, when their ideas do change, the people will change more thoroughly, more all the way through, than the Japanese. It seems that the present acting Minister of Education was allowed to take office under three conditions—that he should dissolve the University, prevent the Chancellor from returning, and dismiss all the present heads of the higher schools here. He hasn't been able, of course, to accomplish one, and the Anfu Club is correspondingly sore. He is said to be a slick politician, and when he has been at dinner with our liberal friends he tells them how even he is calumniated—people say that he is a member of the Anfu Club. I struck another side of China on my way home from Tientsin. I was introduced to an ex-Minister of Finance as my traveling companion. He is a Ph.D. in higher math. from America, and is a most intelligent man. But his theme of conversation was the need of a scientific investigation of spirits and spirit possession and divination, etc., in order to decide scientifically the existence of the soul and an overruling mind. Incidentally he told a fine lot of Chinese ghost stories. Aside from the coloring of the tales I don't know that there was anything especially Chinese about them. He certainly is much more intelligent about it than some of our American spiritualists. But the ghosts were certainly Chinese all right—spirit possession mostly. I suppose you know that the walls that stand in front of the better-to-do Chinese houses are there to keep spirits out—the spirits can't turn a corner, so when the wall is squarely in front of the location of the front door the house is safe. Otherwise they come in and take possession of somebody—if they aren't comfortable as they are. It seems there is quite a group of ex-politicians in Tientsin who are much interested in psychical research. Considering that China is the aboriginal home of ghosts, I can't see why the western investigators don't start their research here. These educated Chinese aren't credulous, so there is nothing crude about their ghost stories. |
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| 85 | 1919.08.04 | John Dewey attended the Educators's meeting in Tianjin. |
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| 86 | 1919.08.14-15,21-22 (publ | John Dewey : Lecture 'New problems of knowledge' at the New Learning Association in Beijing. = Xue wen di xin wen ti. Hu Shi interpreter, Zhi Xi, Wu Wang recorder. In : Jue wu ; Aug. 14, 15, 21, 22 (1919). |
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| 87 | 1919.08.21, 23 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Jane Dewey Peking, August 21st. [1919] Dearest Jane. ... Butter costs $1.20 a pound and it is bad, in a can. Every one Chinese carries home the cutest little round gobs of meat and things done up in a lotus leaf hanging by the stem which makes an eccelent handle. When there are no more leaves for wrapping things they will go back to little sheets of brown paper still made up nto little round gobs and the paper hand made. We have seen them making paper, each sheet handled and spread on a board to dry and it is of course precious, They use all the old news papers for wrapping and people live by going about the streets to pick up the tine bits either to burn on the temple alters or to sell them for rags to make more paper. No wood is available for paper. Begging is so common here as to make life very uncomfortable. But people get to know one in this city very quickly and the beggars hang on less than they did when we were strangers to them for now they know we shall give them nothing. The Cinese do not believe in it, it is against the law and the beggars are fat with nursing children hanging to them if they are women, but, in spite, the Chinese will finally give them the minutest cash. It takes twenty cash, at the least, to make a penny. Counting money here is an occupation for a banker. If you change big money in a shop you are sure to get small money back. In the foreign shops I mean for the Chinese are more honest. It takes 138 coppers in small money to make a big dollar. Some day I am going to make the reckless experient which is so easy to work here. Take a dollar and go from one place to another changing it till I have nothing left. What fun, lacking the movies...... We have one afternoon dissipation her and it is going to the Y.M.C.A. buildi[n]g next to us to eat icecream. We might go to the club for tea instead and to day I think I shall do that, to day or tomorrow. As yet I have not put foot inside the club. Mrs Smith brings me books from there. It is not hot at night any more but by day it still is. At night I sleep comfortably under a sheet and even feel a slight chill from the breeze towards morning, There is nothing one longs for more than that chill. The heat is really fierce you just ooze all the time and bath as many times a day as you have time for. It is wonderful how the the coolies stand it. Once I asked my ricsha man why he did not wear a hat and he said it was too hot. If we had any thing active to do we should not s[t]and it long in the sun. At the club they say the mercury has been 108 on the piazza, and it stay pretty even, juntil this last week when the evenisg have lewered some what. No sun strokes amo[n]g the Chinese… Love, Mother. |
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| 88 | 1919.08.25 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children Y M C A Peking Aug 25 [1919] Dearest children, … Lucy didnt want to go to a hotel, not that any of us did, and Im sure that the bother of a house would have been an irritating burden to mamma, as the housekeeping would have come on her and the conveniences arent exactly modern. It was amusing to see a notice of Miss LaMotte's book in an American magazine in which it told how cheap houses were in Peking—we pay 80, aside from furniture, for this five small romm apt. Another one with six large rooms rents for 200 a month. Equally amusing w[a]s her account of the fear of robbers here, and the walls with broken glass and the fierce Mongolian dogs. Peking is one of the best policed cities in the world; Id much rather take my chances here than in Harlem. She wrote in the hotel I think with a Japanese curier for authority. We have to leave here Sept fourth and the Deerings leave Sept fourth, so it seems quite providential. Mr [Paul S.] Reinsch as you have probably seen is leaving. Nobody knows the reason here, if there is any aside from his wanting to go back. He isnt very popular, or Mrs R with the foreign community here, but is very well liked by the Chinese which speaks well for his official performanes Judging from what we hear a man of the type of Morris in Tokyo, with more business experience and ,ore executive pep will be useful from now on anyway. There ought to be about a half dozen of the ablest men in the country here to handle thes situation. It is the growing opinion th[a]t if the U S backs down on either the Shantung issue or the Japanese consortium for reservation of Manchuria and Mongolia, it means the going back to the old policy of the partition of China, as China cant hold its own alone. People here cant understand why the U S doesnt use its financial power and the Europena need of American assitance to compel GT Britain and France to side with us rather than with Japan in handling the whole Eastern question. Maybe it isnt neceasry but there is a feeling here that deals for further concessions and spheres are concerned going on, besides behind the scenes, in case the U S policy fails, and that the [o]ther countries arent giving any active aid to the U S in making it succeed. If so, its a suicidal policy in the end; for the European countries. Japan will get the concessions and spheres in the end; their only way is to help China get on her own feet, which is the obviously policy of the U S, and which is the only thing Japan is afraid of. We havent a word from Sabino for almost a month, soon after he went to Kuai; we shall be relieved when we hear something. Its rather late to be giving Jane advice ur her year, but I hope she is doing what she wants to do and not what she [t]hinks she ought to do or what she thinks some one else thinks she ought to do. If she wants to give up college entirely and go to sculping or something, she ought to do it, if she can get a good sculp to teach her. We were glad to hear that Evelyns services were getting better peuniary recognition, but hope it doesnt mean that she is going to kept at it so long over there she wont get away to make us a visit, us includes China incidentally. We are wondering whether there will be a ruction again. Over thrity students including four girls, tried to call on the president about Shantung and especially to ask for the removal of the military governor who torured and killed some merchants and bambooed some students for anto-Japnanese agitation and who (the delegation) instead of seeing the president were arrested by the police. If there isnt another students strike etc. it will probably prove not that they have laid down on the job but they are waiting till they get things better organized, and next time expect to make a thorough job of it. On the surface the militarists have had their own way the last month even more than before the success of the students movement—but something must be going on behind the scenes, and I think it is the effort ot organize the guilds which are powerful but whch have never taken any hand in politics. They got in thru the boycott and will probably have to go further now they are in. P M Visiting hours are from noon to seven After I had written I began to be afraid that maybe Id been too hopeful but Luc[y]'s temp got to normal last night and was only 99 at ten oclock and also the doctor grins broadly and says the patient is a credit. The Club has a library and we're giving Lucy a course in O Henry. I have just done a foolish thing. The curio dealers tie up some miscellaneous pieces in two blue calico bundles that balance and then invade the house, if they are allowed. We had one entertain us at lunch We had a painting on silk that he asked ten dollars for. If I had a friend I wanted to cure of gambling Id set him to buying curiois in China; there's no difference—which is the true principle of all cures. You always want to see how much they'll come down. So I offered him two, as the picture isnt actaully offensive, and before he left the house I had bought it for three. Now I appeal to Evelyn to know what am I going to do with it? His smile was so ingratiating when he said "Lose money. How much?" that it cost me a dollar. "Very old. Ming. Number one". Love Dad |
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| 89 | 1919.08.26 |
Letter from John Macrae to Alice Chipman Dewey August 26, 1919. Mrs. John Dewey, c/o Y. M. C. A., Pekin, China. My dear Mrs. Dewey, I have just been informed by Prof. Tilly, of Columbia University, that you are interesting yourself in the introduction in China of the phonetic method of teaching English, and I am at once sending you, with our compliments, a copy of Rippmann's "The Sounds of Spoken English and Specimens of English", and Daniel Jones' "English Pronouncing Dictionary", both of which Prof. Tilly informs me you will find useful. It is my understanding that Miss Evelyn Dewey communicated with Prof. Tilly before he consulted with us. It is a matter of great interest, and, to my mind, of wide importance, that you are taking up this problem during your stay in China. I recently read an editorial in the "World's Work" magazine which, without attempting to analyse the situation technically, dwelt significantly upon the tremendous and world wide importance of introducing some efficient system of phonetics to the Chinese people. Under your leadership and far-seeing initiative, I feel that much may develop from your personal attention to this work. And if there is anything we may do to co-operate with you, it will be a pleasure to do so. Please extend my kindest personal regards to Prof. Dewey. You may be interested to know that Miss Evelyn Dewey's "New Schools for Old" is receiving prompt and enthusiastic recognition, and shows promise of becoming a very widely used book before the year is out. With my very best hopes for the success of your work, I am, Very sincerely, [John Macrae] JM-JKT |
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| 90 | 1919.09 | John Dewey : Lecture on 'Industrial education'. = Shi ye jiao yu lun. In : Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 5 (1919). |
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| 91 | 1919.09.01 |
Mao, Zedong. Statutes of the Problem Study Society. Mao listed seventeen educational problems including "the problem of how to implement [John] Dewey's educational doctrine, seventeen women's problems, fifteen labor problems, eight industrial problems, seven transportation problems, nine public financial problems, five economic problems, and more than sixty other international and general human problems". |
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| 92 | 1919.09.12 |
Dewey, John. The American opportunity in China [ID D28472]. The average American probably regards the past course of the United States in China with complacency, and imagines that we have won a like admiration from the Chinese. Even the casual newspaper reader knows of the return of the Boxer indemnity, and supposes in a hazy way that our declaration in behalf of the Open Door in China succeeded in arresting the partitioning of China. The better informed reader takes pride in the consistently enlightened diplomacy of the United States exemplified in Cushing, Burlingame and Hay, and the insistence upon comparatively mild measures after the Boxer revolt had been put down. Our entire course, we readily fancy, is one that has secured for us the grateful confidence and respect of the Chinese. Our treatment of Chinese immigrants on the Pacific coast and our exclusion act may occur to us, but we quickly put such disagreeable thoughts out of mind as so much past history. It is worth while to ask how far our notion of the Chinese attitude towards us corresponds with the facts. Or if this way of putting the matter implies a false assumption regarding the universality of public opinion in China, then what is the attitude of an influential section of public men, and what are the grounds upon which it is based? The result of the inquiry even if unflattering will be a necessary preliminary to the conception of a proper policy for the future. To give the uncomplimentary answer in a few words, our prior behavior has left with many Chinese, especially those who have not been in the United States, the impression that we are not, in our foreign dealings, a very practical people; that we lack alertness, quickness of decision in emergencies, promptness of action, and especially persistence. And all this even where our own interests are at stake. We are thought of as, upon the whole, a well disposed people, but somewhat ineffectual in action. Even gratitude for our refusal to enter into the game of grabbing China is colored by a suspicion that perhaps we lacked the energy and skill to engage successfully in the game. The immediate background of this feeling is connected with the contest of Japan and the United States in the past two and a half years for prestige and moral authority, a rather passive contest, to be sure, as far as the United States is concerned. Some parts of the record have a definite bearing on the obstacles that are in the way of a successful American policy in the Far East. The expressed objectives and ideals of the United States in entering the war and the vigor with which we went in aroused the greatest enthusiasm in a certain section of Chinese public men. For a time it looked as if there were to be a powerful liberal party with pro-Americanism for one of the most important planks in its platform. Enthusiasm for the Allied cause ran high. Even the militarists who are now in control were anti-Japanese in the early months of 1917. Eloquent testimony is given by the fact that diplomatic relations were broken off with Germany without consultation with any of the Japanese representatives. In fact the Japanese minister being out of China at that time, Japan did not know of the event until it was an accomplished fact. There was then much zeal for an active participation of Chinese troops on the western front. The militarists wanted it because of the training that the army would get; the liberals because they were pro-Ally and pro-democracy; all because they saw the advantage for China of a share in the international negotiations at the end of the war. Plans were made to use the seized interned German ships for transporting troops. But the Allies were short of shipping and parcelled out the ships themselves. If American diplomacy made any effort to help the Chinese carry out their own plans, it was either defeated or no knowledge of the effort came to the ears of the Chinese. Then China needed money, and needed it badly. She needed money not only for internal reorganization but for active participation in the war. The United States was making regular advances to the other Allies. China wanted a loan and got nothing. The Japanese overwhelmed her with financial proffers. Current gossip insists that more or less of the funds stuck in the pockets corrupt Chinese officials. But in the larger sense the accuracy of this allegation is negligible. The outstanding fact is that Japan came forward when the United States did not. From this time dates the hold of Japan upon Chinese official circles. Another fact cooled the ardor of even the military people for an active share in the war. After August of 1917, the military fortunes of the Allies sank to their lowest. Many Japanese leaders became convinced that German victory was either inevitable or that the war would end in a deadlock which would be almost equivalent to German victory. Responsible statesmen, men who had been prime ministers and heads of the foreign office, publicly stated that while Japan would be faithful to her allies throughout the war, an international realignment was almost certain after the war. Japan had already undertaken the necessary rapprochement with Russia, obviously undertaken in part with a view to resisting the growth of American influence in the Far East. Where would China be after the war in the case of an alliance offensive and defensive between Japan and Russia and Germany? It was obvious prudence for her to tread softly and give no offence to the powers which in the near future were likely to dominate the Far East. It is, I am convinced, impossible to exaggerate the influence of this factor in determining the present position of forces. For while the forecast did not come out according to specifications, in the meantime a situation was created which was pro-Japanese and indifferent to America. Even recently the man who is credited with being the head of the pro-Japanese military party in the government circles (and who is known as an incorruptible man) said that China had to be pro-Japanese, because Japan was so powerful in army and navy and also so nearby. 'If the Pacific shrinks to a pond we shall be pro- American'. This is the concrete background upon which to project more general considerations regarding Chinese opinion of American policy. While Americans commence their account with, say, the benevolent return of the Boxer indemnity, the Chinese are likely to recall that as a positive force the United States opened its Far Eastern career with proposals for the neutralization of the Manchurian railways, and then met a defeat at the hands of Russia and Japan. This in itself was nothing very important. All countries receive diplomatic checks. But as it looks to the Chinese, after proposing a large scheme and meeting initial rebuffs, the American government neither made use of its check to secure a compensating advance elsewhere, nor did it try other means to maintain the principle it had laid down. The affair of the Hankow-Peking railway strikes them also as an example of the tendency of the American government to conceive rather grandiose schemes and then fall down or withdraw when resistance is encountered. Through the American Red Cross valuable flood relief work was done. But there was also a large engineering plan for the regulation of the water-ways. After an original flourish, that too dissolved. The Siems-Carey railway projects may not be a case in point, for they may be in a state of suspended animation rather than of death. But the fact remains that the United States is the only great power that has nothing to show in China in achievement on a large scale. Or rather our one decided achievement is in the educational line where confessedly we are far ahead. But this success is not of a kind to be impressive when it comes to determination of international affairs. The cases given must stand as samples of the facts that have led educated and influential Chinese to feel that America could not be seriously counted upon. The Chinese have not, like some other nations, set us down as bluffers. But the cases mentioned, together with our failure to do much except utter words in behalf of the 'Open Door', have led to the feeling that we readily emit large and good schemes, but are ineffectual when it comes to the test of action. The Chinese do not carry sentiment into practical matters. They judge by results not by intentions. In contrast with ourselves, they have found the Japanese constantly on the job, never allowing anything to get by, taking advantage of every opening, stimulated by obstacles only to renewed or redirected effort, quick, patient, persistent, unremitting. If Japan had not blundered hugely in estimating Chinese national sentiment, China might already have put its foreign policies mainly into the hands of Japan. For if China has to depend upon some outside power, there was much to say for relying, even at great cost to itself, upon a nation that was acute, vigorous, vigilant, and that never abandoned a plan after it started to realize it. To the Americans, Baron Shibusawa's Proposal for Japanese-American cooperation in China, the United States to furnish the money and Japan the brains, did not seem together tactful in form of expression. But it is not likely that the great Japanese financier-philanthropist meant to imply that universally speaking Japanese intelligence is superior. He spoke rather on the basis of the fact that the Japanese have used their brains actively and persistently in pushing their policies in China, and Americans have not. Now, of course, the reply to all this from an American standpoint is easy. We have never had large enough interests in the Far East to make it worth while to keep our attention and energy concentrated. We have never, beyond the Monroe Doctrine, gone in for a continuous foreign policy, as have other great powers. We have had so many other profitable ways of investing capital that it paid better to switch off to any other scheme than to bother too long in putting through a railway or other plan in the face of constant irritating and delaying obstacles. And in addition it is to our credit that we have never had the close alliance of business enterprise and governmental action which has characterized the policy of every other great power in dealing with economically backward countries and with China. From the American standpoint, excuses, and good ones, are as plenty as blackberries. But after all, as has been indicated, justifications and reasons do not concern the Chinese when it comes to their formulation of policy in foreign relations. They are interested in past results, in the actual outcome, as a means of forecasting the probable course of the future. The war has now conclusively demonstrated that the United States can act promptly, efficiently and on a large scale in its foreign affairs. Unfortunately the contrast between President Wilson's words and the concrete results of the Peace Conference—a contrast that circumstances make glaringly conspicuous in China—tends to restore the older idea about the United States. Yet not wholly; there is a new interest and a new expectation on the part of important leaders while the masses of people look pathetically toward us for their redemption. The historic friendliness of sentiment toward the United States is so reinforced that it is an asset of great potentiality. The problem is the practical one of turning it to account by a constructive policy in action. It cannot be said that there is any single specific political act which is absolutely indispensable. But there is a line of action which would be fatal, at least for a considerable time. After so much talk about Shantung, to allow matters to go by default, or to permit them to drift, would be to confirm the worst opinions about the instability and futility of our policies. Some kind of definite course, persistently followed up, is a necessity unless China is to fall into practical vassalage to another nation. For help from without China must have. While the peace settlement has made the political international issue most acute for the moment, the financial and industrial question is the important one in the long run. Here lies the great chance of the United States. The introduction of a unified comprehensive currency system, a unified comprehensive railway system, improved modem harbors and terminal facilities, the reconstruction of the inland water-way system to improve transportation and avoid destructive floods—these are samples of the important tasks that must be undertaken. At the present time the United States is the only country that combines the requisite capital, engineering ability and executive talent. The important thing is that by undertaking big things on a large scale the United States will get around much of the competition that breeds irritation and suspicion. If the scale is big enough, there will be no competition. Japan is not prepared to take hold of these matters on a large scale. A negative policy that can be interpreted as putting obstacles in the way of the legitimate development of Japan is fraught with dangers. To concentrate upon big enterprises in a constructive way will leave Japan plenty of opportunities, while it will once and for all avert the possibility of rendering China a virtual subject of Japan—a danger which the best friends of Japan must admit to be real as long as the militaristic-bureaucratic element continues to dominate her policies. The serious source of evil in the present situation is the likelihood that the United States will have sufficient interest in the Far East to talk a great deal, to act in minor ways but upon the whole in ways which can be construed with more or less justice as having for their main object to thwart the ambitions of other countries, especially Japan. It is not necessary to say that the next few years are crucial. In China as elsewhere reconstruction is imminent, but for the time being things are in solution. Distance has its disadvantages ln all the lesser relations. But it can be made an advantage if the Mention of America is fixed on large scale undertakings. A considerable part of past friction in accomplishing things under foreign direction in China is due to failure to secure the administrate cooperation of the Chinese. American enterprise should be reasonably free from the temptation to fill such positions with economic carpet-baggers. The Chinese students who have studied and who are studying in America supply a definite nucleus for administrative cooperation. If there are not enough such trained persons among the Chinese then business plans should include an extension of educational facilities to train the required number. The great stumbling-block of the past, the lack of active alliance between business interests and political governmental authority, can also be converted into a positive asset. The Chinese, like the Americans, have the tradition of industrial self-help; they are constitutionally averse to governmental activities. To get around the government, with its almost unbreakable traditions of procrastination, obstruction and corruption is an advance step. And this can largely be effected by enlisting the cooperation of Chinese voluntaryism. It cannot be done however by sending subordinates to carry out plans made without Chinese consultation. Leaders must come whom Chinese leaders recognize as their equals and who are intellectually prepared to deal with Chinese leaders as equals. And the plans must be on such a scale that it is evident while ample security and reasonable profit are given foreign investors the outcome will be to make China the mistress of her own economic destinies. When this is accomplished, she will have no difficulty in looking out for herself politically. Just because the controlling factor in the policies of other nations has been to cultivate the economic subjection of China, the United States has an unparalleled opportunity to pursue the opposite course. Has it the imagination and the energy? |
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| 93 | 1919.09.15 |
Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes 135 Morrison St Peking China, Sept 15 [1919] Dear Barnes, I didnt get your lettr of the end of July till about three or four days ago. We have recently moved into this small aprtment, which we were fortunate enough to hit upon, mostly furnished, after some months of vain hunting and the unwelcome expectation of having to go to a hotel. We inherited the servants with the place, and as the old story goes it is wonderful how much comfort dam heathen can bring into a Christian—(so alleged—) home. When we think of what we are going back to, the exclusion law seems a huge mistake. Lucy celebrated her arrival by coming down in a few weeks with typhoid, but it was a mild case and she has been back from the—very good—hospital a week now. I told Evelyn to send you back the five hundred you were kind enough to let me have. We have been very well taken care of, both in Japan and China, and didnt need the funds as it turned out, but the accommodation on your part was just the same. My general reactions to the situation here I am putting in articles—some of them are coming out in the N R. and others will come in Asia as I had a acble from them to send them six articles on the general political and social psychology of the Chinese as affecting the preent situation. Taking the word with psychology with a good deal of allowance, Im trying to do this. Its an absurdly pretentious perfromance in one way, with my short stay here and no knowledge f the language. But it will be just as good as most of the stuff travellers put out fr the American reader, and a little better than some for it will give some attempt at interpretation from the Chinese standpiint. It is almost to easy to get up a sympathetic admiration for them, not coming in direct contact to speak of with the disagrreable phases of their life. I have sent more stuff on Japan to the Dial. I dont think it will be as dull as the other one. The atmosphere of Japan has a peculiar restrictive and constrictive influence which it would be hard to analyze or explain. But im Sure almost everyone there suffers from it, the Americans and other foreigners get so used to it tha they dont know what they suffer from; I didnt when I was there, verybody was so friendly and in most ways so open. But there is a hush in the air. I dont know anything just like it. I think it is the reason that so much of writing about Japan is laudatory or eulogistic—that is the only open vent, and seems to be exected some how, waited for by the Japanese, or else just wholesale condemnation in reaction from the irritation of supre subconscious suppressions. In spite of the backardness of China, there is much more openness and outspokenness here which is one of things that one makes one believe the future is with China—but why, of why, dont they get busy and bring in that future. Thats what makes so much despair and disgust about China among foreigners. The puzzle of their contrasting strong and weak sides is one of the most fascinating things Ive ever exerienced, and keeps one always on the alert to see what is coming next. Just now there is a lull with the most activity on the side of the militarists who re strengthening their fences and fortications, because they got scared by the student movement. But now they have things more in hand than ever. But the Chinese principle seems to be to give everybody rope enough to hang himself with—the greater the oppression the greater the ultimate resistance and overthrow. Its a fascinating game to watch, but hard to repress one's desire for a lieel more drect western energy to tackle things before they get to the topling over point. || My lectures begin regularly this week, Scattered about—one day a week at the Boxer Indemnity College, two lectures a week at the University, tho one of them is a public rather than a students course, and one at the Board of Education Ministry. We shall be here till about the first of March. I thot Walter Weyl's article on Wilson was a keen analysis, the best thing of Weyl's I have read. The N R has more pep since Lippman is back. Please remember me to Mrs Barnes. Sincerely yours, John Dewey. |
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| 94 | 1919.09.24-1920.04.02 (pu |
Dewey, John. Lectures in China, 1919-1920 [ID D28460] : 'Social and political philosophy' in Beijing, sponsored by the National Beijing University, the Ministry of Education, the Aspiration Society and the New Learning Association. = She hui zhe xue yu zheng zhi zhe xue. Hu Shi interpreter, Wu Wang, Fu Lu recorder. In : Xue deng ; Sept. 24 ; Oct. 1, 8, 22 ; Nov. 5, 6, 22, 25, 30 ; Dec. 14, 15, 22, 23 (1919). Jan. 24, 26, Febr. 3, 4, 26, 27 ; March 3, 4, 8, 9 ; April 1, 2 (1920). 'The function of theory' "This extreme radical statement was followed by the conservative theories of Aristotle, who in his 'Politics', his 'Ethics', and his other books, set forth theoretical bases for the perpetuation of the social and political schemes of his time. The same thing was true in China : the radical theories of Lao-tze were followed by the conservative theories of Confucius." 'Science and social philosophy' "Here in China a number of people have asked me, 'Where should we start in reforming our society ? ' My answer is that we must start by reforming the component institutions of the society. Families, schools, local governments, the central government – all these must be reformed, but they must be reformed by the people who constitute them, working as individuals – in collaboration with other individuals, of course, but still as individuals, each accepting his own responsibility. Any claim of the total reconstruction of a society is almost certain to be misleading. The institutions which make up the society are not 'right' or 'wrong', but each is susceptible to some degree of improvement. Social progress is neither an accident nor a miracle ; it is the sum of efforts made by individuals whose actions are guided by intelligence… I imagine that most of you in the audience today are students ; and as students, you must be peculiarly aware of the truth of what I have been saying." 'Social reform' 'Criteria for judging system of thought' 'Communication and associated living' "Or take the history of China : transition from one dynasty to another was always attended by political and social disruption – disorder which continued until the appearance on the scene of some person forceful and powerful enough to subject contending factions to his control.” “Workers are much better off in America than in China. Their wages are better, and are still increasing ; their working hours are shorter." "In the history of China, for example, we note that the first emperor of the dynasty was always a strong leader, gifted with imagination and initiative, capable of accomplishing needed reforms, and interested in the people over whom he ruled." 'Economics and social philosophy' 'Classical individualism and free enterprise' "All in all, what was good for economic development would at the same time and to the same degree be good for the spiritual elements in the social process. This outlook must obviously have considerable appeal her in China, where there has traditionally been so much interference both by the state and by the family elders. There seems to be a rapidly growing trend nowadays to reject the authority of the head of the clan, to have members of the family work more independently and responsibly, and to object to arbitrary interference in personal affairs by officers of the state." "We have been speaking of the situation in Europe and America, but the issue between laissez faire and government regulation of industry should be of real concern to China, too, particularly at a time when the country is beginning to industrialize so rapidly. Problems of limiting hours of work, of regulating the conditions under which labor operates, of controlling the employment of women and children – these and other related problems must be planned for before the situation becomes serious." 'Socialism' "There are today in China commercial guilds which, it seems to me, could be exceedingly useful during this period when China is undergoing the transition between cottage industry and full-scale industrial production. It is important for us to determine which aspects of the guild system ought to be preserved, and to discover ways in which we may cultivate professional self-respect by promoting more effective communication among people who are engaged in the same or similar trades… Chinese scholars should engage in research on the guild system, to the end that those aspects of it which can effectively contribute to progress can be conserved." 'The state' 'Government' "In a book I read a few days ago, the author advances the thesis that Western political systems impose restrictions on government because of the assumption that human nature is inherently evil, while the older political system of China was based on the assumption that human nature is inherently good." 'Political liberalism' 'The rights of individuals' "But both socialism and individualism have many ramifications. No matter what one's political orientation, he must grant that this is a basic problem. I see it as being of fundamental importance both in the West and in China. But the problem, as it concerns China, has facets which are different from those we see when we look at the same problem as it confronts the West. The problem as it exists in China can be stated as follows : assuming that we agree that our ultimate goal is the fullest possible development of individuals, should China, as the West did, first go through an age of self-seeking individualism, and then employ the power of the state to equalize society as the West has had to do ; or should it amalgamate these two steps and achieve social equality at one stroke ? It seems to me that there are grounds for hoping that China can achieve social equality in one operation. There are three reasons why I say this : 1) The first basis for hope that China can achieve social equality without repeating the sequence of events followed in the West, amalgamating two steps into one, is that she already enjoys the traditional concept of the state's obligation to protect its people, as this was propounded by Mencius. Political individualism has not made headway in China, so that the tradition of the state's obligation to protect its people, which may be likened to the parents' obligation to protect their children, or the emperor's protect his subjects, can readily be modified into the concept of the protection of its citizens by a democratic government. 2) Modern China can achieve equality of opportunity for her people by popularizing education. Popular education is not intended to satisfy the self-seeking urges of individuals, but to provide all men with equal opportunities for self-development. Education in the West became universal long after the beginning of the industrial revolution. But the industrialization of China is just now beginning ; there is thus the chance for China to universalize education now, so that by the time it reaches full-scale industrialization it will also have achieved social equality. 3) Another basis for hope is that there is still time for Chinese scholars and scientists to pursue specialized knowledge and devote their research activities to special problems. One of the shortcomings of political individualism in the West lies in the fact that it tends to deprecate specialization, and to hold that any reasonably well-educated person can pretty well take care of himself. It ignores the extreme complexities of modern society and politics, and fails to see that even in a small district the problems of education, taxation, and government as well as those of industry, can be dealt with effectively only by those who have mastered a great deal of highly specialized knowledge. If China can begin now to develop appropriate degrees of specialization, her rewards in the future will assuredly be great. These remarks about China are no more than a few random suggestions of my own. The problem, though, is one of extreme importance, and worthy of the most careful study. Although at the moment China is confronted with particular and exacerbating problems, these are temporary. China is certain to be faced with more lasting and more fundamental problems in the near future, and the two which are of the most far-reaching import are the inevitability of industrialization, and its concomitant problem of self-seeking individualism. The problem thus becomes one of conserving the positive aspects of individualism while at the same time avoiding its negative aspects, which are certain to introduce disorder into your society." 'Nationalism and internationalism' 'The authority of science' 'Intellectual freedom' Barry Keenan : Dewey began the lectures 'Social and political philosophy' with an instrumental definition of theory, and of politics ¸than he discussed the characteristics of experimental politics. Political theories, like any theories, he noted, arose to account for and alleviate some difficulty that developed in the operation of established social habits and institutions. Thinking was a response to problems, and so was theoretical thinking. The specific conditions of the original habits and institutions, were primary, and the theories of how they operate derivative. Thomas Berry : The lecture 'Social philosophy and political philosophy' must be considered of special significance. It made a deep impression upon Chen Duxiu, who had already become interested in Marxism. Dewey's presentation of the democratic idea 'delayed by a strong counter-influence' the movement of Chen toward the Marxist-Leninist position. The main idea of this lecture was that democracy in any true sense of the word must begin on the local level and rise from there through successively wider application to the higher realms of political authority. The influence of Dewey on Chen did not succeed in bringing his intellectual and political abilities into the service of liberal or social democracy of a European or American style, for in 1921 Chen joined with Li Dazhao to found the Communist Party, the dynamic center of a movement that would first be the opponent and later the conqueror of all other political forces and doctrines in China. As a distinct political party, the democratic movement envisaged by Dewey was never successful in China. As an ideal it has remained a constant influence there and has seriously affected the political life of the country. |
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| 95 | 1919.09.25-1920.07.15 |
Dewey, John. Lectures in China, 1919-1920 [ID D28460] : 'The philosophy of education', delivered at Nanjing Teachers College. Sponsored by the National Beijing University, the Ministry of Education, the Aspiration Society and the New Learning Association. = Jiao yu zhe xue. Hu Shi ; Liu Boming interpreter ; Wu Wang, Fu Lu ; Zhong Fan, Guo Zhifang, Jin Haiguan, Shi Zhimian, Zhang Nianzu, Ni Wenzhou, Shen Zhensheng recorder. In : Xue deng ; Sept. 25-26 ; Oct. 2, 3, 4, 11, 25, 31 ; Nov. 10 ; Dec. 1, 2, 7, 16, 17, 24, 26, 27 (1919). Jan. 30, 31 ; Febr. 9, 11, 13 ; March 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 ; April 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 24, 26 ; May 10, 11, 14, 19, 23, 30 ; July 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, 15 (1920). 'The need for a philosophy of education' 'The misuse of subject matter' 'Work and play in education' "The spirit of the new education is a complete reversal of this old concept. Once when I was lecturing in the United States on the subject of education, I said that in China pupils are required by their teachers to recite in unison and in a loud voice. I told my audience that even though this wasn't an ideal method of education, it at least allowed the pupils to have a modicum of physical movement, while in the West pupils are required to sit quietly and are not allowed to make the least noise.” "Properly prepared, young women of China can apply Froebel's theories here, and create a new kind of kindergarten, with activities based in Chinese customs and using Chinese subject matter." "When I first went to Nanking in May, the children in the Nanking Teachers College Kindergarten were raising silkworms. They started by collecting silkworm eggs and arranging for their protection ; then, when the eggs hatched, the children fed the tiny worms with mulberry leaves. This continued until the silkworms spun their cocoons. At the time I was there, the children were unreeling the silk from the cocoons. At first glance one might think that this business of raising silkworms in the schoolroom might fascinate the children (and it did, of course), but that there wasn't anything to it other than the mere fact of fascination. But as the situation was actually being handled, the children were also gaining knowledge. They watched the eggs hatch into larvae, the larvae become chrysalises, and then a few days later, they watched the mature moths emerge from their cocoons. In their first-hand experience with the development of the silkworms, the children were laying a basis for understanding many of the facts and principles of biology. Even in the area of industrial production the experience was profitable : th4e children learned about the selection and collection of eggs ; they had experience in distinguishing good silk from poor ; and they took the first steps toward an appreciation of the whole process of silk production. Silk is a major product of this part of southern China, so the child who has a basic understanding and appreciation of some of the chief factors in silk production has, by this token, a better understanding of the society in which he lives. Wouldn't you agree that this sounds like and effective way to pursue knowledge?" 'Creative dramatics and work' 'The cultural heritage and social reconstruction' "I was pleased to read in the newspaper the other day that the Chinese National Education Conference has passed a resolution favoring the adoption of textbooks written in the spoken language of China. Although I am not as familiar with conditions in China as I should like to be, I believe that the use of the spoken language of the people in textbooks should prove to be one of the greatest steps forward that you could take." "This is why I say that the broadening of the child's environment is a matter of greater urgency now than it has been in the past. Of course it is not just in China that there is such a need ; it exists everywhere. But I do believe that China faces an unprecedented and unparalleled opportunity to do this sort of thing in her schools. It is perhaps true that up to now contact with the West has brought China more disadvantages than advantages, more ill than good. But it is also true that the chaos and confusion in morality and economy have reached a point in China at which it would be ill advised, if not fatal, for China to isolate herself from the influences of Western culture. The only method by which China can remedy the present sad state of affairs is to speed up cultural exchange between East and West, and to select from Western culture for adaptation to Chinese conditions those aspects which give promise of compensating for the disadvantages which accrued from earlier contacts. This is a task which calls for men and women of wide knowledge and creative ability. The men and women who will do this are now children in our schools, and this is why the matter of broadening the child's environment is of such great urgency in China today." 'Discipline for associated living' 'The future and the present' 'The development of modern science' "Although I do not know a great deal about the history of the development of Chinese culture, I do know that traditional Chinese culture was more concerned with a philosophy of life than with the natural sciences, so that science never developed enough to be incorporated into the general pattern of politics, religion, and other aspects of social life. Since this is true, there could not be the same reaction in China against the introduction of new thought that there was in the West. The introduction of modern science caused deep-seated conflict in the West, conflict which lasted hundreds of years ; but when the same ways of thinking were introduced into China, Chinese society did not see them as revolutionary at all." 'Science and the moral life' "With the development of modern science the relative amount of attention devoted to the humanities has been reduced, and greater emphasis is devoted to the objective world in which we live. The tendency has been to abandon dogmatic methods of instruction, such as indoctrination in old beliefs and traditions and memorization of the Chinese classics." "Since I arrived in China many people have asked me how China can import Western material civilization to develop her economy, and at the same time forestall the difficulties which maerial developments have brought in their wake in the West. It is true that in the Western world the development of material civilization has been accompanied by negative outcomes such as acquisitiveness and cruelty, contention between capital and labor, and strikes and lockouts. Today, however, we will explore the positive influences of the development of modern science, and identify those aspects of development which can help us overcome the difficulties with which we are confronted." 'Science and knowing' "I have been told that there is a Chinese proverb to the effect that 'to know is easy, to act is difficult'. This is just the opposite of the experimental method, for in this method it is only after we have acted upon a theory that we really understand it. There can be no true knowledge without doing." 'Science and education' "The other way would be for the Chinese people to start now to prepare themselves to cope with the situation which is going to emerge in the next fifty years. The Chinese can popularize education in science, and make scientific knowledge and scientific method available to all people, to that everybody can benefit equally from the development of science." 'Elementary and secondary education' 'Geography and history' 'Vocational education' "The problem of labor unrest is a serious one throughout the world ; I'm sure you are all aware of this. The problem is not by any means solely one of hours and wages ; a fundamental source of trouble is that so many workers have no interest in their work, and this is true because they have no opportunity to make use of their knowledge and their intelligence. Workers will not be satisfied with material rewards alone. This is a particularly important problem in present-day China, as she enters into a period of rapid industrial development. The intellectuals in the universities understand the importance of the problem ; they must plan for social reconstruction in such a way that workers in the future will have full opportunity for intellectual development. If you can do this, China may not have to contend with the labor problems which trouble European countries and the United States. Lawyers, teachers, and other professionals are interested in their work because they have the opportunity for intellectual development. It is only the workers – and not even all of them – who have no interest in their work. The new leaders of China must direct their attention to this problem." 'Moral education : the individual aspect' 'Moral education : the social aspects' |
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| 96 | 1919.10 |
Dewey, John. Chinese national sentiment [ID D28474]. Is it possible for a Westerner to understand Chinese political psychology? Certainly not without a prior knowledge of the historic customs and institutions of China, for the institutions have shaped the mental habits, not the mind the social habits. The West approaches all political questions with ideas composed on the pattern of a national state, with its sovereignty and definite organs, political, judicial, executive and administrative, to perform specific functions. We have even made history over to fit into this pattern. We have taken European political development as a necessary standard of normal political evolution. We have made ourselves believe that all development from savagery to civilization must follow a like course and pass through similar stages. When we find societies that do not agree with this standard we blandly dismiss them as abnormalities, as survivals of backward states, or as manifestations of lack of political capacity. Approached with such preconceptions, Chinese institutions and ideas are often given up as a bad job and as a case of arrested development. In actual fact, they mark an extraordinary development in a particular direction, only one so unfamiliar to us that we dispose of them as a mass of hopeless political confusion and corruption, or a striking object of what happens when there happens to be even a high code of ethics without the blessings of a divine revelation. The attempt to read Chinese institutions in terms of western ideas has resulted in failures of understanding and of action from the very beginnings of our contact. For example, in the early days of intercourse there was ground of complaint of the treatment received by western shipwrecked sailors on Korean coasts. The Foreign Offices knew that there existed some tributary relation between Korea and China. They interpreted this relation of dependence, as Mr. Holcombe has pointed out, in the way familiar to them. They thought of the connection as that of feudal suzerain and vassal. Hence they demanded that China make its dependent behave. When China disclaimed authority, they thought that this was either equivalent to a renunciation of all relationship, or else a wilful piece of deceit in a characteristic endeavor to evade just responsibility. They had no precedent for a relationship which, while one of genuine dependence, was moral and advisory in nature. The whole early history of the dealings of western nations with the Court at Peking is full of similar misconceptions. There was an undoubted monarch. The monarchy was even of the despotic kind; there were none of the checks of constitutional and representative institutions familiar to the western mind. Hence all the attributes of political sovereignty, external and internal, were attributed to the Court. Here again there was no precedent for conceiving of a dynastic rule which was a combination of a primitive tribute-levying empire and an authority of a moralistic, homiletic, hortatory kind. And as we go from such external aspects to deeper conditions we find that China can be understood only in terms of the institutions and ideas which have been worked out in its own historical evolution. The central factor in the Chinese historic political psychology is its profound indifference to everything that we associate with the state, with government. One inclines to wonder sometimes why the anarchists of the pacifist and philosophic type have not seized upon China as a working exemplification of their theories. Probably the reason is that being preoccupied with the problem of active abolition of government, they have not been able to conceive of an anarchy which should be only a profound apathy towards government. Or else they, too, have been misled by the popular association of anarchy with extreme freedom and mobility, and could not imagine it in connection with the stagnation attributed to China. According to literary records, the following verse is the oldest poem in the language—a song put into the mouth of a farmer: Dig your well and drink its water; Plow your fields and eat the harvest; What has the Emperor's might to do with me? China is still agricultural, as it was in the bygone centuries. Its farmers still go about their own business of tilling and eating, marrying and giving in marriage, begetting and dying. As of old, they attend to their own affairs, and the power of Emperor or President concerns them not. Governors come and go, and fuss about their petty intrigues of glory and greed. But they do not govern the farmers, who are the mass of the population. The only governance known to them is that of nature, the rules of the immemorial change of seasons, the fateful laws of birth and death, of seed-corn and harvest, of flood and pestilence. In the words of perhaps their oftenest quoted proverb, 'Heaven is high and the Emperor far away'. The implication is that earth is close and intimate, the family and village nearby. M. Hue tells an incident that dates from 1851; it might, however, have happened at any period in the long history of China. After the recent death of the Emperor, he endeavored without success to engage his fellow guests at a roadside tavern in a discussion of political prospects and possibilities. There was no response, though he exhausted his ingenuity. Finally one of the Chinese replied: 'Listen to me, my friend. Why should you trouble your heart and fatigue your head with all these vain surmises? The Mandarins have to attend to affairs of state; they are paid for it. Let them then earn their money. But we should be great fools to torment ourselves about what does not concern us. We should be great fools to want to do political business for nothing. ' And the anecdote continues: 'That is very conformable to reason,’ cried the rest of the company. Whereupon they pointed out to us that our tea was getting cold and our pipes were out. ' The state, the government, was a special business or trade, less interesting and less important for the mass of the people than ordinary affairs. It was, however, lucrative to those who specialized in it; let them carry its burdens. Meanwhile not merely the wedding and funeral, the sowing and reaping, concerned intimately the life of the people, but even the social consolations of the teacup and the tobacco-pipe were of more importance than affairs of state. If the people were indifferent to government, the government, which in our western terminology we have to call the state, reciprocated. In theory it was the representative of Heaven, and consequently owned the earth, namely, the soil, and was the symbolic cause of its fertility, exercising a beneficial paternal influence upon the prosperity of the country. In fact, like Heaven itself, the government was high above. In earlier days Heaven may have directly intervened in the affairs of earth, but for outnumbered centuries in later days it had remained discreetly aloof, satisfied with relations long ago established and interrupting the affairs of earth only at great crises. Except for a few purposes well understood by custom, the central government was irrelevant to the life of the people. It was a Court, and its dignity, prestige, ceremony and pleasures had to be maintained. The material side of this life required material supplies and money. The ideal life, the glory and supremacy of the reigning dynasty, could be satisfied symbolically and ceremonially, as the spirits had learned to be satisfied with symbolic money and imitations of servants, animals and food. The primary material function of government was then to receive a tribute from the products of the earth, partly in kind, partly in money. The amount was not onerous, and long custom had converted the tax into part of the regular order of nature, though, like the crops and other phenomena of nature, it was subject to unexpected ups and downs. The moral and ceremonial sovereignty was incarnated in the officialdom of viceroys, governors, heralds and other functionaries, who represented the Imperial Court, and who communicated to the people its mandates and exhortations, composed in the best literary style and manifesting the continuous benevolent solicitude of the representative of Heaven for their morals. These morals were, in turn, the source of the prosperity of the country and of the stability of the Empire. These officials also had to lead a life of a certain symbolic grandeur and glory which cost money, but taxation was kept within limits prescribed by custom, and as a rule the burden was not heavy. Pains were taken that it should fall upon the well-to-do as far as possible, thus serving the double end of keeping down the power of possible rivals and of not arousing the disfavor of the masses. It is possible to trace in the old Chinese theory of politics the survivals of an original theocracy. But in China, even more than in Europe in its most deistic days, God, or Heaven, was remote, contenting itself with a general benevolent oversight. Its lordship was of an absentee nature. And the Court which represented Heaven was contented to imitate the latter’s non-interference with the details and customs of life. The result was that for all practical purposes each province was an independent state, composed, in turn, of a large number of petty republics called villages. In 1900 an English writer, made competent by long residence and intimate experience, wrote: 'Each of China’s eighteen provinces is a complete state in itself. Each province has its own army, navy, system of taxation and its own social customs. In connection only with the salt trade and the navy certain concessions have to be made to one another under a certain modicum of imperial control. ' These independent units are traditionally called provinces. But, as the quotation shows, they might have been called principalities, save that they had no orderly lineage of princes. China was not even a confederation, much less a national state or an imperial state, in the sense which history has given those terms in the West. Again we have no precedents by which to interpret and understand such a situation. We are acquainted with empires that left local customs undisturbed and that contented themselves with levying tribute and exacting booty. But they were military powers, and always existed in unstable equilibrium. They never became so interwoven with local custom as to be a part of the established order of nature and able to dispense with military support. But China has worked out a scheme of remarkable static equilibrium—the most stable known to history. The political life of China went on essentially undisturbed, even though rebellions overthrew dynasties. Such rebellions were themselves as much a part of the established order of Heaven or Nature as was an occasional flood or plague. All such crises had their natural causes and were proper and normal, however uncomfortable or destructive they might be. The texture of life was unchanged; it continued to exhibit the same patterns. The equilibrium was a human and internal one, a moral one, not one maintained by external pressure or military force. The actual government of China was a system of nicely calculated personal and group pressures and pulls, exactions and 'squeezes', neatly balanced against one another, of assertions and yieldings, of experiments to see how far a certain demand could be forced, and of yielding when the exorbitance of the demand called out an equal counter-pressure. Long before the time of Sir Isaac Newton, China worked out a demonstration in the field of politics, of the law that action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions. It exemplified the working of the principle in every aspect of human association. Such a social system implies a high state of civilization. It produces civilized persons almost automatically. For the essence of civility, or of civilization, is the ability to live consciously along with others, aware of their expectations, demands and rights, of the pressure they can put upon one, while also conscious of just how far one can go in response in exerting pressure upon others. The Chinese, as long as they were left undisturbed by other peoples, had all the complex elements of the social equation figured out with unparalleled exactness. Their social calculus, integral and differential, exceeded anything elsewhere in existence. This fact, and this fact only, accounts for the endurance of China for almost four thousand years of recorded history. Then there came the eruption of forces from the outside which were radically new, which were unprecedented, for which the social calculus provided no rules. They were not, strictly speaking, human; they were physical forces of a strange and incalculable kind—battleships, artillery, railways, strange machines and chemicals. At first China was complacent. It remembered the numerous eruptions and invasions which had broken into its system in the past, and recalled how they had been subdued by ab-sorption, how they had been gradually worked into the patterns of adjustments, demands, concessions, compromises and intercourses which constitute China. But gradually it became evident that old formulae would not apply, that a radically new force had been introduced. And it gradually became apparent that the new physical agencies and forces which were so irresistible were themselves the tools and designs of an unaccustomed social and political order. China, a civilization, was confronted by a civilization which was organized as China was not, into national states. The consequences of this contact are written in every problem, internal as well as external, that occupies China today. There is a story of an intelligent Chinese who asked a foreigner to explain to him the nature and amount of the indemnity exacted from China by Japan after the successful war waged by the latter about the Korean question. After hearing the explanation he reflected a while to take in the full force of the matter, and then remarked in a contented way, 'Well, that is the Manchus' affair; it doesn't concern us. They will have to pay, not we. ' The remark appears to indicate not merely the extraordinary indifference to politics already spoken of, but an equally extraordinary political stupidity. But it is stupidity only to the mind built after the pattern of western political institutions. From the standpoint of Chinese customs the remark was intelligent. Relations with foreign states were the business of the Imperial Court. And any expenses consequent upon such relations had to be met out of the purse of that Court. In the established system of taxation and revenues, the funds accruing from the tariff on imports from foreign countries belonged to the Imperial Treasury. It was nobody's business what the Court did with them. It was a logical conclusion that any debit item was also the exclusive affair of the ruling dynasty. The logic was good. But it was based upon the past, upon premises that no longer hold good. The Japanese Indemnity was followed by the Boxer Indemnity. The whole revenue system was thrown out of balance. The long-established Imperial balance of expenditures and receipts was destroyed. Yet any radical change in the established system of taxation was practically out of the question, entirely out of the question in any immediate or abrupt way such as the situation required. It would have wrenched the whole social system out of order. Even such changes as had to be introduced had a large part to play in the dissatisfaction with the Manchu dynasty, which led to its overthrow. There was not merely the ordinary opposition felt anywhere to a marked increase in taxation. There was not merely the interference with custom which for immemorial ages had set limits in the game of exactions and resistance. There was an indissoluble association of taxation with the peculiar prerogatives of the Imperial Court, none too popular at best. There was an equally fixed association of increased taxes with 'squeezes' on the part of officialdom, with corruption which was not exactly corruption if kept within certain limits of percentages, but which was intolerable when it surpassed them. The internal system of taxation, adequate to all internal emergencies, was not elastic in the face of the externally induced crisis. Foreign loans had to be resorted to. The remedy increased the disease. It gave the opportunity for more and more intervention from without; it invited a multiplication of precisely those dependencies upon foreign power which were the original root of the difficulty. And gradually the entire internal equilibrium has been upset in consequence of the contact with foreign powers. It cannot be regained without a radical transformation of China's historic political system. It has to nationalize itself in some fashion in order to meet the conditions imposed by its intercourse with other peoples who are organized into national states. What is true of the matter of taxation and revenues is true of almost every phase of Chinese life. Public finance but gives a typical example. There has been discussion of whether the Chinese have national loyalty, whether they have patriotism. Here also our words in their accustomed meanings betray us. In its literal sense the word 'nation' is connected in derivation with the word for birth. In the sense of community thus implied, the Chinese are certainly a nation. But in its acquired historical meaning, nation means a people with a certain political organization, a people claiming or possessing sovereignty of a centralized sort over a certain territory. And this is what the Chinese have not, but have to acquire in the face of sharp demands from foreign nations. It is contrary to their own social inertia and momentum, which has been acquired in minute and complicated ways through centuries of adjustments. Patriotism means love of country. In the sense of love of their earth, their native soil, the Chinese are perhaps the most patriotic of all existing peoples. The love may not be acute as with the Japanese, as ardent as with the Poles, but it is inter-woven with every detail of life. It is not so much a sentiment, a fact of consciousness, as an unbreakable habit of life. Attachment to soil and birthplace is quite a different thing from an effectively organized allegiance to the state, that political entity which is constituted by political means rather than by matter-of-course habits of daily life and intercourse. It is customary to try to escape from the dilemma of a spontaneous, pervasive and unquestioned love of country that exists without the familiar manifestations of public spirit and political nationalism, by saying that the Chinese have a strong sense and pride of race which does for them what patriotism does for western peoples. Literally, this will hardly work. The Chinese regard themselves as five races, not one, as their flag testifies. In a certain genuine sense the Chinese are profoundly indifferent to race and racial distinctions. They have not been infected as have the Europeans and Japanese with the ethnological virus. While the Revolution was expedited by the fact that the Manchu dynasty was foreign, yet this ground of objection had had no effect for over two hundred years. It became significant only after western contact had aroused nationalistic feeling. What the Chinese abundantly possess is community of life, a sense of unity of civilization, of immemorial continuity of customs and ideals. The consciousness of a unity of pattern woven through the whole fabric of their existence never leaves them. To be a Chinese is not to be of a certain race nor to yield allegiance to a certain national state. It is to share with countless millions of others in certain ways of feeling and thinking, fraught with innumerable memories and expectations because of long- established modes of adjustment and intercourse. This consciousness becomes loyalty, patriotism, in our sense in just the degree in which it gets transferred to the idea of a national state made after the model familiar to us, a state with an army and navy, a system of regular taxation and public revenue, an organized system of legislation, judiciary and administration, a subordination of all local powers to a central power, and all the other paraphernalia of sovereignty which we take for granted. It is not easy to transform a traditional feeling into nationalism, and then attach it to an object which is largely non-existent, an object of faith rather than of sight. For this reason nationalistic sentiment has tended to take an anti-foreign color among the Chinese. In spite of the Boxer outbreak and other violent demonstrations against aliens, it may be doubted whether there has been a strong hostility against the foreigner as such. The Chinese, one surmises, are rather unusually tolerant. Their amiable live-and-let-live policy is applied all around. Their normal attitude is that of indifference to strangers rather than of aggressive antagonism. But conditions were such that about the only way in which they could show their devotion to their own civilization was negative. It was the outsider who was disturbing it. The Chinese lacked the positive organs of national life through which to resist foreign encroachments. Their loyalty to their own customs was therefore bound, one might say, to take the irregular and disorderly form of attack upon foreign residents. There are few who think that the Boxer days are likely to recur. The Chinese are intelligent, and they learned the hopelessness of holding their own by such methods. But it is still true that their national feeling can be aroused and concentrated more readily for purposes of resistance and opposition to foreign nations than for constructive purposes. There are fine illustrations of this fact in recent Chinese international relations. There can be little doubt that the Government had officially instructed its delegates to the Peace Conference in Versailles to sign the treaty, recognizing though it did the Japanese appropriation of German rights in Shantung. National sentiment was, however, tremendously aroused. If Japan had set out to instigate a new national spirit which should overwhelm the old local provincialisms, she could not have proceeded in a more effectual way to accomplish the purpose. The people took the matter out of the hands of the Government. By cablegrams to Paris, by telegraph to Peking, by mass-meetings and agitations, finally by a strike of students and then of the mercantile guilds in the larger cities, they made it clear that national sentiment would regard as traitors all those who should take part in signing the treaty. It was an extraordinarily impressive exhibition of the existence and the power of national feeling in China. It was all the more impressive because it had to work without organized governmental agencies, and, indeed, against the resistance of deeply-intrenched pro-Japanese officialdom. If there still remained anywhere those who doubted the strength and pervasiveness of Chinese patriotism, the demonstration was a final and convincing lesson. But it took a great crisis of foreign menace to focus the feeling; Japan in the last two years has done for China what otherwise might have taken a generation more. But when the immediate task of preventing the signing of the treaty that gave away Chinese rights was performed, the feeling lapsed. Perhaps it remains equally intense, but it has lost in sureness of direction. The outward means and the established habits of thought required for positive determination of constructive national policies are still inchoate. Everyone knows that the chief instrumentality of foreign encroachment in China has been finance. Russia first conceived the policy of conquest by bank and railway, and other nations joined in. Japan, with her usual alertness, saw the point, and with her usual energy acted upon her perception. The question of finance remains pivotal in any positive national policy for China. Even if China had the capital to take care of her own developments, and she certainly has more than she has used, the denationalized customs work against loaning it to the Government. And lack of trust in the competency and honesty of the officials reinforces the other influences that tell against extending domestic credit for public needs. Clearly, an international financial consortium which should loan money to China in bulk without assigning in return special concessions and spheres of influence to any particular nation is the obvious solution. But it is extremely difficult to arouse any popular interest in this matter. It is, so to speak, too positive and too specialized. On the contrary, it is comparatively easy for interested parties to stir up opposition. They have only to keep saying that this is a move on the part of foreign powers to get complete subjugation of China, and national feeling is excited in the negative direction. The alternative, namely, foreign loans from separate powers, in fact, Japan claiming specific rights and privileges in return, is not faced except by the more enlightened. The masses trust to a laissez-faire, happy-go-lucky policy of meeting each stringency as it arises, rather than of committing the country to some comprehensive scheme which, because of the organization involved in it, makes the fact of foreign influence obvious. Habituated to dealing with obstacles and dangers in a piecemeal way, playing off one force against another with great skill, the natural dread that all feel towards the unknown is felt towards organization on a large scale. And the fact that the organization is one on the part of foreign nationalism makes it appear particularly dreadful. And who can blame China in view of its past experiences with foreign influence? There is even now a small section which quite sincerely argues that it would be better to let Japan have Tsing-tao than to make it an international settlement. The situation is critical. The fear of coming against an organization of foreign nations was sufficient recently to defeat, at least for the time being, the proposition to unify the railways of China. Ultimately it would mean the development of a large national system under exclusive Chinese control. But for the time being it involved a certain amount of international control. Foreign nations interested in maintaining separate spheres were naturally hostile. But their easiest way of working was not to offer public opposition, but to play secretly, through domestic agencies profiting by the existing state of affairs, upon the national fears of China. The same forces are already at work attacking the proposed international consortium and may wreck it. In fact, they will almost certainly succeed in delaying it until it becomes a matter of dire necessity. Yet it seems almost axiomatic that as long as China is dependent upon foreign loans it is much better for her to be dependent upon a combination of powers that have agreed to forgo special privileges, and who will have to use their funds to build up China as a whole, than upon single separate powers that loan money only in response for special concessions and command of strategic points. These points are strategic not only economically, but in a political and military way. It seems at first sight very unreasonable that China should prefer to continue a system, or lack of system, which has brought her to the present pass. And it is unreasonable. But we need to understand that China has now reached a point of intense national feeling and a position where she can act with assurance as a nation. Feeling is feeling. It is comparatively easy to arouse national aspiration and national fears. It is not so easy to secure a national understanding of and agreement of any comprehensive or constructive plan of operations. And the reason is obvious, for there are no national institutions, no national organs, to supply the material of understanding and afford the basis of enduring faith and confidence. This union of intense national sentiment, with absence or lack of channels and organs of national action, describes the dilemma in which China finds itself today, both internally and externally. It is especially important that the United States should sympathetically comprehend the situation. Just now there is a warm wave of pro-American feelings, especially outside of the governmental circles, which have become involved in Japanese intrigues. It is genuine. Yet it is largely a rebound from the prevalent anti-Japanese feelings. It is in any case a national feeling, not a national idea. It will be subjected in the future to the forces which always operate to make feeling, as distinct from thought, a fluctuating affair. Because of past history and because of economic interests, the United States stands against the policy of partitioning China, whether overdy or by means of spheres of influence and special interests. That is all to the good with respect to China's feeling towards us. She also stands, as in the case of unifying railways and combined financial aid, for organized international assistance. With an ordinary amount of decency and good will, this policy should build up China rapidly and get her to the point where she can dispense with foreign control. But for reasons just explained, China will hesitate and object and postpone. She may conceivably completely balk, and prefer to continue the policy of playing one nation off against another, in spite of the fact that that will mean for the time being an increase of Japanese control. It is most important that America should understand the causes of this attitude and should be patient and persistent in its policy, instead of being swayed by an emotional gust of revulsion at 'ingratitude'. Revulsion and withdrawal of active interest on our part, because our advances and plans do not meet with an immediate and hearty approval, will only play into the hands of those countries who desire special and selfish rights in China, and who for this reason, and because of lack of faith in the political capacity of the Chinese, always carry in the back of their heads a scheme of ultimate partition and subjection. We need to realize that it is just because the Chinese have great political capacity that the problem of national redirection is difficult and slow. For this capacity has been committed to definite lines which are contrary to those that fit into the present situation. It will help an intelligent sympathy to remember that China has not advanced on the path of modem political nationalism to the point where national feeling is warm and intense, but where definite organs of national thought and action are only in the early stage of formation. |
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| 97 | 1919.10 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Student self-government' at the Beijing Teachers College. |
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| 98 | 1919.10 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture on 'Student government' : a lecture given at Beijing Teachers College on the 11th anniversary of its founding. = Xue sheng zi zhi. Hu Shi interpreter ; Liu Rupu, Shao Zhengxiang recorder. In : Xin jiao yu ; vol. 2, no 2 (Oct. 1919). |
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| 99 | 1919.10.04 |
Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey children 135 Morrison St, Oct 4 [1919] Dear Folks. Evelyns letter of Sept 1 came this morning just as we had about given up hope for this boat. Evelyn neednt worry about my getting buried in the past. I spend my mornings running a sewing woman, seeing about getting a horse and ridimg habit, knotting a bed quilt, and reading the magazines in the library. My afternoons are devoted to calls, curio rumaging, and bullying Mamma into hleping me plan dinner parties. Its a gay life. The horse I have on shares with another girl, I dont know just how it is going to work out, I havent riden yet as there is no habit. I hope to be able to start when we get back from Taiyuanfu. Its perfect riding weather now, couldnt be nicer. The quilt is gradually getting done so I wouldnt be able to spend the rainy mornings that way much longer. The "first" calss are gradually getting done, it certainly is a chore, the new people are supposed to call on the old. we arent attempting to do them all, just the people at our legation, the more important Rockefeller and a few of the mishs. Mrs Price, one of the legation, has just come back from America and the afternoon she called on us she said she had made fourteen that afternoon. Numerous things have happend since I last wrote. Tuesday afternoon we went to the dress rehearsal of the Confucian sacrifice. The temple is a beautiful one with courtyards full of wonderful old Lebanon cedars. It is in very good condition, an unusual thing in Chinese temples, as it was restored by Yuan Shi-kai when he was getting ready to be emperor. We got there early and saw them making the preparations. They had all sorts of musical instruments set out, huge stringed things that we decided must be like the biblical psalteries enormous drums, and frames of bells and triangles. They had a chorus of boys who chanted and went thru formal posturing known as dancing. There were dignified old parties in black satin trimmed with gold who ran around and kowtowed every now and then. They didnt have any animal there that day. It all finished off with the dignified old parties marching off with a speech to Confucius and what would be peices of the animal. It was interesting and very impressive but we didnt understand it much. Most of the high officials were there, tho not the great president. Little Hsu, the power behind the throne, was there, but the Chinese we were with remarked in a casual way, "There goes little Hsu" when he had got all by and all we saw was his back in the distance. Thursday we rose at four in the morning and waited for the president to go by the house He almost never goest on the street as all the streets have to be cleared for him. We had received a police order telling us that no one was to leave the house after three until he had gone by. The soldiers were stationed about fifteen feet apart along the street, there were two or three in every door way, one came up stairs and turned on the light in the hall out side our door. They evidently didnt propose to have any one rush out and bomb the old gent. They had the street strewn with yellow sand in the old imperial way. After much waiting eighteen automobiles went tearing by, going about forty miles an hour The pres was in the last one, a closed car with four men on each running board. What I dont understand is how he got home, as all the soldeirs and everything deperted after him. Thursday night the Smiths [Possibly William Roy Smith and Marion Parris Smith] came for a farewell dinner. Miss Carl came too She pained the old Empress Dowagers picture, lived in the palace for a year. She has the most interesting stories to tell and is a most entertaining person generally. The Smiths had to leave early to get their train. We are going to miss them very much. Yesterday the rain came down in sheets and the streets were large rivers This morning was clear and lovely but its all clouded up again now and is cold as Greenland. We are completely overcome at Evelyns style in living on West 56 street. As she didnt say anything about her plans we dont know when she will move in so I wont take any chances on this letter. We had a nice letter from Mrs Coleman and one grom Miss Cross yesterday. Also I got one from Charles today. Im slowly freezing to death so will sally forth for some exercise. Lots of love to you all. Lucy |
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| 100 | 1919.10.06 |
Dewey, John. Our share in drugging China [ID D28473]. Of the millions who associate opium and China probably only few know, beyond a vague impression of England's part in an 'Opium War', that from the very beginning, the responsibility for the introduction and spread of the use of narcotics lies with foreign nations. Few know how repeated and consistent have been the struggles of responsible Chinese authorities to prevent the importation of the drug, nor the obstacles that officials of other nations have thrown in their way. Even when poppy growing became general throughout the Empire (and there is no denying that it did), fairness compels the acknowledgment that the Chinese had reached the conclusion that since it was impossible to prevent the introduction of opium from India, they might as well have a share in the profits themselves. In 1906 began the last great campaign against the growing of poppies and for the total eradication of the drug habit, cooperation of Great Britain regarding the importation of opium from India being secured. Even the foreigners who are most pessimistic regarding the capacity of the Chinese to carry through any general reform make an exception of the anti-opium fight. The vigor with which it was conducted was equalled by the ingenuity and skill with which offenders were detected and dealt with. What was accomplished in five years speaks wonders for the capacity of Chinese administration when it is in earnest, and for the adaptability of the Chinese people. There are few instances in history where such a sweeping reform was carried through so rapidly and thoroughly. Belatedly and under the pressure of criticism and in opposition to the protest of business against 'sentimentalism', other countries agreed to cooperate with China. They forbade the exportation of opium save under strict regulations to secure legitimacy of use. China enforced as well as made these restrictions. Since 1905 only about forty ounces a year have passed through the Chinese customs. This amount is taken accordingly as the standard of proper medical use by physicians, hospitals and chemists. It is hard, however, for law and morals to keep up with the advance of science and business. The above figure cannot be taken to measure the state of the drug-using habit in China. As the importation and use of opium decreased, science provided substitutes in the way of derivatives, especially morphia, heroin and codein, while cocaine was added from a new source. And the use of these forms of 'dope' is spreading so fast that they are likely to outdo the ravages of opium at its worst. Opium-smoking is expensive. It is an indulgence now confined to the wealthy. The use of the syringe is as cheap as that of the pipe is dear. Injections can be had for three coppers a 'shot' and the profit to the dealer at that rate is over a thousand per cent. Opium-smoking was an aristocratic vice; the needle reaches the coolies. It was not difficult to discover the opium-users. The dweller in any large city of the United States does not need to be told how difficult it is to detect the seller of forms of modem dope. Ingenuity when profits are at stake is not less in China than in America. On every hand one hears of the tricks employed in smuggling and distributing morphia and heroin. The sale is made easier because the Chinese are great takers of medicines, and the licensed practitioner in our sense hardly exists. Opium derivates are sold in all kinds of pills, and itinerant pedlars introduce pills and injections without the ignorant victim knowing what he is getting until after the habit is well fixed. And the weight of evidence is that the effects of morphia, cocaine and heroin are more completely demoralizing to the body, mind and character of the average dope user than were those of opium-smoking. Add the comparative minuteness of the dose for injections,—a single case of detected smuggling in Shanghai lately yielded enough for over twelve million 'shots'—and it is easy to see that the new menace is worse than the old. Since, however, the drugs now reach China only by the medium of smugglers, it might be thought that there is no longer national responsibility for forcing this evil on China—that it is now simply a matter of the individual wickedness of the smuggler and dealer. Unfortunately for the good repute of the western nations, such is not the case. Putting it mildly, carelessness and neglect in drawing and enforcing regulations regarding manufacture, transportation and exportation of opium products are such as to make the nations accomplices in guilt. In 1912 an international convention forbade the further exportation of morphia into China. Before this time the exportation from Great Britain into Japan was 30,000 ounces a year. This was a large enough amount in all conscience, and the most of it undoubtedly found its way to China. By 1917 it had jumped twenty-fold—to 600,000 ounces. Over fifty tons got from Scotland to Japan in four years, these figures being official custom statistics. It does not have to be pointed out that both the British and the Japanese governments knew that this amount was infinitely above legitimate needs—or that its destination was China, to which country exportation was nominally prohibited. But division of moral responsibility was at work. The British were far from the retail trade and the ultimate consumer. Their profits were in Indian revenue where the opium was raised, in Edinburgh the manufacturing centre, and in the shipping trade. The Japanese did not have (at that time) the responsibility for producing and exporting; they merely served as intermediaries. It is easy in such circumstances to pass on blame, and difficult to make an effective appeal to conscience. Only international cooperation would work. The Hague passed excellent resolutions—and Great Britain, the offender at the source, declared that she would put them into force when every other nation did. In 1917, however, the appeal to the conscience of the British government was sufficiently strong, so that regulations were put into effect by which opium derivatives could be shipped into Japan and its leased territory in Manchuria (the latter being one of the chief centres whence morphia reached the Chinese) only when licenses were given to the exporter. And these licenses were to be given only after receipt of a certificate from Japanese officials that the morphia was for medical use only, and was destined for consumption in Japan itself or its leased territory. The latter proviso made Japan an underwriter that the goods should not reach China. The next year there was a great falling off. Still in view of the fact that Japan was by this time manufacturing more than enough to supply its own medical needs, it is disconcerting to find that one hundred and fifty thousand ounces were imported into Japan. The fact argues an easy conscience somewhere. But this statement does not cover the ground. In the first place, Great Britain exacts no such license for exportation by means of parcel post—and a single postal package can easily carry stuff for a hundred thousand injections. British subjects in China accuse their home government of wilful omission and evasion. In the next place, the British authorities in both Hong Kong and Singapore farm out the opium product business, receiving in each place two millions of revenue annually for the concession. Now there are well established facts proving that the concessionaire can make his business pay only by getting contraband into China proper. It is obvious that no one would pay two millions a year for the privilege of making opium to be sold only in the city of Hong Kong. So many facilities are given to the concessionaire for smuggling into China that there are those who say that the British licensing regulations for the Japanese trade were adopted not for moral reasons but to protect the 'opium farmers' who were having difficulty in meeting Japanese competition in contraband and who appealed to the British government for protection in their rights. So much for Great Britain's share. As to Japan. Leaving out of the question the neglect of the government in Japan in issuing licenses, and the charges that advantage was taken of the lessened British trade to encourage poppy growing in Japan and Korea, there is the fact that for Japanese territory on Chinese soil, namely in the leased territory of “Dairen and vicinity” and in Tsingtao, licenses are issued by minor officials and irresponsible officials. In a single year there were imported 'for medical use only' in 'Dairen and vicinity' sixty-six thousand ounces of morphia. The figures are conclusive that the Japanese administration was an accomplice to making its Manchurian territory a point of departure for sending contraband into China. In general Japanese control of the retail and distributing trade has of late years become so complete that they have gradually come to be regarded as the chief if not the only sinners. One cause of present anti- Japanese feeling is found in the fact that Shantung has now become a centre for distributing dope. Now enters the American participation in the crime of poisoning China. The British require no license for exportation to the United States. Our laws are such that when the stuff arrives at one of our ports it is only necessary to put the goods into bond for transhipment to avoid payment of duty. And while the morphia could not be directly exported under our own laws into China, our laws regarding transhipment make no inquiry into the nature of the goods. They need only be described in a general way. All the morphia now manufactured in Scotland could readily pass through the United States into Japan thence to reach China illicitly if labelled 'pharmaceutical products'. Remember they could not go direct to Japan from Great Britain. If this is allowed to continue after the attention of our custom officials and of Congress has been called to it, we share with Great Britain and Japan the burden of sinning against China. But not all our guilt is indirect. The morphia seized in the recent smuggling case in Shanghai was all manufactured in Philadelphia—a fact verified in open court by a lawyer of the International Anti-Opium Association. It would be a criminal offense to ship this direct to China. But there is no law against shipment to Japan. American traffic through the two channels of British goods in bond and our own products has reached vast proportions already. The official statistics show that for the first five months of the current year, twenty-five thousand ounces of morphia reached the port of Kobe from American ports. But the Japan Chronicle, published in Kobe, is responsible for the statement that the manifestos of ships arriving in Kobe during the same period show about ninety thousand more ounces not appearing in the custom house returns. The conclusion is certain. This amount was transhipped in Kobe harbor to be smuggled into China. That this shows gross connivance on the part of Kobe port officials may be argued. But the primary responsibility is with the laws and administration of the United States. We have become a large partner in the contemptible business of drugging China at the time when China is making heroic efforts to emancipate herself from the narcotic evil. Our holier than thou attitude towards Great Britain and Japan must be abandoned. We have as yet no vested industrial and commercial interest possessing great political influence. It requires only a slight amount of interest in the evils of the traffic and a slight amount of energy to frame laws and administrative regulations that will compel adequate registration of all opium products reaching American ports, and make it a criminal offense to transport such goods for re-export. We can easily take steps that will make it impossible for morphia and heroin of American production to be exported to Japan thence to reach China. We can see to it that our post-office at Shanghai cannot be employed for sending narcotics into China by parcel-post (as we do not do at the present, thus making ourselves criminal accomplices in the breaking of Chinese laws and the poisoning of the Chinese people). The International Anti-Opium Society has worked out plans which if adopted would effectually control the whole nefarious traffic not only for China but for the world. These plans start from the fact that control from the side of retail distribution and the ultimate consumer are so difficult as to be almost hopeless. But control at the source is simple. The growth of poppies can be put under supervision, and every grain of raw opium that leaves them be accounted for and traced. It is possible to determine the amount of narcotics that is required for legitimate medical use. The manufacture of this necessary amount should be put under government licensing and constant inspection. Then by serial numbering of uniform packages and records of sale all distribution could be traced. No opium products are to be shipped anywhere to the Far East except upon receipt of a requisition from the importing country certifying to the intended use, and upon prior notification to that country of the nature and date of the shipment meeting the order. Our own interest is not a purely altruistic one, nor is it confined to doing our obvious duty by China. We have the drug evil with us, and its growth in our country is one of the most disconcerting of present events. We cannot insure ourselves against this evil till we take the measures that will guarantee China against it. The laws and regulations for the control of importation, transhipment, exportation, manufacture and wholesale merchandizing that are needed to protect China from our partnership in the crime of undermining her life are the exact means of safeguarding our own health and morals. Until we have cleaned our own house we cannot take the part that we should take in urging upon other nations, especially Great Britain and Japan, effective international action. The Paris Conference promised China that the League of Nations would take up the opium and morphia traffic. Shall the United States continue its partnership in crime until forced by outside action to abandon it? Shall it enter the deliberations of the League of Nations Assembly with unclean hands? |
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| 101 | 1919.10.08 |
Dewey, John. The discrediting of idealism [ID D28468]. It will be recalled that the decision of the Versailles Conference as to Japan's claims in China was announced at the end of April. A few weeks after this time, when I was giving some lectures in one of the chief educational centres of China, the teachers and students were asked to hand in questions in writing. They responded in large numbers. The question asked most frequently, repeated over and over again in different terms, ran about as follows: 'During the war we were led to believe that with the defeat of Germany there would be established a new international order based on justice to all; that might would not henceforth make right in deciding questions between nations; that weak nations would get the same treatment as powerful ones—that, indeed, the war was fought to establish the equal rights of all nations, independently of their size or armed power. Since the decision of the peace conference shows that between nations might still makes right, that the strong nation gets its own way against a weak nation, is it not necessary for China to take steps to develop military power, and for this purpose should not military training be made a regular part of its educational system?' At every educational gathering since, this question has been uppermost. The matter is not referred to here for discussion in connection with China. China can become a strong nation only through industrial and economic development. Any military efforts, apart from this development, would only prolong the present chaos, and at most create an hallucination as to national power. The im¬plications, however, of the question come home to every one who favored the participation of the United States in the war on what are termed idealistic grounds. It comes with especial force to those who, strongly opposed to war in general, broke with the pacifists because they saw in this war a means of realizing pacific ideals—the practical reduction of armaments, the abolition of secret and oligarchic diplomacy and of special alliances, the substitution of inquiry and discussion for intrigue and threats, the founding, through the destruction of the most powerful autocracy, of a democratically ordered international government, and the consequent beginning of the end of war. Once having taken sides, vanity is enlisted. As President Wilson is moved to 'make the best' of the actual outcome, so all those who favored America's action in the war from idealistic reasons are tempted to make the best of its outcome. And 'making the best of it' means blurring over disagreeable features so as to salve vanity. Consequently the pacifists who were converted to war are obliged to undertake an unusually searching inquiry into the actual results in their relation to their earlier professions and beliefs. Were not those right who held that it was self-contradictory to try to further the permanent ideals of peace by recourse to war? Was not he who thought they might thus be promoted one of the gullible throng who swallowed the cant of idealism as a sugar coating for the bitter core of violence and greed? Is the pacifist a outrance, the absolutist of peace, the only one who can make a valid claim to untarnished idealism? Have the ideals of humanity, of self-determination, justice to the weak, been hopelessly discredited through being inscribed? The defeat of idealistic aims has been, without exaggeration, enormous. The consistent pacifist has much to urge now in his own justification; he is entitled to his flourish of private triumphings. Superficially, his opponent—I mean the one who placed himself also on idealistic ground—has not much to urge except the scant though true plea that things would have been much worse if Germany had won, as she would have done without the participation of the United States. The defeat, however, is the de¬feat which will always come to idealism that is not backed up by intelligence and by force—or, better, by an intelligent use of force. It may seem like a petty attempt to get back at the pacifist to say that the present defeat of the war ideals of the United States is due to the fact that America's use of 'Force to the uttermost, Force without stint, ' still suffered from the taint of complacent and emotional pacifism. But it may fairly be argued that the real cause of the defeat is the failure to use force adequately and in¬telligently. The ideals of the United States have been defeated in the settlement because we took into the war our sentimentalism, our attachment to moral sentiments as efficacious powers, our pious optimism as to the inevitable victory of the 'right', our childish belief that physical energy can do the work that only in¬telligence can do, our evangelical hypocrisy that morals and 'ideals' have a self-propelling and self-executing capacity. If the principle of force to the limit had been in operation in behalf of our ideals, complete information would have been had at an early date regarding the secret agreements that were out¬standing, and our share in the war would have been made to depend upon a clearing of the decks. This would have shown distrust of our Allies, and an ungenerous wish to take advantage of the hour of their critical need of our help? There speaks our inveterate sentimentalism, our unwillingness to use the force at hand in support of our ideals. Either we and our Allies were fighting for the same ends or we were not. There was no moral generosity in putting them in a position of willingness to use our help for professed democratic ends when in reality they were to use it for imperialistic ends. On our side, if we had had a tenth of the faith in concrete intelligence used at the right juncture that we had in fine phrases, many of the obstacles to securing at the end a peace in accord with our idealism would have been swept away in the earlier months of 1917. It is exceedingly silly to regard as a failure of idealism what ought rather to be charged against our own lack of common sense. Past history would have shown what any knowledge of the present situation confirms—that the type of man brought forward by war is not the type needed to make peace. The urgencies of war bring to the front the kind of man who can make quick deci¬sions in the face of immediate pressure of circumstance. Such statesmen are bound to be of the aggressive and quasi-gambling type. At best they represent the government of war, not the pursuits of normal peace with its long-time interests and consequences. Mr. Norman Angell and a few others, but Mr. Angell especially, taught all during the war the indispensable necessity of provision for popular representation at the peace conference. Everybody who heard him was impressed with the reasonableness of the proposition. But nothing was done. Was this an intel¬ligent use of the force at our command? President Wilson as a peace-maker is the exception that proves the rule. Owing to the accidents of our electoral and party system, he was the one figure in the Councils who had not been given his place and influence by the exigencies of war. He represented and upon the whole with more than ordinary representative capacity the normal interests of men and governments in times of peace. Yet in essentials he was overruled. Why? Because it was thought that, by some magic, dumb millions could be given effective voice through him. He seems to have thought that, contrary to all experience of representative government, he could 'represent' the unrepresented interests of the common people whose main concern is with peace, not war. It would be difficult to imagine any greater travesty on the use of force to the uttermost than the idea that one man could secure a just decision by appealing a la improwisatore over the heads of diplomats to the unorganized, scattered and unenlightened peoples of the earth. When he became inclined to act in this way the diplomats had only to point out to him that he would thereby decrease the wan¬ing power of governmental authority, increase popular unrest, and run the risk of plunging Europe into the chaos of political revolutions. After that, he could not even speak effectually for himself, to say nothing of 'representing' the unrepresented peoples of the earth. He made his popular appeal in the case of Fiume, indeed, but its chief tangible effect was to strengthen Im¬perial Japan in its encroachments upon the people of China. There is another force, an immense force, which might have been used in behalf of the war ideals of the United States, a force which might still be employed though less effectually. There is the economic and financial force of the United States. It may be doubted whether the world has ever seen such a spectacle as that of the last few years. The United States has extended money and credit almost 'without stint' to governments of Europe irrespective of whether they were supporting the announced policies of the United States, nay, even when those governments were doing what they could to undermine American ends. And doubdess the average American has taken pride in this fact. We are so generous, so disinterested, that we do not bargain or impose conditions. In short we are so childishly immature, so careless of our pro¬fessed ideals, that we prefer a reputation for doing the grand seigneur act to the realization of our national aims. This is the acme of our sentimentalism. Can we blame the European statesmen if to put it with blank vulgarity they play us for suckers? Such considerations as these, which might be indefinitely multiplied, show that not idealism but our idealism is discredited, an idealism of vague sentiments and good intentions, isolated from judgment as to the effective use of the force in our hands. It may be said that this is not our fault, but President Wilson's. There are a few who are entitled to the benefit of this plea, but only a few. President Wilson is a scape-goat convenient to save our vanity. But he successfully appealed to the American people and led them. If they—if we—had been different, he would have had to use different methods to get results. History will probably record that his idealistic speeches corresponded to the spirit of the American people; and that the blame which belongs to him is not that of betraying the American spirit but of embodying its weaknesses too faithfully. Take one example. The use of force in behalf of our professed ideals would certainly have involved the use of all the thinking, speaking and writing of the liberals and radicals who in the end could alone give sympathetic and intelligent support to the aims eloquently set forth by President Wilson. Instead, we had a policy of suppression of free speech, of espionage, and of encouragement of the violent unrestraint characteristic of the reactionary. It is easy to blame for this Mr. Wilson's personal desire to play the part of Atlas supporting alone the universe of free ideals. An accomplice his conceit assuredly was, but the American people who revelled in emotionalism and who grovelled in sacrifice of its liberties is the responsible cause. Immaturity and inexperience in international affairs consequent upon our isolation mitigate the blame. But they would not have taken the form they took were it not for our traditional evangelical trust in morals apart from intelligence, and in ideals apart from executive and engineering force. Our Christianity has become identified with vague feeling and with an optimism which we think is a sign of a pious faith in Providence but which in reality is a trust in luck, a deification of the feeling of success regardless of any intelligent discrimination of the nature of success. It may be that the words idealism and ideals will have to go— that they are hopelessly discredited. It may be that they will become synonyms for romanticism, for blind sentimentalism, for faith in mere good intentions, or that they will come to be regarded as decorative verbal screens behind which to conduct sinister plans. But the issue is real, not verbal. There remains a difference between narrow and partial ends and full and far reaching ends; between the success of the few for the moment and the happiness of the many for an enduring time; a difference between identifying happiness with the elements of a meagre and hard life and those of a varied and free life. This is the only difference between materialism and idealism that counts. And until we act persistently upon the fact that the difference depends upon the use of force and that force can be directed only by intelligence, we shall continue to dwell in a world where the difference between materialism and idealism will be thought to be a matter of opin¬ion, argument and personal taste. To go on opposing ideals and force to each other is to perpetuate this regime. The issue is not that of indulging in ideals versus using force in a realistic way. As long as we make this opposition we render our ideals impotent, and we play into the hands of those who conceive force as pri¬marily military. Our idealism will never prosper until it rests upon the organization and resolute use of the greater forces of modern life: industry, commerce, finance, scientific inquiry and discus¬sion and the actualities of human companionship. |
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| 102 | 1919.10.10-15 | John Dewey : Lectures in Taiyuan to universities and to the annual meeting of the Chinese Federation of Educational Associations. |
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| 103 | 1919.10.10 | John Dewey : Lecture on 'Cultivation of character as the ultimate aim of education' delivered at Shanxi University. = Pin ge zhi yang cheng wei jiao yu zhi wu shang mu di. Hu Shi interpreter ; Deng Chumin recorder. In :Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 7 (Nov. 15, 1919). |
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| 104 | 1919.10.12 | John Dewey : Lecture 'School and village' at the Normal School of the headquarters of the Tenth Regiment of the Infantry of the Shanxi Army in Taiyuan. = Xue xiao yu xiang li. Hu Shi interpreter ; Deng Chumin recorder. In : Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 7 (Nov. 15, 1919). |
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| 105 | 1919.10.18-1920.03.05 (pu |
John Dewey : Lectures 'Ethics' in Beijing. = Lun li jiang yan ji lue. Hu Shi interpreter. In : Xue deng ; Oct. 18, 24 ; Nov. 5, 6 ; Dec. 3, 8, 21, 28, 30 (1919). Jan. 2 ; Febr. 14, 15, 24 ; March 3, 4, 5 (1920). 1. 'The nature of the discussion'. 2. 'The constant and the changing elements in morality'. 3. 'Morality and human nature'. 4. 'The role of emotion in morality'. 5. 'Social emotion. 6. 'Selfishness'. 7.-8. 'Self-regard and regard for others'. 9.-10. 'Virtue and vice'. 11. 'A comparison of Eastern thought and Western thought'. 12. 'Desire and happiness'. 13. 'Desire and temptation'. 14. 'Desire and its relationship to customs and institutions'. 15. 'The essence of a democratic institution'. |
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| 106 | 1919.10.19 |
Banquet to celebrate John Dewey's sixtieth birthday in Beijing. Cai, Yuanpei. Zai Duwei bo shi 60 zhi sheng ri wan yang hui shang zhi yan shuo [ID D28515]. At the banquet, Cai Yuanpei seized on this special opportunity to portray Dewey as a modern-day Confucius. "Confucius said respect the emperor (wang), the learned doctor (bo shi) [Dewey] advocates democracy ; Confucius said females are a problem to raise, the learned doctor [Dewey] advocates equal rights for men and women ; Confucius said transmit not create, the learned doctor [Dewey] advocates creativity". In his brief speech, Cai emphasized underlying similarities between Dewey and Confucius despite their differences : one embodies the spirit of modern West, and the other represents the wisdom of ancient China ; one values democracy, equality, and creativity, and the other privileges monarchy, hierarchy, and tradition. According to Cai, Dewey and Confucius were both educators of the common people, shared the same faith in education as a vehicle for social change, and insisted on the unity of thought and action. Cai believed that these commonalities pointed to the possibility of 'a merger between Eastern and Western cultures'. |
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| 107 | 1919.11.02 |
Letter from John Dewey to Evelyn Dewey [November 2, 1919] Dear Evelyn… Last night we went t[o] another dinnr at the hotel and during the dancing Ed Thomas of Chicago recognized me and astonished me by telling me who he was. He is down here from Chitato spend a month and take the Consular examinations. He thinks a change for the better is approaching in Russia and he wants to be redy for business hen that time comes. He is coming to lunch today and I asked him to stay in this apt while we are away, but that may not prove to be convenient he will decide when he comes. This afternoon we go to Mr Wans wedding at the naval club and tonight at eight we start for Mukden. We are to stay at the Japanese hotel so we shall probable send no letters from there. We expect to stay there not m[o]re than four days… [John Dewey] |
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| 108 | 1919.11.02-11.10 ? | John Dewey departs at 20 hour to Mukden = Shenyang and stays about a week. |
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| 109 | 1919.11.12-1920.01 |
John Dewey : Lectures 'Types of thinking' at National Beijing University. = Si xiang zhi pai bie. Hu Shi interpreter ; Shao Yu, Fu Lu, Wu Kang, Luo Jialun recorder. In : Xue deng ; Nov. 20, 21, 28, 29 ; Dec. 4, 5, 12, 13, 19, 20 (1919). Jan. 22, 25 (1920). 1. 'Aristotle's concept of species'. 2. 'Characteristics of Aristotle's thought'. 3. 'Descartes : extension and motion'. 4. 'Characteristics of Descartes' thought'. 5. 'John Locke : sensation and reflection'. 6. 'Characteristics of Locke's thought'. 7. 'Experimentalism, answer to the conflict between empiricism and rationalism'. 8. 'Characteristics of experimentalist thought'. |
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| 110 | 1919.11.15 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'School and village' at the Normal School of the headquarters of the Tenth Regiment of the Infantry of the Shanxi Army in Taiyuan. = Xue xiao yu xiang li. Hu Shi interpreter ; Deng Chumin recorder. In : Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 7 (Nov. 15, 1919). |
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| 111 | 1919.11.15 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture on 'Cultivation of character as the ultimate aim of education' delivered at Shanxi University. = Pin ge zhi yang cheng wei jiao yu zhi wu shang mu di. Hu Shi interpreter ; Deng Chumin recorder. In :Xin Zhongguo ; vol. 1, no 7 (Nov. 15, 1919). |
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| 112 | 1919.11.20-1920.01.15 (pu |
John Dewey : Lectures 'Types of thinking' at National Beijing University. = Si xiang zhi pai bie. Hu Shi interpreter ; Shao Yu, Fu Lu, Wu Kang, Luo Jialun recorder. In : Xue deng ; Nov. 20, 21, 28, 29 ; Dec. 4, 5, 12, 13, 19, 20 (1919). Jan. 22, 25 (1920). 1. Aristotle's concept of species. 2. Characteristics of Aristotle's thought. 3. Descartes : extension and motion. 4. Characteristics of Descartes' thought. 5. John Locke : sensation and reflection. 6. Characteristics of Locke's thought. 7. Experimentalism, answer to the conflict between empiricism and rationalism. 8. Characteristics of experimentalist thought. |
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| 113 | 1919.11.27 | John Dewey visits the Qinghua University for Thanksgiving. |
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| 114 | 1919.12 |
Chen, Duxiu. Shi xing min zhi de ji chu. [ID D28554]. [The basis for the realization of democracy]. Chen Duxiu was highly interested in John Dewey's lecture on 'Democratic developments in America'. Chen began his essay by acknowledging Dewey's broad delineation of democracy in terms of political constitution, civil rights, social equality, and economic justice. Chen remarked that all socialists would share Dewey's belief about social and economic democracy. He endorsed Dewey's claim that the realization of democracy should not be limited to the political sphere. 'The elevation of social life' should be the primary goal. Chen did not accept everything Dewey said. He actually suggested that Dewey blend the four dimensions into two : the political and the socioeconomic. Chen did not trust what Dewey said about political democracy : that individual liberties can be protected by the constitution and that public opinion can be secured by a republican government. In light of the total failure of China's republican government, Chen argued that a mere system of representation and constitutionalism would not ensure the realization of political democracy. He said that the best system was 'direct legislation', which would lead to 'the breaking down of the distinction between those who govern and those who were governed'. Chen was especially inspired by Dewey's historical account of the United States' grassroots democracy, which was developed from self-governing villages and towns rather than imposed by the legislation of the federal government. Chen's critique of Dewey's conception of democracy reflected his own concern with socio-economic questions as well as his limited understanding of democratic procedure and institutions. In his proposal, Chen took Dewey's advice to use China's traditional guild system to build a grassroots foundation. He believed that China could 'develop democracy using England and America as a model. He quoted from Dewey's lecture to emphasize democracy as the best possible society 'because democracy means education. |
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| 115 | 1919.12.20 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The University and public opinion in a democracy' at National Beijing University on the twenty-second anniversary of its founding. = Da xue yu min zhi guo yu lun di zhong yao. Hu Shi interpreter ; Gao Shangde recorder. In : Chen bao fu kan ; Dec. 20 (1919). |
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| 116 | 1919.12.24 | John Dewey : Lecture in Jinan at the Hall of the Provincial Assembly. |
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| 117 | 1919.12.31-1920.01.02 ? | John Dewey stays in Tianjin. |
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| 118 | 1920-1921 | Zhao Yuanren is interpreter for Bertrand Russell and John Dewey in China. |
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| 119 | 1920 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan [ID D18042]. Preface John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University, and his wife, Alice C. Dewey, who wrote the letters reproduced in this book, left the United States early in 1919 for a trip to Japan. The trip was eagerly embarked on, as they had desired for many years to see at least something of the Eastern Hemisphere. The journey was to be solely for pleasure, but just before their departure from San Francisco, Professor Dewey was invited, by cable, to lecture at the Imperial University at Tokyo, and later at a number of other points in the Japanese Empire. They traveled and visited in Japan for some three to four months and in May, after a most happy experience, made doubly so by the unexpected courtesies extended them, they decided to go on to China, at least for a few weeks, before returning to the United States. The fascination of the struggle going on in China for a unified and independent democracy caused them to alter their plan to return to the United States in the summer of 1919. Professor Dewey applied to Columbia University for a year’s leave of absence, which was granted, and with Mrs. Dewey, is still in China. Both are lecturing and conferring, endeavoring to take some of the story of a Western Democracy to an Ancient Empire, and in turn are enjoying an experience, which, as the letters indicate, they value as a great enrichment of their own lives. The letters were written to their children in America, without thought of their ever appearing in print. Evelyn Dewey. |
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| 120 | 1920.01.01, 02, 04 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children Tientsin Jan 1 1920 We have got as far as this, both in time and space. We didnt go to the tomb of Confucius after all, as the connections were bad. Slow trains we knew, and when the guides found out they were also only thrid class, they rather withdrew the idea, and mamma hadnt wanted to go anytime, thinking the absent pilgrims and not the tomb the sight to see; while as for me I would willingly have been a present pilgrim if the only one. But we are now deluding ourselves with the prospect of going next spring when we not only see the pilgrims but also climb the sacred mountain. Aise from the exitement of not going and not lecturing, we had a luncheon and exhibition of old Chinese physical exercises with and by General Ma Liang. He is a story by hiself even more so than the Mohammadan meal and the show he gave us, too long to be tucked in, so Ill let it go now, save that the exercises are the original of the Japanese Jiu jitsu, which like everything else Japanese seems to have come from China. However Im bound to ay they have improved on the original a good deal, tho what we saw was well done, including the sickening conclusion, when eight or ten bricks were laid on a mans head and smahed with another brick, and a big paving stone at least four inches think, nearer six, was smashed with a big sledge hammer on the chest of one of the athletes, in fact two in succession one on the east chest and one on the west. He was stripped to the waist with a temperature of about 15 F, and the stone was fairly covered with the thick frost you see on the under side of the stones when they are frozen into the ground. The sight of the rough cold thing on a mans vare skin was almost enough for me, to say nothing of having it broken into four pieces on me. We were also taken to a show, thetre four or five plays acted by school boys of between twelve and sixteen, wh poor boys who are taught regular lessons half a day and plyacting the ot[h]er half, supported by the public, and shows are free. It was more interesting than the professional acting we saw at first, we havent been to a professional in Peking. The first was a moral play with a spoken moral at the end, namely not to take a concubine. Good advice of course, but probably not so much needed by these poor boys as by the millionaire officials. The queerness of the method of teaching the moral to little boys didnt seem to strike anybody. The play began with in a brothel, with the old man coming in to look over the girls, to pick out the one he wanted to buy—four or five were paraded before him. Of course she has a lover who is an habitue of the brothel and who is smuggled into the buyers house as her brother, and for whose sake the lady concubine attempts to poison him [in ink] her husband, [in ink] and a general suicide etc at the end—that is, next to the end, just before the Moral. The others were scenes adapted from the old historic folklore, and one were more interesting, especially as one twelve year old boy has real talent. He could make a lot of money on the vaudeville stage in U S; its funny how similar methods are, barring the ftone they sing in. Jan 2, still '20. Yesterday we had a day off. Except that in the morning we had a visit from a delegation of students repreentatives of the Students Unions. They and not the officials invited us here. There were four boys and three girls, the latter all from the Anglo-Chinese School, methodist. They all spoke some english, the girls very good, an[d] they were very chatty, more conversational and less selfconscious Lucy says than any of the Peking girls she has seen. It was quite extraordinary—this joint delegation. Suh Hu says that the afternoon before he visite[d] the Union headquarters ad found in each room a committee composed of boys and girls working togther, quite free from any consciousness, a sight which he says is the most encouraging he has yet seen in China. Only here and in Shanghia are such things possible. Why we also heard so much about Turkish women and so little about Chinese orietnalism, unless it was the sightseer's eye for the picturesque veil. Yesterday morning's paper said that the Minister of Interior Chancellor Tsai had resigned, owing to the failure of mediation negotiations. Suh Hu [Hu Shi] came in late last night, had spent part of the day with others hunting for Tsai who had disappeared from Peking, presumably to Tientsin; that all the principals of the schools from elementary up had resigned and that educational chaos reigned supreme; also that one reason General Wu, the government mediator offered for the teachers going back to work was the impending attempt to restore the monarchy. Hu was quite excited last night, as yesterday was the day set according to rumors, but this morning paper hadnt a word about it. Just what is going to happen to my lectures now I dont know, but I hope some way will be foun[d] to resume them without waiting an endless time which will mean I will never finish and earn my salary in Peking. This afternoon mamma and I both speak at the same meeting, which is also the first time for that arrangment. It is the difference between the younger generation and the old. At a recent meeting, Xn, in Shanghai, the Chinese proposed and amalgamation of the Y M C A and Y W C A—it would be interesting to see the fluttering in the male dovecotes. But it is one of many signs that the younger generation of Chinese is ready to go further than the alleged liberal westerner, who has his obssessions as to what the Chinese will and will not stand for—to say nothing of their own inner feelings as to what they will stand for themselves. In the past from combined timidty and politeness the Chinese have hesitated to tell their Xn confreres just what they thought and wanted, but the nationalist feeling is grwoing so rapidly that that wont last much longer. Its only fair to say that some of the missionary element would gladly abdicate when they saw the Chinese disposed to take || responsibility, while the Y M C A is already organized with the Chinese in at least nominal control, and with all the facilities for actual control. Peking Home, Jan 4 When we get back here and find all the rented things gone and our own here and to be chased after, we realize that few millionaires have naything on us in the way of furnsihed houses, what with our palce at 2880, our country mansion at Huntington, our spring residence on Russian Hill and our winter resort here. Whether mama will be able to find another to furnish before we leave China I dont know… Dad |
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| 121 | 1920 |
Gründung der Xiangtan Society for the Promotion of Education durch Mao Zedong [et al.]. Mao explained his newspaper 'Xiang Jiang ping lun' : "This paper is concerned purely with academic theories and with social criticism. We do not meddle at all in practical politics.” In the 'Declaration' of the society Mao wrote : “Education is an instrument for promoting the progress of society ; an educator is a person who utilizes this instrument… Dr. [John] Dewey of America has come to the East. His new theory of education is well worth studying". |
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| 122 | 1920 |
[Dewey, John]. Duwei wu da jiang yan. Hu Shi yi. [ID D25871]. [Five major lecture series of John Dewey in Beijing]. Hu Shi : "Dr. Dewey intends to revise and expand his original lecture notes for publication in book form. When his manuscript is complete, I hope to translate it into Chinese, so that both English and Chinese versions can be published at the same time." Robert W. Clopton : Unfortunately this intention was not carried out. Dewey's lectures were published in Chinese, many of them in the Bulletin of the Ministry of Education. Dewey referred in his lecture on ethics to Sun Yat-sen's theory : 'To practice means to seek knowledge. A theory must be tested before it becomes accurate. I fully agreed with the great Chinese statesman Dr. Sun Yat-sen, when he said the old saying, 'to know is easy ; to act is difficult' has contributed a great deal to the backwardness of China, because under the influence of the saying people have become lazy and hesitant to do anything. It is true that we cannot always anticipate with accuracy the consequences of what we do. But this is no warrant for us to sit idle. The more we try doing something, the more experience we have and therefore the more knowledge we can get. The attempt to get knowledge apart from doing and applying it in a practical situation never will succeed. Jessica Wang : Hu Shi's translations seem highly problematic – mostly in style and tone and occasionally in content. Hu's eloquent, pompous, and proselytizing style marked a dramatic difference from Dewey's usually unassuming and unimposing style. I do not mean to suggest that Hu Shi intended to distort Dewey's lectures, nor do I mean to imply that the records of Dewey's lectures in China were largely fabricated and unreliable. Nonetheless, we may reasonably believe that Hu may have occasionally altered the meanings of what Dewey said to highlight a particular point or to promote a certain agenda. Even though these occasional anomalies may seem minor, they eventually affected the way Chinese intellectuals responded to Dewey. |
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| 123 | 1920 |
Hu, Shi. Wen xue gai liang chu yi. In : Xin qing nian ; vol. 2, no 5 (1917). While doing his Ph.D. work under Dewey, Hu Shi argued in this article, that 'wenyan' was no longer compatible with the Chinese modern experience and that 'baihua' – the vernacular – should be used to revitalize Chinese language and literature. Dewey's presence in China's intellectual scene provided that dimension of understanding. That is, the use of 'baihua' was both a means and an end. To argue that 'baihua' is a tool for expressing ideas was correct, but partial, for language is not only a tool : language means communication and by communication we life and an associative life is formed. Dewey gave hig regards to the New Culture Movement occasioned by language reform. He accepted Hu Shi's thesis that the 'Baihua' Movement embraced Chinese enlightenment. Dewey began to see the fundamental problem in China in the matter of poor and ineffective communication, which in turn would explain many of China's social problems. 'Communication' therefore offered a unique perspective for Dewey to analyze situations in China, and this approach differentiated Dewey fundamentally from many of his Chinese followers and Western thinkers. To discredit the Confucian family system as a defective system of language and communication became the starting point in Dewey's construction of a new Chinese mind. The 'Baihua' Movement was introduced because 'baihua' could facilitate the expression of new ideas. |
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| 124 | 1920.01.04 |
Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey children 135 Morrison Street, Sunday, Jan 4 [1920] Dear Folks. Its been perfect ages since I have written but I have inumerable alibis. In the first place when we first decided to furnish the flat ourselves I went with Mamma to furniture street to look for stuff. I got so cold running around their old stone houses that I was laid up in bed with tonsilitis for two days. I rose from my bed of pain to go to Mrs Hortons dance and it quite cured me. Also I had a very nice time. There are a lot of Italian officers here arranging for D'Annunzios Rome Tokyo flight. They are like Italian officers every where and most amusing. Also Admiral Gleaves and all his staff were there, much gold lace and uniforms. The next day was spent in frantice packing, moving, and buying furniture and a tea dance in the afternoon by way of a rest. I see Dad has writ[t]en numerous letters and told about Shantung. We had an interesting time there and in some ways quite entertaining. You should have seen us chummig with the savage Ma Liang. I sat next him at the Governors dinner and as he is a Mohamedan he couldnt eat anything. I couldnt converse with him very well and neither did the man on the other side so he amused himself by brushing his mustache with a cunning little brush he carries in his pocket. He has the best manners and seems the most amiable of any of those people we have met except Tuchun Yen of Shansi. He may put his old family doctor to death by torture but he doesnt act that way in public. We stopped for three days in Tientsin, got there New Years Eve with our trunk delayed and so were exiled to a remote place outside the dining room for diner. There are street cars in Tientsin and we were so thrilled by the sight that we promptly jumped on one and rode. There isnt a great deal there in the way of sights, just the concessions, like any small town, and the Chinese city. It was very interesting, the first place in China where the Chinese women get out-and-do things that Ive seen. They say Tientsin and Shanghai are the only two. They men and women students work together on committees and in a small audience of about thirty that Suh Hu [Hu Shi] spoke to they sat together. The girls that came to receive us were the nicest and most interesting that I have met in China. They can talk, which is a great relief, start conversations of their own accord and not have things pulled out by questions all the time. And they talk about everything that a girl at home talks about. Two of them, cunning little mites of things, are going to America next year to prepare for college and are planning to go about the same time we do, so we may come home with them under our arms. I hope so. Poor Mamma has been out all morning buying dishpans and things so we can have something to eat without sponging off the neighbors. 6.30 p.m. Mother and I have been in the house about half an hour now after a wild afternoon hunting for a parlor table and soem cooking things. The rickshaw man has just come up to say that the soldiees are looting out un the Chinese city and all the shops are shut. We seem to have got in just in time that is where we were. It all looked peaceful enough then. There have been rumors of an attempt to restore the boy emperor and we are wondering if this is the first act. I have just been out in the kitchen to tell the boy to go down and see what he could find out from the people in the street and the cook informed me Liu go down side. So as soon as Liu go top side again I shall continue this and tell you what he has found out. Ha says that last night the soldiers roobeed a Chinese bank and tonight are robbing more. They Belong to Feng Kuo Chang an ec-president now deceased. He died a few days ago and omitted to pay the soldiers before so doing. They haveny been paid in four months and now apparently they are collecting. This afternoon when Mamma and I first went out we passed a lot of soldiers taking a huge gun along the streets and this explains it. There may be no end of trouble now as the whole administration is in a mess from the teachers strike. Chancellor Tsai has resigned and disappeared again and it looks as tho the whole educational system had gone kersmash. Now the rest may go too. The soldiers are recruited f[r]om the brigands and the brigands from the ex-soldiers, so there isnt much choice. On the whole the soldiers behave pretty well when they are paid, but nobody in China has been paid now for several months. This mornings paper had an awful story about the soldiers in Tsinanfu, which we seem to have left just in time. There they enteres a theater where the studenys were celebrating New Years with some plays they gave themselves. The soldiers boke in and attacked the students, beating them down, two were injured so badly that they may die. The girls were attacked and robbed, some even of their clothes. The military police finally came to the rescue and drove out the police and recovered some of the stolen property. The city is under martial law, I never saw so many soldiers standind around with their bayonets fixed in my life nd hope I never do again. It gives you creepy feeling, not at all pleasant to come on a large bunch of bayonets every tim[e] you go round a corner. Well, I must finish this and get it off or it will hang on forever. We found a lot of mail waiting for us and it sure was welcome. Loads of love to all and I hope Elizabeth had a nice birthday. [Lucy Dewey] |
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| 125 | 1920.01.13 |
Letter from John Dewey to John Jacob Coss 135 Morrison St Peking Jan 13 '20 Dear Coss, Our letters crossed each other, so I hope mine, with the statement of courses, reached you in season. The day it yours came one of my Chinese friends brought up the question of my staying another year I am anxious to get home, and yet age has crept upon me enough so that the ease of living here, to say nothing of more intrinsic values, is tempting, especially as letters are full of the high cost of living, the difficulty of getting "help" etc. In a small and modest flat, with a family of three we have three servants for less than one would cost at home in wages—and they feed themselves, except of course for sqweeze on us, and we pay the highest going rate. Doubtless one smart man could do the work of these three, but the large population of China has to be kept alive and going somehow, and everything in China, tempo of work and the sobiability of numbers as well as the rate of pay is adapted to that fact. Well I started out to say that the question of our remaning another year had been tentatively raised. It will take a month or six weeks to have anything definite come of the suggestion, but Im mentioning it now so if a cablegram comes from me you will have some word. It has been a worth while experience, not so much for things specifically learned as for the entirely new perspective and horizon in general. Nothing western looks quite the same an[y] more, and this is as near to a renewal of youth as can be hoped for in this world. From this distance our sectrain differences in philosoph[y] look as technical and unreal as our similar differences in religion. Whether I am accomplishing naything as well as getting a great deal is another matter. China remains a massive blank and impenetrable wall, when it comes to judgment. My guess is that what is accomplished is mostly by way of "giving face" to the younger liberal element. Its a sort of outside reinforcement in spite of its vagueness. Other times I think Chinese civilization is so thick and selfcentred that no foreign influence presented via a foreigner even scratches the surface. However some of the younger Chinese, among whom our Suh Hu [Hu Shi] is a marked leader are keeping things stirred up. At present the war is on on the old family system, with a demand for the emancipation of women—which doesn[t] mean the vote which amounts to nothing as yet for the men, but breaking down the truly Oriental seclusion and subjection. Most foreigners her[e] are more conservative here than the liberal Chinese. A large part of the missionary elecent, especially the older ones, have compensated for their temerity in introducing new religious ideas and rites by outdoing the Chinese in social conservatism. in other lines. Some of the younger men are marked excpetions. The Rockefeller medical foundation here has coeducation and its head Roger Greene (not a physician but administrative head) is urging coeducation on all the missionary colleges. I was much interested in your college news which is the first Ive had, especially of course in the new course which sounds most promising, also oin the salary matter. The younger married men must have been in an awful condition with the hcl[High cost of living]. If there is anything printed about the mental test etc matter I wish you would have it sent me. I hope go out to the Boxer indemnity college once a week, Tsing Hua and can use it there. The "college" has in reality but about a year's college work; many of the men are disconcerted because some American colleges give two and even three years college credit, except in engineering lines where but the one year is given. This is producing internal friction in the institution as the engineering, or rather scientific men, think they are discriminated aginst, not in America but at home. The problem of sending students to America and what to do with they return de[f]inite[?] and exact idea of the problem. I wish [Adam Leroy] Jones could get a meeting of the some of the representative at Chinese students there, especia[l]ly those with a Tsing Hua background, and get their ideas of the problem and of the defects in the present method. Illogically [p]erhaps without a clear idea of the elements of the problem I have come to a conclusion about one element in its solution—that Tsing Hua should become a four year college and send to America a smaller number, but more mature and advanced, for specialed graduate work. One of the great questions is the demand for technical studies at the expense of students getting much real idea of western civilization. Looked at from this end, it wouldnt be a bad idea to have all Chinese students (and Japanese too) required to take your new frsshman course, even the graduate and technical students. This is meant seriously. I dont belive the problem of Oriental students ca[n] be dealt with satisfactorily till some especial arrangements are made for them in spite of its upsetting uniformity of administration. Over here they would probably strike before they would go back into a freshman course, but the losing face element wouldnt be so strong there… Sincerely yours, John Dewey. |
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| 126 | 1920.01.15 |
Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes 135 Morrison St, Peking Jan 15 '20 Dear Barnes,… On account of the intepretation I have to write my articles lecture notes out much more fully than ever before, several a week, and whe[n] I have written home and the articles I contracted for with N R and Asia, I have am more than satiated with writing. Howver that doesnt apply the last few weeks, for Ive been on strike—dont let [A. (Alexander) Mitchell] Palmer know or Ill be deported. The Peking teacher went on strike late in Dec because they were behind in pay three months and were getting paid fifty percent in depreciated notes, worth fifty on the dollar at that. The minister of Education with a truly American fatuity of officials instead of least appearing to sympathize with them rather ridiculed him so they demanded his scalp too. Then he tried to set the students against the teachers and the former then demanded his scalp also. Up to this time many of the teachers had been quite consrvative and opposed to the student movement. Now they are rather solidified. The teachers got this week everything they were after except the dismissal of the minister. That would have broug[ht] the whole cabinet tumbling down. My strike was rather an enforces sympathetic, as I have no grievances at all, but it makes a good story just the same. All countries are alike tho the level differs. Here any liberal sentiment at all, say as much so as the platituudes of the N Y Times on the liberalism of the past that has become orthodox, [pencil comma] is regarded as out and out Bolshevism, I see from the cables that the latest form of propaganda is that Japan must again intervene in Siberia ifn order to prevent the Bolshvising of China. Land is divided here and the farmers are the real country and factory industry is in its infancy. There is as much danger of Bolshevizing China as there is of the farmers of Berks Co turning Bols. But verything goes when it comes to propaganda. The only question left is the depths of human gullibility. If the Japanese try to hold Siberia, it is the beginning of the end in my opinion and there is that [in pencil w. caret] much reason for hoping the propaganda will succeed. There is one danger. Gt Britain and France may promise J something and get tied up to back her. It is disgusting by the way what a pawnbroking business the big nations do over here—making China loans of a few millions dollars conditioned often on her buying something she doesnt want at a big discoun | high rate of interest, and with a view to getting a mortgage on something in the future. Then, while the western powers wouldnt dream of doing such things nearer home where there is publicity, the Chinese naturally conclude this is the general western standard I was interested in your suggestion about a seminar in esthetics. But I cant rise to my part in it. I have always eschewed esthetics, just why I dont know, but I think it is because I wanted to reserve one region from a somewhat devastating analysis, one part of experience where I didnt think more than I did anything else. And now I have a pretty fixed repulsion agt all esthetic discussion. I feel about it precisely as the average intelligent man feels about all philosophical discussion, including the branches that excite me very much… I recd a letter the other day asking me to join the Leuage for Oppressed Peoples. Im thinking of writing back and saying I will when they include the U S among the oppressed peoples—its shameful that about the only U S news we get here is raids, deportations, semi-officials lynchings, strikes etc. China is in many respects the Europe of the 17th century. The rest of the world wont give her two centuries in which to develop in her own way. Meanwhile the Asia of Russia, China and India is a tremendous fact. At bottom the situation is much like two locomotives plunging at each other—the distance between them is great but they are both getting momentum—or rather the smallest one has great momentum and the big one is beginnin[g] to get it. This sounds pessimistic. Meantime, China is a most interesting spot to live in and also, compared with reports of hcl and lack of service in America a delightfully easy one. I wrote somebody the other day it had the nearest effect to a renewal of youth conceivable. It places everythin[g] in a new perspective so nothing looks alike as it did before. The other day we had the opportunity to see some of the best old Chinese paintings still remaining in China, Sung dynasty and in perfect conditions. Sorry you werent along. To my surprise, in the best the technique was so wonderful that it seemed to get ahead of the feeeling. But I think that is because from lack of background and of [in pencil w. caret] sufficiently long acquintance with the pictures, [in pencil w. caret] it is easier to get the technique than the feeling. Howver there is no doubt the Chinese are virtuosos all right, the cultivated ones. Their devotion to handwriting, to characters shows that. Lots of them devote an hour or two a day to it, just making the characters for practise, and it is my impression they regard it as a higher art than painting or anything directly representative in art. For handling of strokes—that word seems better than lines—both in themselves and in spacing, [pencil comma] I dont believe the world has naything finer to show than two or three of these paintings we saw—men whose names I didnt recognize—which is fairly typical of our general provincialism with respect to Asia. We have engaged passage home for next August. Evelyn is now on her way to Vancouver and will join us in about a month. Please give our regards to Mrs Barnes, and with the same to you, Sincerely yours, John Dewey |
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| 127 | 1920.01.20 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The concept of right in Western thought' at Chinese University, Beijing. = Xi fang si xiang zhong zhi chuan li guan nian. Hu Shi interpreter ; Wang Tongzhao, Xie Bing recorder. In : Xue deng ; Jan. 27-28 (1920). |
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| 128 | 1920.01.27-28 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The concept of right in Western thought' at Chinese University, Beijing. = Xi fang si xiang zhong zhi chuan li guan nian. Hu Shi interpreter ; Wang Tongzhao, Xie Bing recorder. In : Xue deng ; Jan. 27-28 (1920). |
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| 129 | 1920.02.08 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Evelyn Dewey Peking Feb 8th [1920] Sunday. Dearest Evelyn… Pa and I have just been to an exhibition of Mr Liens pictures. They are said to be the best collection in China, tho not large they are all perfect… There is nothing to tell you except that we are jumping out of boots now that we have heard from you and shall continue to jump till you get here which will be soon. I wish I could be in the Sontag Hotel when you get there. But the thought of all that travel is enough to take away the taste for a trip just to come right back. Peking weather is delightful again tho colder than at any time before… The students are going to work again tomorrow to keep the govt from shutting up the schools and also to fix the blame on the gvt where it belongs. The govft here is behaving as badly as the Japanese thems[elves] Now this must go if it gets to you on time. Loads of love till we meet. Mama. |
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| 130 | 1920.02.11 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children 135 Morrison St Peking Feb 2 11 Dearest children, We are expecting Ev to arrive here a week from to morrow, so says a telegram we recd from Tokyo; she gets to Seoul in Korea in two days... I feel free to mention the fact that Suh Hu [Hu Shi] asked us about staying over another year, to work on the educational dept of the university. Ev included, because I dont think there is anything in it, tho we havent given any answer yet, waiting for Evs arrival. There is only one good reason for staying and that's on mother's account, that is to say housekeeping. When things are so easy here it looks hard on her to subject her to the strains of the hcl and servants in N Y. But I think personally Ive got about all I can get from a stay here now. Id rather come back and go home by India or Russia a few years from now. Also I want to see the family, and not lose all track of my country—tho Suh Hu [Hu Shi] says I would get deported if I went back now. Fred seemed to be worrying about my connection with the new school, so I wrote them to announce my course there in such a way that it wouldn't seem as if I had given up there Columbia… We are still waiting to hear what will happen when my work finishes here next month. Presumably I go to the Yangste valley in general and Nanking in particular to lecture, but whether for one month or three I don[t] know. If for one three we shant get south to Foochow and Canton till summer very hot weather, and little time in Japan on our return, earlier tho still hot enough, and have some weeks in Japan to complete our sightseeing there, Nikko etc. When we find out and Ev gets here we shall have to decide what the rest of the family will do when I go to Nanking—they wont want three mos there as it is not exciting. Another thing agt staying over another year is the uncertainty of this situation. Things have been badly broken up, no lectures last two weeks. No actual strike, but no regular classes either. They are meeting everyday to decide upon whether to strike, the more responsible ones trying to prevent it, the hot heads wanting to as a protest agt beating up of students and arests of students, and dissolution of union at demand of J govt; also the pro-oficial spies among them are urging a strike, as the govt would like to have them do it, to close schools, get students out of Peking and give them free hand to open direct negotiations with J about Shntung. The situation was very tense this last week, with the arrests and the police and lmilitary here and in Tinetsin taking the overt action agt the students. Its pretty clear that the first chapter in the movement is now ended, and what will happen next its too much to say. J has felt the boycott very much, and one hand is ready to make some concessions and on the other is forcing the Chinese military party to direct suppression by use of force of the boycott. They have taken Tientsin as the place of for an object lesson, Even if they break it, it wll be a long time before J wholly recovers, The movement toward native production especially in cotton has taken a big leap forward, tho there is great difficulty in importing machinery. Tomorrow is another of the endless holidays here—this time the anniversary of the abdication of the Manchu dynsaty in 1912—tho it might as well be Lincolns birthday here as there. Thursday has been my Tsing Hua day and all the holidays have thoughtfully come on that day. Ev arrives here on Thursday tho, and Im hoping there will be a holiday next week as the 20th is the New Year day, and many schools have a three day holiday. Lots of love to you all Dad. |
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| 131 | 1920.02.13 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Frederick A., Sabino, & Elizabeth Braley Dewey Peking Feb 13th. [1920] Dearest children, Fred, Bino and Elizabeth. It seems by the records I have been making a very bad account in writing home lately. Things go the sme here as elsewhere tho I have not the same excuse of hard work and being tired, but we get domestic and nothing of new importance happens and I allow myself to get busy with the passing incidents and with taling to people. Today is a great day, for Evelyn is landing or has landed on the continent of Asia if she has carried out the plans she wired to us from Tokyo. It seems to put the freshness and the sensation back into the strange appearances that have now become familiar. You know she will get here the day before New years and if she is not tired or sick we ought to have a great time for ten days seeing the markets and the exhibitions. The weathe[r] here is sunny and not too cold, tho it is the coldest of the year. We may still have snow and then it will be hard work standing on the stone floors, looking. But it is all a matter of clothing and the Chinese know how to adapt themselves. The food I have already talked about, but the cl[o]thes ought to be seen to be understood. Lately I have been relieving my own distress as well as mitigating the pains of others a little by putting some little children in K.G. for the rest of this year. Lucy has one particular favorite and the first day this child went she was like a stuffed ball in appearance, her arms stuck out like the wadded dolls and were not much more movable. if the children fall down here there is nothing to worry about. The shoes are the most convincing of our vanities for they are made of felt with thick soles and wadded linings, no heels. The college girl here would not pass on the Smith or Brynmawr campus. All her clothes are made of cotton cloth like the ones I sent home, only in general the good old colors have gone. They wear fur lined coats, both small and over coats made of a dirty brown color and sometimes a long wool overcoat like a very narrow mans ulster with a cheap fur collar. In the house they all wear the thin silk skirts of black put on over several pairs of trousers, and at least four coats one on top of the other, one or two of them being lined with fur. I think they tell the truth when they say they are never cold. no cellars, stone floor, no rug if a little stove with fire they often open their door to get air. I have just read a note from Joanna, came on the Russia I think, tho we ar[e] to get another mail today—if we do. I believe a cotton coat is about as costly for a girl here as a plain silk one would be. When they go out for company they wear the lovely brocade satins. We had a call from a bride yesterday afternoon, She was dressed all in splendid white borcade. This is the second white brocade suit we have seen on an afternoon caller. As for food, let me suggest this dish to you. Put into your chafing dish enough broth for your soup. Put on the table beside it vegetables either cooked or partly so, and thin sliced meat and fish of as many kinds as you wish, very thin, drop these slices into the boiling broth and take them out with your chopsticks and put them into your mouth. After you get enough of this, put all you have into the broth and then put the whol into your soup plates and finish with rice or without. We are h[a]ving it alone for tiffin [luncheon] today. Chinese have it for the last course at a dinner. They always have their sweet in the middle of the dinner. We have today broth well flavored, cabbage wgich is cut up and boiled first, thin sliced potatoes, lamb and I dont know what else for the cook always surprises us with things we know not… As for politics here things move on in the same direction so far as I can see Japan and the interests that go with her seem to calmly press the heel harder all the time on the necks of the majority who are struggling to get loose. The students are doing very l[i]ttle work tho they are not striking nominally. The whole excitement has been very upsetting to them and they still feel they have work more important than studies, and the idle ones take advantage to be more lazy than ever, Mrs [Lois Miles] Zucker taeches English Lit in the govt University. She says she had three boys in one clss this week and that is the largest number, Those t[h]ree told her they came because they were sick and could not go out to speak. Yesterday we were about the town but saw no one speaking, It is said they are speaking on the shops. Meantime the Minister of Foreign affairs has left and his Vice minister has gone with hime and there is chaos in the foreign office. It is a time when I sho[u]ld like to see Mr [Bertram Lenox] Simpson and hear his view. He is in general hopeful but advisers in general have not much influence tho he is said to be listened to by the foreign office. Perhaps that is the reason they are out, I dont know. He is writing articles for the Leader showing how China may keep her advantages if she will and the students are following the lines of the information he gives them. In general no one dares to move and so every thing is outwardly calm, tho that is an atmosphere that suots Japan. We are sending lanterns for New Years presents to our friends the children. They are the very most interesting cheap decorations I have ever seen, all the insects, fishes, birds, vegetables and some quadrupeds are wonderfully reproduc[ed] You put a light inside them, their legs and arms move in the air, they are colored, and they cost 25 cents each. The colors are varnished on so they are very durable. The deer is a sacred animal, brining good luck I saw a fawn life size standing on its feet. There are lovely ones of painted silk which are more expensive. We had a gift of lovely paintings, panels two by six inches The one I like best of our l[a]nterns is a red peach with a scarlet butterfly resting on thr leaf. I wish E.A. could have some of them, but if she did they would have to be made in the U.S. for they would not travel well. Some time may be we wll bring the lantern makers to us but their works will be much more expensive than they are here, like all art… Our lillies are in full bloom and I fear will not make a good show when Ev arrives tho they were bought to celebrat her arrival. The Chinese are wonderful in forcing things and the flowers tho spafrce and very dear are delicious They take two or more liily bulbs abd bind them together in a straight line by running a splint of rattan thru them so you have a lovely flower bed out of two bulbs. I have one such with nine spikes of heavy bloom on it and the three bulb combinations have sometimes 15 others have 12. They produce very fots. and not such big leaves as when we put them in a lot of water, Change water every fay and keep but little in bowl. They are sold for 2½ cts per bloom so there is never any doubt. When you buy the buds are just ready to bloom and the leaves three inches long, Later they get tall, at least I cant prevent that Tomorrow morning at seven oclock I am going to the silk and fur market. So far during the cold I have not had the nerve to do it. I think I shall buy a fur coat for next winter of grey squirrel. The cost about one sixth of the prices I see in the papers from N.Y. Furnishing the flat has so tzken up my intest tht we have not bought much to take home. mean time the prich of rugs has so soared since last summer that I am mad at not having made invesfments in them. Peking is full of conventions, Methodist, Missionary, and Medical… Lots of love, Mama. |
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| 132 | 1920.02.15 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Frederick A. Dewey Peking, Feb 15th. [1920] Sunday. Dear Fred… I had my breakfast before the others and went to the fur market and I nearly bought a fur coat to make over for E.A. The little Am. children wear them here either made of spotted cat which is very pretty or striped cat, or of grey squirrel. If you had only been near to ask if you wanted that expense, they cost about fifteen dollars all made up. I am going to buy another and better for me, and some others, and I think Elizabeth might want one too, but I dont dare to go too far in a ting so perishable as some of them are. let me know I hd lovely sable coats offered to me for 250 and 400 depending on the size. One long coat coming to the feet may be had for 1000 or 1500 and they cost 4000 or more in the U.S. I am not thinkig of those but I like the grey squirrel ones. What I think I shall buy is oe made of fox legs which look like sable and wear a long long time cost about 75. The variety of fur here is greater than with us as they are fond of sewi[n]g little bits together to make handsome designs like the fox legs which are small but dark and handsome. There is one kind made of pieces less than an inch square. Well, so much for fur. Silk is sold at that morning market too, and as for pigs all in parts I necer saw so many in my life, You can buy furniture there and cotton cllth and brasses and dishes and spectacles and vegetables znd ol junk made of iron and all the rest besides the Chinese people. Since I wrote you yesterday there is more evidence that China is just drifti[n]g into the maw of Japan. The teachers and the Students Unions were suppressed day before yesterday and the fact is published today. The tendency has been steady, in spite of all the remonstrances of the people. It is curous to us to see what these people seem to depend upon in making up their minds, or not making them up, as you see it. Since reading more of their history I can see they have always been in a stae much like this. The Japanese have held parts of their coast in the past and then been forced to get out after century or more. They have always pirated the coa[st] and for the Manchu rule, and its downfall the effect of that seems to be to make the Chinese take things as they come trusting that after 300 years or so they will again drive out the Japs. They seem to rest on this great lazy fact that the Chinese nation is too big and too unwilling to be absorbed in any other; and as for this interference, why we have to stand about so moch that is disagreeabl any way and it is very disagreeable to fight the Japs and to hate them as we do but Govt is always bad any way, -like ours, - and we may as well make the best of it. A man named Que [Kuo] Tai Chi is here from Canton. He has just come back from Paris with the peace delegates and he is said to be saying strong tnings to the legations and to the Govt regarding Canton. No one can be surprised if the south breaks entirely with the north in case this govt does make the concessions direct to Japan in Shantung. There is also a strong probability that the whole of the intriguing is just to overthrow this present govt. That downfall happens to be a thing that the republicans want of course, as well as the Anfu Club since they too can not control it. There is not telling from day to day. I have a charming little satin coat for E.A. which I think I can send over by Mrs Frame, and I shall try. She goes in about one week. The embroidery on it is quite rare, and shows the garment once belonged to a child of the highest rank, next to the imperial. Pa has just come in from his lecture. Hu [Shi]says, suppression of the Unions is like the threat to close the schools, largely a threat to induce the students to make trouble. What the govt really wants is an excuse to close the schools and their spies keep coming to the students to urge them to bring legal action agnst the metropolitan police. They really know that the students idea has influen[ce] and agrees with the public sentiment and they want to close the schools for the next four months so as to be able to quietly get things back into their own hands. But the students are on to their tricks and have settled upon a quite policy which does not mean giving up. They mean to continue classes and to outwit the govt by nonresistance. The procalmation of Marial law will not alter anything. Meantime Peking look as if it were under martial law already so many guards every [w]here. Japanese goods have been put out for sale again and some shops which had only native goods have been closed by the police on the ground that they were supporting the boycott. Did you every hear of a contry punishing patriotism to such a degree?... Travel is dear here, and especially when we go with the Chinese who think it necessary to have the highest priced things everywhere… Lucy is feeling better today and Papa worse, That is to say he has the worst cold he has had for on the whole he has thrown off beginnings of colds easily and his lecturi[n]g has not been troublesome. Today however he is lying down tho he has no symptoms of fever or other expreme disconfort. It is quite wonderful how he adapts to all the changes without being upset and I hope this cold means nothing to worry about. There is the usual amount of cantagious diseas in the city among children. Our good friend and still better friend of Chinese education Mr Sam Dean has qite broken down. He is in bed, not allowed to se peple and it is feared the trouble is tuberculosis. He has not been well all winter and has gone on breaking all the laws of hygiene and now every body is mourning him. He is to go home soon any way and now it is a struggle to get him buil up to travel. If he does not come bck the loss to China will be immeasurable… With lots of love to you and to all, Mama. |
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| 133 | 1920.02.17 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children 135 Morrison St Feb 17 [1920] | Peking Dearest family, … The J govt has stood in Korea in the way of persecution and propagand by missionaries etc—and as the lying missionaries of China she would never forgive them for hating Japan. That last is a good mor war moral, hate is so hateful you must be very careful to hate the right ones. The morning paper says Tom Lamont is on way over here—tho it didnt call him Tom, just like that. Some of the business people here say it wasnt true that the Morgans are going in with Japanese capital in Manchuria and Siberia, and think the Japanese gentlemen in Sf just an-||nounced it from nerve because it was piqued because the other crowd had just announced its cooperation with Chinese capital. Internal politics here are too much for me—I hae to admit it. The popular objection to Sha entering into direct negotiations with Japn about her return of Shantung is universal. Its so strong that it would seem unreasonable if it didnt give a measure of the existing distrust both of Japan and of their own officials. But the officials have gone straight ahead. No public decision has been announced but it is generally believed that the govt has decided to go ahead. In fact it is generally believed that private negotiation[s] have been going on thu the medium of some big Japanese financiers here, and that when it is announed that negotiations will be begun it will mean verything is settled. One well posted Chinese said that he thought that after it was fixed Japan would simply announce the terms, saying she would not insist upon direct negotiations in view of the opposition of the people. The terms in general will involve considerable concessions but will be quite general and the details will be fixed by private treaties including some generous "loans". Domestic politics is also miced up, the premier while a militaryist is a rival of little Hsu the head of the Anfu club, which controls the govt except him, and it is said they are playing for his scalp and to get complete control. The best evidence of something going ions is the campaign of the last few weeks against the students Adter suppressing the movement in Tientsin, they have stopped it here, really stoped it so far as external manifestations are concerned. They tried every possibe way to provoke the students to strike. At first the students fell in the trap, but and voted a strike, but they got wise and voted not to. Then the govt to provoke the more, dissolved both the teachers and students unions by main force, police. Still they keep quiet What the govt will do next to provoke them, I dont know. The govt wants to get an excuse to close up all the schools and send the students home. The supposition is that it wants them out of the way when direct negotiations with Japan are announced. Thats probably a part of it, but demands from Japan and money are probably a factor too. The students really won a moral victory over themselves in not striking. Their fellow students had bee[n] arrested and physically abused, over forty are in hospitals here, from beatings up by soldiers and about as many more leaders in prison, no one knows where, and their sense of honor was that they should all strike for their comrades sake. But other managed to persuade them that the Shantung issue was the important thing, and they reserve themselves for that, and their fellow students in prison were more interested in the cause than in themselves. Finally the vote not to strike was unanimous—you cant imagine what it means for them to change about, becuase this would be loss of face for those who had been in favor a strike. Then they also sent telegrams to all the other towns where they had sent emissaries to start strikes telling them not to, to wait. Reports from the Shanghai valley are that probably the southern vaprovinces will break loose and start a revolution oif the Peking govt begins direct negotiations Probably the Japanese discount this. If they can get control of the northern govt, it would give them Manchuria positive and Shantung and this province Chili, and they could get the north and south to fighting one another, without their having to use their own money and blood. Howver the revolution if it occurs wont be confined to the south. The suppression of organizations will lead to direct action by individuals. There is no doubt Bolshevism is growing very rapidly in China—not technical Svovietism, but a belief in revolution as the cure of both Japan and their won govt, and making use of the Russian revolutionary aid to bring it on—there is too much lamd owned by individualistic peasants for a real Russian Bolshevism and factory industry too undeveloped. But the militarists who have used command of the army to extort money have been pu[t]ting their money into banks, stores (that is the chief thing the boycott is up agt) and indutrial enterprises, and in that way an economic question is growing up, and class feeling which has never existed before as class feeling. Its no use trying to prophesy about China, but anywhere else in the world, if things go in the present direction, it would be safe to predict an era of terrorism, assassinations etc, and efforts at revolution. Mentime the Chinese have got pessimistic agin, as much so as when we landed last May. A large part of them predict complete Japanese control—they are so many of them fatalists at bottom. On the other hand they think in the long run fate is on their side and that after they have had fifty years ofr a century of Japan—a century or two more or less is nothing here—Japan will be completely destroyed. They have evolved so far next to no capacity for selfgovernment. As Ive probably said before if I were a historian of ancient times, amytime up to eighteenth century Id study China and see the thing before my eyes. And the financial mess is the worst, and the foreign govts and diplomats are primarily responsible for that. The govt exists from month to month simply by the favor of foreign loans. It is now borrowing twentyfive million—that is five million pounds, which by the time exchange is reckoned and the premium to baker paisd will net China ten million dollars. The reason for our govt going in is thaa toherwise Japan alone will laon the money. But verything is handled in this piecemeal pawnbroking style. They have paper assurane that some of the money will be paid used to pay off loans soldiers and disband the army, and that there will be foreign supervision of expeditures—but Lord. Well there doesnt seem to be anything but politcs to write about—the lanterns of fishes and fruits and bugs and grasshoppers that we get for twenty five cents, oiled paper, for new years are much more interesting—New Years is in three days, but how much we are going to see except the special markets and bazzaars I dont know. When Ev gets here there is to be another big banquet given us, a kind of farewell departure I think. Lots of love Dad Ill try to send this by Shanghai and Empress mail. Plese direct the next letters to me | Care Teachers College | Nanking. | Where the family will be I dont know, but try some of your letters direct to me there, and some to rest of family here. |
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| 134 | 1920.02.20 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children Feb 20 [1920] Peking, the same being the first day of the lunar new year. Dearest family, We lived and dozed thru a night that on the whole has 4th of July beaten for noise; there were no explosions quite so rude as our big dynamite crackers, and thank God the tin horns were not. For uninterrupted cracking however the night was a sucess. This morning the boys have all been in and made their boys bows. Spite of age, they are all boys when you see how happy the New Years Day made them. I wish I knew enough Chinese to ask them why it made them so happy; I dont think it was entirely the cumshaws, sctho they seemed pleased and perhaps surprised at the amount they got; perhpas they had thought we were tightwads. It hardly seems possible as if a people as old and disillusionized as the Chinese could thibk New Years was going to make the world turn over a new leaf and behave decently for a change, but if [pencil del.] every [in pencil w. caret] day ought to be New Years if it can make people happy so easily. If you ever see Mr [possibly George] Hopkins (and I hope you do sometimes) tell him that tho China doesnt seem idyllic, I sympathize with his feeling about it. Mr Barry has taken to sending the Call lately. The red headlines and screaming type and break up into millions of unrelated paragraphs most of which cant have any interest except to the epople who in them are killed divorced and sued for breach of promise or knocked out, [pencil comma] brought back a picture Id about that had almost lapsesd [d in pencil] from consciousness. I had forgotten anyone could be so crazy, and yet I know very well before Ive been back two weeks it will seem to represent the normal curse of life (I started to write course of life, but I bow to the superior wisdom of the Typewriter)… Suh Hu [Hu Shi] in suggesting to me that we stay over next year, said it probably wouldnt be safe for me to go home, as I would be deported. This wasnt all a joke on his part. It represents the impression our present doings in America make on an intelligent foreigner as they they get reported. Of course we are rich enough and big enough, to say nothing of being crazy enough, to care nothing for any what any dam fool foreigner cares about us, but I wonder how much of a headache we'll [pencil apostrophe] have when we wake up the morning after. After sveral million unskilled laborers take the advice of those who are telling them if you dont like this country go back to where you came from, and the labor market is cornered by the unions, and the prize boobs of the universe, the middle class has reaped the full reward of its asininity and servility, we shall certainly have some country. This sounds dyspeptic, but Im only too fate, and all that ails me physically is a bad cold. But Mr Hunt told last night about going back to his old home town in the country in Ill and the respectables of the village were brought out to do him honor, the hardware merchant, the lawyer and doctor and preacher and banker, and he said there wasnt one of them who wasnt ready to fight and die for for Mr [Elbert Henry] Gary. I only started out to say that he has begun to tell the facts about Siberia as practically everybody here knows them, but which have been systematically distorted by the propaganda press and the state dept along with the rest of the diplomatists. About one thing he differs from the others Ive heard talk who have been there. He says America isnt hated, that 90 per cent of our soldiers became sympathetic with the revolutionaries, and that the Russian common people know it, as our soldier[s] generally let the revolutionaries escape as fast as the Kolchak people captured them—the train that went to Vladivostock tand back to dem and the surrender of the latter city to the revolutionaries went under an escort of armed American soliders. Mr Morris ofur minister in Tokyo understod the whole situation he says which bears out the impression I got in Tokyo, but felt bound to be loyal to the state dept which had instructed him to find reasons for recognizing Kolchak. I didnt dare ask Mr Hunt how much Russian he speaks, for as he tells about his experiences it seems to make a little difference whether he is telling literal facts, or whether he is an artists and facts meet him more than havelf way. I suspect something of the latter. Anyway I had him here at dinner last night to meet the man who probably knows the most about the student movement from within, as the Chinese student is at least as much entitled as the Siberian peasant to figure picturesquely in the American newspapers. There is a certain kind of lie which only predicts the future in such a way as to help it come true, and if Hunt lies, which Im not at all sure of, it's [pencil apostrophe] that kind. Anyway he has brains and is an artist. He must also be a newspaper man, for I think he is the man who got the Peace treaty for the Chicago Tribune when the Senate couldnt get it. Mama and Ev must be together by this time; they are supposed to come back here next tuesday but I hae my doots. I just started out to wish you another Happy New Years, under the influence of the spontaneous happiness of our servants, moved especially by Fred's letter of Jan 176 [6 in pencil] || which looks as if mails were to be more regular agin. If it were of any use Id tell him not to work so hard, but nobody ever takes that advice But wall street isnt unlike other places and in taking everything a man will give even if uses himself up doing it, and then saying afterwards what a fool he was to let himself be used… Laotze over here in China was another one Be [in pencil w. caret] a useful citizen and somebody will use you; be worthless and useless, and youll do something, [pencil comma] because you will be let alone and have a chance. This isnt advice, merely a net quotation from Mr Laotze who is the real philosopher of China as Confucius is of the ruling class… Here are two or three little glimpses of China—draw your own morals. There is perfect and complete censorship here. Students unions and teachers suppressed. The last number of the students union paper comes out with an article advsing the soldiers to turn on their officers and divide the property of the latter among themselves. The soldiers ran into alot of inoffensive soldiers with the butts of their guns and sent about forty to hospitals and as many more to jail. The soldiers who guard the students in jail go in and listen to them talk in jail ad then when they are relieved of guard duty carry the letters back and forth from [pencil del.] between [in pencil w. caret] the prioners and the friends—nor for money either. The premier who of China had a talk wthe other day with some men from Shantung province who told him about the actual treaty nd legal status of Shantung. He got very hot and said he had never known the facts before—his subordinates had misrepresented and suppressed them. However the last is not distinctively Chinese—probably every important poilitical decision of the last few years has been made in just this way. So maybe the other things arent distinctively Chinese either. Anyway love to all, and a very Happy lunar new year— I think Ill transfer my allegiance from sun to moon and see if it wont be as cheering as with the Chinese. Dad |
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| 135 | 1920.02.25 |
Dewey, John. The sequel of the student revolt [ID D28475]. As I write, in late November, the Sino-Japanese fracas in Foo¬chow (in which several Chinese students lost their lives and in consequence of which the Japanese landed marines who have stationed themselves in the Chinese city as well as in the foreign concession), is inflaming public feeling in China as it has not been stirred since last May. The students are again engaging in public demonstrations, and are joining with Chinese Chambers of Commerce in demanding that the people cease all social and economic intercourse with the Japanese until the latter change their course. The waning boycott is revived. It is demanded that the government declare a policy of economic non-intercourse and an embargo on imports and exports, until Japan has radically altered its policies. It is impossible to forecast the outcome. Pessimists declare that Japan is taking advantage of the situation to bring Fukien directly within her sphere of influence—an intention expressed in the Twenty-one Demands, but temporarily held in abeyance. There are no optimists in China in the extreme sense, but the more hopeful assert that in the present state of affairs, with the Shantung question unsettled, the Consortium in its bearing upon Manchuria under discussion, and with an acute Siberian trouble on hand, the Japanese government is not looking for more trouble—especially with the eyes of the world in general upon it, and those of the American Senate in particular. Pessimists counter with the remark that it is precisely the growing influence and prestige of the United States in China that has forced the hand of the Japanese militarist expansionists to take an aggressive step, and face the world with a fait accompli; that Japan will make use of the difficulty to demand that the Chinese government put a stop, once for all, to the boycott movement; that Japanese troops, once having obtained a footing, will never be withdrawn, and that Fukien is now to go the way of Manchuria and Shantung. Perhaps the most sinister feature is the semi-official report from Tokyo that the disturbance was deliberately started by the Chinese in order to force the Japanese to land troops, and thereby increase the prejudice against them now existing throughout the world. Official reports from the American consulate agree with Chinese reports that unarmed Chinese students were attacked by armed Japanese and Formosans under conditions which give an appearance of a planned and organized movement with at least the connivance of local Japanese authorities. Judging from the past, the chief outcome will not be immediately to establish Japan in the Province of Fukien, but to strengthen her hands in other controversies by injecting an element to be reckoned with in making a 'compromise'. Such is Oriental diplomacy. The gathering, as I write, of ten thousand Pekingese students for a demonstration, after a period of quiescence, gives a good opportunity to take stock of what the Student Movement has accomplished in the six months of its existence. As an immediate political movement it has accomplished nothing beyond preventing the signing of the Peace Treaty by China. The reasons for the relative political failure are not hard to see in retrospect, however difficult it was to perceive them in the excitement and stir of last May and June. The youth and inexperience of the students; the fear of some excess which would undo what had been effected; the fear in Peking, where the movement began, that government officials (who regarded the movement not as patriotic but as a pestilential disturbance headed toward Bolshevism) would make demonstrations an excuse for abolishing the University and the Higher Schools that are the centres of liberal thought; the difficulty in maintaining continuous organized cooperation with the mercantile guilds; the natural waning of enthusiasm when the crisis was past—all these things entered in. But it would be a great mistake to think the movement died. The active current was diverted from breaking against the political and militaristic dam. It was drawn into a multitude of side streams and is now irrigating the intellectual and industrial soil of China. In Canton and Foochow the economic boycott has been active; in Tientsin, the political ferment has retained its vitality. Otherwise the students' organizations have gone into popular education, social and philanthropic service and vigorous intellectual discussion. China has never been anything but apathetic towards governmental questions. The Student Revolt marked a temporary exception only in appearance. The hopelessness of the political muddle, with corrupt officials and provincial military governors in real control, is enough to turn the youth away from direct politics. In addition a universal feeling operates that the comparative failure of the Revolution is due to the fact that political change far outran intellectual and moral preparation; that political revolution was formal and external; that an intellectual revolution is required before the nominal governmental revolution can be cashed in. Patriotism in China has centered about the maintenance of the existence of the nation against external aggression. The Student Revolt holds that national existence can best be secured by building up China from within, by spreading a democratic education, raising the standard of living, improving industries and relieving poverty. The external phase of the movement centres in the creation of new schools supported and taught by the students, schools for children and adults; popular lectures and direct 'social service' movements; cooperation with shops to supply technical advice and expert assistance in improving old processes and introducing new arts. These activities protect the intellectual movement in getting away from all practical affairs, in getting away from politics, and guarantee it against becoming a cultural and literary side-show. What is termed the literary revolution was under way before the Student Revolt. It aimed at a reform of the language used in books, magazines, newspapers, and public discussion. The outsider will jump to the conclusion that this means an attempt to encourage a phonetic substitute for ideographic characters. Not at all. There is a movement to supplement ideographs with phonetic signs to show their pronunciation, the aim being quite as much to standardize pronunciation as to make it easier to learn to read. But this movement arouses no such interest and excitement as the literary revolution. The latter is an attempt to make the spoken language the standard language for print. Literary Chinese is as far away from the vernacular as Latin is from English, perhaps further. It is the speech of two thousand years ago, adorned and frozen. To learn it is to learn another language. The reformers were actuated by the practical impossibility of making education really universal when in addition to the difficulties of mastering the ideographs, children in the elementary schools are compelled to get their education in terms of a foreign language. They are actuated even more by the belief that it was not possible to develop a literature which shall express the life of today unless the spoken language, the language of the people, is used. Apart from employing and enriching the vulgar tongue, it is not possible to develop general discussion of the issues of today, social, moral, economic. Fortunately the new movement was 'advertised by its loving enemies'. The literary classicists saw in it the deathblow to the old moral classics, upon which China was built. They argued that the history of China is the history of its literary classics. Its unity resides in acceptance of the moral traditions they embody. To neglect them is to destroy China. The fight merged into one between conservatives and liberals in general, between the representatives of the old traditions and the representatives of western ideas and democratic institutions. Young China rallied as one man to the support of the literary revolution. It is stated that whereas two years ago there were but one or two tentative journals in the vulgar tongue, today there are over three hundred. Since last May the students have started score upon score of journals, all in the spoken tongue and all discussing matters in words that can be understood by the common man. In the columns of one of the older Chinese dailies in Peking there has lately been a discussion carried on by voluntary correspondents about a single particle that is used freely in colloquial speech—a discussion already running into ten thousands of words. Those who know what the change from a learned language to the vernacular meant for the transition from medieval to modem Europe will not despise this linguistic sign of social change. It is more important by far than the adoption of a new constitution. Conservatism in China is not native or natural. It is largely the product of an inelastic system of memoriter education. This education has its roots in the use of a dead language as the medium of instruction. A national education conference held in October last passed a resolution in favor of having all text-books hereafter composed in the colloquial language. After this course has been followed for a generation, the judicious historian may see in it an event of greater importance than the downfall of the Manchu dynasty. According to published summaries, social questions are uppermost in the new press. Eloquent testimony to the new-found unity of the world is seen in the amount of discussion devoted to economics and labor questions, which as yet do not exist in any acute form in China itself. Although Marx is hardly more pertinent to the present industrial situation in China than Plato, he is translated and much discussed. All the new 'isms are discussed. Ideal anarchism has many followers partly because of the historic Chinese contempt for government, partly because of the influence of French returned students who came in contact with communistic ideas in Paris. A friend who made a careful study of some fifty of the students' papers says that their first trait is the question mark, and the second is the demand for complete freedom of speech in order that answers may be found for the questions. In a country where belief has been both authoritatively dogmatic and complacent, the rage for questioning is the omen of a new epoch. More than westerners realize, the interest of the Orient in the west has centered in the material progress of Europe and America, in machines for industry and war. There was no belief that the west was superior in other respects. Only within the last year or two has the idea become general that western ideas and modes of thought are more important than western battle-ships and steam-engines. This belief is concentrated in the intellectual side of the Student Movement, though it shows itself not in any great zeal for western ideas, as such, but in a desire for such knowledge of them as will facilitate discussion and criticism of typical Chinese creeds and institutions. One incident out of a multitude must suffice to show that the demand for freedom of thought and speech has a definite practical significance. China took over from Japan the law for assemblies which Japan had taken over from Germany. A discussion club applied to the Peking police authorities for a permit, stating that the object was consideration of the newer currents of world thought. The authorities refused the permit on the ground that newer currents must mean Bolshevism, anarchism and communism and that consideration of such topics was dangerous. As is always the case, official opposition stimulates the movement of ideas. The menace of autocracy from within and without gives edge and fire to the hunger for new ideas. The eagerness grows for knowledge of the thought of liberal western countries in just the degree in which the powers near at hand in Tokyo and Peking seem to symbolize an intellectual creed which the world has outgrown. The more the so-called political revolution exhibits itself as a failure, the more active is the demand for an intellectual revolution which will make some future political revolution a reality. The thing that time makes stand out most in the Student Revolt is its spontaneity. The students met discouragement on all sides. Even their teachers and advisers among the returned students from America were inclined at first to wet-blanket their ardor. Its spontaneity is the proof of its genuine and inevitable nature. When most political in its outward expression, it was not a political movement. It was the manifestation of a new consciousness, an intellectual awakening in the young men and young women who through their schooling had been aroused to the necessity of a new order of belief, a new method of thinking. The movement is secure no matter how much its outward forms may alter or crumble. |
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| 136 | 1920.02.25-27 | John Dewey attends the Annual meeting of Zhili-Shanxi Educational Association in Beijing. |
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| 137 | 1920.03.03 |
Dewey, John. Shantung : as seen from within [ID D28476]. I American apologists for that part of the Peace Treaty which relates to China have the advantage of the illusions of distance. Most of the arguments seem strange to anyone who lives in China even for a few months. He finds the Japanese on the spot using the old saying about territory consecrated by treasure spent and blood shed. He reads in Japanese papers and hears from moderately liberal Japanese that Japan must protect China as well as Japan, against herself, against her own weak or corrupt government, by keeping control of Shantung to prevent China from again alienating that territory to some other power. The history of European aggression in China gives this argument great force among the Japanese, who for the most part know nothing more about what actually goes on in China than they used to know about Korean conditions. These considerations, together with the immense expectations raised among the Japanese during the war concerning their coming domination of the Far East and the unswerving demand of excited public opinion in Japan during the Versailles Conference for the settlement that actually resulted, give an ironic turn to the statement so often made that Japan may be trusted to carry out her promises. Yes, one is often tempted to say, that is precisely what China fears, that Japan will carry out her promises, for then China is doomed. To one who knows the history of foreign aggression in China, especially the technique of conquest by railway and finance, the irony of promising to keep economic rights while returning sovereignty lies so on the surface that it is hardly irony. China might as well be offered Kant's Critique of Pure Reason on a silver platter as sovereignty under such conditions. The latter is equally metaphysical. A visit to Shantung and a short residence in its capital city, Tsinan, made the conclusions, which so far as I know every foreigner in China has arrived at, a living thing. It gave a vivid picture of the many and intimate ways in which economic and political rights are inextricably entangled together. It made one realize afresh that only a President who kept himself innocent of any knowledge of secret treaties during the war, could be naive enough to believe that the promise to return complete sovereignty retaining only economic rights is a satisfactory solution. It threw fresh light upon the contention that at most and at worst Japan had only taken over German rights, and that since we had acquiesced in the latter’s arrogations we had no call to make a fuss about Japan. It revealed the hollowness of the claim that pro-Chinese propaganda had wilfully misled Americans into confusing the few hundred square miles around the port of Tsing-tao with the Province of Shantung with its thirty millions of Chinese population. As for the comparison of Germany and Japan one might suppose that the objects for which America nominally entered the war had made, in any case, a difference. But aside from this consideration, the Germans exclusively employed Chinese in the railway shops and for all the minor positions on the railway itself. The railway guards (the difference between police and soldiers is nominal in China) were all Chinese, the Germans merely training them. As soon as Japan invaded Shantung and took over the railway, Chinese workmen and Chinese military guards were at once dismissed and Japanese imported to take their places. Tsinan-fu, the inland terminus of the ex-German railway, is over two hundred miles from Tsing-tao. When the Japanese took over the German railway business office, they at once built barracks, and today there are several hundred soldiers still there—where Germany kept none. Since the armistice even, Japan has erected a powerful military wireless within the grounds of the garrison, against of course the unavailing protest of Chinese authorities. No foreigner can be found who will state that Germany used her ownership of port and railway to discriminate against other nations. No Chinese can be found who will claim that this ownership was used to force the Chinese out of business, or to extend German economic rights beyond those definitely assigned her by treaty. Common sense should also teach even the highest paid propagandist in America that there is, from the standpoint of China, an immense distinction between a national menace located half way around the globe, and one within two days’ sail over an inland sea absolutely controlled by a foreign navy, especially as the remote nation has no other foothold and the nearby one already dominates additional territory of enormous strategic and economic value—namely, Manchuria. These facts bear upon the shadowy distinction between the Tsing-tao and the Shantung claim, as well as upon the solid distinction between German and Japanese occupancy. If there still seemed to be a thin wall between Japanese possession of the port of Tsing-tao and usurpation of Shantung, it was enough to stop off the train in Tsinan-fu to see the wall crumble. For the Japanese wireless and the barracks of the army of occupation are the first things that greet your eyes. Within a few hundred feet of the railway that connects Shanghai, via the important centre of Tientsin, with the capital, Peking, you see Japanese soldiers on the nominally Chinese street, guarding their barracks. Then you learn that if you travel upon the ex-German railway towards Tsing-tao, you are ordered to show your passport as if you were entering a foreign country. And as you travel along the road (remembering that you are over two hundred miles from Tsing-tao) you find Japanese soldiers at every station, and several garrisons and barracks at important towns on the line. Then you realize that at the shortest possible notice, Japan could cut all communications between southern China (together with the rich Yangtze region) and the capital, and with the aid of the Southern Manchurian Railway at the north of the capital, hold the entire coast and descend at its good pleasure upon Peking. You are then prepared to learn from eye-witnesses that when Japan made its Twenty-one Demands upon China, machine guns were actually in position at strategic points, throughout Shantung, with trenches dug and sandbags placed. You know that the Japanese liberal spoke the truth, who told you, after a visit to China and return to protest against the action of his government, that the Japanese already had such a military hold upon China that they could control the country within a week, after a minimum of fighting, if war should arise. You also realize the efficiency of official control of information and domestic propaganda as you recall that he also told you that these things were true at the time of his visit, under the Terauchi cabinet, but had been completely reversed by the present Hara ministry. For I have yet to find a single foreigner or Chinese who is conscious of any difference of policy, save as the end of the war has forced the necessity of more caution, since other nations can now look China- wards as they could not during the war. An American can get an idea of the realities of the present situation if he imagines a foreign garrison and military wireless in Wilmington, with a railway from that point to a fortified seaport controlled by the foreign power, at which the foreign nation can land, without resistance, troops as fast as they can be transported, and with bases of supply, munitions, food, uniforms, etc., already located at Wilmington, at the sea-port and several places along the line. Reverse the directions from south to north, and Wilmington will stand for Tsinan-fu, Shanghai for New York, Nanking for Philadelphia with Peking standing for the seat of government at Washington, and Tientsin for Baltimore. Suppose in addition that the Pennsylvania road is the sole means of communication between Washington and the chief commercial and industrial centres, and you have the framework of the Shantung picture as it presents itself daily to the inhabitants of China. Upon second thought, however, the parallel is not quite accurate. You have to add that the same foreign nation controls also all coast communications from, say, Raleigh southwards, with railway lines both to the nearby coast and to New Orleans. For (still reversing directions) this corresponds to the position of Imperial Japan in Manchuria with its railways to Dairen and through Korea to a port twelve hours sail from a great military centre in Japan proper. These are not remote possibilities nor vague prognostications. They are accomplished facts. Yet the facts give only the framework of the picture. What is actually going on within Shantung? One of the demands of the 'postponed' group of the Twenty-one Demands was that Japan should supply military and police advisers to China. They are not so much postponed but that Japan enforced specific concessions from China during the war by diplomatic threats to reintroduce their discussion, or so postponed that Japanese advisers are not already installed in the police headquarters of the city of Tsinan, the capital city of Shantung of three hundred thousand population where the Provincial Assembly meets and all the Provincial officials reside. Within recent months the Japanese consul has taken a company of armed soldiers with him when he visited the Provincial Governor to make certain demands upon him, the visit being punctuated by an ostentatious surrounding of the Governor’s yamen by these troops. Within the past few weeks, two hundred cavalry came to Tsinan and remained there while Japanese officials demanded of the Governor drastic measures to sup-press the boycott, while it was threatened to send Japanese troops to police the foreign settlement if the demand was not heeded. A former consul was indiscreet enough to put into writing that if the Chinese Governor did not stop the boycott and the students’ movement by force if need be, he would take matters into his own hands. The chief tangible charge he brought against the Chinese as a basis of his demand for 'protection' was that Chinese store-keepers actually refused to accept Japanese money in payment for goods, not ordinary Japanese money at that, but the military notes with which, so as to save drain upon the bullion reserves, the army of occupation is paid. And all this, be it remem-bered, is more than two hundred miles from Tsing-tao and from eight to twelve months after the armistice. Today's paper reports a visit of Japanese to the Governor to inform him that unless he should prevent a private theatrical performance from being given in Tsinan by the students, they would send their own forces into the settlement to protect themselves. And the utmost they might need protection from, was that the students were to give some plays designed to foster the boycott! Japanese troops overran the Province before they made any serious attempt to capture Tsing-tao. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that they 'took' the Chinese Tsinan before they took the German Tsing-tao. Propaganda in America has justified this act on the ground that a German railway to the rear of Japanese forces would have been a menace. As there were no troops but only legal and diplomatic papers with which to attack the Japanese, it is a fair inference that the 'menace' was located in Versailles rather than in Shantung, and concerned the danger of Chinese control of their own territory. Chinese have been arrested by Japanese gendarmes in Tsinan and subjected to a torturing third degree of the kind that Korea has made sickeningly familiar. The Japanese claim that the injuries were received while the men were resisting arrest. Considering that there was no more legal ground for arrest than there would be if Japanese police arrested Americans in New York, almost anybody but the pacifist Chinese certainly would have resisted. But official hospital reports testify to bayonet wounds and the marks of flogging. In the interior where the Japanese had been disconcerted by the student propaganda they raided a High School, seized a school boy at random, and took him to a distant point and kept him locked up several days. When the Japanese consul at Tsinan was visited by Chinese officials in protest against these illegal arrests, the consul disclaimed all jurisdiction. The matter, he said, was wholly in the hands of the military authorities in Tsing-tao. His disclaimer was emphasized by the fact that some of the kidnapped Chinese were taken to Tsing-tao for 'trial'. The matter of economic rights in relation to political domination will be discussed in part two of this article. It is no pleasure for one with many warm friends in Japan, who has a great admiration for the Japanese people as distinct from the ruling military and bureaucratic class, to report such facts as have been stated. One might almost say, one might positively say from the standpoint of Japan itself, that the worst thing that can be charged against the policy of Japan in China for the last six years is its immeasurable stupidity. No nation has ever misjudged the national psychology of another people as Japan has that of China. The alienation of China is widespread, deep, bitter. Even the most pessimistic of the Chinese who think that China is to undergo a complete economic and political domination by Japan do not think it can possibly last, even without outside intervention, more than half a century at most. Today, at the beginning of a new year (1920), the boycott is much more complete and efficient than in the most tense days of last summer. Unfortunately, the Japanese policy seems to be under a truly Greek fate which drives it on. Concessions that would have produced a revulsion of feeling in favor of Japan a year ago will now merely salve the surface of the wound. What would have been welcomed even eight months ago would now be received with contempt. There is but one way in which Japan can now restore herself. It is nothing less than complete withdrawal from Shantung, with possibly a strictly commercial concession at Tsing-tao and a real, not a Manchurian, Open Door. According to the Japanese-owned newspapers published in Tsinan, the Japanese military commander in Tsing-tao recently made a speech to visiting journalists from Tokyo in which he said: The suspicions of China cannot now be allayed merely by repeating that we have no territorial ambitions in China. We must attain complete economic domination of the Far East. But if Sino-Japanese relations do not improve, some third party will reap the benefit. Japanese residing in China incur the hatred of the Chinese. For they regard themselves as the proud citizens of a conquering country. When the Japanese go into partnership with the Chinese they manage in the greater number of cases to have the profits accrue to themselves. If friendship between China and Japan is to depend wholly upon the government it will come to nothing. Diplomatists, soldiers, merchants, journalists should repent the past. The change must be complete. But it will not be complete until the Japanese withdraw from Shantung leaving their nationals there upon the footing of other foreigners in China. II In discussing the return to China by Japan of a metaphysical sovereignty while economic rights are retained, I shall not repeat the details of German treaty rights as to the railway and the mines. The reader is assumed to be familiar with those facts. The German seizure was outrageous. It was a flagrant case of Might making Right. As von Buelow cynically but frankly told the Reichstag, while Germany did not intend to partition China, she also did not intend to be the passenger left behind in the station when the train started. Germany had the excuse of prior European aggressions, and in turn her usurpation was the precedent for further foreign rape. If judgments are made on a comparative basis, Japan is entitled to all of the white-washing that can be derived from the provocations of European imperialistic powers, including those that in domestic policy are democratic. And every fairminded person will recognize that, leaving China out of the reckoning, Japan’s proximity to China gives her aggressions the color of self-defence in a way that cannot be urged in behalf of any European power. It is possible to look at European aggressions in, say, Africa as incidents of a colonization movement. But no foreign policy in Asia can shelter itself behind any colonization plea. For continental Asia is, for practical purposes, India and China, representing two of the oldest civilizations of the globe and presenting two of its densest populations. If there is any such thing in truth as a philosophy of history with its own inner and inevitable logic, one may well shudder to think of what the closing acts of the drama of the intercourse of the West and East are to be. In any case, and with whatever comfort may be derived from the fact that the American continents have not taken part in the aggression and hence may act as a mediator to avert the final tragedy, residence in China forces upon one the realization that Asia is, after all, a large figure in the future reckoning of history. Asia is really here after all. It is not simply a symbol in western algebraic balances of trade. And in the future, so to speak, it is going to be even more here, with its awakened national consciousness of about half the population of the whole globe. Let the agreements of France and Great Britain made with Japan during the war stand for the measure of western consciousness of the reality of a small part of Asia, a consciousness generated by the patriotism of Japan backed by its powerful army and navy. The same agreement measures western unconsciousness of the reality of that part of Asia which lies within the confines of China. An even better measure of western unconsciousness may be found perhaps in such a trifling incident as this:—An English friend long resident in Shantung told me of writing indignantly home concerning the British part in the Shantung settlement. The reply came, complacently stating that Japanese ships did so much in the war that the Allies could not properly refuse to recognize Japan's claims. The secret agreements themselves hardly speak as eloquently for the absence of China from the average western consciousness. In saying that China and Asia are to be enormously significant figures in future reckonings, the spectre of a military Yellow Peril is not meant nor even the more credible spectre of an industrial Yellow Peril. But Asia has come to consciousness, and her consciousness of herself will soon be such a massive and persistent thing that it will force itself upon the reluctant consciousness of the west, and lie heavily upon its conscience. And for this fact, China and the western world are indebted to Japan. These remarks are more relevant to a consideration of the relationship of economic and political rights in Shantung than they perhaps seem. For a moment’s reflection will call to mind that all political foreign aggression in China has been carried out for commercial and financial ends, and usually upon some economic pretext. As to the immediate part played by Japan in bringing about a consciousness which will from the present time completely change the relations of the western powers to China, let one little story testify. Some representatives of an English missionary board were making a tour of inspection through China. They went into an interior town in Shantung. They were received with extraordinary cordiality by the entire population. Some time afterwards some of their accompanying friends returned to the village and were received with equally surprising coldness. It came out upon inquiry that the inhabitants had first been moved by the rumor that these people were sent by the British government to secure the removal of the Japanese. Later they were moved by indignation that they had been disappointed. It takes no forcing to see a symbol in this incident. Part of it stands for the almost incredible ignorance which has rendered China so impotent nationally speaking. The other part of it stands for the new spirit which has been aroused even among the common people in remote districts. Those who fear, or who pretend to fear, a new Boxer movement, or a definite general anti-foreign movement, are, I think, mistaken. The new consciousness goes much deeper. Foreign policies that fail to take it into account and that think that relations with China can be conducted upon the old basis will find this new consciousness obtruding in the most unexpected and perplexing ways. One might fairly say, still speaking comparatively, that it is part of the bad luck of Japan that her proximity to China, and the opportunity the war gave her to outdo the aggressions of European powers, have made her the first victim of this disconcerting change. Whatever the motives of the American Senators in completely disassociating the United States from the peace settlement as regards China, their action is a permanent asset to China, not only in respect to Japan but with respect to all Chinese foreign relations. Just before our visit to Tsinan, the Shantung Provincial Assembly had passed a resolution of thanks to the American Senate. More significant is the fact that they passed another resolution to be cabled to the English Parliament, calling attention to the action of the American Senate and inviting similar action. China in general and Shantung in particular feels the reenforcement of an external approval. With this duplication, its national consciousness has as it were solidified. Japan is simply the first object to be affected. The concrete working out of economic rights in Shantung will be illustrated by a single case which will have to stand as typical. Po-shan is an interior mining village. The mines were not part of the German booty; they were Chinese owned. The Germans, whatever their ulterior aims, had made no attempt at dispossessing the Chinese. The mines, however, are at the end of a branch line of the new Japanese owned railway—owned by the government, not by a private corporation, and guarded by Japanese soldiers. Of the forty mines, the Japanese have worked their way, in only four years, into all but four. Different methods are used. The simplest is, of course, discrimination in the use of the railway for shipping. Downright refusal to furnish cars while competitors who accepted Japanese partners got them, is one method. Another more elaborate method is to send but one car when a large number is asked for, and then when it is too late to use cars, send the whole number asked for or even more, and then charge a large sum for demurrage in spite of the fact the mine no longer wants them or has cancelled the order. Redress there is none. Tsinan has no special foreign concessions. It is, however, a 'treaty port' where nationals of all friendly powers can do business. But Po-shan is not even a treaty port. Legally speaking no foreigner can lease land or carry on any business there. Yet the Japanese have forced a settlement as large in area as the entire foreign settlement in the much larger town of Tsinan. A Chinese refused to lease land where the Japanese wished to relocate their railway station. Nothing happened to him directly. But merchants could not get shipping space, or receive goods by rail. Some of them were beaten up by thugs. After a time, they used their influence with their compatriot to lease his land. Immediately the persecutions ceased. Not all the land has been secured by threats or coercion; some has been leased directly by Chinese moved by high prices, in spite of the absence of any legal sanction. In addition, the Japanese have obtained control of the electric light works and some pottery factories, etc. Now even admitting that this is typical of the methods by which the Japanese plant themselves, a natural American reaction would be to say that, after all, the country is built up industrially by these enterprises, and that though the rights of some individuals may have been violated, there is nothing to make a national, much less an international fuss about. More or less unconsciously we translate foreign incidents into terms of our own experience and environment, and thus miss the entire point. Since America was largely developed by foreign capital to our own economic benefit and without political encroachments, we lazily suppose some such separation of the economic and political to be possible in China. But it must be remembered that China is not an open country. Foreigners can lease land, carry on business, and manufacture only in accord with express treaty agreements. There are no such agreements in the cases typified by the Po-shan incident. We may profoundly disagree with the closed economic policy of China, or we may believe that under existing circumstances it represents the part of prudence for her. That makes no difference. Given the frequent occurrence of such economic invasions, with the backing of soldiers of the Imperial Army, with the overt aid of the Imperial Railway, and with the refusal of Imperial officials to intervene, there is clear evidence of the attitude and intention of the Japanese government in Shantung. Because the population of Shantung is directly confronted with an immense amount of just such evidence, it cannot take seriously the professions of vague diplomatic utterances. What foreign nation is going to intervene to enforce Chinese rights in such a case as Po-shan? Which one is going effectively to call the attention of Japan to such evidences of its failure to carry out its promise? Yet the accumulation of precisely such seemingly petty incidents, and not any single dramatic great wrong, will secure Japan’s economic and political domination of Shantung. It is for this reason that foreigners resident in Shantung, no matter in what part, say that they see no sign whatever that Japan is going to get out; that, on the contrary, everything points to a determination to consolidate her position. How long ago was the Portsmouth Treaty signed, and what were its nominal pledges about evacuation of Manchurian territory? Not a month will pass without something happening which will give a pretext for delay, and for making the surrender of Shantung conditional upon this, that and the other thing. Meantime the penetration of Shantung by means of railway discrimination, railway military guards, continual nibblings here and there, will be going on. It would make the chapter too long to speak of the part played by manipulation of finance in achieving this process of attrition of sovereignty. Two incidents must suffice. During the war, Japanese traders with the connivance of their government gathered up immense amounts of copper cash from Shantung and shipped it to Japan against the protests of the Chinese government. What does sovereignty amount to when a country cannot control even its own currency system? In Manchuria the Japanese have forced the introduction of several hundred million dollars of paper currency, nominally, of course, based on a gold reserve. These notes are redeemable, however, only in Japan proper. And there is a law in Japan forbidding the exportation of gold. And there you are. Japan itself has recently afforded an object lesson in the actual connection of economic and political rights in China. It is so beautifully complete a demonstration that it was surely unconscious. Within the last two weeks, Mr. Obata, the Japanese minister in Peking, has waited upon the government with a memorandum saying that the Foochow incident was the culminating result of the boycott; that if the boycott continues, a series of such incidents is to be apprehended, saying that the situation has become 'intolerable' for Japan, and disavowing all responsibility for further consequences unless the government makes a serious effort to stop the boycott. Japan then immediately makes certain specific demands. China must stop the circulation of handbills, the holding of meetings to urge the boycott, the destruction of Japanese goods that have become Chinese property—none have been destroyed that are Japanese owned. Volumes could not say more as to the real conception of Japan of the connection between the economic and the political relations of the two countries. Surely the pale ghost of 'Sovereignty' smiled ironically as he read this official note. President Wilson after having made in the case of Shantung a sharp and complete separation of economic and political rights, also said that a nation boycotted is within sight of surrunders. Disassociation of words from acts has gone so far in his case that he will hardly be able to see the meaning of Mr. Obata's communication. The American sense of humor and fairplay may however be counted upon to get its point. |
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| 138 | 1920.03.8-19,22-27 (publ. |
1920.03.8-27 (publ.) John Dewey : Lectures 'Three contemporary philosophers ' in Beijing. = Xian dai di san ge zhe xue jia. Hu Shi interpreter ; Fu Lu recorder. In : Chen bao fu kan ; March 8-19, 22-27 (1920). 1.-2. 'William James' 3.-4. 'Henri Bergson' 5.-6. 'Bertrand Russell' |
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| 139 | 1920.03.16 |
Zhang, Shenfu. Ji bian zhe. In : Chen bao ; 16. März (1920). [Letter to the editor about John Dewey]. "The night before last, Mr. Dewey talked about Bertrand Russell as a despairing pessimist. In fact, Russell stands for ethical neutrality (lun li zhong li). Russell stands beyond judgement in all categories of thought. Furthermore, Dewey is thoroughly mistaken when he describes Russell's philosophy as elitist. This leads us to think of him as somehow anti-democratic. In fact, Russell is a thorough realist who upholds logical atomism (duo li yuan zi lun) and the principle of absolute pluralism (duo yuan lun). Russell's philosophical method is to dissect all categories of thought, be they political, scientific or philosophical. To make this clear I have translated his piece on Dreams and facts which appeared first in the January issue of Athenaeum and was reprinted again in the February, 1920 issue of Dial." |
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| 140 | 1920.03.28 |
Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes 135 Morrison St, March 28 [1920] Peking My dear Barnes, … Im leaving here this week to go to Nanking which will be my headquarters for the three spring months, care Higher Normal School. Nanking isnt very thrilling per se. It has been the battle ground between the [nort]h and south and was almost destroyed at the Taiping rebellion, in [the] middle of the last century. However, I shant be there all the time, as it will be the headquarters offor various journeys to other towns, especially on the Yangste. The family will stay in Peking three or four mor weeks longer before coming down, [a]s this is of course the most interesting single place and Evelyn hasnt exhausted it yet. Im afraid I have neither the time nor the technical skill to get a line on Chinese paintings, that would enable me to turn the semitic trick. People who are here for years, some of them, become experts. But the fake market is as large here as anywhere, and a westerner is at a great disadvantage. A Chinese expert knows the the details of silk, of color as well as the details of style and the countless other things. Westerners generally begin by buying poorer things and gradually educate themselves thru experience in buying and discarding. They also get a reputation established so that pictures come to them. The best for sale never get into the open market. Old families that have to dispose of pictures put the matter in the hands of the go-betweens who seek out the twnety or thrity or so good buyers there are in China. We saw another good collection a few days ago, that of General Munthe, a Norwegian collector who has been the military trainer of Peking police. He has pictures and porcelain both. Many of the collectors never show their collections not even in private, they are so afraid of risks. Also the secretive spirit seems to be imbibed from the Chinese collectors who are generally averse to having it known they have collections, as they may then be looted at some opportune moment. The University has asked me to stay over another year, but I find it hard deciding. They have asked Evelyn to give some courses next year also, but she feels as if teaching werent her line and by staying over s[o] long she might cut herself out of some things at home. With regards to Mrs Barnes and yourself from us all, Sincerely yours, John Dewey |
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| 141 | 1920.03.31 | Farewell dinner for John Dewey with Cai Yuanpei. |
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| 142 | 1920.04.01 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children PEKING APRIL ONE [1920] Dearest children, This is myb first last day here, for the present. I cabled to Columbia the other day asking whether they would give me leave of absence another year, but cables are slow. Lucy is going home anyway and Ev has declined the job they offered her, and will probably go too. China is too slow for the young but it is goes easy on old folks. I often wonder whether it wouldnt be a good thing to leave while the leaving is good. I cant repeat this years success, such as it is, because I have done all the general lecturing I can, said all that can be said of a general sort I mean, and as they have been published all over China—remember the four hundred million, I cant say the same thing over again next year very well. Some people say Ive stirred up considerable interest, but when you are entirely outside the fuss interest, if any, you stir up, its about as exciting to your vanity as pouring hot water on the Arctic ice would be. Its much as if you were told that something you had said had aroused interest in Mars when you had never been in Mars, never expected to be there and had no share of any kind in what is doing there. I dont suppose I convey the idea; its a curious experience, and until youve been thru a similar one you cant get it, for ordinarily one's vanity is a part of the reverberations—if any, and you cant help imagining yourself having something to do with what you are said to accomplish. But there is no more kick to this than there would be if you had a pole which happenned to touch something in Marthe moon—to try once more. Its Nanking Im going to. The rest of the family will abide here a few weeks more, we have the flat rented till July one but there is said to be a new medical family anxious to take over, including our furnsihings. Tehy want it till Oct one however. Its been weeks and weeks since Ive written, but everything seems to rather flat just now. Perhaps a new place will give me a fresh start… I am giving a farewell dinner tonight at a Chinese restaurant, chinese food, about twenty people including ourselves, mostly Chinese educators, Chancellor Tsai the chief guest. He gave us a family dinner at the University the other evening with three or four of the Univ profs we know best. Professor Levy Bruhl who has been exchnaging at Harvard was here last week and I went to two dinners given for him, one at the French legation. He seems to have enjoyed his stay in America. Im going home to Nanking the same way we came up, the trip the other way, buy Hankow, having been given up. Partly too much disturbance along the line, partly because Dr Tao [Hsing-chih] of Nanking cam up and is taking me down, Mr Hu not going along. However later on we are to go up the Yangste river as far as Hankow, stopping along at several towns. We wont get up to the gorges tho, takes too long and costs too much and also will be too hot. We havent any summer plans yet, but I shant stay in Peking a[n]other summer whatever happens. Id lonkie to go up to Harbin, and get an impression at least of the Siberian situation. The Soviets are reported to be offering back to China everything in the way of railway and mining etc concesssions the old imperial govt stole; the story is they offerred this in 18 but the Allies prevented China accepting, I suppose Russia wanted recognition in return. I enclose a copy of letter I wrote flat agents. I dont seem to see any way to fix any limit sum. If there is any chance of subletting if we dont come back at good figure we can pay accordingly. I certainly should hate to go above two, and it seems to me that 24 ought to be above the limit unless you can turn around and rent at good advance… The next report is that the Japanese Chinese govt doesnt like the terms proposed. The next one will be, if history repeats itself, that Japan having squared itself by going in is now using her influence in China to keep the thing from consummation—not that the rumor will necessarily be true The extract from Mr Onos letter is very interesting, and it wouldnt be well to subject itthe logic of consecutive sentences to too much scrutiny. The soldiers etc who are coming back will throw some light on the desire to cooperate in Siberia; China certainly, if American bankers furnish the money, and Japanese manage it, as they will certainly do, unless Americanr are more on the job than they ever have been before. Lots of love to everybody, and send a carbon to Nanking—no, by the time you get this everybody will be there, Care Higher Normal College. Dad |
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| 143 | 1920.04 |
Dewey, John. The new leaven in Chinese politics [ID D28477]. To the student of political and social development, China presents a most exciting intellectual situation. He has read in books the account of the slow evolution of law and orderly governmental institutions. He finds in China an object lesson in what he has read. We take for granted the existence of government as an agency for enforcing justice between men and for protecting personal rights. We depend upon regular and orderly legal and judicial procedure to settle disputes as we take for granted the atmosphere we breathe. In China life goes on practically without such support and guarantees. And yet in the ordinary life of the people peace and order reign. If you read the books written about China, you find the Chinese often spoken of as the 'most law-abiding people in the world'. Struck by this fact, the traveler often neglects to go behind it. He fails to note that this law-abidingness constantly shows itself in contempt for everything that we in the West associate with law, that it goes on largely without courts, without legal and judicial forms and officers; that, in fact, the Chinese regularly do what the West regards as the essence of lawlessness—enforce the law through private agencies and arrangements. In many things the one who is regarded as breaking the real law, the controlling custom, is the one who appeals to the 'law'—that is, to governmental agencies and officers. A few incidents of recent history may illustrate the point. The Peking Government University students started the agitation last May which grew into that organized movement which in the end compelled the dismissal of some pro-Japanese members of the cabinet and forced the refusal to sign the peace treaty. The movement started with a procession. The parade passed by the house of an offensive member who was ordinarily referred to as 'traitor'. And the Chinese equivalent of the word traitor literally means thief-who-sells-his-country. In a fit of absent-mindedness the policeman on guard opened the gate into the compound. The leading students took this as a hint or an invitation. They rushed in. During the following scrimmage, the offender was beaten severely and his house was set afire. This incident is now ancient history. What is not so well known is that public opinion compelled the release of the students who were arrested. To have tried and condemned them for crime would have had more serious consequences than the government dared face. The heads of the schools gave assurance the students would not engage in further disorder; and they were let go, nominally subject to summons later. But when in the autumn the government, having recovered its nerve somewhat, made a demand upon the heads of the schools to submit the students for trial, their action was regarded as a breach of faith. When the school officials replied that the students had not returned to their respective schools, nothing further happened. There was a general feeling that the summons for trial did not represent the real wish of the officials, but was taken because of pressure exercised by some vengeful person. To western eyes, accustomed to the forms of regular hearings and trials, such a method seems lawless. In China, however, the moral sense of the community would have been shocked by a purely legal treatment. What in western law is compounded felony is frequently a virtue in China. The incident also illustrates the principle of corporate solidarity and responsibility which plays such a large part in Chinese consciousness. The school group to which the students belonged assumed liability for their future conduct, and gave guarantees for their proper behavior. As the Peking students were the authors of the movement, they were regarded as its chief abettors. It was desirable for the militaristic reactionaries to discredit them. A meeting of a few actual students, together with some old students and some who intended entering the University, was planned. Resolutions had been prepared which stated that a few noisy, self-seeking students, anxious for notoriety, had fostered the whole movement, coercing their weaker fellows. The resolutions declared, in the alleged name of a thousand students, that the real student body was opposed to the whole agitation. The liberal students got wind of this meeting, entered with a rush, took the thirty dissenters prisoner, obtained from them a written statement of the instigation of the meeting by the reactionary clique, and then locked them up as a punishment. When they were released from confinement by the police, warrants were sworn out and the ringleaders of the invading liberal students were arrested. Great indignation was aroused by this act, which was regarded as highly unsportsmanlike—not playing the game. An educational leader, a returned student, said to me that officials had no business interfering in a matter that concerned only the students. Yet this seeming absence of public law—this apparent lack of concern for the public interest in peace and orderly procedure— does not mean that opinion would support any individual in starting out to redress his own wrongs. It means that troubles of importance are regarded as between groups, and to be settled between them and by their own initiative. It is easy to imagine the denunciation of lawlessness that a report of such acts may excite in clubs and editorial rooms. They are here related, however, neither to condemn nor to approve. They are illustrative incidents, fairly typical. They show that the entire legal and judicial background which we take for granted in the West is rudimentary in China. Law and justice, as they should be, are not deliberately challenged in such episodes. There is merely a recurrence to traditional methods of settling disputes. The incidents are also instructive because they suggest the underlying cause. There is no confidence in government, no trust in the honesty, impartiality or intelligence of the officials of the state. Families, villages, clans, guilds—every organized group—has more confidence in the willingness of an opposed group to come to some sort of reasonable settlement than it has in the good faith or the wisdom of the official group. The following incident illustrates one reason for the lack of confidence in the government. One of the new liberal weeklies in Peking was a thorn in the side of the reactionary officials. Not that it was a political journal, but it was an organ of free discussion; it was connected through its editorial staff with the intellectual element in the Government University which the reactionaries feared, and it was serving as a model for starting similar Journals all over the country. The gendarmerie in Shanghai complained to the Provincial Military Governor in Nanking that the journal was creating unrest. Bolshevism has become the technical term in China as well as elsewhere for any criticism of authority. The Military Governor reported this statement to the Minister of War in Peking, who reported it to his colleague the Minister of Justice, who reported it to the local police, who took possession of the newspaper office and shut down the paper. Note the official House That Jack Built, and the impossibility of locating responsibility anywhere in any way that would secure the shadow of legal redress. Vagueness, overlapping authority, and consequent evasion and shifting of responsibility are typical of inherited governmental methods. Back of the incident lies, of course, the fact that government in China is still largely personal—a matter of edicts, mandates, decrees, rather than of either common or statute law. If we in the West sometimes suffer from the extreme to which the separation of administrative from legislative and judicial powers has gone, a slight study of oriental methods will reveal the conditions which created the demand for that separation. A few days ago, for example, the Minister of Justice in the Peking Cabinet issued a decree that all printed matter whatsoever must be submitted to the police for censorship before publication. There was no crisis, political or military. There was no legislative enabling act. It suited his personal wishes and his factional plans. The order was calmly received with the comment that it would be obeyed in Peking, because the government controlled the Pekingese police, but no attention would be paid to it in the rest of China. In many cases, the Republic's writ does not run beyond the city walls of the capital. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the acute problems of Chinese existence and reconstruction are due to the fact that methods which worked well enough in the past are now sharply challenged by the changes that have linked China up to the rest of the world. China faces a world that is differently organized from itself in almost every regard; a world, for example, that prizes the forms of justice even when it neglects its substance; a world in which governmental action is the source and standard of redress of wrongs and protection of rights. The habitual method of China, though it has accomplished a great measure of law-abidingness among the Chinese in their own affairs, appears from without as total absence of law, when foreign relations come under consideration. This is true of China's relations to practically all foreign nations. But Japan lies closest and has the most numerous and varied contacts, and hence has the most sources of complaint. She has borrowed and improved the technique of other nations in making these causes of friction the basis for demands for all sorts of concessions and encroachments, to the constant bewilderment and growing resentment of China. In enforcing the boycott against Japan, for example, the student unions have frequently taken matters into their own hands. They have raided stores in which Japanese goods are sold, carried the stocks off and burned them. When these things are reported in Japan, there is no scrupulous care taken to say that the goods are always the property of Chinese dealers, and that the Japanese themselves are not interfered with. A succession of such incidents skilfully handled by the Japanese government through the press has bred among the mass of the Japanese people a sincere belief that the Chinese people are lawless, irresponsible and aggressively bumptious in all their dealings with the Japanese, who, considering their provocations, have acted with great forbearance. Thus the Imperial Government assembles behind it the public opinion that is necessary to support a policy of aggression. The feeling that China is in a general state of lawlessness is used, for example, as a reason for keeping Shantung. The matter is further complicated by the large measure of autonomy enjoyed by the provinces, which historically are principalities rather than provinces. A well-informed English resident writing shortly before the downfall of the Manchu dynasty said: 'Each of China's eighteen provinces is a complete state in itself. Each province has its own army and navy, its own system of taxation, and its own social customs. Only in connection with the salt trade and the navy do the provinces have to make concessions to one another under a modicum of Imperial control'. In spite of nominal changes, the situation is not essentially different today. The railways and telegraphs have brought about greater unity; hut on the other hand the system of military governors, one for each province, has in some respects increased the effective display of States' rights. During the last few months there have been repeated rumors of the secession of the three Manchurian provinces, of the Southern provinces, and of the Yangtze provinces. These rumors, like the threats of governors here and there to withdraw when matters are not going to suit them, are largely part of the game for political prestige and power. But we know in the United States how our measure of independent action on the part of one state in the Union may complicate foreign relations. Given a greater measure of independence and a weak central state, it is easy to see how many cases of foreign friction may arise which give excuse for an aggressive policy. Moreover, there is a constant temptation for an unscrupulous foreign power to carry on intrigues and bargains with provincial officials and politicians at the expense of the National State. The recent history of China is largely a history of this sort of foreign intervention, which naturally adds to dissension and confusion and weakens the national government still more. Whether justly or not, the Chinese believe that militaristic Japan has deliberately fomented every movement that would keep China divided. As I write, rumors are current of an attempt to restore the monarchy with Japanese backing. The bearing of neglect of legal process and judicial forms upon the problem of extra-territoriality is obvious. At present, if commercial and other relations between China and foreign powers are to continue, some kind of extra-territoriality is a necessity, and this involves the existence of 'concessions'. Nevertheless, their existence is galling to national pride. Returned students have brought the idea and the word 'sovereignty' home with them. No word issues more trippingly from the lips. Yet the existing system has its present advantages for the Chinese themselves. The concessions in Shanghai and Tientsin, which are under foreign jurisdiction, are veritable cities of refuge for Chinese liberals and for political malcontents. As censorship and suppression of newspapers have increased under the present reactionary Ministry of Justice, there is a marked tendency for newspapers to form corporations under nominal foreign ownership and with foreign charters in order to get legal protection. Progressive Chinese business houses flock to the concessions. At present, without the Chinese element they would be mere shells. It is said that 90 per cent of the population of the International Settlement in Shanghai is Chinese and that Chinese pay 80 per cent of its taxes. Tares proverbially grow with the wheat. Corrupt officials protect their funds from confiscation by keeping them in foreign banks. As you ride through the Tientsin concessions, you have pointed out to you the houses of various provincial governors and officials who have thoughtfully provided a place of safety against the inevitable, though postponed, tide of popular indignation. A Chinese friend said to me that one of the next patriotic movements on the part of the Chinese would be a wholesale exodus from foreign concessions. Except for investors in foreign real estate, it will be amusing to watch when it occurs. The concessions will be left a mere shell. The foreign interest in the maintenance of concessions would completely disappear in this contingency were there some other way of maintaining consular jurisdiction. I would not give the impression that nothing is going to change the legal situation. The contrary is the case. There is a competent law codification bureau, presided over by a Chinese scholar whose works on some aspects of European law are standard texts in foreign law schools. A modem system is building up. An effort is being made to secure well trained judges and to reform and standardize judicial procedure. The desire for the abolition of extra-territoriality is hastening the change. But it is one thing to introduce formal changes and another to change the habitudes of the people. Contempt for politics and disregard of governmental jurisdiction in adjusting social and commercial disputes will die hard. It is to be doubted whether China will ever make the complete surrender to legalism and formalism that western nations have done. This may be one of the contributions of China to the world. There is little taste even among the advanced elements, for example, for a purely indirect and representative system of legislation and determination of policy. Repeatedly in the last few months popular opinion has taken things into its own hands and, by public assemblies and by circular telegrams, forced the policy °f the government in diplomatic matters. The personal touch and the immediate influence of popular will are needed. As compared with the West, the sphere of discretion will always be large in contrast with that of set forms. Western legalism will be short-circuited. Along with apathy on the part of the populace at large to political matters, there is extraordinary readiness to deal with such questions as a large number are interested in, without going through the intermediaries of political formality. The liberals in the existing national Senate and House of Representatives make no pretense of attending meetings and trying to influence action by discussion and voting. They make a direct appeal to the country. And in effect this means appeal to a great variety of local organizations: provincial educational associations to reach scholars and students, industrial and mercantile guilds, chambers of commerce (whose powers are much larger than those of like bodies in our country), voluntary unions and societies, religious and other. It is not at all impossible that, in its future evolution, China will depart widely from western constitutional and representative models and strike out a system combining direct expression of popular will by local group-organizations and guilds with a large measure of personal discretion in the hands of administrative officials as long as the latter give general satisfaction. Personal government by decrees, mandates and arbitrary seizures and imprisonments will give way. Its place will be taken by personal administration such as already exists in the railway, post office, customs, salt administration, etc., where the nature of the constructive work to be done furnishes standards and tests, rather than by formal legislation. Roughly speaking, the visitor in China is likely to find himself in three successive stages. The first is impatience with irregularities, incompetence and corruptions, and a demand for immediate and sweeping reforms. Longer stay convinces him of the deep roots of many of the objectionable things, and gives him a new lesson in the meaning of the words 'evolution' and development'. Many foreigners get stranded in this stage. Under the guise of favoring natural and slow evolution, they become opponents of all things and of any development. They even oppose the spread of popular education, saying it will rob the Chinese of their traditional contentment, patience and docile industry, rendering them uneasy and insubordinate. In everything they point to the evils that may accompany a transitional stage of development. They throw their weight, for example, against every movement for the emancipation of women from a servile status. They enlarge upon the dignity and power some women enjoy within the household and expatiate upon the evils that will arise from a relaxation of present taboos, when neither the old code nor that existing in western countries will apply. Many western business men especially deplore the attempts of missionaries to introduce new ideas. But the visitor who does not get arrested in this second stage emerges where he no longer expects immediate sweeping changes, nor carps at the evils of the present in comparison with an idealized picture of the traditional past. Below the surface he sees the signs of an intellectual reawakening. He feels that while now the endeavors for a new life are scattered, yet they are so numerous and so genuine that in time they will accumulate and coalesce. He finds himself in sympathy with Young China. For Young China also passed through a state of optimism and belief in wholesale change; a subsequent stage of disillusionment and pessimism; and, in a third stage, has now settled down to constructive efforts along lines of education, industry and social reorganization. In politics, Young China aims at the institution of government by and of law. It contemplates the abolition of personal government with its arbitrariness, corruption and incompetence. But it realizes that political development is mainly indirect; that it comes in consequence of the growth of science, industry and commerce, and of the new human relations and responsibilities they produce; that it springs from education, from the enlightenment of the people, and from special training in the knowledge and technical skill required in the administration of a modem state. The more one sees, the more one is convinced that many of the worst evils of present political China are the result of pure ignorance. One realizes how the delicate and multifarious business of the modem state is dependent upon knowledge and habits of mind that have grown up slowly and that are now counted upon as a matter of course. China is only beginning to acquire this special experience and knowledge. Old officials brought up in the ancient traditions, and new officials brought up in no traditions at all, but who manage to force themselves into power in a period of political break-up, will gradually pass off the scene. At Present the older types of scholars, cultivated, experienced in the archaic tradition, are usually hesitant, if not supine. They are largely puppets in the hands of vigorous men who have found their way into politics from the army, or from the ranks of bandits; men without education, who know for a large part no law but that of their own appetite, and who lack both general education and education in the management of the complex affairs of the contemporary state. But in the schools of the country, in the Student Movement, now grown politically self-conscious, are the forces making for a future politics of a different sort. |
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| 144 | 1920.04.02 | John Dewey leaves Beijing. |
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| 145 | 1920.04.03 | John Dewey goes up to the Taishan mountain. |
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| 146 | 1920.04.04 |
Letter from John Dewey to Alice Chipman Dewey Sunday—on train [April 4, 1920] Dear Alice, We stopped at Tai-an [Shandong] and went up Taisahn [Tai Shan, Shandong] after all, but not Chu fu. When Mr Tao went to Tientdin Mr Lu was on the train doing to Tsinan, and he said he wanted to go to Taishan and would make arrangements. So he met us at Tsinan. Ill write particulars later, we stayed at Chinese hotel, but got some Tai-an addresses. Mr H S Leitzel, Methodist Mission Mr Mauson, Anglican Mission Mr Connely, Southern Baptist. Probablt the first is the best to write to. Write long enough in advance to ensure getting in, as they are often crowded. The train gets to Tai an a[b]out ten oclock in evening, and you will have the pleasure of a wheelbarrow ride. I couldnt learn of any missionary at Chufu, but the methodist mission has a chinese branch there, and the pastor Liang En Po takes in people sometimes, probably Mr Leitzel would arrange it if you asked him when you write. Be sure and get a letter of intriucion from the ministry of edn. Mr Lu said he would get it if asked, as then you can get in and see the Dukes and the sacred relics. You better stay at Tai an two nights. You will be glad of the rest after the mt trip, and will can get to Chu fu about noon instead of after midnight, with six miles in a Peking cart to the city of the temple and tomb. Then you have about a day and a half there The sta[t]ion master will take you in if written to, but you have to bring your bedding, clothes that is. You will save about 16 apiec[e] on second class. But buy a berth ticket, five dollars, one ticket will do for the three I think. You wont use the berth to sleep in, but the accmodations are much better than the regular second class car and you will be sure of seats, a nice neat compartment. You have to buy express tickets from Tientsin on, to Tai-an beside the berth ticket. You can get the latter in Peking. Dont buy your regulr ticket beyond Tai-an unless sure tht second class allows time for stop overs. To make sure of berths from Che fu or Tai an you p[r]obably will have to buy first class from there to Nanking Dont have sunday in Tain an on acct of mi[s]sionary place Lots of love to all John |
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| 147 | 1920.04.04 |
Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey family Sunday, April 5, [4] 1920 Dear Family Dad has left and life is somewhat settled down again, tho we still manage to keep fairly busy. He went on Friday and Mrs Ting then came and took us all off for an automobile ride thru the Western Hills. We went to the Summer Palace first and then had a picninc lunch and rode awhile It was wonderful day and the country is lovely now. The fruit trees are all in bloom and the magnolias most out, and everything getting green. The palace seemed even finer then it did last summer when we went out. Thursday night Dad gave a farewell dinner to Chancellor Tsai and other of the Peking dignitaries and we had a very nice party. We all played Chinese gambling games and it was quite hilarious. Yesterday there was howling dust storm again tho not so bad as some Ive seen. It did very well, however and by three oclock the sun was fairly well dimmed and the sky quite a bright yellow. Last night we went out to dinner, to Mrs Chens and had a wonderful Chinese meal. They have about the best cook in Pekin that we know of. After dinner some people came in and we danced until fairly late. The dust had stopped by the time we came home and it was a wonderful moonlight night and today is a perfect day again. We are planning to do some milder kinds of batting now. Go for a couple of days to some temple in the Western Hills, take Evelyn to the Great Wall, and other nice outdoor trips like that. We are planning to go south about the twentieth and after that our plans depend on what Dad hears from Columbia. Evelyn and I are coming home anyway and I think we shall stick to the original plan of sailing from Yokohama on the twentieth of Aug. We are considering going south from Shanghai just by ourselves and taking the boat at Hongkong but we havent found out much about that yet. I think we should have just about time enough for it by leaving Shanghai on the first of July or soon after. It doesnt cost much more to go to Hongkong than it does to come back to Pekin and we may be able to work it that way. Mamma rather wants us to postpone our sailing and come back to Peking and up to Kalgan with her but that is pretty expensive and would probably mean that we shouldnt get home much before November and it seems more sensible to get home early in the fall if we are coming at all… Lucy |
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| 148 | 1920.04.04-06 |
John Dewey : Lectures 'Experimental logic' at Nanjing Teachers College. = Shi yan lun li xue. Liu Boming interpreter ; Xia Chengfeng, Cao Chu, Liu Boming, Shen Zhensheng recorder. In : Xue deng ; April 19, 22, 25 ; May 21, 29 ; June 2, 9, 10, 11, 19 (1920). 1. Logic, its nature and its importance. 2. The origins of thought. 3. The five steps of the thinking process. 4. Natural thought and scientific thinking. 5. The deficiencies of natural thought. 6. Deficiencies of natural thought attributable to social psychology. 7. Logic as a control of thinking. 8. Steps in logical thinking. 9. Facts and hypotheses. 10. The meaning of facts. 11. Abstraction and generalization. 12. General principles as description. 13. Verification. 14. Facts and meaning. 15. Judgment. 16. Types of Judgment. 17. Measurement. 18. Experimental logic : a summary. Berry Keenan : In his lectures series on 'Experimental logic', Dewey continued his discussion of the pragmatic re-evaluation of knowledge and human thinking. He discussed the five stages of thought, based on the model of the experimental method of thinking he had formulated in 1910. These stages explain what a simple mechanism human thought is. |
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| 149 | 1920.04.05 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey family Nanking, Care Higher Normal College, April 5 '20 Dearest family, On my way here—I arrived yesterday afternoon—I had the nearest approach to an adventure that I have had in China. It began with riding in a wheelbarrow from the station in Tai-an to a Chinese hotel in the village. It was after ten and the clouds were chasing the full moon, and the mountains shone thru the mists. A Chinese wheel barrow is built around a big wheel at the centre and its squeak, and its made to carry a ton and never wear out. There are two theories about the squeak which is more like a symphony minus the music than an ordinary creaking vehicle. One is that the coolies wish to save the expense of oil. The other is that the noise is a sign of good luck. Probably both theories are true, certainly the second is, if the first is. The hotel is less than a mile and the mud was soon so deep and the road so rough we had to get out and walk. But the proprities had been saved. The town magistrate had been telegraphed to of our arrival, and he had deputed the president of the middle school to await us. We might have slept in the clean German built station but we hadnt brought our roll of bed clothes with us. We hadnt expected to stop when we left Peking but Dr Tao, the Dean of this school, who was bringing me down, met Mr Lu an inspector of the ministry of education on the train who was coming to Tsinan—where we were Christmas time—and arranged the stop to go ou up Tai-sgan the sacred mt of Shantung. The hotel—there is no use putting quotation marks around as they it wouldnt mean anything to you—is built like all Chinese house level with the ground, and our rooms had dirt floors. It had been raining for several days; each room had one small window with paper panes, and the room was decorated with gilt and silvern paper bullion, which the pilgrims take up the mt and burn for sacrifice. Chinese beds are made by taking two saw horses and stretching boards across them. Fortunately mine had kooliang stalks, tall milmillet, a kind of cross between rushes, corn stalks and bamboo, and they put a fur rug over, so by turning over every five minutes I got some sleep. It must be said things were fairly clean. Mr Lu remarked that it was too early in the season for bedbugs, which would seem to disprove the theory of adaptation to environment as March is the season for pilgrims—or perhaps the pilgrims started the adaptation this time. What was a hotel in back was a food shop in front, and so our food was brought from one of the stands such as Ive seen hundreds of—mainly a kind of scrambled eggs, and noodle soups—palatable enough except that the garlic with which it is flavored while innocent enough at first soon takes root and becomes a great tree wherein the birds of the air may roost. Anyway two of the ambitions of my life had been safely realized, to ride in a wheel-barrow and go to a Chinese hotel. About eight next morning the middle school president (who touches his spectacles when he bows to you much as we would our hats) came around with the men & chairs for the ascent. Two coolies to each chair, and one spare man for a change. Leather straps so that each carries over his shoulders fastened to the long handles—one man ahead and one behind on good ground, sideways going up the steps, when they shaift the strap by a kind of hitch without slowing their pace from one shoulder to another; at the level between flights of steps they suddenyl whirl about sides so as to change strap from one shoulder to another. The chairs have no bottom except some loose roping over which a rug is thrown, so the seat is very comfortable. Until you have tried it you wouldnt believe oyou could be carried up steps with so little feeling of motion. Shut your eyes and you can hardly tell when you are going up or down one. And the coolies are more surefooted than mules—whic[h] they need to be, if you recal any pictures of the steps. In four years there have been two accidents, neither fatal and both on rainy days—which is no day to go up. It seems there was an artcile in the geog magazine some years ago on Taishan which gives particulars better than I can, but for the benefit of the statisticians Fred and Sabino. Ill say that the mountain is over 5000 feet high, straight up from the almost sea level plain, and there are 6600 stone steps—also the mountain is very steep, as geographically this country isnt very old. Toward the end it is almost all steps, and the view from below looking up to a red gate at the top of the gorge is a sight for a life time. In the lower reaches there are cedars along the path and above wonderful pines, some of them like the queer pines in Japan; monasteries at the top where we got our lunch, a Taoist monastery this was not Buddhist, so we had meat. We are were six hours going up, and three down, of course we walked more or less going up. We started in a fog and not much prospect of a view, but as the day wore along wethe wind came up and by the top we were at the top it was clear but with a soft mist effect over everything. To the east it was mts to the sea—which we couldnt see. Something like the Arizona mts in form, tho without the brilliant colorings, then in the other directions the spread out plains. Hundreds of tablets cut in the rocks all the way up, and at the top—generally "poems"—such as Hear the running water, or the waterfall; or The color of the sky and the sound of water; or Hear the whistling of the pines; Or we are coming to the better places, with a great many references to the sky or heaven. Its easy enough of course to see why mountains became sacred but the steepness must accentuate the feeling that you are going the mountain is going up to meet heaven. Nobody knows when the road and steps were built, the steps all dressed stone, altho there is a Chinese history in twelve volumes of the mountain. Coming down we left the road and wnt off to some Buddisht scriptures engraved on flat rocks over 1500 years ago, each character about a foot by a foot and a half. Unfortunately the water comes down there sometimes, and a good deal of the original has been carried off. Near the top is very big insciption of the one of Han Emperors, engraved on a cliff, two thousand years ago. It is impossible to convey any sense of the feeling the Chinese have for characters. Even a greenhorn can see the new ones fall far below the old, they are stiffer and more mechanical The educated Chinese go up to see these characters as we would go to a fine picture gallery. The rush hour of the pilgrim season is over, but we must have seen a thousand or two, mostly peasant people, and many many old women. The pilgrims acquire merit by walking—the poor women with their bound feet stumping up and down these thousand of steps—they sleep at the top, or along the way. Mr Tao counted the beggars—there were 186, not so many as earlier. They are much less professional than the Peking beggars; they cut out the whine about Great master, and confine themselves to Spare one, or Open up and distribute. Many are farmers who have made a few yards of terraced dirt among the rocks, and many lived in caves and straw houts along the road side. Most had hens too. They scrooch in the middle of the road, or leave their baskets there while they go off, and the coolies calmly carry the chair right over them. They had only cash in their baskets, one tenth of a copper, so the pilgrims can acquire merit without great expense. To add a few more statistics. The magistrate having engaged the chair bearers at our expense, they had been hired at the official price—one hundred coppers, about 75 cents for a chair, three men. We gae them money for their food and tips so they got at least a dollar apeice. But think of carrying a man up and down a mountain, six miles at least each way, for a dollar—or officially for 25 cents. They were are as imperturbably cheerful when we got back as when we started, and made their one leg courtesies most gracefully when they got their cumshaws. On arriving at Nanking we cross the Yangste on a ferry. When we got off there were several score hackmen yelling and crowding with no attempt at order. Mr Tao engaged one, and then another one spied me, an old pirate who drove mama and me around when we here a year ago. We were his plunder and he seized the baggage and put us in his carriage, the other man cursing at top of the voice. We had to stop sooon to get my trunk which had come on a day before. The the man who had lost the job rushed up like a wildman and attacked our villain. He put his head down and rushed to butt him; our man dodged and he scraped his head on a brick wall, and soon as they clinched the gore thereform gave both of them a bluggy look. Finally therey were separated, after howling and cursing all the time, neither really the worse for wear, and we drove off leaving them to act it all over out before a policeman, who hasd a maternal and detached air as he listented to them. The other man on our carriage drove off not even having his seat or spoken to his companion all during the row or its sequel. Why worry? Its astonishing what a difference your own feelings due to the temperature make in the look of a place. Last May it was as hot as hell here, and the town didnt look for thirty cents. Now it is cool and you can really see the lovely first green of the willows, and note that the town is full of them, and see may lovely things about the place. Its too warm for fires here, and too chilly to be warm, but still Im writing by an open window. Im satying almost next door to the Higher Normal compound with a Y M C A secy, a Mr Sweetman. They have two little kids, four and two, and are young and not very YMCAy. Its not their house but that of a missionary home on a forlough. He has been here 25 years and has a lovely compound, lots of trees, some big old ones, and across the street is the highest hill within the town walls which has been made thru foreign influence into a city park, planted with trees, mostly small yet, but a more attractive part of town thn where we were last year—or maybe its just the effect of temperature differences again. Today is Arbor day; everybody is supposed to plant a tree Mr Tao is quite disguseted because he says last year the coolies dug all the holes and all the students did was to stick a tree apiece in the ground when the coolie filled it up again. Much love to everybody. While I was slumbering on my Chinese bed I dreamed there were three letters all addressed in Eliz writing. I woke up before I had a ch[a]nce to read them, but anyway Ill address this letter to her. The delayed Empress mail was just coming when I left Peking, so probably the three will be forwarded to me soon. Love to verybody Dad. |
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| 150 | 1920.04.05? |
Letter from Evelyn Dewey to Frederick A., Elizabeth Braley, Sabino, & Jane Dewey [April 5, 1920?] Dear Fred, Elizabeth, Bino and Jane, I suppose you want to know what the state of plans are. Just before dad left for Nanking on Friday he cabled to Cloumbia for another leave of absence and he and mama seem to want to stay if that comes all right... Quite a number of things have been going on lately on account of dads departure, Chancellor Tsai gave a dinner at the u, small with just his particular gang and very good food and dad gave a dinner for all the officials he knows and some of the profs at the u at a Chinese restaurant and Saturday we went to dinner with a very nice young Chinese couple and they had some people in to dance afterwards, about the most human party I have been to here, excepting when I go to see Lucys pet Chinese couple, but they never entretain. Friday after seeing dad off with most of the rest of China we went to the summer palace and the Western Hills, some place, the Western hills means the bottom sloap of a mountain range that goes around two sides ot Peking, there are no trees, but all sorts of other queer things. Yesterday mama and I went shopping all day long like two crazy women, tho as usual the result in bulk was not not much, tho she did get a lovely rug with horses all over it and waves and trees, which she found about a month ago and has been bargaining for ever since, and we picked out an enourmous fur coat, which we are going to get some one to go and look at with us tomorrow, this one is good, the selection of furs here is very small, but this kind seems quite pretty and durable, then you have to get it made up and comes it the question of style, when they will surely ruin anything you get. The furit trees are all in bloom and the willows out, and the sun it very hot when it gets a chance, on the whole the weather is better than our spring, but there is the same uncomfortable alternation of hot and cold. The sunlight and general appearance of things is like Italy. Peking in a funny dive, life seems very dull and quiet in spite of having a good deal to do, I suppose it is because about 80% of the people we see do not interest us or us them. The regular social life is the dullest round of calling and calling and then calling again, and there is an awful lot of gossip and intrgue and the people are not worth it, I havent even seen anything that was gay yet, but then I havent done my duty, but spent my time batting around seeing things since I wasnt going to stay anyway. The few Chinese we know seem like much more real folks and it is easier to have easy relations with them. At last I think we will get into a reception of the presendents, as Mr. Plimpton asked us to go to the Y.W.C.A. one on Wednesday, we were going to spend the day on a boat in the canal, alias sewer which flows thru these parts, but I would rather rubber at the pres, I think. Over the week end we are going to a temple in the Western hills, now owned by the Y.M.C.A, at least I trust we are, mama is not a bit anxious, but I guess we can bully her into going. Had the best Chinese dinner, ever Saturday night, the food is simply lush, and I dont mind reaching to the middle of the table and helping myself with chop sticks to a bite at a time, its funny how undisgusting eating out of a common dish seems when everyone does it. You have a little saucer for a plate and if you dont eat all of each course you are lost for the night as you can never get more than a bite of anything that follows without mixing it up with the left overs you dont like. Fortunate there are a couple of courses that always come in clean bowls. All dishes are left on the table and of course using chop sticks and eating soup from the middle of a large table everything dribbles and the whole thing is one mess. You really dont have to eat the soup woth chop sticks ans spoons are supplied… Eve. |
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| 151 | 1920.04.09-06.29 (publ.) |
John Dewey : Lectures 'The history of philosophy' at the Nanjing Teachers College. Liu Boming interpreter ; Zhe Fan, Tai Shuangqiu, Shao Yulin recorder. In : Chen bao fu kan ; April 9-June 29 (1920). 1. The origins of philosophy. 2. Early philosophical problems. 3. The search for a universal principle. 4. Being and becoming. 5. Facts and theories. 6. The sophists. 7. Skepticism and logic. 8. Socrates. 9. Socrates' postulates. 10. Socrates' logic. 11. The Platonic 'real'. 12. The Platonic 'idea'. 13. Plato's epistemology. 14. Plato's educational philosophy. 15. Plato's politics. 16. From Plato to Aristotle. 17. Aristitle's 'potentiality' and 'actuality'. 18. Aristotle's 'individual' and 'species'. 19. Aristotle and the modern world. |
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| 152 | 1920.04.10-16? |
Letter from Evelyn Dewey to John Dewey [April 10-16, 1920?] Dear Dad, Well I hope you are not as sorry as I am that the cable came. I see that the Nanking students have joined the strick, does that mean that you are having a vacation. Mrs. Lamont came to call on ma the morning after she got here and has been to lunch to meet Suh Hu [Hu Shi] and has been shopping to look at Mrs. Chens silks, but on the whole seems to be tearing around like a chicken without a head, shopping mostly and getting everyone to bring out there things and look up things for her and then not buying anything, so certainly dont lift your finger about the head dress. She has a most unsympathetic personality and is absorbing everything that lies about. Liu has been getting very impertinent and strange and mama has just fired him, also the ricksha boy who was spending most of his time in the kitchen, she has acquired a boy whose sole accomplishmnet is honesty who is coming immediately and Mrs. E. is looking about for a real person, I only hope the cook will stay and be good, but I suppose not. I am all for getting away from here and hope we will by the first, but no bites for the apartment have turned up yet and mama does not seem to enjoy sightseeing so she wants to stay on here. My cold continues to flourish which does not add to my pleasure here. Suh Hu [Hu Shi] told me the other day that he was probably going to teach in summer school in Nanking, if they have an educational department going there why dont I get a job there too, he says it lasts six weeks, will you please enquire a bit and find out what kind of school they have and if they would be much embarressed if I should ask for a job, I would lecture on new and exp[e]rimental practises in schools at home, and could make it last just about six weeks, then I would put off sailing for a couple of boats and we could all go to Mongolia for a nice trip the end of the summer. I would write direct to Mr. Tao but thot if the prop is utterly absurd I would save them the embarressment of answering. The cook says he must go too he would like to stay but would loose too much face, so there you are. Hu told mama the other day that it was their plan to have you stay a good part of the cold weather next year in Canton, which would be nice. I trust that I am going to get a translator at last from the customs college. We went to a very nice dinner at the Fus the other night very jolly and elaborate food. The men tried to prevent it but the ladies sat at one table and the men at another all except mama and Geogre Wen sat her down between Hu and Tsai. But after dinner the men walked into the room and broke up the ladies party, after which the Chinese speaking group repared in mixed form to the Fu bed room and sat about and roared and had a wonderful time, Miss Bodon-Smith allowed she had never seen anything like it before… [Evelyn Dewey] |
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| 153 | 1920.04.11 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey family Nanking April 11 [1920] Dearest family, Ive been here a week and am really seeing a spring in China more so than in Peking I imagine, as there is so muc country here, and I live in a large compound with palm and bamboo trees aomong other things, and near the open country, close to the city wall in fact. I never confided in you how fat I got got, 170 when I tried the scales last some months ago, have never strained them since, and having no ricksha boy here and much time alone and so near open country, I have resolved upon walking daily, climb the hill near the house once or twice daily, and walk on the wonderful wall, 40 feet wide and much higher than the Peking one. Also more variety in the scenery, ponds and marshes, and a nice island like a Chinese picture, green gardens, bamboos and willows, peach tress in bloom, blossoms twice as big as ours, graves being spruced up for the year with twigs stuck into them and little white and red streamers of paper flying, mountains on almost every side, a glipse of the Yangste from the top of the hill, and in general spring in full blast. They say it doesnt last generally more than ten days, gallopping straight into sfull blown summer. This year it seems to be hanging back as if loathe to part with itself. I dont blame it for being fonder of itself than of the summer we saw here last year. I have a nice big room with a corner alcove for the bed, and a good table, what is called home cooking more than before in China, and quite abundant tho not so stylish as some. The missionary who owns the place and is home on furlough must be a character. I wondered for a while if he were a bachelor, and then heard that he ran everything him self; the house is filled with big shining brasses, reminds you of Macy's except four or five bells, temple bells, Id like to take home, and the dining room is lined with a hundred or so blue and white plates, platters and vases, mostly very modern and on the principle of quantity before quality. However they said he had taken down and packed away all of his best pieces. On the bookshelves Mary J Holmes novels are next to The Second Coming of Chrsit, and the Wild Widow, by the author of Scarlet Kisses, is all mixed up with the hymn books; an Edith Wharton and H G Wells or two have somewhat got mixed in with the funniest collection of religious literature and paper covered trash you ever saw. There is a girls school, orphans, and a boys school, latter closed while he is gone, in the compound, both of which he maintains. He is a practical joker when he isnt missionarying, and one of his refined jovialities was to teach an ugly gate keeper, who had no idea of the meaning of any ChiEnglish words, to go up to callers and say Kiss Me. I suppose this is the way he keeps from going more insane. He wrote back with great glee of telling a tourist on the boat how Li Hung Chng2 [Hung-Chang] lived in the same town and once every year brought his fifty wives over to pay a ceremonial call; also he wrote how angry it made him when the ship landed to see white men tying it to the wharf—this latter wasnt intende[d] as a joke. I am giving eight regular lectures per week, four evenings on the philosophy of education, two afternoons on Logic, and two afternoons on Greek philosophy. There are only an hour long, interpretation and all however, so its quite light work. Last week moreover there were two holidays, one Arbor Day which is the old spring festival and a ringer for Easter, and one to commemorate the opening of the first or old parliament. Im sorry I cant tell enough Chinese history and politics to show you the immense humor of this celebration, but its much as if they were to have a national holiday to celebrate Oliver Cromwell's purging of the English parliament. Last monday evening, I think they it was, they had a "reception". I had innocently forgotten the nature of a reception, and only when I got over there did I remember that school receptio[n] consists exclusively of speechmaking, one speech of welcome from the faculty and three from the students. They werent interpreted however, but I dont think any one repeated the witticism of a farewell speaker in Peking who said I had come to China to do to—or for—her what President Wilson did for France. Once there was much applause, and I was told it was becuase the speaker said that when the Japanese heard how warmly I was recd here they were jealous and sent me over a badge, which I refused. The myth seems well established, but a badge seems innocent enough. This sunday afternoon I spoke to all the Nanking students, theoretically all about fiften hundred in fact in the open air, delivering my w.k. [well-known] speech on a new conception of life. I am just as popular with the officials here as elsewhere, and was told that when the subject was printed in the paper, the word "new" was omitted, in order tnot to give offense. The word is positively inflammatory, which simplifies getting a hearing from an audience. The national executive committee of the students union has sent an ultimatum to the government, demanding that the Govt cancel at once all secret treaties with Japan, and also reject Japan's request for direct negotiations over Shantung. They have given the govt four days to do these stunts in, and have voted a nation wide strike if not granted. The Peking and Nanking students were both opposed to this action, but the majority carried it. It looks rather foolish, and I may be in for another enforced vacation, but as before remarked you never can tell. They, the radical students, were anxious to include two more demands one for dissolving the Anfu Club and another for a bas the militarists. These demands seem to have been reerved for the present. Well one enthusiastic foreigner who has been here twnety five years says that in China the Renaissance, the reformation, the English, French and American revolution are all taking place simultaneously and in the same country. If this is so, a little thing like a general strike is easily explainable. The same gentleman however is unpopular with his tudents becuase he insists on the faculty electing the student representatives to the selfgovernment Council so he takes his revolutions in moderation. There is a Young China Association with a branch hand here, and which publishes two journals, one called Young China and one the Young World. I have been trying to get somebody to tell me about the New Culture as they call it, and some of these people are going to make me up a kind of synopsis of the about a hundred periodicals, divided under three heads. The literary or language revolution, the new social ethics (labor and woman question) and education. This Teachers College is going to introduce coeducation, unlike progressive and liberal countries the men students are in favor of it here, mostly instead of opposing. When the committee was arranging the seating for the meeting to day, the student members insisted that the women should not be seated separately but mixed up with the others. They werent so damned mixed up as matter of fact, but they werent all herded in one spot either. I forgot to say that at the Recpetion one student made his welcoming speech in English. He got mixed up and forgot and the students laughed at him. To all appearances he kept up his nerve, but Im told he lost so much face he left school and hasnt been ^seen^ since, no one knows where he is. Its not pleasant that this should be the only visible, or perhaps invisible, result of my lectures. Lots of love to everybody and hope something will be forwarded from you soon Fred has been nobly doing his duty, but Sabino seems to have relapsed, and Jane never did get a fair start. With love, Dad |
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| 154 | 1920.04.12 |
Letter from John Dewey to Alice Chipman, Evelyn, & Lucy Dewey Monday, April 12 [1920] Dear Alice, Evelyn and Lucy, … There is another good sized room in theis house which they have offered for use when you come. This will be two in a room but I dont think it would be any better by dividing up. They have some single beds, which they will put up so mamma can have her own bed. The grounds are large and nice, and as there is a big two story piazza around the house I think it will be as cool as anywhere. No bathtub with running water, but I dont think there is anywhere except at the Bowens [Arthur J. Bowen]. Food is abundant and nourishing. The program remains in statu quo, otherwise meaning vague. How ever this much is definite. They expect six weeks lectures from me here altogether; they have spoken of a week at Shnaghai which may come off barring strike this month. But the interesting trips arent planned till later. I dont suppose you will mourn missing Shanghai, especially as there will be plenty of chance later if you want. Anyway we maynt go this mont[h] I think they are somewhat embarrassed about the Yangste trip. Tw of the provinces, the Educations Associations bvoted to invite me, according to newspaper reports but they havent recd the official invitations, and I infer, think officials have interfered. There is a good tennis court here. It would probably be a good idea for you to purchase a racket in Peking, as you will be glad of it here, probably wherever you are this summer. They say there is fair Chinese made racket can be bought for about five dollars, also bring a few balls. Lots of love and thanks for letters Shall hope to be able to write you definitely about plans here soon. Evelyn will find in the Sept or Oct no, No 4 of Young China a number of articles by women student[s] giving their ideas. I presume Suh Hu [Hu Shi] wont have got anybody for her unless shes had better luck than I did. Better ask George or Chiang [Monlin]when he gets back; I had thought of asking Mr [John Stewart] Burgess if he couldnt find some one, and that might be a good idea. Love to all John |
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| 155 | 1920.04.14 |
Letter from John Dewey to Alice Chipman, Evelyn, & Lucy Dewey Nanking, April 14 [1920] Dear family, Thanks especially to mamma for full and good letters. You probably know more about the strike than I do; it begins in Shanghai for one week today, here to morrow the students have no enthusiasm for it. There is certainly politics connected with it, more politics than there seemed to be in the Peking movement. The general opinion here is that it is the Shanghai students who are most back of it—that and the fact that having a general conference of delegates from all over, they had to find something to do. As to the politcs, so far as I can make out the student leaders think that they can use the 8 Tuchun leuague to help overthrow the present Anfu club domination—and I dont kno doubt the Tuchuns think they will use the students for their ends. The gossip is that the President [Hsu Shih-chang] is now in favor of the student movement. This sudden turn is said to be that due to the fact that the rivalry with Tuan [Chi-jui] has now reached a pointe where he wants popular support for himself and Ching [Chin Yun-peng]. Quite as likely the whole rumor started in the mere fact that the president received the Ymcas after Tuan had attempted to prevent the convention from meeting—the officials woill now be sure that the stirke is a consequence of the Tientsin meeeting. Another rumor said to be influencing the students is that Lamont has promised them financial support if they show they have the courage to do something! He may be interested in this rumor. Of course I cant say how widely circulated or believed these stories are, any more than the one that the students adopted from me the slogan that militarism must go. Its a good sentiment, but I havent the pride of originality about it. Mr Roy Anderson4 called on ment the other day with a Korean rebel conspirator and a local Chinese, and said that Mr Lamont was the first man who had been over here who had been big enough to see and talk to everybody, gave the students in Shanghai half an hour appointment and then talked to them two and a half and once when he asked them what they wanted he should do, one of the students replied "Go home", and Mr L took it goddnaturedly and said he would if he found he couldnt do something of benefit to the people. Also that the officials tried to keep him cornered but he wouldnt be. Nothing was said however about our friend Sokolsky; it would be interesteding to know if in his itch for sensationalism he had been stirring up the strike. The Korean was bound for Vladivostok and told with pride about the millions of yen the Koreans were subsrcibing to start patriotic newspapers, and also the number of indutrial companies, over 250 which had been started in the last year for encouraging Korean industry. He had been in prison several years so he must be old at the game. Mr Anderson think that if the Allies dont interfere to protect Japan an alliance between Koreans, Chinese and Russians in Siberia and Manchuria which will in time by guerilla warfare drive out Japanese is inevitable. The present reports from Siberia put Mr Ono's remarks about desire for cooperation in Siberia in the unfortunate light which events have a way of placing Japanese propaganda. I am living in a missionary house under the hill you spoke of, and maybe Mrs Malone is the one you spoke of; she is in America. However I have heard of two others who sometimes do that business and am on their trail. Tuesday afternoon and evening I teaed and dined at Mr Williams, the acting presidents—he is more cultivated than Mr Bowen, but also I think more conservative. He knows lots about Chinese and China tho. In 1900 spent a year in Japan with C T Wang and the Chinese students, of whom there were then 15000—he says that Chinese brought home a lot of new ideas, and evidently thinks that in spite of everything their going to Japan has been a great factor in producing the present new tendencies. Says Chinese were exploited in every posiible way; men used to get them into their homes, entangle them with their wives and daughters and then blackmail them. At the tea there were several Chinese women, among them the kindergartner, Mrs Wang and a cunning two year old girl, Mrs Won and the two celebrated boys that came in answer to prayer as a miraculous proof of the truth of Chritianity etc. The boys were about the size of "us boys" in the picture of the four of us, and their clothes were so like ours in the picture, and their hair cut the same way, that it was funny. They have two new semi Chinese buildings about up, the big administrative one rather ugly, the small one for a chapel is going to be quite lovely. At Mr Plimpton' suggestion they are going to set up a few of the old examination stalls Thursday, the 15th in the campus. Yesterday is my offday for work. Mr Tao and Liu cam around about nine, with a young brother of C T Wang who is on his way back to Shanghai and took me off for the day. We went to the Rain Blossom Hill whence come the pebbles, lots of peddlars, children with the coarser ones, like ours, following you around with baskets and finally offering to sell the whole lide for ega mau [illeg.], up to the aristocratic ones who have their stands and their best speices under glass with fancy names attached, the moon in the sea, etc, and prices according—one with a Chinese character like happiness on it for sixten dollars I came home with some pretty ones; then we went to the examination halls again, to the public gardens, to a lake we didnt go to before, in whose tea house the first Ming emperor used to play chess with his prime minister, a Chinese restaurant on the canal opposite the exam halls where we ate in The Flowery Boat on the canal, and to a big buddhist monastery, where we saw the sutra scriptures, 7000 vols, as well as the usual ten thousand buddhas; also we we were leaving there was service in the temple, so we waited. At first the music sounded to my ears much like negro chanting; its more hypnotic than catholic mass, more soothing to the nerves; if I were near Id go in everyday. Our weather is evidently cooler than yours. No hot days, rather chilly on the whole; the ewather we had here last May much the hottest of whole summer they say, also hottest ever. Strike begins today, but they say they will go on with my lectures There are single beds here for everybody. But bring sheets and pillow cases for your beds also a comforter or quilt apeice. A few towels would probably come in handy, but there arent sheets enough to go around, and bringing your own is part of the recognized scheme of living with missionaries. Also they dont drink coffee which means it is pretty bad; it wouldnt be a bad idea to have a couple of cans accidentally left over and bring em. Sorry to hear about Evelyn; quite likely the damp her and absence of dust will be a good thing for her, tho there isnt much to do here, except that wandering the streets one gets much more insight into life here than in Peking, things more open, and women much more in evidence, keeping shop, working with men etc. Better bring two tennis rackets, one for me as I think Ill have to start playing. Lots of love to everybody John |
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| 156 | 1920.04.18 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The new conception of life'. = Xin ren sheng guan. Liu Boming interpreter ; Jin Haiguan, Cao Chu, Pan Gungzhan, Ni Wenzhou recorder. In : Xue deng ; April 18 (1920). |
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| 157 | 1920 | John Dewey attends a tea party with the Young China Association in the garden of the Gentry Club. |
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| 158 | 1920.04.19 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey family Nanking April 19 '20 Dear family, or families, here and there I hope you will forgive me if I mix things all up in a scramble, some for one, some for tother. One negative fact has emerged about the future. Im not going anywhere not even to Shanghai till Ive finished here, which will be the middle of May. After that I am to be in the hands of the National Federation of Chinese Education, headquarters at Shanghai, and I guess something Monlin Chiang got up. I hope they have others reasons for being save managing my tour, but one feature of their activity I strongly suspect is to keep me from falling into the hands of the missionary institutions—at the same time, theyll expect probably to board us with missionaries wherever we go. When I can get at Tao [Hsing-chih] or Kuo [Ping-wen] Ill find out. They alnd practically all the leaders here are Christians, so you get another angle on that question here, tho not free from jealousy of their institutions I think. I dont think youll have any difficulty spending two weeks here pleasantly enough, or more; sight seeing will take more sometime and if any one has energy for picnics and walks, there are lots of places to go. I wander about the streets a good deal; shops are more wide open and domestic than in Peking, nothing exciting going on in them, but you see things fairly wide open. Weather much cooler than Peking so far; season is three weeks late. Evelyn outlined a good article on consortium for the N R and I hope she'll write it, under her own name. Glad mamma liked the sense of my Shantung article if she didnt the sound. I found, re the head dress that a Miss Lyons has a girls school here and wrote to ask when I could call on her, wrote several days ago, but havent had any answer. Have had a chance to get some contact with students here. Tea party yesterday afternoon with the local members of the Young China Association. I had supposed it to be very large, but found the entire representation there, ten in number, about equally divided between Teachers College as they prefer to call the Higher Normal and Nanking University. A man from the latter made quite a little set || speech, telling about the society and its purposes—five branches, one at Peking where it was formed last July, one Chengtu, one here one Tokyo, one Paris. 68 members in all and publishing 2 monthlies and one weekly. Thing of a small no of American college students doing that, say nothing of their object being to create a new civilization for China, and to cooperate with movements in other countries, for general reconstruction. They eschew politics and, are devoted to soicial reform, including educational, and to the spread of scientific method and results. The teachers tell me the group here is quite the elite among the students. Take in ^no^ new members save when they are thoroughly acquainted with them, and have four requirements; purity of character, an economical habit of life, a fighting disposition, and responsibility in carrying thru what they promise—not such a bad list. Judging from their conversation their chief present, in this group at least, is the family and woman question; anxious to know about feminism, strongly in favor of coeducation etc. The Baptist College in Shanhgai is going to introduce it in '21. One young man wanted to know how the psycology was going to be changed, that the men had a certain idea of women in their mind, and the women had the traditional idea of woman and also the mens' idea od women in their minds and when they met these old ideas came up no matter what their theoretical beliefs were. On thrusday afternoon [22 Apr. 1920] the student editors of their educational publication Youth and Society have asked me to meet with them. The meeting yesterday was in the Garden of the Gentry Club, I think thats the place mother and I had the bout with the hard boiled officials last spring. Mrs Thurston isnt here, The acting president Miss Vautrin brings her class in education over every evening to the normal school lecture, eight or ten of them, and the women teachers of the practise school come. Afternoon lectures there are a few scattering women, also, today from the womans normal. Im going to speak at Ginling [Nanjing] wednesday night; to science teachers of TC tomorrow, and spoke at University last Friday [16 Apr.] so am getting these stunts off the program, May 7 and 8 there is to be a Teachers Conference here, educators from outside. There is to be an Athletic Meet here, and this is run in after; I think thats the way they have got around the officials. The strike is supposed to come to an end tomorrow; anyway it doesnt affect me. The students had their first demonstration, parade, speech making this a m But I didnt know it was coming off and missed it. There is less no enthusiasm and unless the demonstration stirred things up, I dont think it will last. If cook goes too, I dont see why you dont put forward a little your coming down here. Shouldnt think it would pay to start up for two weeks all afresh. Hope you got to the Great Wall, and also hope you will do the Ming toombs, tho if you do you better stay at the hotel and not try it all in one day—go up afternoon before. The summer school here begins about July 15. I think thereir program is all made up, but will see what I can find out. Ev better speak to Suh Hu about it too. Got the other home letters but as a foreign ^mail^ got in the other day am now hoping for more. Lots of love to everybody John, also Dad. I hope if Mr Lamont decides to go back without doing anything he will speak right out in meeting, as undiplomatically as possible, and tell just why. Not only will it do the Chinese good, but also save American prestige, as the Japanese will give it out for a great American defeat and lots of Chinese will think it is another case where Americans have talked and done nothing. Mr Anderson said the thing to do was to get all territory within three miles on each side of every rail way thrown open to foreign trade; the Japanese go in anyway, and this would enable foreign capital to go in to compete with them, and the Chinese local merchants would rather tie up with American, and that way could also get protection for their investments against their own officials, this was the only way to make the Open door a fact he said. |
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| 159 | 1920.04.20-30 |
Letter from John Dewey to Alice Chipman Dewey [April 20-30,1920?] This is the detailed itinerary. I dont think I have the names of a lot of the places right. The towns before Shanghai all on the rail road between here and there. Chinkinang, May 17, Yangchow, 18th, Tsing chan 19-20, Changchow, 21 Wusih, 22-23, Soochow, 24-25, Shanghai, 26-31, Nantung, 1-6, Sinkian, 7-14, Hangchow and Wuhu, 7th-14th between them; Wuhu, An King, Kukiang—all up the river from here—rest of June. Dont know why Hangchow is dropped, lack of time is reason given; maybe, maybe afraid of missionary institutions in Wuchang. All this is subject to strike being called off before dates given. If it isnt, nobody knows what will happen. Dont forget towels, sheets, pillow cases. The cheapest place in Peking to buy typewriting paper is Munyons near gate on Hatamen, 3,50 for 500 hundred sheets. Please bring a box Ill hear your plans soon I suppose. Many inquiries about you. I have brought up the possibility of Evelyns giving some lectures her[e] this summer and it seemed to be well recd. I doubt oif she wants six weeks hot summer here however. Glad to hear Cook didnt leave, and hope Evyn has been all right again. My appraoches to Miss Lyons seem to have been in vain. Its a nunnery, no men on the place etc, and I suppose they are still holding consultations as to how to deal with my suggestion of making a call, Anyway I judge there is no reason from that end for following up the matter. After a dfew days nice weather ists cold and rainy again. Love to everybody John May 17, monday Chinkiang May 18, tuesday, lecture, Yongchow evening May 19 wednesday, Yongchow, lecture May 20 thurs lecture """""" May 21 Tsing kiang, travelling to Friday May 22 saturday Tsingkiang lecture May 23 sunday " " May 24 Travel to Chinkiang Monday Mat 25 Tues Changchow, early train lecture May 26 wednesday "" " May 27 thrusady to Shanghai May 28 friday lecture "" May 29 Sat Shanghai, Natl assn vocational edb May 30 sunday, """" """""" [M]ay 31 monday " till thrusday evening June 3rd. June 4 Friday Nantung, lecture till June 7 monday, then to Shanghai, leavingev 8 June 8 Tuesday, arrive Shanghai June 9 wednesday """" to Hangchow June 10 Tr Hangchow thursday June 11-12, 13 Hangchow thru sunday June 14 monday to Shanghai June 15 tuesday recreation """ June 16 Wednesday Tsuchow 17,18,19 """" June 20 sunday to Wusih, stay thru saturday the 26th June 27th Soochow, Monday tues 28-29 lectures at Soochow June 30 wednesday reurn to Nanking || [not typed by JD] Time table for Dr Dewey's Lectures. May 16th Sunday. May 17th from Nankin to Chingkiang by first train. Travelling for scenery May 18th Tuesday Lecture. To Yongchau in the evening. May 19th Wednesday Travelling for scenery or lecture. May 20 Thursdy lecture May 21st to Tsingkiang. Friday May 22 Sat arrive at Tsingkiang or lecture. May 23 Sunday May 24 Monday To Chingkiang. May 25th Tuesday To Chang chau by first train. Lecture. May 26th Wed. Lecture. May 27th to Shanghai. " 28th Friday May 29th Sat. Lecture in the National Association of Vocational Educa " Sunday same as above. May 31 June 1st Tuesday and 2nd Wednesday, blank June 3rd to Nantung in the evening. June 4th Arrive at Nantung June 5th travelling for scenery or lecture. June 6th Sunday lecture, Monday 7th lecture return to Shanghai. June 8th Arrive at Shanghai. June 9th to Hangchow. 10th 11th, 12th 13th June 14th return to Shnaghai. Tuesday 15th recreation. June 16th Wednesday To Siuchau till June 20th To Wusih till Sat the 26th four lectures beginning Wednesday June 27th to Suchow lecture 28th and June 29th, 30th lecture June 30th return to Nankin. |
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| 160 | 1920.04.21 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Science and democracy' at the Science Society of China. |
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| 161 | 1920.04.22 |
Letter from John Dewey to John Jacob Coss Care Nanking Teachers College April 22 '20 Dear Coss, Well as you know I have decided to stay over here and teach another year. I hesitated very long time; among other things they asked Evelyn to stay and she couldnt make up her mind at once. However altho she declined, I decided for another year of it, partly because being here it seemed the easiest thing to do, especially as reports from America arent especially attractive so far as living is concerned, and partly to try to clinch whatever may have got started this year. My teaching next year will be of a more intensive character, and mainly at the University, tho enough time will be taken off in the winter to go to Canton—which is another reason for staying as we havent been south. A trip was planned for this summer but some Americans advised us agt us very strongly on grounds of health. Suh Hu [Hu Shi] and a few others are very anxious to modernize the university, and to do means not only getting teachers but material in shape. He is anxious to have me give a course in the interpretation of the history of western philosophy, which can become for a while a kind of standard basis for that subject. The largest publishing house in China has recently made arrangements by the way for extensive translations, rather specially oin philosophy. Suh Hu [Hu Shi] and Monlin Chiang, a Teachers College man, and Chancellor Tsai of the University are the board of editors. The students are on strike again as a protest agt the Government's dealings with Japan, but they have excepted my lectures. Im lecturing here on philosophy of edn, rather popular, history of Greek philosophy and logic, 8 hours a week altogether, but the interpretation has to come out of the time, so it is rather a lesson in selection, condensation and illustration. Thanks very much for the material you sent. Im glad to be able to ging information about the tests, and the syllabus the course will be of great practical value to me. Books are scarce and hard to get hold of and that syllabus will take the place of quite a library. I have an account at the University Press Book Store and when you see a book that you think I really ought to read, philosophy or social theory, I wish you would tell them to send it to me—the old Peking address—and charge to my account. I feel Im getting rather stale. I wish by the way you would have [Bertrand] Russells Introduction to Mathematical Theory sent now, send that here, as this will be headquarters till July. I shall miss my classes and associations very much. And it is some pleasure to know that some will miss me there. I have had to write out my lectures on Social Philosophy—not wuite finished yet—for translation into Chinese, and Im wondering whether to get them printed in English. Im afraid however they are too general as I aimed at an outline of the whole field. My book of lectures on philosophical reconstruction, given in Japan, will probably be brought out by Holt shortly, At least I got galley proofs in Jan. I tried to sum up my past in that, and get rid of it for a fresh start. Please remember me to everybody, Woodbridge and Montague especially and Edman and the younger men who willmay be interested. With best wishes, Sincerely yours, | John Dewey The family is still In Peking tho Im expecting them shortly. Ive been here most three weeks. After the middle of May Im going on circuit round and about the Yangste provinces. |
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| 162 | 1920.04.24 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey family Teachers College April 24 [1920] Nanking Dearest children, You will see from the other side of this what sometimes happens when the Chinese get away from their own etiquette and dont succeed in getting over to ours. There are 60 or more returned American students here, about half of them in the T C; the guests were the American community here, at last as many as cane. Pres Kuo after a social occasion of cakes and tea delivered my obituary which I am getting reasonable hardedned to, but he interspersed the more painful parts with a few jokes. The Chinese have an enumerative mind; they like to cover the ground, from one, two, three, four up. Thusly, I am welcomed first because I am an American, secondly, because I am a philosopher, thridsly because I am a teacher, and so on till catagories and words are exhausted. There was also music, and some of the Chinese young men did stunts about like college boys at home, including a lesson in learning a new language by the modern motheod, which consisted in a dialogue of all the American slang they could remember, and the giving of various college yells. The French are sending back some Chinese coolies now. The French lot moslty came from the river provinces, and the big boats come up the river to here, 1100 landing today, and everybody is investigating their door and window locks. Also cussing the French. They just unload them and turn them loose; they may be penniless and a hundred miles or more from home. They give them drafts on France for their back wages, payable not here but in Shanghai, and then only when the Shanghai bank has recd notification from Paris. Some of them have hung around two months, living ion charity or something else waiting for the bank to get authorization from France for the Bank to pay checks these men already have. They have to have identification papers too with thunm prints, and between losing them having them stolen, and gambling them away, everything is a mess. When the first lot landed here, there was no one to receive them, or give them advice. The Y M C A now have an organization that takes their checks sends them to Shanghai and collect. Everyone contrasts French management with the British; they sent part of the wages to the mans home here, registered every letter, followed them up, got several postofficers dismissed for dishonesty; send somebody to look after them when they come home, and open a good number of pay offices in the home country of the people. Also the British made it easy for their coolies to save money and the French offered them every facility for spending it as fast as they got it. The students strike is on, indefinitely this time, altho they only struck for five days at first. The students here altho they were oppose[d] sent delegates out to other schools in Yangste towns and induced them to strike and now they cant quit because of these others. Also there is a good deal of disgust with Shanghai students, and I think there is some face-making at expense of Shanghai union; they want the leadership to centre here. Now they are trying to get the ineveitable middle man, the peacemaker to intervene. The provincial assembly has telegrapghed to the central govt in favor of the student demands—return of Japanese note andsking for negotiations over Shantung and cancelling of all secret pacts—and they are trying to get some Shanghai organizations to do the same. This will save the face of the students and they can go back to work, saying they struck only because others whose business it was did not take the responsibility and now that the latter have taken it, they will return to their proper business. But the paper says the Peking students have struck and that may complicate things. When mamma wrote about Sokolsky heading the Lamont student delegation I wondered of course whether he hasd anything to do with the strike. Yesterday I heard from a young Chinese here that a Russian Jew had had a lot of influence with a man who had influence with the students, and had been influential in starting the strike. He seemed to be of the opinion that the fiasco would reduce his future influence. Yesterday I went to the a tea in the Cockcrow temple—the Buddisht temples often have tea houses in connection—given by the student editors of an educational bi-weekly, Youth and Society, they made four very good speeches in English explaining their purposes and work. The neatest one said that their object was to help produce a Social Youth and a Youthful Society—which is an elegant example of Chinese balance. While we were talking three policemen came in. As they made profound bows, I was much flattered thinking they had come especially to offer their section of honor to the distinguished foreign guest. But there is martial law here, and the priests had reported that a meeting was going on. Having made their bows they promptly went out, and when we left they were still drinking tea in the other room, so they evidently got a hoilday out of it. Some of the students talked some. It seems that some professor in Peking University has advocated public rearing of children, on the ground that parents were too ignorant to rear their children, and that the family system was a failure anyway, and family ought to be abolished. Id like to get a collection of the extreme proposals that are going the rounds. An interesting thing is that they are practically put forth by Chinese who have had no foreign education at all, but who have become disgusted with conditions. Apparently at different times there has been a good deal of radicalism in China in spite of their conservatism. Another problem is that this school has the reputation of turning out radicals educationally and when they get jobs to teach they at once come into conflict with the old line educators, and many of them have to quit—or some quit simply they are senstive as to their face. This society like the other one seemed to put a good deal of emphasis upon a fighting spirit however. When we were in Peking we had read to us a letter from the Governor of Chekiang province pitching into a school principal there, saying he taught the pupils free love, nationalization of women etc as well as other alleged Bolshevist eccentricities. It turns out that the governor got his information from some of the old teachers in anonymous letters, they disliking their principal because of some of his progressive educational tendencies The principal is a Chinese scholar of the old type, and his progressiveness is all a matter of the last two or three years. These things throw some light on the struggle to change things. These young editors asked me to suggest topics for their magazine, which has a circulation of 1200, and I suggested a critical discussion of the disadvantages of Face. One of them put the whole political dilemma of China in a sentence when he said considering that an immediate revolution would merely transfer power from one set of officials and militarists to another set, and an educati a revolution that depended upon the proper education of the people so as really to have a democratic government would be too slow and come too late, what where the students to do? My program is finally made out. We are supposed to leave here May 16th and make six one or two day stands before reaching Shanghai on the 26th where we stay the rest of May. Then two weeks in three cities including Hangchow in the Shanghai region, then back up the Yangste for the last two weeks of June—not getting as far up the river as Hankow however. After the first of July we shall be on our own, I mean a vacation so if we want to go further up the river we can. You better keep sending mail here till further notice. An empress steamer comes in Shanghai today, so shall hope for late news soon. Lots of love to everybody. Im going to adress to Sabino as a reminder we have missed of late his good letters. Dad. |
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| 163 | 1920.04.29 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The essential meaning of vocational education'. = Zhi ye jiao yu di jing yi. In : Jue wu ; May 31 (1920). |
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| 164 | 1920.04.30 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Vocational education and the labor problem'. = Zhi ye jiao yu yu lao dong wen ti. In : Jue wu ; May 21 (1920). |
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| 165 | 1920.05 |
Dewey, John. What holds China back [ID D28478]. The longer one stays in China, the more the question of what holds China back impresses itself, and the more difficult it becomes to answer. There is 'if' in almost every answer which your Chinese friends give to the question; and the 'if' generally only restates the difficulty. The remark heard most often is perhaps the most superficial of all. 'If we had a stable government we could do this and that'. But why isn't there a stable government? Its absence is much more of an effect than a cause. The country is still divided, both north and south having their own government, and each at loggerheads with the other. Yet every Chinese friend tells you the country is united although the government is divided, and everything you can learn confirms the statement. Why do not the people then enforce their feeling and will? Japanese intrigue and interference is an obvious answer. But again you are given an effect, a symptom, instead of a cause. Others tell you that the source of the difficulty is lack of ability and experience in organization. This answer goes further below the surface. But it still needs explanation. The Chinese have both experience and ability in some kinds of organization, as the long history of the guilds and of village self-government shows. Why should they not show at least as much capacity for organization as the Japanese, who have only recently emerged from feudalism with all the personal suspicions, jealousies and class division that feudalism opposes to organization? And no one who knows the Chinese can believe that the difficulty is intellectual, that the people have not the mental gifts required in successful organization. To say (as is so often said) that the Chinese do not progress more systematically and rapidly because they are a conservative people is clearly repeating in other words the thing that needs to be explained. Conservative they doubtless are. But nevertheless their history is not a history of stagnation, of fixity, as we are falsely taught, but of social as well as dynastic changes. They have tried many experiments in their day. Centuries ago they had a statesman who induced the emperor to commit the kingdom to something as near to modern socialism as was possible considering the absence of steam and electricity. China has undergone as many barbarian invasions as any country in Europe. Its survival and its absorption of its invaders do not argue conservatism of the inert kind. No country whose conservatism came from sheer routine, from lack of imagination, from mental rigidity, could have maintained and extended its civilization as China has done. And experience shows that the Chinese are supple, pliant, accommodating and adaptive—neither rigid nor dull. It may strike the western reader as simply funny, but more than one Chinese friend has assured me that it is the Japanese people who are really conservative. And they back up their assertion by evidence other than the way in which Japan has clung, through all historic vicissitudes, to a primitive theocracy. They point out, for example, that a thousand years ago the Japanese borrowed their present style of clothing and of household furnishings, of sitting and sleeping on mats, from China; that China has changed several times, moving constantly in the direction of practical utility, of ingenious adaptation of means to needs. The Chinese cuisine is another argument. It is doubtless the most extensive in the world in the variety of material employed for food, and also the most varied in its combinations. Academic analysis may despise arguments drawn from food, clothing, shelter and furnishings. But when one notes the variety and ingenuity of the processes and appliances used in daily life and in the crafts, one is certain that the Chinese mind is naturally observant and adaptive. But it seems unnecessary to labor the question. Many charges have been brought against the Chinese, but no one has ever accused them of stupidity. Their undoubted conservatism is something to be explained rather than an explanation of anything. It may well be doubted whether there is any single key to the mystery. Certainly the present observer has no final solution to proffer. But there is one fact which I am quite sure must be taken into the reckoning and which counts for much. It is beyond question that many traits of the Chinese mind are the products of an extraordinary and long-continued density of populations. Psychologists have discovered, or possibly invented, a 'psychology of the crowd' to account for the way men act in masses, as a mob at a lynching bee. They have not inquired as to the effect upon the mind of constant living in close contact with large numbers, of continual living in a crowd. Years ago an enthusiastic American teacher of the Chinese in Honolulu told me that when the Chinese acquired Anglo-Saxon initiative they would be the greatest people in the world. I wonder whether even the Anglo-Saxons would have developed or retained initiative if they had lived for centuries under conditions that gave them no room to stir about, no relief from the unremitting surveillance of their fellows? Possibly they would then have acquired a habit of thinking of their 'face' before they thought of the thing to be done. Perhaps when they thought of a new thing they would have decided discretion and hesitation to be the better part of invention. If solitude or loneliness exists in China it is only among the monks who have retired into the mountain fastnesses; and until I have ocular evidence to the contrary I shall believe that even monks in China are sociable, agglutinative beings. Until the recent introduction of rapid transportation, very few Chinese ever enjoyed even the possibility of solitude that comes from being in a crowd of strangers. Imagine all elbow-room done away with, imagine millions of men living day by day, year by year, in the presence of the same persons (a very close presence at that), and new light may be shed upon the conservatism of the Chinese people. An English author, long resident in China, wrote a book which, aside from a wealth of picturesque incident, gossip and rumor, was a long diatribe against Young China—against, that is, the Chinese who favor the introduction of western institutions, inventions, methods. His way of arguing was sufficiently simple. China suffers from an excess of population. Great masses live just on the edge of subsistence. A flood, a disabling pestilence, a season's bad weather, plunges millions over the edge. Equilibrium is then restored. But a long succession of prosperous years produces an over-population which finds vent in rebellion, civil war, a killing off of a very large number, and possibly the overthrow of a dynasty. Chinese history is and must be a succession, a cycle, of such episodes. Meantime Confucian ideas, ancestor worship, family and clan organization, transmit Chinese civilization intact. This, Young China would destroy, robbing China of its moral foundations. Since it cannot alter the basic facts of the struggle for existence, Young China therefore offers nothing of value to the country. The logic is not close-knit; non sequiturs abound. But it is a good example of the way in which foreigners become infected with a belief that in China things must in the future be about as they have been in the past, and that efforts to make a change only result in making things worse. In my experience, most foreigners who have been long in China and who think at all, acquire this attitude in some degree. You hear solemn warnings on every hand that this and that cannot be done, although next day you learn from some Chinese friend that it is being done and the heavens have not fallen. Many are more Confucianist—in a kind of vague belief that Confucius contributed something without which China cannot endure—than the younger generation of Chinese. After a few years some foreigners find themselves hypnotized by the thickness, the compactness, of a civilization forced upon people living closely crowded together. They acquire the fear that if one strand is touched, the whole will unravel, and the belief that the safe thing is to leave things alone. Young American teachers and social workers, recently over from America, tell me that the older missionaries frequently admonish them against their innovating zeal, and tell them that as they grow older and wiser they will learn conservatism. Most of the older British residents are reported to have no sympathy with the Revolution, to mourn the departed days of monarchy, and to point to many increased present evils as proofs of their belief that as China has been, so she must be. If China 'gets' so many foreigners who come with the opposed tradition of the initiative of Anglo-Saxons, then what must be the case with those brought up from infancy in thick, dense, inbred civilization? Live and let live is the response to crowded conditions. If things are fairly well off, then let well enough alone. If they are evil, endure them rather than run the risk of making them worse by interference. In western countries, the doctrine of laissez faire has flourished because a policy of hands off was thought to encourage individual energy and enterprise. In China it flourishes because any unusual energy or enterprise on the part of anybody may work untoward results. Not to rock the boat is wisdom the world over. In a crowded country, not organized along the lines of utilization of natural resources, any innovation is likely to disturb the balance of the social boat. The reformer does not even meet sharp, clear-cut resistance. If he did, he might be stimulated to further effort. He simply is smothered. Stalling has become a fine art. At a recent national educational conference a returned student holding an official position moved that the public middle schools (corresponding to our high schools) be made co-educational. He was inspired by sound consideration. China suffers from lack of educated women. Funds are short. The effective thing is to admit girls to the schools already existing. But the proposition was a radical innovation. Yet it was not opposed. A resolution in favor was duly passed. But at the same time it was made subtly understood that this was done out of courtesy to the mover, and that no steps to carry the resolution into effect need be expected. This is the fate of many proposed social reforms. They are not fought, they are only swallowed. China does not stagnate, it absorbs. It takes up all the slack till there is no rope left with which to pull. The weak points of a people, like those of an individual, are the defects of their qualities. Vices are not far removed from virtues; they are their reverse side. The Chinese believe themselves the politest people on earth. They are probably right in their belief. In comparison even the best of western manners often appear either crude or else overdone, affected. Nothing can exceed the amenity of the Japanese in personal intercourse. But they learned their etiquette as well as so much else from China, and it remains somewhat formal, a cultivated art. In China the ages have toned down and mellowed the forms of intercourse till they no longer seem forms. High and low are so easy and unconstrained in their bearing toward one another, that one is tempted, in spite of scientific authority, to believe in the inheritance by later generations of the manners acquired by previous generations. Cheerfulness and contentment amid the most trying conditions are a part of good manners. Yet there is none of that rigidity, to say nothing of glumness and fanaticism, which we ordinarily associate with stoicism or fatalism. There is no flourish of self-control which betrays that the self-control is maintained with difficulty. Fate is welcomed with a smile, perhaps a jest, not with a frown, nor yet with heroics. Such courtesy and cheerfulness are undoubted products of long-continued close face-to-face crowded existence. The unremitting impact of a thick civilization has impressed the folly of adding to the burdens of life by friction or repining. Politeness and cheerfulness are the lubricants by which the closeness and constancy of personal contacts are made endurable. Circumstances admit of but two alternatives: either ruthless competition, war to the bone, or an easygoing peace. Having chosen the latter way out, the Chinese have carried it to its logical conclusion. Yet personal consideration for others in direct face-to-face intercourse is quite compatible with what in the western world would be regarded as unfeeling cruelty and lack of active aid to others. The other day in Peking a passing carriage knocked down a man in the street, and rolled by unheeding. The man was so badly injured that he was unable to rise. No passer-by made a move; all literally passed by on the other side, until some foreigners came to the rescue. A few months ago Mr. Baillie was set upon by bandits in Manchuria. The other persons present not only offered no aid, but they ran aside and shut their eyes so that they could not be called upon to testify. The further point of this incident lies in the fact that Mr. Baillie had taken poor and miserable persons from the more crowded parts of China to Manchuria where there was plenty of land, and by colonizing them had greatly improved their conditions. These men who closed their eyes that they might not know what was going on were men whom he had aided; they were personal friends. This does not mean that Chinese habitual politeness is insincere. I have never heard the Chinese accused of hypocrisy, though I have heard of many bitter complaints of their unwillingness to carry things through. I have never seen anyone who did not regard genuine friendliness as one of the chief Chinese traits. But where there is a complete manifestation of the Malthusian theory of population, friendliness develops with great difficulty to the point of active effort to relieve suffering. Where further increase in population means increase in severity of the struggle for subsistence, aggressive benevolence is not likely to assume large proportions. On the contrary, when the cutting off of thousands by plague or flood or famine means more air to breathe and more land to cultivate for those who remain, stoic apathy is not hard to attain. A foreigner interested in the prevention of cruelty to animals after many discouragements approached with some hopefulness a Buddhist monk. He thought that the doctrine of universal pity would have prepared the way for sympathetic reception. But his message was coldly greeted. He was told that the animals, when they were abused, were justly suffering for the sins of some ancestor and that it was not for man to interfere. Such Buddhism only formulates the fatalism which is a general natural response to surroundings. Most of the oriental traits of lack of active sympathy and relief which missionaries have cited as due to heathenism seem to have a simpler explanation. On the other hand, western philanthropy makes a great appeal. Missionaries and Y.M.C.A. workers took a large part of the burden of recent flood-relief work. The Chinese in the devastated region who had remained calmly impervious to prior preaching, were so impressed with the exhibition of kindness that was gratuitous that they flocked into the churches. The latter had to sift and choose very carefully to keep from being themselves flooded. And this result was not a 'lively expectation of favors to come'. The population had been deeply touched by the unprecedented display of sympathy and help. I was told on good authority that the Governor of Shansi, the most respected provincial governor in China, said that up to the time of the outbreak of bubonic plague, he had thought that western civilization was good only for battleships and machinery. But the unpaid devotion of physicians, teachers and missionaries, at the risk of their own lives, had convinced him that there was another side to western civilization. The incidents of personal disregard of others have the same spring as the absence of organized relief. To do anything is to assume a responsibility. To have helped the man knocked down would have done more than involve a loss of time. Those helping would have implicated themselves with the authorities. They might be accused of complicity. Mind your own business, don't interfere, leave things to those whose express business it is to look after them, is the rule of living. Don't make a nuisance of yourself by meddlesomeness, to say nothing of getting yourself into incalculable trouble by leaving the beaten track. Practical in-difference in matters that do not directly concern one is but the obverse side of exquisite consideration in immediate personal relations. Where the latter are concerned everything suggests the superior claims of an immediate smoothing over of things rather than an adjustment on the basis of actual objective consequences. Effect on 'face' is more significant than consequences upon outer facts. It is contrary to the proprieties, for instance, for a government school to accept private gifts. It reflects upon the government, which then loses 'face'. The head of a Peking school recently said he would accept gifts, that he was willing to sacrifice his 'face' to the good of his school and the country. This was a more genuine sacrifice than westerners might believe. When people live close together and cannot get away from one another, appearances, that is to say the impression made upon others, become as important as the realities, if not more so. The ulterior consequences of, let us say, a diplomatic transaction with a foreign nation seem of less consequence than the immediate conduct of negotiations in such a way as to avoid present trouble and graciously to observe all the proprieties. When evasion and delay no longer suffice, it is better to surrender and to permit the other side to be rude and brusque than to lose 'face' one's self. The Japanese knowledge of this trait accounts very considerably for their diplomatic methods with China. It is known as the policy of the strong hand. Concede anything to the Chinese and they think you are afraid of them, and they at once become presumptuous and demand more—this is a commonplace in Japanese newspaper discussion of Chinese affairs. So far as immediate dealings with officials are concerned, the Japanese seem to have decided wisely as to the methods which give results. What they failed to count upon was the immense backwash of resentment among the people at large. In fine, the crowded population has bred those habits of mind, which, as the common saying goes, make the Chinese individually so companionably agreeable and attractive and collectively so exasperating to the outsider. Innovation, experimentation, get automatically discouraged, not from lack of intelligence, but because intelligence is too keenly aware of the mistakes that may result, the trouble that may arise. 'Keep out of trouble' comes to be the guiding principle. In an evening pleasantly spent with ex-President Sun Yat-sen, he set forth his theory as to the slow change of China as compared with the rapid advance of Japan. It seems some old Chinese sage once said, 'To know is easy; to act is difficult'. The Chinese had taken this adage to heart, so Mr. Sun explained. They did not act because they were afraid of making mistakes; they wanted to be guaranteed in advance against any failure or serious trouble. The Japanese, on the other hand, realized that action was much easier than knowing; they went ahead and did things without minding mistakes and failures, trusting to a net balance on the side of achievement. I am inclined to think the old sage was influential because his teaching was reinforced by effects of the ever-close and ever-thick environment. Only the superficial think that to give the causes of an unfortunate state of affairs is to excuse them. Any state of affairs has to be judged on the basis of the consequences it produces, not on the basis of the causes that explain its existence. But if the causes are those described, they cannot be remedied by expostulation, exhortation and preaching. A change of conditions, an alteration of the environment, is needed. This cannot take place by reducing the population, although part of Young China is now shocking archaic China by preaching birth-control. An introduction of modem industrial methods is the only thing that will profoundly affect the environment. Utilizing energy and resources now untouched will produce an effect that will be the same as an enlargement of the environment. Mining, railways and manufacturing based upon China's wealth of unused resources will give a new outlet for energies that now cannot be used without the risk of causing 'trouble'. The impersonal and indirect effects of modern production and commerce will create habits that will lessen the importance of appearances and 'face', and increase the importance of objective consequences of facts. A way will be discovered with the increase of wealth and of constructive appliances to turn personal friendliness, unfailing amiability and good-humor into general channels of social service. |
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| 166 | 1920.05.04 | John Dewey took a horse-drawn carriage and visited the markets in the Chinese districts and foreign concessions in Shanghai. In the evening he watched a Chinese opera at the Jiumidi New Stage. |
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| 167 | 1920.05.05 | The director of the Zhejiang Association of Education came to Shanghai and invited John Dewey to Hangzhou. |
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| 168 | 1920.05.06 | The director of the Zhejiang Association of Education and John Dewey toured to the West Lake in Hangzhou. |
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| 169 | 1920.05.07-08 | John Dewey : Lectures 'Criteria for social progress', 'The trend of modern education', 'General education', The vocation of educators' at the Nanjing Teachers College. Liu Boming interpreter. |
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| 170 | 1920.05.09 | John Dewey returned to Shanghai. |
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| 171 | 1920.05.11 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Criteria for social progress'. = She hui jin hua zhi biao zhun. Liu Boming interpreter ; Qiu Yi recorder. In : Xue deng ; May 11 (1920). |
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| 172 | 1920.05.12 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Educational factors'. = Jiao yu zhi yao su. Liu Boming interpreter ; Qiu Yi recorder. In : Xue deng ; May 12 (1920). |
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| 173 | 1920.05.13 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Trends in modern education'. Liu Boming interpreter ; Qiu Yi recorder. In : Xue deng ; May 13 (1920). |
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| 174 | 1920.05.14 | John Dewey and Zheng Zonghai visited Harddon Garden and Cang sheng ming zhi da xue in Shanghai and Dewey gave a speech in its auditorium. |
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| 175 | 1920.05.14 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The duty of educators. = Jiao yu jia zhi tian zhi. Liu Boming interpreter ; Qiu Yi recorder. In : Xue deng ; May 14 (1920). [Delivered lectures on this topic several times during May-June 1920 in the Shanghai-Nanjing area]. |
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| 176 | 1920.05.15 | ohn Dewey went to Nanjing. |
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| 177 | 1920.05.16 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The essence of populist thought' before the Jiangsu provincial parliament in Nanjing. Guo Bingwen, Liu Boming interpreter. |
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| 178 | 1920.05.17 | John Dewey traveled from Nanjing to Zhenjiang. He stayed at the Jinshan Jiangtian Buddhist temple. |
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| 179 | 1920.05.18 | John Dewey : Lectures 'The essence of students' self-motivation', 'The vocation of educators' at the Zhenjiang Encouraging Learning Society. After the lecture Dewey was invited to dinner at the Provincial Middle School. After dinner, he went to Yangzhou. |
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| 180 | 1920.05.19 | John Dewey toured to the Yangzhou Slender West Lake. |
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| 181 | 1920.05.20 | John Dewey : Speches 'Education and social progress', 'The essence of self-motivation' at the Yangzhou Grand Theater. Liu Boming interpreter. |
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| 182 | 1920.05.20 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The relationship between education and social progress' in Yongchau / Yongchow [Yangzhou]. = Jiao yu yu she hui. Liu Boming interpreter ; Chen Changgeng, Xu Changnian recorder. In : Jue wu ; May 23 (1920). |
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| 183 | 1920.05.20 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The real meaning of freedon' in Yangzhou. = Zi you di zhen yi. In : Jue wu ; May 25 (1920). |
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| 184 | 1920.05.21 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Vocational education and the labor problem'. = Zhi ye jiao yu yu lao dong wen ti. In : Jue wu ; May 21 (1920). |
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| 185 | 1920.05.21-23 | John Dewey : Stay and lecture in Qingjiang. |
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| 186 | 1920.05.23 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The relationship between education and social progress' in Yongchau / Yongchow [Yangzhou]. = Jiao yu yu she hui. Liu Boming interpreter ; Chen Changgeng, Xu Changnian recorder. In : Jue wu ; May 23 (1920). |
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| 187 | 1920.05.23 | John Dewey returned to Yangzhou. He went to Zhenjiang in the evening. |
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| 188 | 1920.05.24 | John Dewey arrived in Zhenjiang and went to Changzhou. |
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| 189 | 1920.05.25 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The real meaning of freedon' in Yangzhou. = Zi you di zhen yi. In : Jue wu ; May 25 (1920). |
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| 190 | 1920.05.25 |
John Dewey arrived on the morning at Changzhou. He visited the Youth Society, watched a shadow-puppet drama, and had a Chinese meal. He went sightseeing on the east outskirts of the city and observed the Yuanjie ceremony at Tianning Buddhist Temple. He bought a Chinese landscape painting which was said to have been created in the Ming dynasty. In the afternoon he gave a lecture 'The school and its environment'. Liu Boming interpreter. Shen Yihong : “The lecture attracted an audience larger than that of any other. Present at the lecture were County Magistrate Yao of Wujin, missionary John Hawk, priest Hu Jianong, local education administrative staff, headmasters and teachers of local schools, students from Middle Schools, Normal School and Girls' Normal School.” |
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| 191 | 1920.05.26 | John Dewey : Lectures 'The essence of students' self-motivation', 'The new outlook on life' in Changzhou. There were over 3000 listeners. |
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| 192 | 1920.05.26 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Methods for measuring intelligence'. = Zhi hui du liang fa di da gang. San Lang recorder. In : Xue deng ; May 26 (1920). |
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| 193 | 1920.05.27 | John Dewey : Speech 'Moral cultivation for the youth' at the Youth Society in Changzhou. $at noon Dewey returned to Shanghai with his wife, their daughter and Liu Boming. |
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| 194 | 1920.05.28 |
Banquet for John Dewey by the Jiangsu Association of Education, the New Education Co-Progress Association and the Association ov Vocational Education at the Yipingxiang Restaurant in Shanghai. Guo Bingwen gave a high praise for Dewey's positive and huge influence on Sino-U.S. diplomatic relations and China's education : Banquet for John Dewey by the Jiangsu Association of Education, the New Education Co-Progress Association and the Association ov Vocational Education at the Yipingxiang Restaurant in Shanghai. Guo Bingwen gave a high praise for Dewey's positive and huge influence on Sino-U.S. diplomatic relations and China's education : "In terms of Sino-U.S. relations, Dewey has been playing an important role in informing the American people of a real China, which would help strengthen Sino-U.S. ties. As for education in China, ever since Dewey's arrival, it has been enjoying great progress." |
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| 195 | 1920.05.29 | John Dewey : Lectures 'The vocation of educators', 'The essence of vocational education' for the third annual meeting of the Zhonghua Vocational School at the invitation of the National Association of Vocational Education (Zhong hua zhi ye jiao yu she). Liu Boming interpreter. |
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| 196 | 1920.05.29 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The real meaning of independent action'. = Zi dong zhi zhen yi. Liu Boming interpreter ; Chen Changgeng recorder. In : Xue deng ; May 29 (1920). |
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| 197 | 1920.05.30 |
Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes Shanghai May 30th [1920] Dear Barnes, … I left Peking early in April. For six weeks I was at Nanking, teaching, or rather lecturing, wuite different, in the Govt Teachers College ther[e]. For the last week two weeks Ive been on tour, three interior places and then a week here, and then four or five other places before the first of July. All in this province and in the neighboring one. These are about the most prosperous and progressive provinces in China, but China, barring Shanghai, is still most decidedly China. It is interesting to get these glimpses of interior towns; two places were not treaty towns, and hence had no foreigners in them except doctors and missionaries and mission teachers. Everything in China is a contradiction. China needs foreign influence badly, foreign industrial methods etc, and yet the individual Chinese seem batter off, honester and more selfrespecting where foreigners dont go in large nos. In some ways one gets a better impression of missionary work in the smaller towns than in the big centres. The hospital and medical work awkanes [awakens] enthusiasm, and they take with them, the missionaries and teachers, a certain social spirit and public interest which is much needed. I stayed at a Chinese Youngs Mens Club at one of these places a useful institution, but it is safe to say that it wouldnt have been started without the example of the Y M C As. Many Chinese say that China is now going thru a period of rather indiscriminate admiration of all things foreign after having had so long a contempt for everything foreign, and is in danger of losing its own best things. I dont know of course. The Chinese seem to be very Chinese, and likely to stay so, tho in my judgment they really assimilate foreign ideas more internally than the Japanese. I have a theory that the situation in China now is much like that in Japan fifty years ago, and that there was a time when Japan might have turned in either direction. The Japanese continue to invade Siberia—and to promise complete withdrawal of all troops "when". They doubtless will when they get all the economic concessions they want—otherwise when the Russians get strong enough to put them out. Mr [Frank A.] Vanderlips party has been drowned in Japanese courtesy and palaver. Only one had strength enough to get up to the surface again and come over to China to see for himself. Mr Lamont at least has force, and isnt decieved. Dont think the consortium is all bad or exploitation. It might even be the salvation of China politically speaking, not only as the means of protecting China from further competitive exploitation which means partition ofr complete Japanese domination. Without foreign supervision of her finances China will surely go bankrupt and an international supervision is better than a compettive scramble—which is the reason Japan, or one reason, why Japan so opposed the consortium. I shall get back to Peking early in July I suppose. Mrs. Dewey and the two girls stayed in Peking a month or so after I did but we are now going about together. Sincerely yours, John Dewey— |
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| 198 | 1920.05.30 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Vocational education and labor issues' at the Association for Vocational Education. |
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| 199 | 1920.05.30 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The duty of educators' : delivered on the 15th anniversary of the Second Teachers College, Shanghai. Liu Boming interpreter. In : Jue wu ; May 30 (1920). |
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| 200 | 1920.05.31 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The essential meaning of vocational education'. = Zhi ye jiao yu di jing yi. In : Jue wu ; May 31 (1920). |
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| 201 | 1920.05.31 |
John Dewey : Lecture 'A social perspective on professional education' at the Tongji School in Wusong and 'Science and people's life' at the Jiangsu Association of Education in Shanghai. Liu Boming interpreter. Following his speech was a talk by Alice Chipmen Dewey on 'Co-education'. Hu Bingxia interpreter. |
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| 202 | 1920.06.01 |
John Dewey : Lecture 'The new outlook of life' at the invitation of the Jiangsu Association of Education, at the Zhonghua Vocational School in Shanghai. There were about 1300 listeners. After this lecture, Dewey went to give a lecture to the Department of Public Relations of the Youth Society. In the evening, lecture 'The relationship between industry and culture' at the Nanyang Public School. |
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| 203 | 1920.06.02 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Students and the nation' at the University of Shanghai (Hujiang College). In the evening, lecture on 'Social evolution' to the Shanghai Youth Association. |
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| 204 | 1920.06.02 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The question of co-education' at the Jiangsu Education Association (Jiangsu sheng jiao yu hui), Shanghai. = Nan nü tong xue wen ti. Keng Xiang recorder. In : Jue wu ; June 2 (1920). |
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| 205 | 1920.06.03 |
John Dewey : Lecture 'Populist education' at Pudong Middle School' in Shanghai. In the afternoon, lecture 'The essence of democracy' at the Jiangsu Association of Education. Alice Chipman Dewey gave a lecture on 'The essence of women's education' at the Qinye Teachers College of Women. Lu Xiuzhen interpreter. |
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| 206 | 1920.06.03 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The social conception of specialized education' : delivered at the Tong Ji School in Shanghai. = Zhuan men jiao yu di she hui guan. In : Xue deng ; June 3 (1920). |
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| 207 | 1920.06.04 |
John Dewey arrived in Songjiang at the invitation by the Songjiang Encouraging Learning Society, the Education Association of the county, the county library and the Provincial School. Lecture 'The school and society' to the Songjiang Encouraging Learning society with 2000 listeners. Lecture 'General education and vocational education' at the University of Shanghai (Hujiang College). |
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| 208 | 1920.06.04 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Education for citizenship' at the Putong High School near Shanghai. = Gong min jiao yu. In : Jue wu ; June 4 (1920). |
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| 209 | 1920.06.05 | John Dewey arrived in Nantong by the invitation of Zhang Jian to lecture. |
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| 210 | 1920.06.05 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The relationship between elementary education and vocational education : delivered at Shanghai College (Hu jiang da xue). Feng Shuhua recorder. In : Jue wu ; June 5 (1920). |
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| 211 | 1920.06.05 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Responsibilities of educators' at the Nantong Gengsu Theater in Nantong. Liu Boming interpreter with about 2000 listeners, most of them were teachers and students. |
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| 212 | 1920.06.05 | John Dewey visits the grave of General Frederick Townsend Ward at Songjiang. |
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| 213 | 1920.06.07 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Social evolution' in Nantong. |
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| 214 | 1920.06.07 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Social evolution' : delivered at the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) Shanghai. Liu Boming interpreter ; Yao Huian recorder. In : Jue wu ; June 7 (1920). |
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| 215 | 1920.06.07 |
Letter from Mao Zedong to a friend. "I'm reading three great contemporary philosophers : John Dewey, Bertrand Russell and Henri Bergson." |
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| 216 | 1920.06.08 |
John Dewey : Speech 'Industry and education' in Nantong Park. Dewey started for Tangzha, Nantong. |
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| 217 | 1920.06.09 |
John Dewey : Lecture in Tangzha, Nantong. Zhang Jian introduced him to the audience : "Dr. Dewey is among the few foreign experts who have an in-depth understanding of China's current political and educational situations. Since Nantong is geologically isolated from large cities, it is truly a precious opportunity for us to witness the doctor's elegant demeanor and hear his speech. His insights will keep us in pace with the new trend in society. America is the first country to have successfully incorporated philosophy into politics and education in modern times. Its republican system is a good example for China. Today we're honored to have Dr. Dewey to enlighten us with the past and the present of American politics and education." On the evening Dewey started for Jiaxing. |
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| 218 | 1920.06.09 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The relationship between culture and technology'. = Gong yi he wen hua di guan xi. Liu Boming interpreter ; Zhao Naiqian recorder. In : Xue deng ; June 9 (1920). |
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| 219 | 1920.06.09 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The relationship between education and society'. = Jiao yu yu she hui di guan xi. Xu Shouwu interptreter ; Li Zenglian recorder. In : Xue deng ; June 9 (1920). |
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| 220 | 1920.06.09 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The real meaning of democratic education. = De mo ke la xi di zhen yi. Li Xiaobai recorder. In : Xue deng ; June 9 (1920). |
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| 221 | 1920.06.10 |
John Dewey : Lecture 'The new trend of primary school education' before an audience of over 3000. Zheng Xiaocang interpreter. Alice Chipman Dewey delivered a speech on 'Education for women'. They arrived in Hangzhou in the afternoon. |
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| 222 | 1920.06.11 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Research methods for social problems' at Hangzhou Mapoxiang Public School of Law and Political Science. |
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| 223 | 1920.06.12 |
John Dewey attended a meeting at the Lawyers' Association by the Zhejiang Association of Education in Hangzhou. Speech : 'The essence of democracy' in the roof garden of the Youth Association. |
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| 224 | 1920.06.13 ? |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey family [June 13, 1920?] There are so many things like these that I want to tell you after reading your lively letters that I scarce know where to begin. But anyway I wish you would come to China, I like it more the more I want to see you all and I always wish this were the last day of my stay on the day your letters come. Well here we are. new surprises waited for us this time, Hangchow did not want us to come and was none too glad to see us. Last night they impeached their Gov on six charges and he resigned. Three of the sis were financial, he is a famous gambler and runs lotteries all over town, not to speak of opium, The conservatives have there at present and we are thot Bolshevicks and the students complained because Papas lctures were not intellectual enough, (Think how China has cahnged Pa) and so he gave them as a farewell a lecture on Elementary schools in which he told them it was not theories abkut sociallsm and free thought and free lve that China needed, it was teaching the people how to improve agriculture and cotton and silk and more especially their own lives. With it all we did not see as much as we wanted to, we were kept busy and out of mischief, but the girls will tell you what they saw and it was so hot we could not sleep much and Ec was getting very tired so we came up with Pa when we might have staid lnger. Lucy goes back to Nankin with Pa tomorrow morning to stay there with Winnifred Miller, but Ev and I are daring the excitement a lttle lnger. Only we are denying our selves one bird cage for Pa goes way beyond Nankin and then comes clear back south again a ten hours ride to Soochow, Now Soochow is only two hours from here, so we shall stay at this hotel which is cheap being only seven dollars a day and good whereas the Burling is eight and bad, and the others are ten and more fashionable and to them all the people go who dont know any better, The housekeeper here is a real German haus frau and I wanted to embrace her when I saw her swelling bosom and her tight little wisp of hair on the tip of her head and the food is good and real mattresses on the beds. I dont think I ever told you about Chinese beds. They are of woven rattan like our cane seats, or else boards (one of ours in Pekin is just like the seats of chairs,) and over the cane they throw a comfortable and one sheet, and there you are. [Alice Chipman Dewey] |
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| 225 | 1920.06.13 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Qualities of democratic members of society' at Hangzhou Normal School. Zheng Zonghai interpreter. |
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| 226 | 1920.06.14 |
Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey family Hangchow, Monday, June 14 [1920] We left Shanghai for Nantungchow on Friday the forth. We spent the morning with Mrs Crane in Shanghai and had lunch with her. Thursday night we went to a dinner given for the Cranes by various associations of Shanghai and there had been no arrangement beforehand, so C. T. Wang who had charge of the Cranes, never thot to ask Mrs C and we were the only foreign ladies present. There were several Chinese, including Miss Chen-Mrs Wu. She had her hair up and was looking most grown up and sober. It seems that she was the woman who organized a company of 80 women during the revolution at Nanking, and led them. They carried amunition to the soldiers and practised every day with rifles. Were school girls, mostly, and when they had got well enough trained to go out and fight the war was over. "We were so disappointed." Had dinner Friday night with Mr [H.H.] Kung of Shansi, a very nice party. He said that after we left [T]aiyuan last fall he was talking to the gov. The gov said that he had heard we were Bolshiviks and was afraid of the spread of Bolshivik ideas in China. Mr Kung explained what Bolshivism was and how it grew up. Yen said, ["W]ell, under those conditions I dont wonder they became Bolshiviks and of course such a thing is impossible in China" Mr K thinks Yen is really liberal and progressive. The boat for Nantung left at midnight. We were met by a Mr Ho, French and Belgian returned student who spoke a little English and beautiful French and another man, who promptly disappeared. We sat up and watched the moonlight on the river till about one and then went to bed on some nice Chinese boards. Slept very well, considering. Got to to Nantung about nine. Somo more people came out in a sampan to greet us before we docked and presented us with elegant purple and gold printed programmes. We were met at the dock by Chang Jr, a company of soldiers, and a brass band. We were taken to the house by the [page torn] arretts and slept till lunch time. After lunch, Mr Lee came and took us sightseeing, we saw lots || of things, but didnt g[et] thru the programme, at that. Went to the Changs to dinner. They have a very elegant and hideously furnished foreign house and dress the children in terrible foreign clothes. Had a long and elaborate foreign meal. The next two mornings we went to Dads lectures in the city theater, a fine building. In the afternoon we did sightseeing, went to see the mills and factories. They have a cotton factory, iron founry, where they build small boats and make repair parts for the mills, an oil mill for the cotton seed, etc. In the cotton mill sixty percent of the employees are women and children over ten, they work twelve hours a day, and the factory is paying 250% Nothing done for the children of mothers who work they sit around the mills. One afternoon we went to Lanshan, where the chickens come from. Saw an institution for the dumb and blind, and an industrial home for beggars, on the way. Climbed the pagoda on the mountain and got a wonderful view of the country. Lots of canals everywhere. One night we went to the theater and saw Oyang [Ou-yang Yu-chien], who is supposed to be the best actor in China, after Mei Lang Fan. He is interested in the revival of the stage and did a modern play with a romantic interest. It was awfully interesting and pretty, with very little banging and noise and he is a very good actor. He has a school for actors which we went to see. Forty boys who are taught Chinese, history, math, Chinese and foreign singing and dancing, playwriting. I asked if they were taught historical costuming but couldnt find out, I think not. It was awfully interesting [to] see what he has done and to see the boys. They were all beauties in one way or another, some with faces like Buddhas. They did their stunts for us. They dance very well indeed. Mr Chnag presented Mamma with a peice of embroidery from the school and Mr Lee gave Evelyn and me each one. We bot some besides. Left Nantung Tuesday night [8 June 1920], quite an experience. Got half way to the dock and Mr Lee discovered there was no boat and we would have to take the English boat which would probably come along about two. We all sat up until after one playing games and then we went and lay down on the board beds. I got [a] little sleep, nearly an hour, before the boat came, about two thirty. We went out in sampans to the boat. Mr Ho had joined us by that time, he knew what would happen and had wisely spent the time in the town. It was quite ride out to the boat, most exciting. Rough, tho the worst wind had died down, with a little moon, and the sampan going along rowed by three men. Got settled on the boat about four, all the cabins taken so we had to sit up. Nobody slept much, I did for about fifteen minutes, deck too cold, and the cabin too stuffy. Landed in Shanghai about ten and went to the Kalee hotel. Ran errands frantically all day, and finally got to bed about nine. Nantung an interesting place, very much one man, nobody talks about anything but his excellency. He has done a lot for the place industrially but its all pretty Japanese. Lots of industrail schools but very little expansion of primary and girls ed. Mamma spoke at the girls normal one morning and whom, should she run into but her old friend from the Peking normal that Suh Hu [Hu Shi] had dismissed. Chang has built roads and runs jitney busses, he is getting more. [Lucy Dewey] |
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| 227 | 1920.06.14 | John Dewey : Speech 'Science and people’s life' at the West Lake Phoenix Theater in Hangzhou on the invitation by the Hangzhou Normal School. Zheng Zonghai interpreter with over 1000 listeners. |
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| 228 | 1920.06.15 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey children GRAND HOTEL KALEE | SHANGHAI, CHINA, June 15th. [1920] Dearest Children. Here we are back from Hangchow. I dont know why I say back for I have had a bath and am dring my hair. Drying it in the rain, but still happy. And besides you wont know what it means, you never will till you come to China, when I say I have had a bath. It seems such fun to just go here and there and have no trouble and all expenses paid and then you do it and the fun is more than one kind. Chinese hotel at last, and very good food with a wash bowl between us thrown in. But were we allowed to eat that good food, By no means, In stead we were led to say we wanted to go her and there, hither and yon, and in all the places under the sun wherever we wandered there came a third class foreign cook of great reputation in the ancient capital and he came even into our own Chinese hotel from his restaurant, his third class restaurant with his castors and his dirty table cloth and he cooked for us, with starch for sauces and with fried fish for break fast cold and greasy, and with cold storage eggs of some sort out of ctyle in Chinese cooking, and in the normal school or the Law school there was this curried ghost of the paste and we did eat thereof and great was the fall. One hot blistering noon we traveled from our lovely lake side to the red brick R.R. station near by which he spotted his cotton table clothes and there we sat down far from the willow trees and did eat the bitterness of captivity. Only one good Chinese meal of savory taste and fattening flavor did we eat in the ancient capital in our own hotel and one other in a Buddhist temple, vegetarian, and good, very good, given by two lovely spinsters who spend their aristocratic lives running a girls Industrial school A most aesthetic friend from last year gave us fans, the Hangchow fans are the most famous in China and therefore in the world, with his beautiful writing thereupon and pas tell him quite frankly that he is the pole star of China and mine that I am the star of Womans world and the girls that they are the milky way or something near to it, and these we shall keep on the parlor table with translations in sight. [Alice Chipman Dewey] |
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| 229 | 1920.06.16 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey children [June 16, 1920] Dear Children. This is the evening of the 16th and Ev and I are alone in this hotel. Lucy got sick of this job and went to Nankin and Papa is in a town named Tsuchow way off somewhere that he ahs to come back from. SEv is still short of sleep and we are going to bed early and really waiting here in Shanghai partly for time to pass. We pay dearly for it, but still we must stay some where tho we are both about at the point that Lu had reached. In Nankin she and we all feel at home in a lovely garden and settle into it for a while. But we are none the less looking now towards Peking. I am getting this off for tomorrow the mail gets ready for the Equador. We went out with miss B Blascourt today, she is one I knew in New York and now deals in corios here. We made the acquaintance of the big dealer with whom Mr Simkhovitch deals. He the one from whom S bought his first pictures. His shop is a lovely one and besides his we saw one other. Ev bought a piece of blue and white and I bit at a pretty cracked thing which ought to be expensive but under the circumstances sold for three dollars and I think I can get it as far as Peking at least. It is a big jar like a ginger jar of old five color pictures and I shall be proud to see it on the Peking sideboard and fish a cracker out of it from time to time. I wanted to look at some pictures, but time was too short. Their place is filled with splendid blue and white of all the periods but all too dear for me. and China is selling out all the old stuff pretty fast. Some of the very most horrible photos we have had arrived today from a girls school where we visited and spoke when here before. The passion of this nation for poor photos is quite miraculous. I have been looking at the proof of EA. and think it is hard to make nay thing out of it for a stranger, being a proof only and my not knowing her. I hope I may sometime tho. and shall look for a copy of the photo soon, a small one I mean. The book of letters has not arrived here and will not but Pa has declined o tkae the trip up the Yngste and we shall be at home soon after July first. Maybe some of us before that time. If I take the lectures in Nankin I think Ill go and come back. Winnifred Miller has decided not to ait for Ev so she will go alone with the help of crowds of fellow passengers. Probably on "ug 21st too, for the chance of getting anything but blackmail out of the S. S. Co seems very slight. Our conductors this time were different both from the past and from each other, One was dear little Chen of Nankin, he weigs 35 pounds and we love the whole of him. he is sweet and gentle and intelligent and he cant get any thing done except he is very good to talk to and to learn from and he tells you when he doesn't understand what you say so you can say it over again. he is delcate in health and very popular with the chair bearers so we never get into a chair till he tells us which one he is not gong to take and then the bearer resigns himself. What do you think, I have just been called to the phone, wrong number of course, but then what an experience, to speak thru a phone again. our other conductor is a real sport, a lout in plain languagem and how he ever got in on the job we cant guess, but he had his picture taken with Pa alne in the rock garden of the park yesterday and we are going to wait and see what kind of chewing gum prints it. He gave os three heavy pieces of very bad porcelin and we think maybe it is to be a trade mark for that. Since we shall probably bring home the bad porcelain I may as well tell you it is an attmpt to revive the most ancient and valuable ware called celadon (or, Japanese, seijji) pale green you know and sometimes very beautiful, These three pieces make up in design for their lack of workmanship, one is a water buffalo, with smooth knees and skin of striped green, another is the Goddess of the three eyes, a foot tall and much heavier than Chen tho we were her bearers, and the third is a dog of short body and long legs smiling jaws and a spread tail and I forgot to find out who worships him, but you will see him later on. All their greens are curiously spread and tinged with a gloomy white on all the high spots where the glaze ran thin in the firing. The whole effect is some like Mr Li himself in that you cannot identify it with any thing in your past. Mr Li spent much time in the hotel when we wasnt running out to get the bad eggs and things and so far as I could see he was equally at home with the coolies down stairs and with the young mna Yang who was the third on our list and who writes a complete history of all we do and say in a book which he keeps with him, at least he does this excepting when nature gets the better of him and he cuts a lecture like a normal boy which he is. He had a good chance Sunday [13 June 1920] when he came to mine and sat on the back seat to visit it thru and so escaped going to Papa's. Yang is from Nankin and he said goodby at the station so we are alone till we meet someone else who is interested in us, or else gets paid for seeming so. Yang is quite bright and has had several prizes for essays ad things and he belongs with littl Chen among the bright group at Nankin. They are putting Coeducation in there this summer, with great scandal of course, and Mr Tao has asked me to give a few lectures on the hist of etc in U.S. and I think maybe I'll do it. I find it is quite fun to talk to young men, and they will be more numerous than the girls. Besides I like Nankin and noe of the foreign missionaries there will give them any think but hindrance, they are all Mt Holyoke graduates except two from Mich, but some goirls from their college are leaders in the coed movement and one is going to be dean of women this summer. In hangchow the Govt told them at the Normal if they put in Coed the Asssembly woul cut off teir appropriation so Mr Chnag the President is going to open all the classes to visitors. and by this you will see there are a few daring ones in China where it does tke nerve and no mistake to do anything for women, or to change much anywhere. Meantime war has broken out in the province of Honan and we may see more interesting things yet. I hear the American ministry (Mr Crane) has protested to the Govt at the arrest of an editor of a liberal paper, the same paper I told you about last summer Mr [Dwight Woodbridge] Edwards is interested in it and it is in some way under the portection of our legation. I hope that protest will make trouble for the Govt. As for Shanghai, you never saw so much silk in your life as you can paw over in the big shops here and it is the most lovely and never wears out. Tonight Col[u]mbia men are giving a dinner to Pa, Mr Tong Shao Yi will preside. Did I tell you how his son followed me from one speech to the other when I was here last week, and the second was at a club for women only. he is a charming boy, speak English as we do and is in a Chnese University here. Think of an American boy of 18 following a grand mother lle me to a womans club, I spose he wanted to report it to the students or something. he did it nicely anyway. Evelyn wants me to get some clothes here but as we have no success in getting a maker. Such lovely stuff and no good foreign dressmakers, isnt it a pity. I look like meal bag in all their tings… We met a young agriculturist in Nantung who is sure Cornell is the best place. He is engaged in running the station for the famous Chang Bros who own and run the town. It is as it were a Standrd Oil town every thing done well or else Mr Chang knows the reason why and acts promptly and efficiently. Mr Chang is old and his son is young and hs taught in New York City College, dept of Commerce. He is 23 and has a wife and three children like all good old fashioned Chinese of that adnvanced age. We saw them when we dined there, a little girl of three with Chinese trousrs a Japanese made American dress with an embroidered ruffle at the edge and a beautiful large jewel hung at her neck made a strange makeup for a preety and bright littlr gilr who read us some hundred or more characters. She learns four new ones each day, that appears to be the allotment in high class families like that. The house is large with several apartments and many servants, fine old corios and and other coice things and the ugliest foreign furniture In fact the foreign furniture of China is something so hopeless in taste that descriptions would mystify even if I had time to give them. Nothing fits anything else anyway and you gradually learn to pick out the beautiful and costly things from an aggregation that seems at first glance to be a gathering together of a scond hand shop. They have a very durable varnish from Ningpo which is most useful and covers all the wood work in China and it gives a red color to it all something like our imitation mahogany. As a background it is ruinous in effect, and yet we saw it even in the fine curio shop where we were today, and to me it swore at us all through. In these big shops they keep the most valuable jades and jewels in the family living rooms so we always get glimpses of the laides and children and ammahs. The ladies always go on combing their hair before the mirrors with their maids helping them. Combing and dressing that hair is a long process too and the powder and jewels take time, to say nothing of the finger nails. Paint is used commonly for the face and jewels in the hair and all the rest of the dress surprisingly plain. In summer the thin black gauze skirts hung loosely over the white trousers give a funny appearance to us. The manners at the hotel in Hangchow were enlightening too. Young married couple next to us. She disappears and then reappears in full white pajamas all reay for bed with hair and jewels and fingernails perfect. Then she with hubby in the same coustme except the hair and jewels sits beside her at the edge of the porch upstairs, looking at the lake and cooling themselves with fans till after we go to bed. Our window was on this piazza and no curtain. Getting any privacy in China is a study. I got a lttle seclusion for my bath in the wash bowl by putting the screen in front of the window, but the room boy would not be interrupted by that if I forgot to lock the door. Water is obtained from said boy by 1st ringing the bell, then pointing to the dirty water in the bowl. He picks up the bowl and goes out after a while coming back with the bowl full of clean water He brings you hot water (or tea if you wish) in a tea pot and leaves it on the table and he brings you a glass of cold water in the same fashion of bringing in the bowl, and he is always on the jump to unlock your door or to go down stairs a long way off and put you in your ricsha, or to bring up food or to dispense any other more original sort of service you may devise for him and he never seems to sleep but always to smile. If you give him a fortune like a silver dollar he smiles till his ear drums crackle. This house is foreign in stye and very comfortable in the N.Y, sense of that Sometimes I have a picture of the adirondacs suddenly flash into my mind and smell the clean woods and the pine house and the sweet air and wonder how it has ever happened that mother earth has contrived to keep herself so clean and so green on one side when all the bloom is rubbed off her on the other. After all it is these devilish Japanese that worry one. We now hear that the condition attached to the last loan was a concession from the Pekin Govt of the importation of rice to Japan. If this is so and the Chinese PEOPLE find it out there may be sad trouble ahead for the govt and as for that, we hope for the trouble. I think Ev and I will go up to Soochow tomorrow and from there to Wusih by ourselves and then just go home without waiting to come back to Soochow with Pa, picking up Lucy in Nankin as we go, perhaps stopping there for a little rest. The heat has come tho nights are still cool here, but anyway we must get started if we are to go to Kalgan and get back to start off Ev for the boat at Kobe on the 21st of August. Until we write to the contrary you may consider this our program and we shall commence writing more often now that we can get a chance to sit down and get up of our own volition… Sunday [20 June 1920] is the day of the Dragon Boat Festival and we shall be in Soochow to see it on the canals there said to be one of the best places in China and a grand old carouse it is with the flower boats and the singsong girls. As yet I have not seen a flower boat, but they are very ancient homes of vice and pleasure Meantime think of the things you want from China and tell them to us. No shirts have come to us but they may be in Pekin) If we can bring you the things we will so it will do no harm to speak of them Evelyn can of course prompt you when she gets back tho she has not seen Canton. Now I must stop for I have to finish an article on Coed for the Stud magazine of Nankin. Love and love from mama |
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| 230 | 1920.06.16 | John Dewey arrived in Xuzhou. |
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| 231 | 1920.06.17 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The new trend of education' in Xuzhou. |
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| 232 | 1920.06.17 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Factors creating motivation in education : delivered at the First Teachers College, Hangzhou. = Zao jia fa dong di xing zhi di jiao yu. In : Je wu ; June 17 (1920). |
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| 233 | 1920.06.17 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The responsibility of educators' : delivered at Nandong (Jiangsu). = Jiao yu zhe di ze ren. Liu Boming interpreter ; Luo Hongxuan, Fan Gaijin recorder. |
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| 234 | 1920.06.17 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The responsibility of educators' : delivered at Nandong (Jiangsu). = Jiao yu zhe di ze ren. Liu Boming interpreter ; Luo Hongxuan, Fan Gaijin recorder. |
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| 235 | 1920.06.18 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Education management and teaching material reform' in Xuzhou. |
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| 236 | 1920.06.21 | John Dewey arrived in Wuxi via Nanjing, accompanied by Liu Boming and Wang Boqiu and attended the welcome meeting held for him at Wuxi Normal School. |
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| 237 | 1920.06.22 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Pragmatism' in Wuxi. |
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| 238 | 1920.06.22 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The problem of social progress'. = She hui jin hua wen ti. Liu Boming interpreter ; Fei Fanjiu recorder. |
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| 239 | 1920.06.23 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'New trends in education and the reorganization of teaching methods' : delivered in Süchow [Xuzhou] (Jiangsu). = Jiao yu di xin chu shi yu jiao. Shen Zishan recorder. In : Xue deng ; June 23 (1920). |
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| 240 | 1920.06.23-25 | John Dewey : Lectures 'Students' autonomy', 'The school and society', 'The contemporary world and educational trends' in Wuxi. |
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| 241 | 1920.06.26 | John Dewey left Wuxi and arrived in Suzhou. |
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| 242 | 1920.06.27 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Aims of educational administration' at the Association of Education in the Ancient Imperial Palace in Suzhou. Zheng Xiaocang interpreter. |
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| 243 | 1920.06.28 | John Dewey : Lectures 'Industrial education in the special training schools', 'Educational administration' at St. John's Church in Tianci Zhuang, Suzhou. |
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| 244 | 1920.06.29 | John Dewey : Lectures 'The school and society', 'Education and industry' at Tianci Zhuang, Suzhou. |
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| 245 | 1920.06.30 |
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. |
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| 246 | 1920.06.30 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'New trends in teaching mathematics'. = Shu yu di xin chu shi. In : Je wu ; June 30 (1920). |
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| 247 | 1920.06.30 | John Dewey returns to Shanghai. |
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| 248 | 1920.07.01 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The organization of teaching materials : delivered in Suzhou. = Jiao cai di zu zhi. Liu Boming interpreter ; Zheng Mengjia, Xu Zaizi recorder. In : Jue wu ; July 1 (1920). |
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| 249 | 1920.07.02 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Education and industry'. = Jiao yu yu shi ye. Zheng Xiaozang interpreter ; Chen Dan, Shen Bingkui recorder. In : Jue wu ; July 2 (1920). |
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| 250 | 1920.07.03 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The responsibility of educators : delivered in Soochow [Suzhou]. = Jiao yu zhe di ze ren. Zheng Xiaozang interpreter ; Jiang Shizhou, Chen Dan, Shen Bingkui recorder. In : Jue wu ; July 3 (1920). |
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| 251 | 1920.07.03 |
Remer, C.F. John Dewey in China [ID D28542]. The first impression that one gets, who tries to arrive at the Chinese estimate of Dewey, is an impression that has been cleverly connected by a Chinese university professor with the second character that is used to represent Dewey's name in Chinese. The second character means 'awe-inspiring'. One who talks with many Chinese about Professor Dewey long enough to get past the first statements that 'Professor Dewey's thoughts are very deep', soon comes upon this feeling of awe. A whole number of the magazine, 'The new education' [Xin jiao yu], was devoted to the educational and philosophical ideas of Professor Dewey. The writers, who are the most capable of any Chinese in the country to so, undertake no critical analysis of Dewey's teachings. After some search no attempt is discoverable on the part of anyone to make such a critical analysis. No one has attempted to distinguish between the ideas of Professor Dewey that was useful in China today and those that are not useful. No one has raised a voice to say that they may be harmful. But it is perhaps too soon to find any further effect than the first one. The Chinese are too polite to subject the ideas of a guest to critical analysis when he is still a guest. Professor Dewey, by means of his lectures which are interpreted as they are given, has reached thousands of Chinese. These lectures are translated into Chinese and are published in the leading magazines and newspapers of the country. These printed lectures are carefully studied by many. |
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| 252 | 1920.07.09 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Trends in elementary education'. = Xiao xue jiao yu zhi chu shi. In : Jue wu ; July 9 (1920). |
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| 253 | 1920.07.09 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The aim of educational administration'. = Jiao yu xing zheng zhi mu di. Zheng Xiaozang interpreter. In : Jue wu ; July 9 (1920). |
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| 254 | 1920.07.09 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'School and society'. = Xue xiao yu she hui. Chen Dan, Shen Bingkui recorder. In : Xue deng ; July 9 (1920). |
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| 255 | 1920.07.09 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The organization of student government'. = Xue sheng zi zhi di zu zhi. Pan Shenwen, Zheng Xiaozang interpreter ; Chen Dan, Shen Binggui recorder. In : Xue deng ; July 9 (1920). |
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| 256 | 1920.07.10 |
Remer, C.F. John Dewey's responsibility for American opinion [ID D28542]. Dewey's thought [about China] is not of the apologetic sort ; it is experimental. This makes him a liberal thinker in the true sense ; there is an air of freedom and hope about him. He does not, as many do, pay lip service to liberalism while his mind is set upon the main chance and safety first. Dewey has helped the people of the United States to get a fair and honest appreciation of the activities of the Chinese and should be honored as a true servant of his country and of the people of his time. |
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| 257 | 1920.07.16 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Experimentalism' : delivered at Wuxi. = Shi yan zhu yi. In : Jue wu ; July 16 (1920). |
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| 258 | 1920.07.18 ? |
Letter from Evelyn Dewey to Alice Chipman Dewey Sunday, [July 18, 1920?] Dear mamma, Lucy is going to Peitaho to-night after all with the Cranes of course. I think dad would have liked to go along but they did not have room I guess. Rich Chinese are fleeing the city the Wagon Lits is crowded and any one in the quarter can get rich renting rooms. The North East gate is closed and every one has laid in a few extra supplies of food. But of course everything is a peaceful and quiet as can be. The trains to Kalgan are not running to-day, and soldiers and ammunition supposed to be coming from Mukden, we saw some soldiers coming in from Nan Yuan this morning, but there are not many around the streets, there is martial law and everyone is supposed to be home by mid-night. There are 150 sailors at our Legation "on a sight seeing tour". The paper says there will be fighting in Soochow and maybe Nankin, but you probably have your own batch of rumors and news there. Yesterday we went to a temple in the Western hills, but didnt see a thing, the barracks by the summer palace seemed more deserted than usual. We have given up going to Tan Che Sse, partly because the trains arent running there as the station is one of the places where they are concentrating troups, and partly because if anything is going to be here we wanted to stay and see it. It is hot and Dad seems to mind it, but I dont nearly so much as when it is damp, it is clouding up now and looks like rain again, there is some breeze in the house and we have been able to sleep, but there is no denying that it is very hot, We havs had only one short letter from you., but suppose we will hear shortly. The last letters to Kalgan have not brought any news yet. We had dinner with the Cranes Friday night and they were coming here to night. My ticket home was gotten thru Yokahama which is why there is no record of it in Shanghai. There was no more news from home except Freds letter which we sent you. We are going to send word to Suh Hu to have his wife brought here if trouble should really start, and George has already asked if he can bring Susan [Wan], so we may have a maternity hospital in our own little tenement. Somehow it is quite impossible to belive that anything will happen. Remember that Richard Smith has gone to Nanking for the summer, and Mr. Crane says a U.S. gun boat will go up the river to take people out if the trains stop or fighting begins. I only hope nithing happens to prevent your getting away when you want to. Much love Eve |
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| 259 | 1920.07.19,20 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey family On the train to Shanghai. | [July 19, 1920] You see uch funny sights the crooked willows making a fringy background for the dark gren lotus fronds and the snow whie blosss[o]ms and all eflected back in the water and then a lovely ornamented moon bridge over the dragon like pon that wander round thru the rice fields after the rains and what really makes you laugh, the huge water buffalo walking on the earth at the bottom of these muddy rainpools with his back and his noe and his horns which look like the dead branches of trees sticking up and his old grey sides shine like silver when he comes out of the water unwillingly driven by the naked water colored boy on his back all the Yangste color except the lovely green which covers this part of China more than any other. and junks on the canals and it seems funny to see telephon poles set in these rice fields hen off in teh distance bald looking pagodas with all their curls dropped off from age mark the tops of little hills. The men and women are going ut the rows of rice plants with long bamboo handles on the hoes, handles longer than fishpoles and the ends shake as if the wind blew them in the hands of the hoers. The hoes are broader than any you eve saw and they work with them all day standing with thir leges in the deep water of the rice fields, half way up to their knees. There are no passengers except a few Chinese young men and they do what they always do in the heat slouch about in their underclothes with the clean linen or silk coats folded up on the seats and they sleep or eat. Mostly their underclothes are dirty in spite of th beautiful coats, It is second class so we have clean rattan instead of dirty hot plush of the first, and the mercury is somewhere between 90 and 100. All the land is used, every inch, the beans are beginning to yellow at the bottom of the stalks and the cotton is getting up high and taro is very decorative, so arre the slender strawstacks tall and straight ad every now and then the unfertile mounds of the graves put the dead in place of life, There are soe cows here mostly led by little girls between the rows of crops to browse. Pigs in China le in the corner of the vegetable gardens and eat the weeds on the oter edge, never showing wheteher they like human food or not. There are many trees even the hills being sometimes covered with small ones. I am trying to fill up with green since I am going to Peking.—if I can. Shanghia. July 20th [1920] Room 29 of the missionary home is up under the roof but the breeze blows thru from the long hall and I have had a good sleep. The house is full of missionaries starting home on furlough so there are swarms of children. It is interesting to get up against a bunch of people whose experiences are quite different from our own altho the same. I sat at the table with some Episcopalians, I know from the tone of voice such rolling and such charitable abuse of Wilsons admin was worth coming for. I am very anxious about getting off but I am sitting here instead of in the boat office because Mr Lee of the Y.M.CA. just called me up and insisted that Mr Sweetman had written him last night and he would do the errand for me. I feeel it is probably a mistake to allow of any intervention since no one wants me to get to Peking quite so badly as I do myself adn since Mr sweetman in particular has ideas that he ought to do all this for me 'as if I were his mother' but since I shall not have to wait very long for him I said thank you. If he upsets the whole pie because of what he thinks an old lady ought to do I shall simply have to start over again later. I can go the Consuls office and if I cant get off today there is another boat on another line on Thursday. One difficulty in Nanking was that Sweetman has not been about China as much as I have but he felt it was his duty to give very positive advice. The kindness of epople is very sincere here but it is sometimes emphatic and almost interfereing. I have been reading yesterdays paper and find the fighting is severe near Peking but the whole look of things is hopeful since the worst influences are on the lose and tho the winners are bad they will have to come a little nearer to the people. I wish you could see the head of this place, picture of the pious spinster tall, and angular with high neck dress and a prim way of talking, one real authority. It is a pleasure to be here in no way for it is real old fashioned housekeeping calen and bare and enough simple good food, so if I have to wait a few days I shall ask to be kept here. Plenty of baths and all at a price which I understand is much less than the regular hotels. The table and the managemnet is like the old fashioned American Boardinghouse. [Alice Chipman Dewey] |
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| 260 | 1920.07.19 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Frederick A. Dewey Nanking July 19th [1920] Dear Fred. This is your birthday and I am wishing you many happy ones. I wonder if you are celebrating it as seriously as I am. I had hopes of getting off to Peking by the Saturday boat from Shanghai, a slow way but the only now. Co write no room leaf, So I at once sent a letter asking them when I could go and asking for room on the boat which leaves tomorrow. As yet no letter at all. Also wire sent to Peking was not rec there as I know by receiving promptly from them a wire asking for my plans, No leatter has come from them since the stoppage of trains and I have no idea whether on nt my letters have got thru to them. I could tak it all very philosophically if it were not for Evelyn coming leave. I hope they have gone up to Kalgan without me, but it may be they are waiting in an uncertainty equal to mine, Kalgan is so near to Pek I think they will go as I wrote and also wired to them to do. It is two weeks ago yesterday since they left here and if they do not go to Kalgan now Ev will be unable to stay long enough to make it pay. Tko add to my irritation here we have a servant in this house who causes a lot of trouble thru his hopeless stupidity and it was to him I gave the letters to mail last saturday. I think I shall go down to Shanghai which I do not want to see at all in any case this afternoon. It is seven or eight hours depending on the train and I should remain there till I can get place on the boat. I culld stay at the missionary home which is cheap and one gets every possible help about attending to things, A there is no danger now in Shnaghia, but all the old settlers here asay I must not attempt to go to Peking by rail even if the chance comes. Four of these devils of Tuchuns are now fighting over and around and about that road and they think almost any thing might happen to me if I tried it. Then they say go to the consul, and they know the consul would simply repeat that advice. Nankin is perfectly quiet except for the summer school and the constant moving of ammunition. The summer schoo disturbance is due to the bumptiousness of the boys who are some of them mad becase the 60 girls have been assigned to front seats in the classes and also because they are claiming that right to dictate to their profs which has been preeety common here since the students organized, It seems a kind of frontier bossism. They burdned one man out of his class and some of them ordered the girls out of the seats saying they could not stand up, the idea seemed to be if any one stood it must naturally be the women. There are 63 women and nearly 700 men. N the latest, on account of the tie up Suh Hu and his friend Mr Tao, both of Peking Govt University, have not come down to take thier classes. Su Hu [Hu Shi] is the most popular man in China and about 700 students have elected their course especially on the literary revolution. This forenoon Mr Tao the dean of Summer School here expects a delegatiion of student to call on him officially to demand the delivery of these men. Poor Mr Tao is the most active man in China one might say and devoted as active and last night he was about to send a man to Peking to take care of these two families and to drive the men down here I told him not to do that for I could accomplish as much as any such delegate and I would go up today, I mean on tomorrows boat. He has been sending special telegrams and I rather think the men may be ob the way, but on the other hand they may not be, for suh Hu at least is apt to decide things for himself in his own way. Whether they will break up this now-nice summer school in consequence remains to be seen. I do hnot think they will for I think in the end the students will give up. Shu Hu's [Hu Shi] wife is to have a baby about the first of August. He has told me several times the baby was expected in June which did seem impossible and I fancy they have just waked up to the reality of the situation, that is he has. He was not present when the first child was born, but she was at that time with her family. I cant make many guesses tho I know he does not let family affairs interfere with his business so far a I can se in any other matters. It seems that mr Tao's house has been entered by robbers already and Mr Nanking Tao [Tao Hsing-chih] thinks his young wife and baby ought to be put under foreign protection. In all these matters I could be of as much use as any other foreigner and have already written pap to take care of these epople. I fancy the situation there is tense. Tho the legations gave official warning at first that no fighting must occur within ten miles of the walls of Peking, still one can not be sur[e] that all China will not go up in the air again, tho I dont think it will, [page torn] scared and these officials are afraid both of the people and of the foreigners and I dont think they will try to drive out the foreigners again. If they should yu mgiht be sure they were helped by the Japanese but I dont think there is any hiding place big enough to conceal even the J in such an attempt, Not that they would hesitate to use the Chinese in that way as well as in others if they felt safe in doing it that they would not be discovered. The union and the sympathy between the Amercans and the Chinese can not be doubted and it will count for much in this crisis. Our news is insuffucient but keeps up all the time and is perhaps accurate. There is somehing of a check both in the foreign influence and in the fear of the Tuchuns for each other, But there is not one Tuchun in China who has yet waked up to the fact that China is a part of the world, Some of the believe it is the whole thing just as the Mnachus used to and the present Dictator Tuan Jui Jei is one of these ignorant tyrants, who smoke opium and can not think in international terms, to use mr Sweetmans favorite expression. Meantime they just juggle with their country, on money borrowed from Japn and cherish a hope of coming out on top and being made an dictator or Emperor as Yuan Shi Kai was. Thier rule would be even shorter than Yuans if by any throw of the dice they bring that about. For all this all the schools and all the industries in China and most of the 400,000,000 wait and suffer until the spectacle is incredible. If any one of the large influences could be shifted, if the Jps could bt thrown out especially, it would all change, It is easy to see how the Japs are gaining ground minute by minute on this system. China is like a ball in the air and the first one who catches is the best man in the game as it is now. It is surely maddening to sit here as I am now, tho there has been some compensations in the expra things I have been able to do for the girls in the summer school Having them in the same yard with myself and seeing them often has set up some real connection. [Alice Chipman Dewey] |
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| 261 | 1920 | John Dewey : Dinner at the Chamber of Commerce in Qingdao. |
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| 262 | 1920.07.29,30 |
Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey family Peking, July 29, 1920 Dear Family Here I am back in Pekin and a wonderful time I had getting here. I left Peitaiho Sunday night with Mr [John Earl] Baker as I knew that if I ever could get thru it would be with him. I dont know whether I told you that he got thru the only train to Tientsin in days just by talking to the railroad men. Miss Boynton came with me and a giddy journey we had. The train at the junction was three hours late so we finally got on at one thirty a.m. Along about three a poor long suffering English friend of Mr Bakers, who also works for the railroad, found one berth for the two of us, so we each got two hours sleep in that. It was enough to get us thru, tho. When we got to Tientsin the Pekin train was nearly ready to start, all packed full. The cars had been resurected from the ark, the paint was peeling off and the dirt of ages had settled on them. Mr Baker went ahead on the military train and we tried to persuade him to take us on that with him but had no luck. There were four of us in a compartment designed for two, but fortunately the other two were nice Americans and helped to pass the time very nicely. It took us seven hours to get here. The usual time is three. It was terribly hot and most unintersting. There was nothing along the road to indicate that there had been any excitement there. Even at the stations where there was the most fighting there were no signs of it. The fields werent even trampled over nor nothing. At a couple of stations near Pekin there were troops enczmped and we passed a few troop trains. The nearest approach to excitement was when they kept us waiting twenty minutes outside the city wall, but they didnt come thru the train. Fortunately Miss Boynton and I had had lunches given us in Peitaiho and we fed oursleves and three other poor wnaderers. We finally got to Pekin about four and it certainly loked good. I dont think I have ever been so hot and dirty in my life before…. Did I tell you I have a wonderful scheme for going home next year? Mr and Mrs Zucker of the Rockefeller are planning to go and I am inviting myself along. The idea is to go to Kalgan and from there on horseback with a caravan to Urga in outer Mongolia. Ive been crazy to see Urga ever since I got over here, its the capital city of Mongolia and Mongolian Lamaism, theres a living Buddha there and all sorts of things. From Urga, also on horse, to Kiakhta on the Lake of Baikal and thence by the trans-Siberian across Europe and home… Politics continue complicated, interesting, and uncertain. The US English and French Legations have come to an open break with the Japanes over the question of the right of asylum to the Chinese political offenders. The first three have agreed no to take in any male refugees but the Japs refuse to agree. The natural inference is that they have some one there already and suspicion centers strongly on Little Hsu, the man every one in China is looking for. He disappeared mysteriously off the face of the earth about a week ago and the pass word around Peking now is, Where is Little Hsu? and the answer I wish I knew. The victorious patriots want his head and I dont wonder that he wants to keep himself under cover. I am rapidly melting down into the chair and soon will be so thoroly melded Ill never be able to get up, so I think Ill stop before that sad fact is accomplished. Lots of love to all. Lucy |
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| 263 | 1920.08.01 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey family 135 Morrison St Peking Aug 1 [1920] Dear children, I dont know whether this will reach you before Evelyn does or not; she is packing up altho her steamer doesnt leave Yokahama till the 20th. Mrs Crane telegraphed that she has found a four room bugalow at Peitaho and we are going there as soon as we can, which hurries Ev packing. But also she has difficulty in getting a boat to Japn, I dont know whether that is ordinary travel or whether it means that political refugees from the defeated party are flocking to Japan. The a"war" seems quite over. Yesterday pictures of little Hsu and others of the Anfu leaders appeared on the streets with rewards for their captures from twenty to fifty thousand each—at the same time the school teachers havent got any pay since May April, including university profs. Two weeks ago today it was that posters—without photos—were up offering rewards for the heads of the men who are now on top, and six weeks ago they seemed entrenched as masters of China—which bears out what was said of olden time, You never can tell. The Chinese awe know are pleased but not elated. They are glad to see one gang overthrown but arent sure the next one wont be about as bad, ftho they think each overthrow brings nearer the time when the people will be sufficiently educated to get control of things. However the present victory they regard as merely negativ except in one respect, the declone of Japnese influence The Japanese trained troops couldnt and wouldnt fight, the japanese shells were duds, and the whole elaborate political structure they had built up collapesed like a childs card house. It isnt very logical to argue from these things to the weakness of the Japanese, but the officials at least had nbeen intimidated and hypmostized by the belief in the Japanese superman, and now all of a sudden that prestige disappears. This doesnt mean that may not get hold of officialdom again but I dont believe there will be the feeling of their omnsiceince and omnipotence again. The rhing crumbled too easily. As one military man told me the people were hostile to the Js on acct of Shantung, and now the generals dont believe in them any more. I still believe that we got the right impression before we left Japan that they are badly overextended economically, politiclyy and even militarily to say nothing of diplomatically, and the shrinkage to normal size is bound to come… Love to everybody Dad |
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| 264 | 1920.08.06 | John Dewey leaves Beijing. |
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| 265 | 1920.07.07-09.14 | John Dewey stays at Beidaihe beach. |
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| 266 | 1920.08.19 |
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 |
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| 267 | 1920.09.12 |
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 |
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| 268 | 1920.10.06 |
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). |
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| 269 | 1920.10.06 |
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. |
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| 270 | 1920.10.17 | John Dewey received the Honorary degree, Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Beijing. |
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| 271 | 1920.10.22 | John Dewey leaves Beijing. |
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| 272 | 1920.10.25 | John Dewey arrived in Changsha. |
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| 273 | 1920.10.26 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children Changsha Hunan Oct 26 [1920] Dearest children, We left last friday morning—its Tuesday evening now… Instead of going right thru from Hankow we were taken to a nice clean hotel with bathtub, and stayed there till next afternoon at five when we took a train. There was a funny time there. A delegate as usual came up from here, a Frecnh returned student. There was also a delegation of Hankow educators at the train. One of them in behalf asof the French-Chinese sociaty of Hankow invited us to a lucneon at noon. So I accepted. The very next moment he said that would hurry us too much, so they would have the banquet at five. Then the Changsha delegate spoke up and said we might be on the train at that time. Then the H. man said—all in frecnh—it was a sufficiently rare occasion, n'est ce pas, and we wcould stay over another day. I referred the matter back to our delegate. Next morning he came to the hotel and said the banquet was fixed for five. Your mother and I both thought he didnt like it to have the trip posponed a day so for the first time since Ive been in China I butted in and said my time for the trip was limited, and this meant one day less for lecturing, and While I appreciated etc etc. So he said it would hardly do for him to make any objections but if I wrote a note it would be all right of course. So the note was written suggesting the banquet be given on our return when it could be combined with a day for lecturing. Then they got passes for us for the afternoon train, and sent a young American returned student just back from Oberlin and Harvard with us. After we got on the train he said that the Changsha delegate was anxious all the time to saty and have the banquet. Also he was much peeved because an American returned student wasnt sent, and said the Japanese and French Balgian returned students had combined here agt the American, and they ought to have sent some one who could speak Eng as there were about thirty here. Also that the banquet was for Chancellor Tsai and a fren[c]h returned professor of biology at Peking Univ who is accompanying the Chancellor to Shanghai to see him off for a trip to Europe. Meantime the delegate from here had to stay anyway because the boat from Shanghai was late, said boat bearing the Honorable B[ertrand] Russell, who was also coming here to lecture. Well this is a long story and doubtless seems quite pointless. But take my word for it that it quite illuminating and you'll know a lot more about China than we did before it Happenned. At first we were peeved and thought we had made a mistake, but as they had teachers here from all over the province waiting for the meetings to begin, and I think they were already one day late, Im glad we butted in. The Hon B[ertrand] R[ussel] came in this noon on the train we came on yesterday with all the rest of the party along. He was supposed to speak every forennon till next monday night, six in all, and me afevery afternoon. But it seems he has or thinks he has to be in Peking, and has announced he must take the boat back tomorrow or next day Im not sure which. Whether he hasnt been in China long enough to know how little dates count or whether he has some other reason I dont know. They had a place all picked out for him, I think a missionary English and he declined to go, said he preferred a Chinese hotel. But I guess the hotels, Chinese here are pretty bad. The committee wouldnt let him go and I understand have emptied or filled a house especially for him. A Miss [Dora] Black of Cambridge a former student is accompanying him and is to lecture on sociology. Mamma has seen more people than I have since the news came out, and all the people, at least foreigners are saying What do you know about these socialists travelling around the world together? Fortunately we dont know anything?. He lectured this p m right after I did, on Bolshevism. I was rushed right out of the hall, to 'go and get rested'. I suppose from politeness but it almost looked as if they [di]dnt want me to hear him. I judge they are about the same as his articles. The only thing I heard him say was that one reason he was opposed to Bolshevism was that the rest of the world wouldnt accept it voluntarily, they were bound to impose it, and that would mean continued fighting and he considered the situation so precarious that civilization might go under in a prolonged war. The other thing was that they were doing a lot for the children. Its fortunate for China his reaction was unfavorable as they will stand things from him on acct of his radical rep they wouldnt from anybody else. They rather idealize the Bolshevists here, especially the radical among the students. This place seems to be a hot bed. As I have written the late civil war began here. The old Tuchun was the rottenest in China, or would have been if there went so many rotten ones, they all the rottenest when you hear the details. The schools have been closed for almost two years, and the students have all the effervescence on tap the rest worked part of off last year. Also Hunan has the rep of being the most independent and revolutionary province in China. I was told that in one school the students had compleed in 21 changes of techers in the last two month. Im not sure that it wasnt one place which had been changed 28 times to meet their desires. They have issued posters that nobody should be called mister or teacher or any other title any longer since all are equal. However they wont admit the teachers are their equals in practise. Also advised that all the unamrried men and women in Changsha be promtly paired off. A Chinese told me he would get me a translation of the whole thing. As matter of fact its probably a dozen students ut of a thousand, but the minority is vigorous enough, the majoritgy will always give in when the minority calls them names. The new governor has been tgov twice before, once after the rev and was driven out by the name Yuan Shi Kai crowd, and then after the latters downfall only to be driven out by the Anfus. He is said to be one of the most enlightened liberals in China, a younger amn than I thought. When they said he was Hanlin—an old Chinese doctor under the exam system, I supposed he was an old man but he isnt over 45. He must have been a precocious kid and got his degree lalong with his mothers milk. He is certainly what they call democratic. We went to call on him yesterday p m, an he was in conference when we got there. Then he finally came almost running into the room, breathless and apologetic, with no pomp or bodyguard of soldiers. He came to the lecture this p m without any soliders at all, no uniform, and helped introduce me. Most of the governors dont stir out unless they have soldiers several deep to stop all stray bullets. he gives us banquet friday night. We are staying at a Chinese doctors, teacher in the medical college here, Yale farudate, speaks better eblish than I do. His wofe has never studied aborad but speaks enough eng to get along, and they have a foreign house and style, only Chinese food, Im glad to say. Darn good [co]oking at that. This is the seat of the socalled Yale-in-China college Yale grads send funds, and the faculty is largely from there, both American and Chinese. They keep up more social style than any place, weve been outiside Peking and Shang. By which I mean evening fdress. Haventing got sick of lugging mine around, of course I came without and we are invited out to dinner every night, tho some of them are Chinese affairs. Also invited out to luncheon everyday about, also a few afternoon teas. We are in luck being at these place, as it is Chinese enough to find out things from their point of view and foreign enough to have a bathtub, and good beds. There seem to be rather more cooperation than is usual between Chinese and foreigners here. The gentry give half the money for the College, comes thru govt funds. The only case in China I think. We are only three hundred miles from Canton.anAfter taking from five pm till eleven next day to get there, something less than 250 from Hankow, 300 is far enough howver. There were no sleeping cars, but he had a coop to ourselves and could stretch out some. The soldiers took possession of everything else, tho they are supposed to be the reformed soldiers, defenders of the faith. The streets are narrow here, and they say the former northern soliders used to beat a ricksha man or chair coolies if they bumped into them at all, and it was practically impossible not to. Quite middle age style. Also when they anted things from a stor[e] they would take what they wanted. The old Tuchun shipped or allowd a lot of rice to be shipped to Japan and got a big squeexe on every picul, hundred pounds. Made a million, in six weeks alone, also a shortage of rice in China at same ime, and exportation officially forbidden. He still lives, in Shanghai and took his money with him I suppose. And his conks. The young man who came with us and who is interpreting for me in spite of a bad cold, and the first time he ver did for anybody, is a case, a character. Was a revolutionist when he was a school boy of fiteen, and made such a name that when the republic came in they sent him to America to syudy, Hunan province altho he knows no Eng. He is quite critical of Dr Hu [Shi] and the Peking crowd, thinks they are too radical and destructive, but he is really more radical than most of them, tho more prwctical, less theoretical about it. Time to go out to dinner Love to everybody Dad |
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| 274 | 1920.10.27 | John Dewey attends a banquet hosted by Tan Yankai, the governor of Hunan, in Changsha. He visited Changsha, attended an education conference, and visited Hankou and Jiangxi province. |
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| 275 | 1920.10.31 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Lucy Dewey Oct. 31 [1920] Dear Lucy, This is Sunday evening and we have just come in from a picnic on the mountain called YoloShan. We saw an anceatral worship, so one more experience has been added to Cinese ones. The place is lovely, trees large and old and not all of them crooked. Live oak and sweet gum and ginko camphor and chestnut, and good roads which are too goo to please the old residents who prefer the like the primitive, The temples are in charming spots, It is all little tho compared to the Ssishan and easy to reach, tho they insist I should keep in a chair. Papa had to stop at a school on the way down and make a speech so I am the only one back with Dr Yen himself, Mrs Yen and the two children staid for the ancestral worship as they are friends of that family. A monument, a beautiful new house with every thing comfortable for the worshippers, the flags and other marks of honor, the son greeting the friends who came, the open house and the tea and the sons wife the table set out with a fea[st] over which the flies were crawling, it all did not seem so bad a way to remember the dead as one might think. There wa[s] incense burning in place of the flowers on the grave Then we came down a lovely green and moist road like h[o]me with a little brook singing alongside and here am I taking the first whack at the machin to tell you about Changsha. There is much to tell, it has been what the books call an eventful week, small event filling up every minute, I spose Pap told you they handed us a program with a banqu[et] every night when we arrived, We have had the lovliest place to stay in all China missionary spots, Dr Yen is the most spirituel of Chinese and Mrs Is good as gold and simple and all that she ought to be, She comes from Shanghai. There are four lovely children It seems to me the Yale Mission intends to dominate all situations, and it is the Chinese members who keep their hands on top, We havent had a breathing spell once, not a moment when we could run away and buy things, Tho I have gathered up a few, Tomorrow morning I am going to th[e] Y.W.C.A. who live in part of a big house, f[am]ily named Tso who are selling off old things, and maybe I shall find something for you, We are bringing a leopard skin and some cross stitch. I wish I had kept a record from day to day to send you, You know by this time Mr Russell did not stay long but went on to peking last Tuesday, We leave t[o]morrow night and I think we have staid quite long enough. They are keeping up too strenuous a pace to last out for long. last night we went to a dull banquet given by eight societies. Tonight the Gentry are giving us one, I shall not go unless Pap gets back here for I think I am the only woman and Dr Yen does no[t] want me to go, In spite of his being so kind he has Chinese ideas about women. The talk here is strong and loud about the Russells, Still I asked them to go and call on you. My advice is to receive the[m] well and not speak of the event, In fact it i[s] better for us all to do as little talking ab[o]ut it as possible. The day I first lectured in the missionary school they took back an engagement with Miss Black to speak and they told her the reason they co[u]ld not receive her, I will tell you all about it when we get back. The case is not easy All I wrote you from Hankow turned out to be quite an inc[illeg.] reac reading of Chinese methods and I have decided to never agin make an exception to my habit of saying I dont know what they are doing nor how they do it. [T]hings have gone smoothly here and very hapily owing to this charming home where we are staying, The whole thing is better planned and goes off with more snap than in most places The interpreters have been not very good, tho Papa has been settled down to an excellent one now. The Governor has been very civil, he is quite a simple human being, he brought us down the river in his launch when he came back from ns worship of the old hero whose grave we visited. He is going to start at once a model school on the basis of Pas suggestion that there are only two in China, He has aksed a Miss Loyan to take charge of it, She has been studying school administration in T.C. for three years besids studying somewhere else three years before that and she came back last September. She seems very stupid, and she certainly does not understand our language very well but we will hope that is not so. If one school is started as a result of these trips there is something to show, There is n[o] doubt this Gov is very much interested in education, It is said here he is rather weak in wishing to offend no one. but do not quote to any one any thing except the agreeable things I say He gave us together with other visitors a dinnes on Wednesday night. Tomorrow night we leave on the boat at ten oclock. We go to lunch and to dinner and we each have to speak twice and I am going to look at the things at the Y.W.C.A. We are expect to stay in Wuchang and Hankow eack two days, So we ought to leave Hankow for the north on Saturday the 7th of Nov, Pa will go straight home but I shall stop off at Paotingfu I will let Miss Gumbrell know as you suggest in your letter which I was surely gald to get All you say soulds as if you were enjoying life Miss Stearns lives here she will get me the broadcloth and besides I am buying velvateen for you two dresses. [Alice Chipman Dewey] |
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| 276 | 1920.10.31 | John Dewey visits the Yoloshan. |
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| 277 | 1920.11.01 | John Dewey attends a conference on constitutionalism and self-government in Changsha. |
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| 278 | 1920.11.04-06 | John Dewey : Six lectures on education and social reform in Wuchang. |
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| 279 | 1920.11.05-1921.11.10 (pu | John Dewey : Lecture 'Democracy and education' : delivered at the Department of Educational Research, Beijing Teachers College, Fall 1920-Summer 1921. = Ping min zhu yi yu jiao yu. Chang Daozhi interpreter ; Li Jimin, Yang Wenmian, Chang Daozhi recorder. In : Xue deng ; Nov. 5, 10, 12, 17, 18, 19 (1920). In : Ping min zhu yi yu jiao yu ; Nos 26-35, 41-42 ; Dec. 20 (1920), (Jan. 10, 25 ; Febr. 20 ; March 5 ; April 1, 20 ; May 5, 20 ; June 5 ; Nov. 10 (1921). |
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| 280 | 1920.11.07 | John Dewey visits Hankou. |
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| 281 | 1920.11.08-13 ? | John Dewey : Lectures at Jiujiang and Nanchang, Jiangxi. |
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| 282 | 1920.12.01 |
Letter from John Dewey to Walter S. Drysdale [military attaché of the American Legation to China in Beijing, 1917-1921]. Bolshevism in China. Peking, China, December 1, 1920. My dear Col. Drysdale: "In reply to your inquiry, I would say that I have seen no direct evidence of Bolshevism in China. I landed in Shanghai the first of May last year. In the year and a half since I have been in nine provinces, including the capitals, though much the greater part of the time has been spent in Peking. I have been in Shanghai four times, however, Hangchow twice, and spent two months in Nanking having been there twice. I feel the surer of my belief that Bolshevism is lacking in China because I have been in close contact with the teachers, writers and students who are sometimes called Bolshevists, and who in fact are quite radical in their social and economic ideas. The student body of the country is in the main much opposed to old institutions and existing political conditions in China. They are especially opposed to their old family system. They are disgusted with politics, and while republican in belief have decided that the Revolution of 1911 was a failure. Hence they think that an intellectual change must come before democracy can be firmly established politically. They have strong and influential leaders among the younger teachers. The great majority of the teachers are still, however, rather conservative in their ideas. The student body in China is proverbially undisciplined, taking an active hand in running the school, striking and demanding dismissal of teachers, etc. This is no new thing and is found in only slightly less degree in Japan, in spite of the great political docility there. All of these things make the students much inclined to new ideas, and to projects of social and economic change. They have little background of experience and are inclined to welcome any idea || provided it is new, or is different from what actually exists. They are practically all socialists, and some call themselves communists. Many think the Russian revolution a very fine thing. All this may seem more or less Bolshevistic. But has it not been inspired from Russia at all. I have never been able though I have tried to run down all rumors to hear of Bolshevist propagandists. In the south they are said to be in the north; in the north they are said to be in the south. I do not doubt there are some in China, but I am sure they are not many. And I am absolutely certain they have nothing to do with the general tone and temper of radical thought in the country. A student was arrested two months ago in Peking for circulating "Bolshevist" literature. I investigated and found it was truly anarchistic, advocating the abolition of government and the family, but no Bolshevist. However if the movement were practically dangerous it wouldn't be much matter whether it was inspired or directed from Russia or not. As matter of fact, it is the effervescence of school boys, being intellectual and emotional rather than practical. It is stimulated by the corruption and inefficiency of the government, and by the pro-Japanese character of the former cabinet. It is a symptom of the change of China from old conditions to new. Much of it is rather silly and superficial, but it is a sign that the students have begun to think about social and economic matters, and is a good sign for the future, because it shows that they have awakened to a realization that a mere paper change in constitution and government is not going to help China any. Radical thought has been accentusted in consequence of the war, but it has been an accompaniment of the new movement for twenty years. The first platform of the Chinese revolutionaries, adopted in 1901 or 1902 was socialistic, and so was the program of the Kou Ming Tang, the Sun Yat Sen revolutionary party, till it was dissolved by Yuan Shi Kai. But there is no leverage in the country to bring about a social revolution or anything approaching it. The farmers are still highly conservative, and they form ninety per cent of the population. There are a good many tenant farmers, but there is much more family proprietorship. A country of peasants that will stand the famine the north is passing through now with no rioting or outbreaks of disorder is loss in danger of Bolshevism than any country on the globe. Also industrialism is only just beginning. As yet it is confined to Shanghai and about a half dozen other cities. There isnt outside of these few cities any discontented "proloterist" to appeal to. In these cities unions are forming etc., but the men are mostly interested in their wages. They are not capable of being reached by ideas of great economic changes. In Changsha a few weeks ago I was invited to attend a meeting to organize a branch of a labor association. There wasnt on actual day laborer at the meeting, mainly merchants with some students. It was much more like some civic welfare or philanthropic organization at home than any labor party, though it had been called by a national organizer sent out from Shanghai. Thus the students have no material to work upon even it they wanted to start a practical movement. Also they are still too theoretical to engage successfully in practical movements. They were quite successful in attacking some of the corrupt Anfuites two years ago, but popular opinion was strongly with them. But at present even their influence in politics where they would have a practical effect if anywhere is very slight. Most foreigners who have any contact with them wish, I think, that they were more active, and more likely to start something than they seem to be. The sum of the whole matter is that the intellectual class is radical in its beliefs and much interested in all plans of social reform. But it is a small class, practically with little influence, and not concerned to organize itself to get more. The whole social and economic background of Bolshevism as a practical going concern || is lacking. Pick ten Chinese who are educated at random and who are outside the official class (which during the Anfu regime tried to block the student movement by calling them Bolshevists) or ten foreigners in contact with the Chinese and you will get the same reply. Many hope that a political revolution is coming to throw out the present class of officials and to get a new start. There may be an upheaval of this sort which those who dont like it will call Bolshevist. But I'm afraid it wont come very soon, and when it does come it will be confined to doing over again the things that were pretended to be done in 1911." Very sincerely yours, (signed) John Dewey. Colonel Walter S. Drysdale forwarded John Dewey's report to the State Department, he added the following: "Bolshevism in China | Service Report | December 2, 1920. Your attention is especially called to the following report written for us by Dr. John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University and Exchange Professor in China. Dr. Dewey has made a special study of this subject in China and has had unusual opportunity of getting into touch with this element in China that may be considered as radical. I know of no one any where, better qualified to report on this important matter than Dr. Dewey." |
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| 283 | 1920.12.05 |
Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes Dec 5, [1920] 135 Morrison St Peking Dear Barnes, We had expected to spend the time this year settled down here, except for a possible trip to Canton, which however has been in too unsettled a condition to permit educational meetings to take place. But we had an invitation to go to the central yangste provinces, and spent about four weeks in the capitals of three of them. With the exception of the region about Hankow they are the freest from foreign influence of any places we have been in, also interesting as the centr[e]s of the old porcelain industry, grass cloth and old Chinese cottons with the blue prints, very simple and artistic… I have written too much about myself in this letter, but the situation here is awful and its a relief to get away from it, and one has to pump up optimisms to keep going. The overthrow of the Anfu crowd makes it impossible to lay all the ills off on Japan any more, but they are much aggravated by the long period of Japanese control. And its impossible to see anyway out. And the gloomy thing is that the ills seems to go back so much to just lack of character. Of course one cant indict a nation, but its exasperating to see so many thoroughly attractive traits, and some much sweet reasonableness, so bound up with plain lack of character. The most consoling thought, and one needs all the consolation he can get, is that after all the social habits which breed these defects are economic at root due to the struggle for existence, and that a new industrial development will in time crowd them out. But meantime its almost certain they will take on many western wvices, and lose many of their old virtues, by carrying love of money, intrigue, mutual suspicion and calumny into the new situation. There is but one end logically to the present political situation, and thats complete international foreign control of finance which means of course practically all governmental administration. Nothing happens logically in China however. On is often inclined to think that would have been better if China had been allowed to go to pot in thits own dway, and no foreigner had ever set foot in it. But 'ifs' that assume the non-existence of steam and electricity dont go far. Perhaps next time I write Ill be quite hopeful—I hope so. I met Russell first on our trip as he was also giving lectures at Changsha, in Hunan. He then came up to Peking where he is now giving two lectures a wekk, on strictly special subjects, one on analysis of mind and the other problems of phil, along the lines of his little book. He declined to give any lectures on social reconstruction in China until he had studied the subject more, quite sensibley. [y in ink] His criticisms of Bolshevism rather weakened the attachment of students, who are socialists and to whom all socialists look much alike, except that Bolsheviks are to them really carrying it out. He is accompanied with by a young woman, a Miss [Dora] Black, one of his former students. The situation has produced a number of social complications quite naturally, which do not bother him becuae he came to China to see the Chinese not foreigners, but it may be a little hard on her before the year is out as educated and interesting Chinese women are arfew especially in Peking. The Chinese dont bother about the complication which seems to many quite admirable and advanced. but on the other hand many of them have been attacking the existing system in China and clai demanding a monogamous system and they dont quite to know what to make of it. Its rather petty writing personal gossip rather than about his work, but the truth is I havent fgot to any of his lectures yet, and conversations havent yielded much except that he is very amiable and an very interesting conversationalist, but avoiding shop as all the English do. He said that philosophically he had come nearer the pragmatist position than when we met last fsix years ago, but circumstances didnt admit of following the matter up. They have a fund for foreign lecturers one every year and want suggestions. In my opinion they are surfeited with theories, that includes me, and want somebody who can present definite knowledge about specific subjects which have a practical bearing, either on specific educational reforms, administrative measures etc, while being, in order to get a hearing rather radical in his ideas. They seem to want a German next time, and had the carzy idea of inviting Eucken, but I hope theyve dropped that. If you think of anybody mention him. The students are very receptive but rather uncritical, and also too disposed to vague generalities, any Ism as long as its uptodate. Im rather glad Im doing specific class teaching this year, not general lec-||turing, in fact made that condition of staying last spring. Im giving two courses, at two institutions, on D & E [Democracy and education] trying to simplify to make it intelligible, a course on Ethics and one on history of western phil; they appear the most interested in that. There is no interpreter and Im not sure about the english of many of them, and its hard to get questions and discussion from them. The have good minds but there is a general complaint they dont like to work. I mean the student class generally. A japanese who was over here gave the students a good talking to, told them some wholesome truths, contrasting their general atttitude with the spratan atttitude of the Japanese students thirty and forty years ago when J was in a precarious position and advised them to work heard and keep out of political rows. Yet the intelligent ones might have answered that hile Japanese students were keeping out of politics, the country had Shintoism and imperialismtic militarism put over on them. Its a hard question, and on the whole my sympathies are with a certain amount of superficial study due to outside interests, but they need to be training a good number of leaders in special subjects, [a]nd whether enough hard work is done for that is doubtful. However on the whole I dont consider the present situation bad if it isnt kept up too long; its an almost necessary stage of development that there be a period considerable intellectual fickleness, that is instability and attendant superficiality. Mentime the returned students come in for all kinds of criticisms, the gist being that they are out of touch with China while they havent really absorbed western culture and science, and also arent willing to begin at the botton, but want important jobs from the start. All natural enough too. The chief difficulty I think is that they have gone toabroad too young and now now there is a tendency to prepare them better before sending them, and send them for some special work planned in advance. The attitude of our govt in keeping them out of money earning pursuits has had a very bad influence. Theres a scheme for sending students who shall also work in factories and r[a]ilways etc, but Im told our dept of labor in Washington is holding it up—a very stupid policy from the standpoint of American business interests to say nothing of larger concerns… Sincerely yours, John Dewey |
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| 284 | 1920.12.08 |
Dewey, John. Industrial China [ID D28481]. Nowhere in the world is the difference between industrious and industrial as great as in China. The industriousness of the Chinese is proverbial. Industrially, they are in the earliest stages of the revolution from domestic to machine production, and from transportation on the necks of men (and women and children) to the freight car. The necks of men:—for while the bulk of goods in central China is doubtless carried by its marvellous system of water-ways, yet whenever winds fail the boats are towed with ropes attached to the shoulders of men—and women and children. On the Grand Canal, you can sometimes count forty persons from ten years up tugging at a rope attached to the mast of some clumsy junk. Even a Ruskin if abruptly placed in strictly mediaeval economic conditions might be forced to admit that there are two sides to the humanity of the steam locomotive. And the indiscriminate admirers of the mediaeval guild might learn something from a study of the workings of its Chinese counterpart. My last six weeks have been spent in travelling through the Province of Kiangsu. Shanghai is located in this province and it is industrially and commercially the most advanced in China, the one with the most mills, railways and foreign trade. For details and statistics the reader may go to consular reports, trade journals, etc. This article has a humbler task. Its aim is merely to record impressions which seem to me to be indicative of the problems China has to face during the years of its oncoming accelerated industrial transformation. The fifteen towns visited are scattered from the extreme north to the extreme south of the province; strictly speaking, two of them lie in the Province of Chekiang to the south. The towns fall into four groups. The first contains the treaty ports, where foreign merchants have come in, where foreign capital is concentrated, and where foreign methods, though usually subjected to Chinese conditions in the form of acceptance of the compradore as a middleman, set the pace. For technical commercial purposes, from a statistical point of view, these towns of which Shanghai is the most important, are doubtless the most interesting. From a social point of view they are the least interesting, except as one may want to make a study of the contact of two civilizations meeting with but one common object—the making of money. Otherwise they are chiefly significant as revealing an increasing ability of the Chinese to adopt the joint-stock and managerial system without coming to grief—as did most of the early companies that were exclusively Chinese. The reasons are worth recording, because they affect the entire problem everywhere of the introduction of modem industrialism. The speculative element, the promoter element, was at first most marked. The general psychology was that of gold mine promoting. After an early furore in which most 'investors' lost their money, the bitten became wary, and even legitimate enterprises could not secure attention, except in the case of a very small number of persons who had made a success of their joint-stock mills. In the next place, the Chinese family system with the obligation it puts upon the prosperous member of the family to carry all his relatives who wish to be carried made nepotism so common as to be an impossible burden. And in the third place, most of the earlier enterprises scorned the technique of putting aside reserve funds in a prosperous season, and of writing off for depreciations. A short life and a merry one was the usual motto. Now, however, business methods have developed to the point where many Chinese mills are successfully competing with foreign capital and foreign management. In fact many Chinese think that the latter will soon be at a disadvantage because of the diversion of profits to the compradore, and the lack of personal contact with workmen. But upon this point it is not possible to get facts that can be depended upon. The second class includes towns at the opposite extreme of development, towns that are not only non-treaty ports but that are only beginning to be touched. The northern part of the province, for example, is almost as primitive as it was five hundred years ago. The building of a railway has created some flour mills, and since the war egg-factories have made a new market. Eggs that used to sell for a third of a cent apiece now bring three times that, and the producer gets most of the increase. In all of the towns and villages, the number of hens any one family can keep is limited by communal action, as otherwise hens would poach. The extraordinary cumulative effect of large numbers so characteristic of China is nowhere better demonstrated than in the hundred thousands of eggs that nevertheless are daily brought by hand, or rather by neck, to the factories. Such an impression may seem too slight to be recorded. But it is typical of the kind of happening that is still most significant for the larger part of industrial China. Even this fact is increasing the value of land, raising the standard of living so that rural families that had only one bedding now have two, and is changing the attitude toward railways from one of hostility to one of favor. In these primitive districts one realizes also the immense odds that have to be overcome. There are districts of a million population that a few years ago had no public schools whatever, no public press, no postoffices, and where these facilities are still most scanty. The great positive obstacle is the activity of bandits. Being a robber is a recognized profession like being a merchant. The well-to-do live in constant fear of being looted so that their homes are almost as bare as those of beggars and in fear of being kidnapped for ransom. The professions of soldier and bandit are interchangeable, and upon the whole the peasants prefer the latter. One hears the story of the traveller who met a whole village in flight with their household goods on mules and in wheelbarrows, because the soldiers were coming to protect them from bandits. It is such facts as these that lead many to assert that any genuine industrial development of China must wait upon the formation of a strong and stabilized government. The significance of the political factor is evidenced in the province of Anwhei which juts into the northern part of Kiangsu. Here is seen the perfect flower of militarism. The military governor recently closed all schools in the province for a year in order to spend the money on his army. He has been getting personal possession of all the mines in the province and recently diverted a river from two cities in order to make a canal to some of his mines. This is only an extreme case of the effect of present political conditions upon the industrial growth of China. Almost everywhere officials use their power, based on control of soldiers, to exact tribute. They levy blackmail on mills and mines; use the control of railways to manipulate the supply of cars until they can force an interest to be given them. Then they reinvest their funds in pawn shops, banks and other agencies of economic domination. Thus a new kind of feudalism is growing up in which militarism is a direct adjunct to capitalism. These men keep their spare millions in foreign banks and have places of refuge in foreign concessions. The control of the Ministries of Communications and of Finance is equivalent to an economic overlordship of China, and the effects ramify everywhere. The station master has to pay several thousands of dollars to get his job, and he recoups by charging fifty or a hundred dollars when a shipper wants a car. Yet industry and commerce are advancing, and there is probably as much reason for thinking that in the end their growth will reform government as that a stabilized government will permit the normal growth of industry. The third class of towns consists of cities that also represent old China, but the prosperous and cultivated side of old China, cities that are now lazy, luxurious and refined along with extreme poverty and ignorance; towns that are slowly degenerating, for they want none of the new methods while at the same time the new methods are diverting industry and trade from them. To these cities go many retired officials with their stolen funds. As one moves about near the clubhouses and gilded house boats one hears everywhere the click of the gambling dominoes. There is money for dissipation and opium, but little for new industrial developments. Surplus funds are invested in neighboring rice lands; old small owners are crowded out, and a large class of tenant farmers is being created where family ownership has been the rule. Where the northern towns are merely primitive and backward, these once rich cities of the southern part of the province are reactionary and corrupt. Finally there are industrial towns where foreigners cannot own land or trade, and where the chimneys of cotton and flour mills and silk filatures are as numerous and smoky as in the factory districts of Shanghai—a development mostly of the last ten years, and indeed largely post-war. As it happens, the two most important of these towns present opposite types. In one of them the entire development has been in the hands of a single family, two brothers. And the leading spirit is one of a small group of men who vainly and heroically strove for the reformation of the Manchu dynasty from within. Finding his plans pigeon-holed and his efforts blocked, he retired to his native town and began almost single-handed a course of industrial and economic development. He has in his record the fact that he established the first strictly Chinese cotton mill in China and also the first normal school. And since both were innovations, since China had never had either of these things, he met with little but opposition and prophecies of disaster to himself and the district. Now the district is known popularly as the model town of China, with its good roads, its motor buses for connecting various villages, its technical schools, its care of blind and deaf, its total absence of beggars. But the method is that of old China at its best, a kind of Confucian paternalism; an exhibition on the small scale of the schemes for the reformation of the country which were rejected on the large scale. The combination of the new in industry and the old in ideas is signalized in the girl and woman labor in the factories, while the magnate finds it 'inconvenient' that boys and girls should be educated together after the age of ten years, with the usual result that most of the girls receive no schooling. The other town represents a go-as-you-please competitive development. There is less symmetry but more vitality. Many deplore the absence of cooperation and organization in developing civic life. But it is characteristic of young China that it regards the greater individualism with all its lack of system as more promising than what it terms the benevolent autocracy of the model town. But all of the industrial towns have one problem in common, and it is the problem of China. Is the industrial development of China to repeat the history of Great Britain, the United States and Japan until the evils of total laissez faire bring about a labor movement and a class struggle? Or will the experience of other countries be utilized and will the development be humanized? China is the land of problems, of problems so deadlocked and interlocked that one is constantly reminded of the Chinese puzzles of his childhood days. But for China and for the whole world this problem of the direction to be taken by its industrial evolution is the one of chief importance. Outwardly all the signs as yet point to movement in the inhuman direction, to blind repetition of the worst stages of the western industrial revolution. There are no factory laws, and if there were, no government capable of admin¬istering and enforcing them. You find silk filatures in which chil-dren of eight and ten are working fourteen hours a day for a pit¬tance, and twelve hours is the regular shift in all the mills. And these establishments have many of them for the last few years paid dividends of from fifty to two hundred and fifty per cent a year. Superficially China looks at the outset of its industrial career like the paradise of the socially unrestrained exploiter. The case however is not so simple or so certain. It is still conceivable that the future historian will say that the resistance of China to the introduction of the agencies of modern production and distribu¬tion, the resistance which was long cited as the classic instance of stupid conservatism, was in truth the manifestation of a mighty social instinct which led China to wait until the world had reached a point where it was possible for society to control the industrial revolution instead of being its slave. But the tail of an article is no place even to list the conditions and forces which make such a history conceivable, and only conceivable at the best. |
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| 285 | 1920.12.29 |
Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes 135 Morrison St Dec 39 [29, 1920] | Peking Dear Barnes, … I dont wonder that you are suspicious of the Consortium, but you can judge of the situation here if I say that so far as I can see it is the best thing in sight for China, in fact the only thing in sight politically. Its very questionable however whether it will ever really function, but its failure will be more due to its good points than its bad ones. There are three great things agt its operation. Its a combination of finance and politics. Politically it is distinctly anti-japanese in the sense of being a measure to check the japanese aggressions which have been going on so uninterruptedly for the last six years. Apart from the Monroe doctrine, China is the only country so far as I can see where the U S has had a continuous foreign policy—the socalled Open Door, no further parttitions, no further spheres of influence. The Consortium politically speaking is a tool of this idea But at the same time it is financial ad must give an attractive opening to American money. Its doubtful whether these two things can be made to lie down together; certainly there is something of a campaign agt the C already as being too "idealistic." The second force agt is international jealousies. Of course the Japanese know it will curb their designs, but the France and Gt Britain know also it is in pursuance of the distinctly American policy, John Hay etc, and will add to American prestige and influence in China, and if successful will destroy in the end the whole sphere of influence of partitition. Also they are now too hard up to have money to invest and their obvious policy is to stall, and prevent the thing working till they can come back. So they will work together with Japan more or less to put monkey wrenches into the machine. The third reason agt is is in-||ternal. Aside from the natural general fear of foreign control, there is the opposition of corrupt officials to the fact that all expenditures under the loans will be subject to expert foreign auditing, and opposition of Chinese bankers, since by making hand to motuh loans as at present they get from twenty to forty per cent interest—in some extremely corrupt cases even more—but two per cent a month is considered quite legitmate. How the Consortium can survive all these difficulties its hard to see. There is one thing in its favor—the desperate condition of things here. I doubt [a]fter seeing things here the generalizations of fluent radicals about finance being internationalized. Maybe it would be here if there were a common agreement to do it at the expense of China, but as long as the interest of the U S is against a break up of China, finance cant be internationalized here—unless the U S is powerful enough and der emined enough to lay down the law. Probably the Steel trust will control the next administration and that is mainly pro-Japanese, as industrialism is do much further advanced there. The Morgan interests for some reason arent tied up with Japan, At least they havent been, and I suspect T L [financier Thomas Lamont] is somewhat influenced by a little oldfashioned American patriotism which in this case brings him out on the comparatively right side. Thank you for the c[o]pies of the correspondence you sent. Her letter was too brief for me to get a clear insight, but there were certainly plenty of signs of poetic spirit, and your reply was a rare combination of friendliness and straightforwardness. The journals came with your Cezanne article and we were glad to see it in print. I was awfully glad about you[r] suggestion of Hobson [probably John A. Hobson] for China; I dont know why his name had escaped me. The Chinese have a fatuous devotion to their old teachers—which accounts for a good deal of my own reception here—and unfortunately there is a man—I never met him—with a good deal of influence who once studied in Germany under Eucken, and they seem bound to invite that mass of flabby decay. ItHe is so dam old maybe he cant come; no one of the men I know take any stock in him, but the man who is booming him has influence with theose who put up the money. Then there is a strong pro german feeling in China, so they want a German. I belive they asked Einstein, but he declined. Intellectually of course he is as respectable as Eucken is the reverse, but he would have been clear over their heads. Russell gave a public lecture on Relativity the other day, and while like everything he does it was a masterpiece of cl[e]ar[n]ess yet no one in the audience || except two or three professors of math and physics knew what any of it was about. Hobson is the right combination of theory and practise for them; as I wr[o]te before they are a little crazy now on the[o]ry, What is truth? What is religion? What is democracy? these are typical questions, and then right in the middle will be a fairly specific question like [w]hat is instinct? and apparently they dont see why one question cant be disposed of as well as another in a paragraph. I was invited to speak on religion and declined and the secy of the student society which invited me came around to see me and naively said they wanted to get the question settled while Russell and I were in the country. Of course it isnt all as bad as this, but in a way its typical. Russell gave out an interview in which he remarked that in the Western world no one had any faith any longer in the "wise men" but China was still in the stage where it beleived that a wise man could come along and settle its difficulties and questions. He got ion to the weak points of the Chinese in much shorter time than I did. He is extremely s[e]nsitive, as his Russian articles show, since he was only there six weeks and had never been before and didnt know the language. However he is constitutionally in opposition; he could write a wonde[r]ful critique on either heaven or hell after a short stay in either. A young Chinese expressed what I called his mathematical detachment by saying he gave very simple reasons for very complicated conditions. I fancy thisat is the mathemetical psyhcology—the ability to ignore contexts and select just what is directly relevant to the point in hand. If you meant that I envy him this gift you are right, for to my own psychology in spite of my shematic logical tendencies everything comes complicated end first, and I have to proceed consciously thru a tot of negations to untangle anything—to him it comes fairly clearly at the beginning I think. But if you mean that what is nearest my hearts desire it his ability to reach the liberal masses, why it only shows [ in ink] you dont get the psychology of the specialist. Even Wm James who is as much greater an artist than R as R is than me, says somewhere that he thinks when he writes of some twenty men, [ink comma] whose approval he would like—I havent the exact number but that makes no difference. Russell soon begins a new course on Analysis of Matter to go with his Analysis of Mind course. He told some one that Einstein had largely upset his prior phil of matter—that is one wonderful thing about R, he gets in opposition to himself as easily as to the rest of the world—this doesnt mean he is grouchy personally, on he contrary, he unusally agrreable. But he has simple intellectual tests and nothing naturally comes up to themir requirements. The war and Russia have affected such a senstive mind naturally. He thinks civilization is doomed to go to sleep like the old Roma world, he gives it only two centuries more of existence at the outside. Maybe hes right, but I cant see or feel it, but I can see how differently the world must look to one who seen at first hand the European debacle. He says Russian civilization which was tenuous and exotic, but still the finest in quality in the world has been destroyed, he seems to think permanently whoever comes out on top. He has a kind of dillemma, either aristocracy and injustice and civilization, or equality, (justice) and no civilization. That carries his simplification a little further than he does. But apparently he knows what justice is, namely equality, and I cant even fancy anything being as simple as that… Sincerely, [John Dewey] Wytter Bynner the poet has been over here. He is taking back a lot of cheap Chinese paintings, the kind that can be bought for a few dollars apiece, Mex. I cant imagine he wants them all for himself, and it made me wonder whther there was a business market for such things. If there is maybe I would try a venture to help pay expenses For a thousand dollars Mex I could esaily get two hundred pcitures, none very old, and none by masters of course, but having a certain Chinese charm and a technique as far as it goes. Do you know whether such things sell now in U S? The real Sungs are hard to get and up in the thousands. |
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| 286 | 1921.07 |
Dewey, John. New culture in China [ID D28486]. A Chinese friend, to whom I owe so much that he would be justified in arresting me for intellectual theft, has summarized for me the stages of foreign influence in China. At first, new military devices were thought to be the secret of western power. According to tradition, earlier divinities had come to China borne by the waves or riding a white horse. Some divinity must be associated with all organized power; and now 'Christ was riding on a cannon-ball' to China. This is not a literary phrase; it was the common man's literal belief. So an arsenal was built in Shanghai, and then gunboats. The guns wouldn't go off, or they exploded. The men-of-war were sunk by the Japanese navy in the Chino-Japanese War. Then the weakness of China was attributed to her outworn form of government. Reform was to come by political means. A republic was to be constructed instead of a navy, as easily and in as short a time. But the republic hardly came off either. At this period, some foreigners made up their minds about Chinese ideas of reform and they have never changed their notion since. They labeled this political movement 'Young China' and have stuck right there. Meanwhile the thought of China has moved on; the representatives of this movement and their successors are now almost like fossil reminders of an olden time. The period is hardly ten years distant, but thoughts, if not things, change with such rapidity in China that one is hard pressed to keep up—and unfortunately many foreigners make little effort to keep pace. The third period is that of reliance upon technical improvements. After all, the artillery and the naval equipment of the West are due to applied science, to engineering. So the distinguishing feature of western civilization, the one to be imitated, was thought to be neither military nor political but economic. Civil and mechanical engineers were to be the saviors of the country. Railways, factories, steam and electricity were to enable the old country to compete with new nations on even terms. But somehow this movement ran up against all sorts of obstacles; progress was slow; it brought new dangers and evils. Soon there was a wave of moral reform. Thousands of societies were organized for the cure of this, that and the other evil. This was the time of the anti-footbinding societies, of anti-opium movements, of anti-gambling associations, of remodeling of the old system of education and so on through the list. Though Christian influence counted for much in the initiation of these reforms, they were mostly carried on in a Confucian revival. Then came a conviction that underlying ideas must be changed, that democracy was a matter of beliefs, of outlook upon life, of habits of mind, and not merely a matter of forms of government. Democracy clearly demanded universal education, the extension of schools to all the people and a change from literary learning to something connected with civic and social action. It was the tradition that what was written must be written in the vocabulary, forms and cherished expressions of hundreds of years ago, in a language that bears little relationship to the spoken language of today. But the people could never be reached until the written language was simplified and made more accessible. And the language of speech must also be used in writing in order that modem ideas might get adequate expression. A scholar of the old school remarked to me in Hangchow, a centre of the older culture, that no one knew how many valuable ideas had been lost to China in the past few hundred years because those who thought them could not make them known, for lack of command of the cumbrous and artificial medium of writing. So there grew up, about two years ago, the so-called literary revolution—an attempt to write and publish in the vernacular and also to familiarize Chinese readers with what is distinctive in the trend of modem western literature, from free verse to Thomas Hardy, Bernard Shaw, Ibsen and Maeterlinck. I know of one school that criticized its foreign teacher of literature as not up-to-date, because he used Shakespeare and Dickens while they wanted H.G. Wells and Strindberg! They even suggested that he take a vacation, go home and catch up! He had become, they said, too 'Chinafied' and conservative. The matter of content, of ideas, soon became more important than that of language and style. The new ideas were turned full against ancient institutions. The family system came in for full measure of criticism, and this not only from the point of view of the traditional western idea of family life, but from that of A Doll's House and the most advanced western radical thought. Socialistic literature, anarchism, Marx and Kropotkin ran like wild-fire through reading circles. Tolstoi became perhaps the most read of foreign writers. Thus was evolved a new formula: China could not be changed without a social transformation based upon a transformation of ideas. The political revolution was a failure, because it was external, formal, touching the mechanism of social action but not affecting conceptions of life, which really control society. And now there are signs that the next stage will be an interest in scientific method. It is recognized that technology and other branches of applied science are dependent upon science as a method of thought, observation, registration, criticism, experiment, judgment and reasoning. The idea is gaining ground that the real supremacy of the West is based, not on anything specifically western, to be borrowed and imitated, but on something universal, a method of investigation and of the testing of knowledge, which the West hit upon and used a few centuries in advance of the Orient. These latter ideas underlie what may be literally translated from the Chinese as 'the new culture movement'. Concretely and practically it is associated with the student revolt that began on May 4, 1919. Some foreigners think of the latter as simply a new form of political movement. They have been encouraged in this belief by Chinese politicians and by conservatives, most of whom doubtless believed it was a purely political movement. Anything of a cultural and social nature is too far removed from their own lives and thought to be conceivable. But though it directed its outward manifestations against a group of corrupt politicians, and though it was stimulated by the failure of Chinese claims at Versailles, on account of commitments made by these politicians, for value received, to the Japanese, it was in its deeper aspect a protest against all politicians and against all further reliance upon politics as a direct means of social reform. The teachers and writers who are guiding the movement lose no opportunity to teach that the regeneration of China must come by other means, that no fundamental political reform is now possible in China, and that, when it comes, it will come as natural fruit of intellectual changes worked out in social, non-political ways. And the great mass of the student body in the higher schools of China is now virtually pledged to abstinence from official life. Doubtless many will fall by the way in the future. They will not be able to resist the lure of an easy living and of power. But the anti-political bias is pretty firmly established. This sketch, hurried and superficial as it is, suggests a number of comments. In the first place, the movement, though instigated by foreign contacts, which is only to say, after all, by contacts with the distinctively modem world, has become more and more characteristically Chinese. The movement of May 4 was directly undertaken by Chinese students, not only without the instigation of returned students, but against their advice. It was spontaneous and native. The movement for a reform of language would hardly have been started without foreign influence, but it is naturally a movement conducted by Chinese, for specifically Chinese ends, and it has precedents in Chinese history. The subsidiary movement toward phonetic script has been encouraged largely by missionaries, and so one hears more about it in western newspapers. Even the anti-political movement, the belief that reform is conditional upon scientific and social changes, is in a way a return to Chinese modes of thinking, a recovery of an old Chinese idea, plus an assertion that the power of that idea was not exhausted and terminated by Confucianism. It has now to be worked out in adaptation to new conditions, even if it involves the overthrow of Confucian forms of belief and conduct. Another obvious feature of the evolution is that it shows steady progress from the superficial to the fundamental. The comments just made take the movement at its best, in its spirit. From the point of view of results concretely attained by it, they involve an undoubted idealization of its development. Each old stage has left behind it a deposit, a stratification. 'Young China' is at best an ambiguous term. It lumps into a single mass representatives of each of the phases described—military, political, economic, technological, ethical, literary, social, etc. By selecting certain individuals from each of these strata, one may, with some degree of truth, bring almost any charge against 'Young China'. Naturally, in other words, there is confusion, un-certainty, mutual criticism and hostility among the various tendencies. Most of the returned students of some years ago are opposed to the present anti-political movement and to the literary revolution. Many are still in a nationalistic stage where they rely upon some change to be wrought miraculously in the army and the government. More are distinctly in the technical stage, believing that if they could get the engineering jobs for which they have trained themselves, China would begin to move—as it doubtless would, to some degree. One more discrimination has to be made. Although cultivated Japanese as well as politicians like Marquis Okuma have long proclaimed the right and duty of Japan to lead China, to be the mediator in introducing western culture into Asia (including India, where they look upon the English as alien interlopers), few Americans have taken seriously the dependence of China upon Japan in just these ways. I have seen books on the development of modem Chinese education which do not mention Japan, which attribute the renovation of the Chinese system to American influence, and which leave the impression that it is modeled upon the American common school system. As a matter of fact, it is modeled administratively wholly after the Japanese system, which, so far as western influence enters in, is based on the German system, with factors borrowed from French centralization. I have visited nine provinces and seen the educational leaders in the capitals where the higher schools are concentrated. There are but two cities, Peking and Nanking, where, in the government schools, direct western influence begins to approach the Japanese, either in methods or in personnel. To talk about returned students and fail to discriminate between those from Japan and those from Europe and America is to confuse everything touched by the discussion. This is not said by way of criticism of Japanese-trained returned students. I believe that, in spite of the too bitter rivalry between them and other Chinese students educated abroad (partly a matter of the ever present 'rice-bowl' question), the great mass of Japanese-trained students are doing the best they can, according to their light, for China. The exceptions are enormous, for they include some of the politicians and military men who have been doing their worst during the past few years for China, and who have provoked a large measure of the present universal condemnation of Japan and things Japanese. The point is that western ideas from the West itself and via Japan are two such different things that only confusion ensues when representatives of both schools are massed, as Mr. Bland constantly combines them, under the name of 'Young China'. The defeat of Russia by Japan created a vogue for Japan that no western country has ever begun to touch. Here was another oriental nation, using Chinese characters and deriving its civilization from China, which had conquered the dreaded foe, the West, in the person of mighty Russia. No wonder thousands flocked to Japan to study and most reformers took their models from Japan. By far the greater number of the revolutionary leaders who formed the Republic were Japanese or had lived in Japan as refugees and imbibed its culture as they never assimilated that of the West. The Manchu dynasty was doomed in any case. Full fifty years before the Revolution, the Taiping rebellion would probably have put an end to it, if foreign aid had not come to the support of the throne. The direct cause of its final downfall was the defeat of Russia by Japan. The historic parallel is the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan and the imperial restoration. By an accident, historically speaking, the change in China eventuated in a republic. Its main object, aside from getting rid of a foreign dynasty, was to modernize China as Japan had been modernized. 'Young China' at this period meant Japanized Chinese. What the new leaders brought to the situation was western ideas via Japanese utilization of them. And this meant in effect not a new culture, but a utilization of western technique in military, technological and administrative affairs in the interest of old culture. The Japanese have persistently taught, doubtless sincerely, that western civilization is essentially materialistic, while oriental culture is idealistic and spiritual in basis and aims. They have held that the West obtained its temporary supremacy merely by artillery and machines. Hence it must be fought by adoption of its own devices, while old oriental ideas and ideals are retained intact. Most of the Chinese who studied in Japan returned to China with this idea of the materialistic, technological nature of western civilization firmly fixed in their heads. It fell in with the conceit of their own superiority, which was so common and amusing a feature of all the earlier intercourse of the West with the Orient. All that China needed to learn from America and Europe was technical science and its applications. 'Young China' is thus a diversified and fluent term. Among those popularly labeled with that name by western writers there are all kinds of contradictory aspirations. But the two things that stand out today as active and dominant features of the situation are the need of reform in culture as an antecedent of other reforms, and a tendency for leadership to revert to those who are distinctively Chinese in their attitude, as over against those who would introduce and copy foreign methods, whether from the West or from Japan. The two traits seem to contradict each other. How can reversion to Chinese leadership coincide with attack upon Chinese customs and habits of mind? How can it coincide with a realization that the real source of western superiority is found, not in external technique, but in intellectual and moral matters? Well, history is never logical, and many movements are practically effectual in proportion to their logical inconsistency. But so far as an answer exists it is found in the fact, already alluded to, that the idea of the supremacy of intellectual and moral factors over all others is itself a native Chinese idea. It is much more Chinese than the idea that salvation can be found by introducing guns and factories and technical administrative improvements. It implies also that the real breakdown in Chinese national life is moral and intellectual. It implies a demand for new ways of thinking. Some of the new leaders might assert that they are truer to Confucianism in attacking it—as they mostly do—than others are in clinging to it. For the real idea, the vital idea in Confucius, they may say, is belief in the primacy of ideas, of knowledge, and in the influence of education to spread these ideas. But the ideas that are now petrified into Confucianism are not fitted to modem conditions. The breakdown in Chinese national life is proof of their inefficacy according to the standard of Confucianism itself. And Confucian education had become aristocratic, for the few only. Hence the need for a new culture, in which what is best in western thought is to be freely adopted—but adapted to Chinese conditions, employed as an instrumentality in building up a rejuvenated Chinese culture. The program is an ambitious one. It may seem to many much more pretentious, much less hopeful, than an attempt to borrow specific devices from the West. To many foreigners on the ground, it certainly seems a deviation from the real path of Chinese reform, which they hold to be the adoption of Christianity. But its relation to Christianity bears out the account here given of it. Some of its leaders are as non-Christian as they are anti-Confucian. They do not attack Christianity. They are merely indifferent to it. Others, especially in active educational work, are Christians. But I have generally found that these men are profoundly indifferent not only to denominational and dogmatic Christianity, but to everything except the social aspect of Christianity. They do not even take the trouble to call themselves liberals in religious belief. They approach Christianity from such an angle that they are indifferent to the distinction between conservative and liberal in belief. In effect they assert their claim to develop a distinctively Chinese Christianity. And though the movement toward an independent Chinese Church has not as yet gone far, it is likely to be a large feature of the future. It would be foolish to say that any great number of the students and teachers influenced by the new culture movement are wholly conscious of the underlying philosophy that has just been expounded. This is confined as yet to a small group of leaders. The movement is for the most part still a feeling rather than an idea. It is also accompanied by the extravagances and confusion, the undigested medley of wisdom and nonsense that inevitably mark so ambitious a movement in its early stages. By making a clever selection of extracts from the writings put forth in its name one could easily hold up the whole movement to ridicule, as less than half-baked, as an uncritical and more or less hysterical mixture of unrelated ideas and miscellaneous pieces of western science and thought. Or a selection of writings could be made which would show it to be dangerous to society, to the peace of the world. Japanese writers who have paid attention to it have mostly held it up as a subversive radicalism and have attributed it to Bolshevist propaganda. But in the nine provinces I have visited, I have yet to find a single trace of direct Russian influence. Indirectly the Russian upheaval has of course had a tremendous influence as a ferment, but far subordinate to that of the World War, and even to President Wilson’s ideas of democracy and self-determination. For the new culture movement, though it cares nothing for what is politely called a republic in present China, is enthusiastically stirred by democratic ideals, and is starting out with the premise that democracy must be realized in education and in industry before it can be realized politically. For Bolshevism in the technical sense there is no preparation and no aptitude in China. But it is conceivable that military misrule, oppression and corruption will, if they continue till they directly touch the peasants, produce a chaos of rebellion that adherents of the existing order will certainly label Bolshevism. After the upheaval of May 4, the student unions started periodicals all over China. It is significant that at this moment of the height of the revolt against corrupt and traitorous officials and also of the Japanese boycott, these topics were secondary in the students’ journals. They were written in Pei-wha, the vernacular already referred to, and were ardent in advocacy of its use. Their burden was the need of educational change; attacks upon the family system; discussion of socialism; of democratic ideas; of all kinds of utopias, such as taking away children from their parents and giving them to public authorities to be reared, the abolition of all national and even provincial government and the reduction of China to a state of self-governing communes. Naturally there was much effervescence along with the fermentation. Lacking definite background of experience, the students thought all ideas and proposals much alike, provided only they were new and involved getting away from old customs and traditions. In one prominent provincial city, some teachers in a normal school joined with a youth of seventeen in advocating free love as a remedy and substitute for the family system, communal rearing of children, abolition of all private property, the election of teachers by students as a form of democracy, the abolition of examinations as a relic of autocracy. Since the articles were written in the vernacular, an alarmed provincial governor, scared by the noise made by this blowing off of steam, closed the school and wrote to Peking, demanding that future use of the vernacular be prohibited by law. But some official had enough of the saving grace of common sense to remark that these dangerous thoughts would then be written in the old literary language, and then it would be necessary in consistency to forbid its use, too. Practically speaking, these ideas were about as dangerous as those set forth in schoolboys’ debating clubs would be in any country. Yet they are important symptoms and potentially they involve a menace, not to the peace of society, but to those who profit by the evils of the established order. It is significant that in my whole experience I have not found one of these extremists who had been trained in America or England. They are almost without exception persons who have been educated in China and who speak and read only Chinese. They can easily quote sanction for their extreme ideas from old Chinese writings and legends. The few exceptions were students trained in France, who had adopted as congenial to the anarchistic vein in Chinese thought certain ideas coming from the French Revolution. In Nanking last spring some students were kind enough to make out for me a list of journals, mostly founded within the previous year and a half, to advocate the principles of the new culture. A cursory reading of the titles and professed objects of these periodicals confirms what has been said. The organ of this particular group of students gives the key-note of the whole undertaking. The journal is called Youth and Society. Its motto, with true Chinese balance of phrasing, is, 'To make society youthful and youth social'. The Dawn, New Voice of Society, The New Individual, The Citizen, The Warm Tide, Young China, The Young World, The New Group, The New Life, Upward, Construction, Learning and Labor and Truth are other typical names. And among the objects professed occur almost with monotony such phrases as 'to reform the nation and society, physically and socially'; 'to investigate society'; 'to study social and economic problems and introduce new ideas'; 'to introduce new thoughts to the citizen and uplift his personality while promoting home industries'—the last phrase of course an echo of the boycott; 'to arouse the workingman and reform society'; 'to promote popular education and save society'—this by a journal called Save the Country, 'to promote the new culture and develop thinking and pure science'; 'to bring about a development of learning so as to apply the idea of research and criticism to the reform of society'; 'to study society and introduce western ideas’; 'to reform society in the light of scientific ideas'; 'to introduce new thoughts to the world, and to apply an optimistic but critical attitude to the reconstruction of society'. Many of these papers were of course as ephemeral as all of them are ambitious. But they illustrate the spirit of the movement as hardly anything else could. The list would not be complete without the mention of journals like The New Woman, the object of which is 'to arouse women as a means to reforming society', and The Woman's Bell, the aim of which is 'to educate women and enable them to take part in the progress of society'. In fact, in the journals as a whole, the three most discussed topics are reform of the family system, the emancipation of women and the labor question, all of them in connection with educational reform. The three parent journals, which continue to exercise the greatest influence, and so are peculiarly the organs of the new culture movement, are called 'Youth', 'The Renaissance' and 'Emancipation and Reconstruction'. It must not be gathered that the whole activity has been literary and theoretical. For the first time in Chinese history, the educated youth have given themselves to what at home we term social service. I suppose most foreigners approach China with an antecedent belief in its essential conservatism, its aversion to change. The conservatism is unquestionably there. But so also is a predilection for change. And the scene shifts so often as to be dizzying to observe. Teachers complain of the 'bumptious' insubordination of students—not a new complaint in China, where students have prerogatives in respect to their own discipline most disconcerting to visitors from free America. They complain also of instability of mind, which leads students to rush enthusiastically into a new cause only in a few months to lose interest and turn to some newer thing. The symptom is characteristic of conditions outside of schools. It is to be regretted. But it is genuine evidence of a general state of transition, with the hesitation, uncertainty and openness to novel stimuli that such periods are bound to exhibit. On the other hand, there is a maturity of interest far beyond that which marks American students of the same years. High-school boys and girls listen soberly and intelligently to lectures on subjects that would create nothing but bored restlessness in an American school. There is an eager thirst for ideas—beyond anything existing, I am convinced, in the youth of any other country on earth. At present the zeal for ideas outruns persistence in getting knowledge with which to back up the ideas. But it supplies an extraordinary vitality to the growing desire for knowledge and scientific method. It means that knowledge is being acquired, not as a technical device nor as a conventional badge of culture, but for social application. If the students in any higher school in China are asked why they are taking a particular course, the greater number will answer, 'To help our country' or 'To promote the reform of society'. Discount the superficiality with which many make this reply and there still remains a substantial basis for hope for the future. After a few months in China, a visitor will take an oath, if he is wise, never to indulge in prediction. For prophecy is sure to be dictated by hope or fear rather than adequate facts. Flesh is weak, however, and loves to pass upon the present in terms of the future. The observer will consequently fall into the vice he abjures—as I have occasionally done—to his own prompt undoing. Yet, moving between the thin, but exciting, ice of prediction and the safe, dull ground of sure fact, one may assert that, with all its crudities and vacillations, the new culture movement provides one of the firmest bases for hope for the future of China. It cannot take the place of better means of communication—railways and highways—without which the country will not be unified and hence will not be strong. But in China there is need, too, for a unified mind, and that is impossible without the new intellectual movement. It also makes a great deal of difference whether the mind when unified looks to the past or is in sympathy with modem thought in the rest of the world. A China unified according to the scheme that Japan successfully adopted would be no less isolated than Japan has turned out to be, and more menacing to the world. China needs schools; it needs, and needs badly, universal elementary education. But it makes a great deal of difference what these schools teach and what their spirit and aim is—as German and Japanese universal education both prove. Chinese educated youth cannot permanently forswear their interest in direct political action. Their attention needs to be devoted more than it has been to detailed, practical economic questions, to currency reform, public finance and problems of taxation, to foreign loans and the Consortium. One finds schools where foreign-educated students are teaching theoretical political economy from books based on the assumption of competition, machine production and capitalistic accumulation, which have no more to do with the surrounding industry—strictly local as it is, and carried on by handwork according to custom and for a static market—than has lunar astronomy. Or one finds the interest centering in socialism even when there is next to no problem of distribution of wealth (except checking the rapacity of officialdom) and when the problem of increased productivity for labor is acute. But China is after all in the early stage of the industrial revolution, and, if it is not to repeat the experience of the rest of the world, with all the evils and dangers of the warfare of capital and labor, with sweated industries, child and woman labor, oppression by capital and sabotage by the worker, if it is going to profit by the nineteenth-century experience of the rest of the world, it has to come to the problem prepared. And not even the most extravagant speculations of the present will, when brought to earth by the demands made by actual conditions, prove wholly useless as preparatory equipment. China has the alternatives of perishing, to the disturbance of the world, as well as itself, or of condensing into a century or so the intellectual, scientific, industrial, political and religious progress for which the rest of the world has taken several centuries. It cannot, like the United States, make the change with plenty of elbow-room, but must accomplish it in a civilization crowded with traditions and superstitions as well as with people. Young China, especially Youngest China, shows an appreciation of this fact. There are hours when, stimulated by contact with what is best in the movement, I am willing to predict that it will succeed and, in succeeding with its own problems, will also give to the world things of new and permanent value. There are other times, when, after contact with the darker features of the situation, I wonder that the supporters of the cause do not all lose hope and pessimistically surrender. It is easy to see why some give up effort and devote themselves to making the best of a bad situation by feathering their own nests. At the end, one comes back to the sobriety, the industry, the fundamental solidity of the average common man. These qualities have weathered many previous storms. They will pull China through this one if they are redirected according to the demands and conditions of that modern world that has thrust itself so irresistibly and so disturbingly upon China. The new culture movement is a significant phase of the attempt to supply the direction so profoundly needed. |
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| 287 | 1921.01 |
Dewey, John. As the Chinese think [ID D28499]. There is an oft-quoted saying of Chesterton's that a man’s philosophy is the most important thing about him. He illustrates the point by saying that it is more important for a landlady to know the philosophy of life of a would-be lodger than to know his financial status. The latter may decide his ability to pay, but the former decides his willingness to make false or true representations and to carry out his agreements. The late Mr. Morgan aroused much interest when he said at Washington that he attached more importance in banking to the character of the applicants for credit than to the material securities they proffered. The remarks of Chesterton and Morgan testify to the practical importance of what in war-time we learned to call the imponderables— grit, stamina, loyalty, faith—in comparison with things so tangible that they can be counted and measured. What is true, in this regard, of individuals is true of peoples. The spirit that countries bring to the negotiations going on in Washington, the spirit in which they will proceed to execute the decisions of the Conference, is more important than the letter of the decisions. Those who are cynical about the Conference are so because they do not believe in the underlying good faith of the governments concerned. They assume that negotiations are simply a hypocritical cover for a series of dickerings and maneuvers for special advantage, and that professions of regard for peace, justice and humanity are merely part of the traditional paraphernalia of a secret jockeying to get the better of some one else. They distrust, in short, the underlying philosophy of existing governments. If we go deeper, we realize that many sources of discord and friction have their root in the fact that different peoples have different philosophies ingrained in their habits. They cannot understand one another and they misunderstand one another. It is fashionable today to assume that the causes of all difficulties between nations are economic. It is useful to fix attention upon these economic causes and to see what can be done in the way of adjustment. But the friction generated by economic competition and conflict would not break out into the flames of war if atmospheric conditions were not favorable. The atmosphere that makes international troubles inflammable is the product of deep-seated misunderstandings that have their origin in different philosophies of life. If we are to take steps to dampen the atmosphere, to charge it with elements that will fire-proof international relations, we must begin with an attempt at an honest understanding of one another's philosophy of life. The difficulty is greatest between oriental and occidental peoples. There are great differences in the mental dispositions of European and American peoples; the philosophies of life of even the English and the Americans are much more unlike than they are usually assumed to be. But all such differences pale into insignificance as compared with the differences between the civilizations of the West and of Asia—between the philosophies to which these civilizations have given birth. It is proportionately hard to secure mutual understanding and respect and proportionately easy on both sides to create suspicion and fear, which slide over into hatred when the time is ripe. The common belief at the present time that the Pacific is to be the scene of the next great world catastrophe, the fatalistic belief that conflict between the white and the yellow race is predestined, are really expressions of a sense of a deep, underlying cleft that makes mutual understanding impossible. But instead of trying to lessen the cleft by effort to understand each other, we talk about an irrepressible conflict of forces beyond human control, or else about the competition for control of the natural resources of China and the tropics. I would not minimize the danger in this competition, but it is ridiculous to suppose that it is so great as to make the Pacific the scene of an inevitable war. If we succeed in really understanding each other, some way of cooperation for common ends can be found. If we neglect the part played by fundamental misunderstandings in developing an atmosphere of combustion, any devices that are hit upon for lessening economic friction are likely to turn out so superficial that sooner or later they will break down. One reason why misunderstanding is so dangerous is that peoples like persons tend to judge one another on the basis of their own habits of thought and feeling. Mr. Wells recently pointed out a specific instance. He said that the Japanese, because of their docility and obedience, tend to overestimate the power of the British government to regulate the sentiments and acts of the English people, while the English, because of contrary habits, tend to exaggerate the control that Japanese popular sentiment has upon the ruling class in Japan. The practical application he made bears upon the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The Japanese tend to overlook the fact that the Alliance might break down under strain because of pressure of popular sentiment, which would make the government unable to carry it into effect in case of Japanese trouble with the United States. The English, on the other hand, overlook the danger of the Alliance, because they imagine that in a crisis the Japanese governing class would be amenable to an alert and intelligent public opinion. It would be easy to fill pages with instances of just such misunderstandings due to imputing to another people the motives and aims that we should have if we performed the act that the other people has performed. Japanese diplomacy, for example, is centralized, almost dictated, from Tokyo. Ours is comparatively loose. If, accordingly, an American consul in the Orient does an act—if only making a speech—more or less on his own, it is natural for Japanese to assume that he is deliberately acting upon orders from Washington in pursuance of some national policy. Americans, on the other hand, are likely to overlook the compactness and continuity of Japanese diplomacy. Or, when they become aware of some objectionable result of diplomacy, they regard it as a sudden and treacherous coup instead of the culmination of a series of steps, which from the Japanese point of view have been already accepted and sanctioned, if only tacitly. Then the Japanese are perplexed in their turn. Such incidents and others that might be mentioned seem trivial, taken one by one. But the total effect is by no means a trivial detail. The net result is mutual distrust, suspicion, dread. Episodes of this kind illustrate the importance of a better understanding by each nation of the psychology of other nations. The physical means of intercourse between nations by means of trade, mails and cables have got far ahead of the agencies of psychological and moral intercourse. After thousands of years of isolation, the East and the West have been thrown into intimate political and commercial contact. During the period of separation each side of the globe has developed its own peculiar ways of thinking and feeling. It is no wonder that under such circumstances the contact of East and West is so largely materialistic, economic. It is an accident, a by-product of the invention of steam and electric machinery, and, like any accident, it may turn out a catastrophe. There are many questions of a directly practical nature that cannot be understood or properly handled unless the larger background be taken into account. Why are the Chinese so unperturbed by circumstances that appear to a foreigner to menace their country with national extinction? How can they remain so calm when their country is divided within and threatened from without? Is their attitude one of callous indifference, of stupid ignorance? Or is it a sign of faith in deep-seated realities that western peoples neglect in their hurry to get results? So far as diplomatic negotiations, including those of the Washington Conference, are concerned, does the Chinese policy of watchful waiting—with more waiting than watchfulness from a western point of view—imply indifference to their fate or weakness that makes them unable to cope with it? Or is it evidence that they are banking upon the operation of slow-moving forces that in the end will bring things their way? Surely the right answer to such questions is at least of equal importance with the particular decisions of the Conference. In the long run it is more important; for it will control the way in which the decisions work out. Again there is the question of China's long and obstinate resistance to modem methods of industry, to machinery, railways and large scale production and her disinclination to open up her country except because of pressure from a foreign power. This refusal, taken in connection with the desire of foreign nationals to utilize the natural resources of China and to find markets among her teeming millions, is the source of many of China's most acute difficulties. A natural question arises: Why hasn't China taken the lead in developing her own resources? Why hasn't she gone ahead much as the United States did, borrowing foreign capital, but keeping political and, in the main, economic control in her own hands? Is her course stupid inertia, a dull, obstinate clinging to the old just because it is old? Or does it show something more profound, a wise, even if largely unconscious, aversion to admitting forces that are hostile to the whole spirit of her civilization? The right answer to these questions makes a great difference in the treatment of many concrete practical problems. If the course of China is blind and inert, there is much to be said for a combination of nations, a kind of economic-political consortium, which will force modern industrialism upon China, overcoming her obstinacy for her own good, not allowing sentimental considerations to stand too much in the way. But if there is something deeply worth while in Chinese culture, and if industrialism as it exists in the western world is a menace to what is deepest and best in Chinese culture, then the practical answer is quite different. Perhaps there will come a time when historians will say that the course of China gave evidence of a profound instinct. Perhaps they will say it was better for the world and for China that she resisted the introduction of western, machine-made industrialism until the world and she herself were able to control its workings. If so, the entanglements and perplexities into which China has temporarily got will not be too great a price to pay for the result finally attained. Only those who are completely satisfied with the workings of the present capitalistic system can dogmatically deny this possibility. It is much easier to raise these questions than to answer them. But a knowledge of Chinese civilization and of the philosophy of life expressed in it at least makes the questions more real and more pertinent. Two great philosophies of life are intimately connected with the Chinese attitude toward political and social issues—those of Laotze and Confucius. Perhaps a third should be added—that of Buddha. But the latter was not indigenous, and the first two were. Though no one can deny the immense stimulus to Chinese art and thought that came with the introduction of Buddhism from India, yet in the end its influence seems to have een transformed by Taoism and Confucianism. The teaching of Laotze did not become classic and official in the way in which that of the Confucian school did. Yet one obtains a strong impression that fundamentally its influence upon the people is greater than that of Confucianism, since it colored the way in which Confucianism was received. This is no place for a technical exposition of the teaching of Laotze, the Old Master. Nor is it important for our purpose. The important thing is the doctrine of the superiority of nature to man, and the conclusion drawn, namely, the doctrine of non-doing. For active doing and striving are likely to be only an interference with nature. The idea of non-doing can hardly be stated and explained; it can only be felt. It is something more than mere inactivity; it is a kind of rule of moral doing, a doctrine of active patience, endurance, persistence while nature has time to do her work. Conquering by yielding is its motto. The workings of nature will in time bring to naught the artificial fussings and fumings of man. Give enough rope to the haughty and ambitious, and in the end they will surely be hung in the artificial entanglements they have themselves evolved. There is nothing exclusively Chinese in this point of view. But no other people has become so saturated with its consequences. It is at the root of their laissez-faire, contented, tolerant, pacific, humorous and good-humored attitude toward life. It is also at the root of their fatalism. The teachings of Laotze have been influential because they expressed something congenial to Chinese temperament and habits of life. China is agrarian, agricultural; everybody knows that fact. But while we know it, we forget how long and how stable is their agriculture. The title of a book by an American agriculturist, Farmers of Forty Centuries, is infinitely significant when we reflect upon it. Other peoples have been farmers. But by their methods they have exhausted the soil and gone down, or they have turned to other occupations, which have supplanted farming in importance. But the Chinese have gone on tilling, tilling, tilling, even, as in north China, against great odds; and their soil is still productive, as productive, probably, as ever it was. This is an unparalleled human achievement. It helps explain the conservatism of the Chinese, their laissez-faire reverence for nature and their contempt for hurried and artificial devices of man’s contriving. Their minds are as steeped in contact with natural processes as their bodies are apt for agricultural work. They are conservative because for thousands of years they have been conserving the resources of nature, nursing, preserving, patiently, obstinately. While western peoples have attacked, exploited and in the end wasted the soil, they have conserved it. The results are engraved upon both Chinese and western psychologies. The Chinese have learned to wait for the fruition of slow natural processes. They cannot be hustled because in their mode of life nature cannot be hustled. Why be in a hurry when hurry only means vexation for yourself and either accomplishes nothing in nature or else interferes with its processes and so hinders the natural harvest? It is not meant that there is nothing but good in this attitude. Virtues and defects, excellencies and weaknesses go together. Western fatalism takes the form of believing that, since what is going to happen will happen, we might in the meantime as well » go our own way. It is like the fatalism of soldiers in the trenches. Oriental fatalism is directed upon the present rather than upon the future. Why do anything, why try, why put forth energy to change conditions? Non-doing runs easily into passive submission, conservation into stubborn attachment to habitudes so fixed as to be 'natural', into dread and dislike of change. But it is meant that the Chinese philosophy of life embodies a profoundly valuable contribution to human culture and one of which a hurried, impatient, over-busied and anxious West is infinitely in need. It is also meant—and this will appear to be the more 'practical' point—that this philosophy of life is so ingrained in the Chinese people that we cannot understand their way of dealing with political and social problems unless we take it into account. And if we do not understand it, we shall not be able to deal with them, in either politics or business, intelligently and successfully. To attain success, to achieve anything worth while in our relations with the Chinese we have to adopt enough of their own point of view to recognize the importance of time. We must give them time and then more time; we must take time ourselves while we give them time. The teachings of Laotze spring from the depths of Chinese life and in turn they have influenced that life. Much of the actual effect, as it comes home to the individual farmer, has no connection with the general theory. As a philosophy in the abstract, the farmer would not recognize or understand it. It is associated for him with a mass of superstitions and geomantic practices. Yet even the superstitions are bound up with a general attitude toward nature. The most widely influential custom is that called Feng-shui, literally translated, 'wind-water'. The belief in Feng-shui is a belief in certain mystical influences connected with the land. Upon the propitious working of these forces depends the prosperity of the dead, the ancestral spirits, and of the living family. These forces are easily disturbed and their equilibrium and benign operation interfered with. This belief was an earlier obstacle to the introduction of railways and it is still a mighty obstacle in the way of opening new mines, and, in general, of introducing new industrial forces. It is easy to dismiss the whole belief as a gross superstition, which is degrading intellectually as well as inimical to progress. But it is also easy to rationalize the doctrine. Then one would see in it a belief that the land and its energies belong to the whole succession of human beings, past generations and future. The present generation is a trustee of the family and race, of ancestry and posterity. The exploitation of the land must therefore be regulated in the interest of the whole succession. This rationalization is as extreme in one direction as the view that the Chinese system of geomancy is a degrading superstition is in the other. But the doctrine of Feng-shui is at least a remarkable exhibition of piety toward nature and it has been a power for conservation as well as for conservatism. The general point of view of Confucianism is the opposite of that of Taoism. It magnifies the importance of art, of culture, of humanity, of learning and moral effort. Naturally, therefore, this doctrine influenced the scholars and upper classes much as Taoism spread among the people. Yet in many respects the actual effect of Confucianism has been like that of Taoism. In inculcating reverence for the classic literature of the past as the well- spring of wisdom, it supplied intellectual reasons for conservatism. In exalting moral and intellectual, as superior to physical, power, it taught patient disregard for display of military and political force, which is sure, in the end, to be brought to naught by reason. It created that extraordinary reverence for the teacher, that conviction of his abiding influence upon the life as well as the learning of pupils, which is so remarkable a trait of Chinese life, and which helps to explain the tendency of the Chinese to rely upon pacific reason rather than upon brawling force for settlement of troubles. Is there any other people that has persistently believed that the influence of the teacher is in the end the most powerful of all social forces? What other nations are there whose heroes are moral teachers rather than revealers of supernatural affairs, priests, generals, statesmen? Though Confucianism has had its especial career among the upper and official classes, yet its net effect has merged with the influence of Laotze to create a definite contempt for politics and an aversion to government as the West understands the term. To the Taoist, government is unnatural, an interference by men with the orderly operations of nature. The emperors, even the alien Tartars and Manchus, had to bow to this conviction. They got around the people by adopting their belief, by giving the emperor a mystic significance. He was the agent of the people in reverencing Heaven. The emperor did not govern. He ruled by not governing, by not interfering with the real government, the customs of the people, which were so immemorial and so interwoven in agriculture with the operations of nature that they themselves were like the workings of nature. Tribute paid him was not so much political taxation as an expression of loyalty to the natural and moral forces that he embodied. If nature failed to function, if famines and floods recurred, if his demands became extortionate and his officers ceased to be fathers and mothers of the people, these were signs that he no longer represented Heaven. Then the people became, pending the restoration of righteous and benevolent order, the representatives of Heaven. According to Mencius (who emphasized this more democratic side of Confucianism) the people under such circumstances had not only the right but the duty of deposing the ruling house. In putting down, largely in western terms, these suggestions about the philosophy of the Chinese, one is painfully conscious of their inadequacy. But even so, they show why the Chinese maintain such confidence in the outcome of events, in spite of so much that is discouraging. China has survived many such periods. But after a while the civil power, that is, the moral and intellectual, has reasserted itself, and the stable industry of the people has again become dominant. Even now, in spite of conditions that would throw any western state into chaos, there is steady progress among the people. In her external relations, China undoubtedly faces a new situation. It is not safe to argue that, because she has always conquered her conquerors before, she is certain to do so this time. Her conquerors before were her inferiors in everything but military power and skill. Now she deals with peoples who are her superiors in natural science and in its applications to industry and commerce. Conquest of China by economic penetration that will reduce her population to a proletariat working for foreign capitalists backed by superior military resources, is a very different thing from direct military subjugation. Yet the reasons for China's historic confidence are still not wholly shaken. It is a common saying that China manages her international relations on the basis of an old maxim about playing the barbarians off against one another. This fact sometimes inspires a frantic appeal for all foreign nations to get together and impose their unified will upon China. Propagandists for a foreign nation often bid Americans beware of expressions of Chinese regard for the United States. They say these are only another instance of a policy based on the old maxim; and that, if it succeeds, China with a bland smile will retire again into herself and forget her affection for the United States. This argument, taken at its worst, suggests the difficulty in the way of forming a stable combination among the Powers on the basis of material interests. It indicates that the only lasting union of Powers with respect to China must be formed upon a moral basis. A cut-throat union against China will in time bring about a cut-throat policy of the nations in the union toward one another. If the policy is tried, and, as a result of struggle among the nations, China regains her own, she will be entitled to smile at one more proof of the superiority of moral to material forces. Finally, an understanding of the Chinese philosophy of life is not only essential to an intelligent treatment of Chinese problems, but it is of immense value to other nations. Not China alone but the world is in transition and liquidation. Psychologists talk about 'projection'. Persons who are irritated in themselves are always irritated about others. The principle applies in social psychology. Nations are now 'projecting' their own troubles and uncertainty upon China. The result may easily be rash and inconsiderate action. An adoption of Chinese calm and patience, a willingness to take only the steps, like disarmament and abolition of special privileges, which are immediately necessary, and to wait till time has adjusted the present troubled condition, would have a wonderfully healing effect. For it is not true that Chinese difficulties have suddenly become a menace to the world's peace and prosperity. It is only true that western nations are in danger of condensing their own troubles and unloading them upon China. The philosophy of the East was never more needed by the West than in the present crisis. |
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| 288 | 1921 |
Fei, Juetian. Duwei di she hui yu zheng zhi zhe xue [ID D28517]. [A critique of John Dewey's social and political philosophy]. Fei Juetian wrote a scathing critique of Dewey's lectures on social and political philosophy. Disagreeing with Dewey's comment about the cause of international conflicts, Fei claimed that conflicts exist not between nations, but between classes. It was unrealistic for Dewey to hope that through the development of industry and education, China could endow individuals with rights while also providing the opportunities to exercise those rights. This could be realized only by carrying out a revolution as the Russians did. Fei further asserted that Dewey's experimental approach to politics based on collective inquiry and continuous reform simply did not make sense. "If I tell the world that we should experiment with socialism and see if it works, people would think that I am crazy and would oppose this experiment. If I proclaim that socialism holds the ultimate truth to solving problems in today's society, that there is no better theory than socialism, people will become interested in its practice and help transform the theory into a reality". Fei rejected Dewey's particularistic approach to solving social problems, claiming that social problems were all interrelated and could not be dissected into this or that particular problem. An educational problem may have been tied to a political or economic problem. Fei also disagreed with Dewey that social theories should be grounded in concrete facts, not on abstract speculations. Fei condemned Dewey for overly replying on contingent social knowledge at the expense of eternal truths, without which, he believed, human civilizations would not advance. He completely denounced Dewey's claim that science could be applied to solving social problems. Fei believed that social problems were not difficult to resolve if only the proletariat were made aware of their oppression by the capitalists and thus united to fight for their right. He concluded that Dewey's experimental approach would not work ; only a social revolution, a class war, could provide the antidote to all of China's ills. |
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| 289 | 1921 (Spring) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Essentials of democratic politics' : delivered at the Private Fujian College of Law and Administration. = Min ben zheng zhi zhi ji ben. In : Jiao yu bu gong bao (1921). |
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| 290 | 1921.01.12 |
Dewey, John. Is China a nation ? [ID D28482]. An answer could easily be given to the questions in Mr. Helburn's letter which would be literally correct, and yet almost wholly misleading. China certainly is not a nation as we know nations in Europe. It is sprawling, not compact. It is as diversified as Europe, if not more so, instead of being homogeneous like Switzerland or France. Every one has heard of students from the north and south who talk to one another in English so as to be understood. But there are populous parts of China where a native has to go only a few miles to fail to understand the language of his compatriots. As for political self-consciousness, let the following true story serve. Students went from Shanghai to a neighboring village at the beginning of the anti-Japanese agitation a year and a half ago. The villagers listened patiently to their impassioned pleas for an interest in the policies of Peking dominated by 'traitors', and for a patriotic boycott of Japan. Then they said in effect: 'This is very well for you. You are Chinese. But we are Jonesvillians. These things are not our business'. And this was not in the hinterland but close to the most developed coast city. Yet if any would argue alone or chiefly to the future from such facts, he would certainly go wrong. Not because they are not massively representative, but because things are in flux. It is not safe to prophesy where they are going. But they are going somewhere, so that a Chinese politician who goes steadily contrary to the interests of China as a nation is sure of overthrow sooner or later. Even a Chinese within China cannot safely base his actions upon the state of things which is correctly represented above. Yet it would be equally unsafe to argue to the existence a persistently influential minority from the fact of the thousands of telegrams sent to Paris in protest against signing a treaty that had within it the Shantung clause, or from the fact that a cabinet dominated by pro-Japanese politicians, and in control of finance and the army, simply did not dare enter into direct negotiations with Japan about Shantung. In a crisis there may be a minority so substantial as to be dominating. But only in a crisis. Is China a nation? No, not as we estimate nations. But is China becoming a nation, and how long will it take? These are the open questions. Any one who could answer them definitely could read the future of the Far East like a book. But no one can answer them definitely. In this suspense and uncertainty lies the momentous interest of the situation. When did nations begin to be, anyway? How long has France been a compact and homogeneous nation? Italy, Germany? What forces made them nations? And what is going to be the future of the national state outside of China? What is the future of internationalism? Our whole concept of a nation is of such recent origin that it is not surprising that it does not fit in any exact way into Chinese conditions. And possibly the days in which political nationality is most fully established are also the days of its beginning to decline. The last suggestion may be wild. But it suggests that the world as well as China is in flux, and that answers to the questions whether and when China is to be a nation, and what kind of a nation it is to be, cannot be found till we know also what is going to happen in Russia, and Europe generally. At present, to continue the negative side of the affair, there is little public spirit in China. Family and locality spirit give China its strength for its old traditional ends and its weakness for contemporary conditions and for international relations. Even among the politicians factional spirit is much stronger than public or national spirit—and this is a weakness alike for traditional and new objects. A big army eats up public revenues and makes China increasingly dependent upon foreign loans and subject to foreign spirit interference. It is of no use for national aggression and of next to none for national defense. It is of use for graft, for personal ambitions and factional strife. China has all the disadvantages of both extreme centralization and extreme states' rights, and few of the advantages of either. There is not only a division between north and south, but a cross division in both the north and south, and in addition a multitude of cross currents of provincial isolations and ambitions. And yet was the United States a nation in the critical years after 1785? Was there not a bitter civil war only sixty years ago, and did not Gladstone announce that Jefferson Davis had created a new nation? Are all questions of national unity and states' rights yet settled? Not many centuries ago European politicians took funds from foreign governments to strengthen the hands of their own factions, and upon occasion foreign interference was invited or welcomed for furtherance of party or religious strife. Hardly today are the respective claims of state and church fully adjusted, while up till recently a church located outside the nation claimed and secured powers of intervention. And this at least is a complication which China is spared. I have recently read the words of an intelligent English visitor in America to the effect that the diversity of unfused populations and traditions is such that the United States is one country only in the sense in which the continent of Europe is one. And at about the same time H.G. Wells, using a different criterion, that of freedom and ease of movement and transportation, was saying that the United States was such a complete empire within itself that we could not speak of it and of France as nations in the same sense of the word nation. Such miscellaneous citations warn us that we cannot use the conception of nation in any but a fluid sense, even in western affairs. They indicate the difficulty in making hard and fast statements about Chinese national unity. When we turn from political to economic affairs, our habitual western ideas are even less applicable. Their irrelevancy makes it impossible intelligently to describe Chinese conditions, or even grasp them intelligently. In the familiar sense of the word, there is no bourgeoisie in China. There used to be a gentry with considerable unwritten power, but for the time being at least it is practically non-existent. The merchant class is traditionally outside of political concerns, and has not as yet developed any political or social class consciousness, though some signs of its beginnings were evidenced in connection with the boycott of 1919. Even in the west one has considerable difficulty in placing the farmers in the bourgeoisie-proletariat terminology (one is tempted to say patter). And how is a class of peasant proprietors who form not merely the vast mass of a people but its economic and moral backbone, who are traditionally and in present esteem, the respectable part of the population, next to the scholars, to be classified under our western notions? Even in the west the point of these distinctions is the product of the industrial revolution. And in China the industrial revolution has still to occur. China is a much better place to study European history of a few centuries ago than to apply the concepts and classifications of present political and economic science. The visitor spends his time learning, if he learns anything about China, not to think of what he sees in terms of the ideas he uses as a matter of course at home. The result is naturally obscurity rather than light. But it may be questioned whether the most enlightening thing he can do for others who are interested in China is not to share with them his discovery that China can be known only in terms of itself, and older European history. Yet one must repeat that China is changing rapidly; and that it is as foolish to go on thinking of it in terms of old dynastic China—as Mr. Bland for example insists we must do—as it is to interpret it by pigeon-holing its facts in western conceptions. China is another world politically and economically speaking, a large and persistent world, and a world bound no one knows just where. It is the combination of these facts that give it its overpowering intellectual interest for an observer of the affairs of humanity. The question of China's nationhood, as the writer of the letter of inquiry goes on to observe, 'is not an idle one. China is the stock example of survival by submission. If she is a nation in the European or Balkan sense, it is obvious that Japan cannot sit upon her chest forever. If not, the nation that organizes her industries and education may be able to swallow her, for political and economic purposes, more completely than England swallowed India—swallowed, if not digested. Or the old inertia of size and patience may prevail, and the Japanese be swallowed and digested like their predecessors. ' These remarks are pertinent, and they enter into the constant query of the foreign observer in China. And yet he can hardly go further than noting the problem, noting the flux of events, and some of the factors that may turn its direction. It is not safe, for one thing, to argue that because China has absorbed all previous invaders she will end by incorporating into herself future intruders. Her previous conquerors were northern barbarians upon a lower plane of civilization. What would have happened if they had brought with them a superior technique of industry and administration no one knows. Marquis Okuma is reported to have accounted for China’s long story of independent existence on the ground that she had no railways. At first sight this may seem to resemble the child's statement that pins save persons' lives, because persons don’t swallow them. But it suggests the radically different character of ancient and modem invasions. The latter centre about exploitation of previously unused economic resources. A country that had possession of China's ports, railways, mines and communications would have China in subjection. The wiser the invading country, the less would she assume the burdens of civil administration beyond necessary policing. She would act as permanent exploiting capitalist using the natural resources and unskilled labor of the country to serve her own ends. In addition she would doubtless try to conscript native man-power for her armies. Generally speaking, the natives would act as coolies, the foreigners as upper-class personages. Under such conditions, success or non-success in cultural assimilation would amount to little. But as soon as such things are said, the mind at once recalls that improvement of internal communication and transportation has been a chief factor in developing countries into political units, while oppression from without has been the other great factor. The same forces are operating in China and will continue to operate. Nationalistic feeling as it now exists is largely the product of reaction against foreign encroachments. It is strongest on the sea board not merely because industrial development is most advanced there, but because the aggressions of foreigners have been most felt at that point. Effort to take advantage of absence of national unity to subject a country is likely to end in creating a national consciousness. Korea is a striking example. Politically corrupt and divided, with no national political consciousness, less than a generation of alien rule combined with industrial and educational changes designed wholly to subserve the interests of the foreign power, have almost converted Korea into a second Ireland. History seems to show that nations are hardened into being under influences intended to subvert nationality. China is not likely to be an exception. While it is not a nation 'in being', events are probably evoking a nation 'in becoming'. And the process is hastened by efforts to prevent it. At the same time no report is honest which does not state that almost any faction in any part of China, north or south, will surrender national rights to a foreign country in return for factional aid against its internal foes. One other factor in probable evolution should be mentioned. For a long time, the great Powers, with the exception of the United States, proceeded upon the assumption that China was bound to be disintegrated, and that the policy of each foreign nation was to get its fair share of the spoils. This statement may be too strong. But at least the working assumption was that whenever any disintegration occurred, surrender to one nation must be compensated for, at China’s expense, by concessions to others. The world war made conditions such that other nations could not compete with Japan in this game. It is fairly clear now that the disintegration of China would be almost exclusively to Japan's advantage. Hence a great access of benevolent interest on the part of other Powers in China's national integrity. China's historic foreign policy has been to play one Power off against another. Now she is aided by a tendency of all the Powers to give her at least passive assistance against Japanese encroachments. The formation of the consortium with its abolition of distinctive spheres of foreign influence, the question of the re-affirmation or abrogation of the British-Japanese Alliance, the Shantung affair, acquire their meaning in this context. The as yet unsolved question is what Japan can by promise or threat offer by way of compensation to other great Powers to induce them to give her a freer hand in China. An American educator long resident in central China remarked to me that China was trying to crowd into a half century literary, religious, economic, scientific and political revolutions which it had taken the western world centuries to accomplish. The remark indicates the difficulty in making predictions and in offering definite descriptions. In spite of the inertia and stability that still dominate the vast rural districts, in spite of non-fulfillment of specific past prophecies of changing China, China is in a state of flux. The accumulated effect of thousands of petty changes due to contact with western methods and ideas, has been to create a new mind in the educated class. This fact is at present more important than any single big external change or external failure to change that can be singled out. It will take a long time for this new mind to work itself out in definite achievement or even to trace definitely perceptible lines of progress. But these conditions which make intelligent description to difficult are those which lend China its absorbing interest. |
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| 291 | 1921.02.16 |
Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes 135 Peking Feb 16 [1921] Dear Barnes, When I wrote you about your letter concerning my lectures, I omitted my main point—appreciation of your appreciation. I was particularly touched that you found some esthetic pattern and rythym becuase that is my weak point and you are a good judge. Intermin came the other day for which more thanks; I havent had time to get far into it yet. You wr[o]te once about Chinese pictures, and I wrote back the risk was too great, and as only an expert can tell the date—and the expert collectors are largely at loggerheads with one another, each claiming that the other has got more or less fooled by imitations which have been palmed off on him. lately Ive been buying a few cheap ones, or rather Mrs Dewey has, which do not pretend to be very old but which have some artistic merit besides being typically Chinese—two quite stunning Ming decorations, like florid wall paper or cretonne patterns, flowers and pheasant for [a] few dollars. We have had the advantage of a the knowledge of a collector who has lived here many years a Dane, and who has himself a fine collection which he generous about showing, most collectors were not And he very generously gave the benefit of his not only his advice but his ability to buy cheap. Mostly flowers and birds, she says landscapes except the old and very expensive ones have no foreign market in case one needs to sell. We also have had an opportunity at some more expesnive ones. A frien in the Ministry of Education who is something of a technical expert told us he had been given pictures this year by old officials who hasd to sell to dispose of them for them. He showed us some nice Ming2 landscapes, which could be had for from a hundred to two hundred, which he is confident are originals; we didnt get any but sent him to Russell who bought one. He says he has sold S[u]ngs this winter for from a thousand to two thousand—foreigners say that cant be done and are suspciious because he sold them so cheap—so only Chinese bought them. I didnt see any of them, but he says when he gets more he will let us see them. Really good pictures are very hard to get at here. The price is Mex dollars which are now only fifty cents gold—which cuts the price in American money in two. I am just beginning to feel a little more confidence in my judgment. Everything is so different that the except for the really fine things the standards one brings wont work. Just both the Chinese and Japanese prize foreign things that are ugly to us. Their own artistic standards wont work and so they are lost, and it is more [o]r less so with foreign appreciation of Chinese prodctions. Sometimes the [f]oreigner is right, as in the case of Japanese color prints. We have been [a]musing ourselves lately by buying belt buckles, brass and white jade. They havent been worn since the Revolution, and in general the Chinese dont care for them any more so they are on the market, tho the brass ones are hard to find comparatively. [Charles August] Ficke who made a small fortune on Japanese prints when they were selling for coppers started in buying jade buckles recently, and took a big collection home. Witter Bynner who has just been here and who is [a] friend of Bynn Fickes has is taking home a still bigger collection together with a copla hundred of the cheaper Chinese paintings. Ours will be just big enough to cost more than we can afford and not big or choice enough to be really valuable. Howver hunting and bargaining is lots of fun; its the chief outdoor amusement going around to stores and markets, and porcelains are now rare and out of re[a]ch, even good imitations are high. Otherwise life is calm, nothing sp[e]cial going on except famine drives. Chinese are depressed politically and economically students quiet and discouraged, and generally there is a great lull. Civil war between the t[w]o chief military leaders of the north is prophesied for this spring, but prophecies are the long suit here. Aside from the fortunes of the Consortium now also a lull. The only other political talk is whether the British are back of the war talk between America and Japan; practically verybody, Chinese Americans and Japanese in Peking belives they are, but it is hard to get proof. Reutrs agency which is a British political agency6 under the name of a news bureau is certainly active in keeping the rumors going. Just why they should stir up this talk when they are hard to going to ren[e]w their alliance is hard to see, also when America relations with Germany are still undetermined. One theory is that they want us to buy their alliance with Japan but by remitting her war debt but that seems incredible. Anything ^how^ British foreign policy as seen from the [A]siatic end is anything but attractive Sincerely yours, Dewey |
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| 292 | 1921.03.01 |
Dewey, John. America and Chinese education [ID D28500]. A Chinese student who is now in this country and who was an active leader in the Students' Revolt in 1918 in Peking, recently remarked to me that the conduct of the Chinese official delegation in Washington had led him to reflect upon Chinese higher education. Or rather, he thought their course was a reflection of Chinese education in certain of its phases. He regarded the delegation as having failed essentially in their task. He recognized that conditions in China and also the exigencies of American politics—or what the American representatives took to be such—had a large share in the failure of China to accomplish her aims. But he said there was another failure for which the Chinese delegates were responsible: there had been at Washington no representative voicing of existent Chinese national sentiment. Certain practical failures might be conceded to be inevitable; but there was only one explanation of the failure to express the active contemporary attitude of the Chinese people, and that was found in unrepresentative qualities in the delegates. So far his view of the situation is of primary and practical interest to the Chinese. It concerns Americans only as they are sympathetic with China and desirous of seeing her just aspirations properly expressed. But the connection of the fact he cites— if it be a fact—with the state of the higher education of the Chinese touches us closely. All three of the delegates are American educated; two of them studied in missionary institutions conducted by Americans in China before they came to America to study. And these two—the diplomats of the delegation—are those whose methods have been most unsatisfactory to Chinese at home and in this country. The third member, the one who had not come under missionary auspices in his preparatory education in China, is the one who is regarded as most nearly representative of present day China. Now the educational conclusion which the student-leader had drawn was that American missionary education has failed to develop independent, energetic thought and character among even its most distinguished graduates. It has produced rather a subservient intellectual type, one which he characterized as slavish. The literal correctness of his premises and his conclusions need not be categorically affirmed. It is easy to deny the premises, or to hold that they are too slight to bear the burden of the conclusion. There are not many non-Chinese who know enough to judge the situation and I do not count myself among the few who can judge. But one thing can be positively affirmed. The view in question expresses a belief that is widely and increasingly held in China. It contains elements that are of prime importance. It suggests the attitude of the Young China of today as distinct from that Young China which figures in the writings of men like Mr. J.O.P. Bland, who if not important in himself is important as the spokesman of a definite class of foreigners in China who have been the most influential persons in purveying information and forming foreign opinion about China. The Young China of which the Bland School speaks consists of a group of foreign educated men, of whom the two diplomats of the official delegation at the Washington Conference are good representatives. Young China viewed from this angle means men who have gone into politics, domestic and diplomatic, with Western, usually American, preconceptions, and who have tried to force Western, usually American, political conceptions and methods upon China. They have failed, failed tragically, it is said, because of the intrinsic unfitness of their conceptions and methods to immemorial traditions and customs and engrained racial traits of the Chinese people—immemorial, atavistic and racial are the literary slogans of this school of foreign commentators on China. The failure goes back to the well-meaning efforts of missionaries who have bungled because of their ignorant attempts to foist alien ways of thought and of political action upon China. With this condemnation of Young China and its foreign sponsors goes a condemnation of all attempts of China to become republican in government and to transform its culture. I do not know to what extent this picture ever truly represented a Young China. But events move rapidly in China, and certainly the Young China of today has nothing in common with this picture. Present Young China is bent upon a genuine transformation of Chinese culture—sometimes a revolutionary breaking with the past, but in any case a transformation. It is democratic, but its democracy is social and industrial; there is little faith in political action, and not much interest in governmental changes except as they may naturally reflect changes in habits of mind. There is in it little sympathy with missionary efforts, not because they represent the West, but because it is believed that they do not represent what China most needs from the West, namely, scientific method and aggressive freedom and independence of inquiry, criticism and action. Hence the remark quoted earlier about the cause of the failure of Chinese diplomacy in Washington and its root in the weakness of the education given by Americans in China. In wanting a transformation of their country, the Young Chinese have no thought of a Westernized China, a China which repeats and imitates Europe or America. They want Western knowledge and Western methods which they themselves can independently employ to develop and sustain a China which is itself and not a copy of something else. They are touchingly grateful to any foreigner who gives anything which can be construed as aid in this process. They are profoundly resentful of all efforts which condescendingly hold up Western institutions, political, religious, educational, as models to be humbly accepted and submissively repeated. They are acutely aware that the spirit of imitation at the expense of initiative and independence of thought has been the chief cause of China's retrogression, and they do not propose to shift the model; they intend to transform the spirit. There is nothing which one hears so often from the lips of the representatives of Young China of today as that education is the sole means of reconstructing China. There is no other topic which is so much discussed. There is an enormous interest in making over the traditional family system, in overthrowing militarism, in extension of local self-government, but always the discussion comes back to education, to teachers and students, as the central agency in promoting other reforms. This fact makes the question of the quality and direction of American influence in Chinese education a matter of more than academic concern. The difficulties in the way of a practical extension and regeneration of Chinese education are all but insuperable. Discussion often ends in an impasse: no political reform of China without education; but no development of schools as long as military men and corrupt officials divert funds and oppose schools from motives of self- interest. Here are all the materials of a tragedy of the first magnitude. Apart from this question of education what is done and what is not done in Washington is of secondary moment. It makes vital the matter of American influence. There is a great and growing philanthropic interest in America for China. It shows itself in support of educational schemes and in generous relief funds. It is not motivated to any considerable extent by economic considerations, by expectation of business profits, nor by political expediencies. It is motivated largely by religious considerations. It is well intentioned, but the intentions are not always enlightened in conception nor in execution. It was not a disgruntled foreigner nor a jealous, anti-foreign Chinese who told me that American missionary colleges in China had largely simply transplanted the American college curriculum and American conceptions of 'discipline'; and that instead of turning out graduates who could become leaders in developing the industries of China on an independent Chinese basis, it had turned out men who when they went into industry took subordinate positions in foreign managed industries, because of their training especially in the English language. There is no difference in effect between this statement and that quoted at the beginning of this article about fostering the dependent, the slavish, mind and character. And a missionary actively engaged in educational work was its author. American influence in Chinese education should have something better to do than to train commercial, political and religious compradores. Something can be done by encouraging such American managed institutions as are trying to develop a better type of school; by freeing those men who are adapting their curriculum and methods to Chinese conditions against the petty opposition and nagging they now meet from reactionaries. There are a few institutions in China where the Chinese members of the faculty are put on the same plane of salary, of social dignity and administrative importance as the foreigners. Let the philanthropically inclined whose philanthropy is something more than a cloak for fanatic meddlesomeness or selfishness select these institutions for aid. Not many know that at present some American millions of a special fund are being spent in China for converting souls; that they go only to those who have the most dogmatic and reactionary theological views, and that the pressure of these funds is used to repress the liberal element and to put liberal institutions in bad repute as well as in financial straits. That is a shameful business from any point of view, and it ought to be met by a generous and wise business. China does not need copies of American colleges, but it does still need colleges supported by foreign funds and in part manned by well trained foreigners who are capable of understanding Chinese needs, alert, agile, sympathetic in their efforts to meet them. But of course the chief work must be done in distinctively Chinese institutions, staffed mainly and managed wholly by Chinese. Instead of carping at missionaries we should remember that they have been almost the only ones in the past with a motive force strong enough to lead them to take an active interest in Chinese education. It would seem as if the time had come when there are some persons of means whose social and human interest, independent of religious considerations, might show itself in upbuilding native schools. Above all else, these schools need modern laboratories and libraries and well trained men of the first rank who can train Chinese on the spot to the use of the best methods in the social arts and the natural and mathematical sciences. Such men could train not only students but younger teachers who are not as yet thoroughly equipped and who too often are suffering from lack of intellectual contact. First class men who go to China in this spirit with nothing to 'put over' except their knowledge, their methods and their skill will meet with a wonderful response. Somewhere in America there must be men of means who can give their money and men of science who can contribute their services in this spirit. Their work will not be done for the sake of the prestige or commerce of the United States but it will be done for the sake of that troubled world of which China and the United States are integral parts. Build up a China of men and women of trained independent thought and character, and there will be no Far Eastern 'problems' such as now vex us; there will be no need of conferences to discuss—and disguise—the 'Problems of the Pacific'. American influence in Chinese education will then be wholly a real good instead of a mixed and dubious blessing. |
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| 293 | 1921.03.07 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'On the Chinese fine arts' at the Fine Arts Club of Beijing Teachers College. = Lun Zhongguo di mei shu. Hu Shi interpreter ; Cao Peiyan, Wang Huibo recorder. In : Chen bao fu kan ; March 7 (1921). |
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| 294 | 1921.03.13 |
Letter from John Dewey to Albert C. Barnes 135 Morrison St Peking | March 13 '21 Dear Mr Barnes, … An American business engineer who knows China of old and who has just come over, remarked that the Consortium was more anxious to protect old investments in China than to make new ones at present. I think he struck the nail on the head so far as the financial side is now concerned. Mr [Frederick Waeir] Stevens their present representative is an extraordinarily honest man, almost innocently so. You may imagine that he is so clever that he has duped me, but I know the Chinese secy very well, in fact I recommended him, and he has been with Mr S every day now for many weeks. He is not the kind of man who would be sent if there were an intrigue to be put over, but is the kind who would be sent when a waiting policy was the key-note. Meantime the Chinese govt is on the verge of bankruptcy. The business man to whom I just referred said the same was true when he was here four years, it didnt seem as if it could least another month, and one gets very suspicious of the "verge" after awhile. But no they have pledged the last thing available and pawned things ahead. For some time they have have been borrowing money to pay interest due, and at enormous rates thirty per cent being common. It is possible that before you get this letter cables may have reported a bust-up. What will happen no one can tell. There may be a kind of international receivership; there may be a monarchical restoration; there is no doubt there is wide-spread reaction agt the "Republic"; there may be a civil war between the two military leaders of the faction now in control—Chang Tsolin of Manchuria and and Tsao Kun of this province, fairly likely anyway and Chang is a monarchist—there may be secession of all central and south China, and if a monarchy in the north a virtual tho not an avowed Japanese protectorate, or any combination of some or all of these things. Yet the expected is what almost never happens in China. Id like to saty over another year to see what happens, but nothing ever comes to a head and another year and another, there would still be the waiting to see something definitive happen. The movement for provincial autonomy is the most sure thing. Five southern provinces are now practically independent of any govt outside their own borders, and the movement is spreading north. This is the most healthful sign on the horizin even tho it means a transitional breakup of China, for with locally centred govt it may [b]e possible to secure responsibility and now there is none. The ablest of the young Chinese g[ave] us a half hour conversation the other evening on Chinese history as bearing on present situation. He finds the key in the constant conflict of Chinese civilization limited to a few Central [P]rovinces with outside barbarian tribes. In this struggle, the north has been practically barbarized by the Mongols, Tartars etc, altho socially Chinafied, and to him north China is the weight that holds China back. He makes an analogy with the history of Medieval Europe, except the northern barabarians here are not as promising material. as the northern barbarians of Europe. The extreme south Canton etc w[a]s of course also barbarians but of a different type, less stolid, more adventurous and hence progressive. The Yangste regions are the backbone of China proper. In a few weeks we are going south, to the province of Fukien, Foochow and Amoy. It is likely the schools here may close for lack of funds, and in that case I hope to go to Canton also and to spend more time in the south. Teachers have been paid only up to Nov and at that only under pressure from repeated threats to strike, and the latest rumor is that to save face the govt will move first and close the schools, instead of waiting for the teachers to close them by a strike. One of the beauties of Chinese govt is that each dept has its "own" funds, so that the dept of communications is rolling in wealth, comparatively, while the rest of the govt is bankrupt. Its like each general having his own army. The present govt is a coalition of part of the generals with the financial interest of the dept of communication politicians—or financiers… Sincerely yours, Dewey— [pencil postscript] Have got sailing from Yokahama Aug 19 |
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| 295 | 1921.03.16 |
Dewey, John. The Far Eastern deadlock [ID D28484]. The key to peace in the Far East exists at the present time in America. That much is fairly certain. But it is doubtful whether anyone knows just where the key is to be found and whether anyone knows well enough what it looks like to recognize it if he stumbles upon it. The lock, however, is clear. It is the relations of Japan and America. For at present the relations of the United States to China and Siberia, so far as larger matters are concerned, are not direct but through Japan. There are two keys which are being tried which certainly will not fit; the third key we may call a statesmanlike policy, while admitting this to be the x whose value is to be found. The two courses most in evidence and most talked about, which are bound to result in making affairs worse, are buying Japan off and nagging her. The policy of keeping peace between Japan and America by bribing Japan or buying her off has had of late a number of eminent representatives—though naturally they have not called their plea by these bald words in public—possibly not within the recesses of their own minds have they named it so frankly. The steps of the argument are these. Japan has a small territory and a large and rapidly increasing population; seven hundred thousand per annum has been the favorite propagandist figure. She also has a shortage of raw materials and of food supplies. An outlet of population is imperatively demanded. The 'white' countries, having land to spare, refuse to admit the Japanese as immigrants. The alternative, necessary to the peace of the world, is expansion upon the continent of Asia and such command of the raw, natural resources of Asia as will enable Japan to develop stable industrialism at home, and increased industry that will take up the slack caused by increase of population. Japan, moreover, is an enterprising, efficient, educated modem nation, with capacity for organization, with respect for law and for government, with a reasonably honest civil service. She is, therefore, admirably suited to take up the Yellow Man's Burden in Siberia and China, countries where government is flouted and corrupt, and which are in no sense as yet fitted to become equal partners in the society of nations in either business or politics. Moreover, as respects China, there is unity of culture, some say of race; the Japanese understand the Orientals of Asia and what is good for them as no white race does—and so on to the end of the chapter. The moral is clear. The world in general and America in particular should look with a benevolent neutrality upon the efforts of Japan to establish herself on the continent of Asia, whether in Siberia, Manchuria or Shantung. So speeches and articles always end with a vague plea for that desirable something called a sympathetic understanding of Japan and her serious problems, and with an assurance that, having been in Japan, the speaker or writer knows from personal intercourse with the real leaders of Japan that she desires above all things in the world the friendliest relations with the United States, and only waits the word from America to go ahead—upon just what course is not stated. There is usually also a vague intimation that Japan, being 'a proud and sensitive nation', will arm and bring on war with the United States if she is pressed too hard and made desperate by lack of outlet and lack of necessary economic resources. Through the whole argument runs a subtle intimation that we can avoid all trouble with Japan by permitting or encouraging her to divert her energies into Asia. Sometimes there is an incidental suggestion that, as Japan will need foreign capital in her Asiatic expansion, the United States can with no trouble to herself come in also for part of the material rewards of such a course. This is the policy which I call buying Japan off. Its chief significance is not due to the fact that it is advanced by men of some eminence in America—and also by certain Englishmen. It is significant because it reflects the propaganda so accurately that in reading it one gets to know the mind of official and commercial Japan. The visitor may think he has evolved this policy for himself. But anyone long resident in the Far East can almost guess the names of the persons that have been talked with, and can retrace every step of the confidential disclosures and the hesitant suggestions by which the eminent and much entertained foreign guest has been led to make his 'discovery' of the way to enduring good relations between Japan and America. The policy is adapted to keeping relations between Japan and America amicable for a time. It gives Japan what she wants, in comparison with which the Californian issue is a rattle for a baby. It relieves the United States of diplomatic anxieties for a time, and enables the stream of after-dinner speeches to continue in an increasing flood of gush. But from the standpoint of a settlement of the serious problems of the Far East it is a fraud. It represents an aggravation of the problems, the sure road to an ultimate unsettlement which may conceivably involve the whole world. Such matters as the claims of an unrestricted growth of population, due to a low standard of living and artificially stimulated by the government, to rule the fate of a continent may be passed over. So may the fact that the first and only official census taken by Japan shows the gain for the last year to be four instead of the seven hundred thousand always advertised. We also glide over the fact that Shantung is already over-populated, and that Japanese make poor colonists for settling in undeveloped countries and bearing the hardships of Siberia or even Manchuria. We may even slur over the fact that there is already no obstacle to Japanese immigrants going into the unoccupied parts of Asia, as European immigrants go to Canada or the United States—namely as individuals and not as an advance guard of a foreign empire, emissaries of national aggression. But we cannot pass over the accompaniments and consequences of this latter fact. The persons who repeat the plea of Japan for a free hand on the Asiatic continent, as a means of maintaining good relations and promoting order, efficiency and progress, overlook the fundamental fact of the situation. Japanese methods on the continent have been such as to arouse the profound distrust and hostility of every people with whom the Japanese have come into contact. This fact cannot be got out of the way by references to the backwardness and inefficiency of the native inhabitants. Admitting the most exaggerated statements made by apologists for Japan's course in regard to the administrative and economic superiority of the Japanese over the Chinese and Siberian Russians, it remains a fact that the operations of the Japanese upon the continent are of the exact nature which all over the world have sowed the seeds of ultimate war. Americans may sometimes wonder in a perplexed way about the contrary reports and views of travellers in the Far East and conclude that the latter become pro- or anti-Japanese for temperamental or accidental reasons. Here is the explanation. Those who have not gone further than Japan realize Japan as a fact; the continent is still a place on the map, an impersonal factor in an intellectual calculation. Those who with eyes and ears half-open have stayed upon the continent realize the condition which has been created by Japanese methods. Apologists may more or less successfully explain away details one by one, accompanied by vague admissions of wrong deeds in the past committed by wicked militarists. But the vast continental fact remains. One may get himself to a point where his subconscious premise is that China and Russia ought to submit willingly to Japan on account of the latter's superiority. This is going far. But even if they ought, they won't. Because they won't, the peace of the Far East is subject to an explosion which may involve the world. The other dominant fact in the situation is that the United States has no need of buying Japan off. British statesmen seem to feel differently about the need for the British Empire to become a tacit accomplice of Japan. It is arguable that they are guessing wrong. But, in any case, the United States, though she has the Philippines, has no India and no Hong-Kong. War deliberately entered into by Japan against the United States is unthinkable, as unthinkable as between the United States and Colombia. This extreme statement is made advisedly. Individuals in Japan commit hari-kari, but not the nation, and every intelligent person in Japan knows that for Japan an aggressive war with America would be national suicide. They did not know it before the last war; but then the demonstration was more than Euclidean in its rigor. When one thinks of how the United States was taxed in the last war, in spite of its railways, its financial resources and its raw materials, the idea of Japan, with its few narrow gauge railways, few forests, few mines, relatively few factories and shortage of food supply, waging a successful war with any first class industrial Power is simply silly. At present, having spent her war gains in enterprises in China which are not yet remunerative, and in Siberia—where they will never be remunerative until Kolchak comes to life and successfully resurrects the Omsk government—and having increased her already burdensome taxation to the stretching point, Japan is on her back financially. If she gets control of the manpower and natural resources of the continent, the case will be different. But, short of that time, which, of course, is artificially hastened by encouraging Japan to exploit Asia for her own benefit, any war between Japan and America will be the result of a series of accidents due to drifting and not to the deliberate choice of the rulers of Japan. There is at least one exception to every 'never'. The exception in this case is that militarists threatened with downfall at home might try to restore their prestige and power by the last desperate gamble of war. The fact that in order to save ourselves we do not need to buy Japan off, does not imply that we should treat her truculently or irritatingly. There is some danger of our adopting this policy, which will open no locks. I do not mean that we should ever adopt nagging deliberately as a policy; but failure to work out a clear constructive course may practically amount to it. Drifting and diplomatic opportunism making a separate issue out of every matter which comes up; never facing fundamental issues so as to arrive at an understanding regarding them, comes in the end to an irritating course of mutual pin-prickings and blockings which is the most dangerous of all courses. This seems to be the state of affairs into which we are getting, leaving principles in a twilight of purposeful ambiguity such as now exists about the Open Door and the Lansing-Ishii agreement. Dealing with each case of friction which arises, and which in reality comes under these principles, is the sure way to reduce our international relations to a kind of continuous subdued duel, with all the rancor and misunderstandings thereby generated. Our true policy I have called x. It is not easily discoverable even as regards a statement in words, to say nothing of practical execution. But it does not lie in smooth and flattering words, which gloss over realities, any more than it does in spite, suspicion and nagging. Now is the time of all times to search for and enter upon a definite policy. Japan is practically isolated among the nations, and, what is more, she is beginning to realize it. She is also experiencing the sobering reaction that comes after a prolonged intoxication. She will be lucky, according to all accounts, if she gets off with her present depression, and does not come a greater smash. There is probably more talk about liberalism than there is effective reality; but there is a promising beginning of sentiment if not of active policy, especially in the younger generation. The talk is a sign of a new sensitiveness to the world’s opinion. Above all, Japan realizes her actual dependence upon the United States, a dependence rarely recognized in the United States because it is so out of all proportion to our dependence upon Japan. The dependence is not exhausted in the statistics of international markets and the fact that we are the customer who keeps her industries going. Japan realizes the extent to which her career in China is connected with the ideas and policies of America. She really needs the moral support of the United States to 'go ahead' in any proper sense of that word. Let me cite as evidence a fact which may not seem important but which, I am convinced, is of great import. Of late, Japanese liberals and Japanese Christians have made repeated, almost continuous, attempts to approach American missionaries and educators, and native Christians in China. They have insisted upon the reformed intentions of the present Japanese Ministry and have almost begged this element in China to take the lead in acting as mediators, appealing to every sentimental principle of good-will and Christian love. Now it is safe to say—and one does not rely wholly upon internal evidence—that this move is not directed primarily at China. China is still despised as weak, negligible. It is directed toward America. Japanese accusations against missionaries of misleading the Chinese and Koreans and stirring up trouble are mostly trumped up. But Japanese fear of the effects in the United States of the reports sent there by missionaries and Y.M.C.A. workers concerning the state of things in China and Korea, Siberia and Manchuria, is perfectly genuine. They estimate that the change of opinion about Japan which they know has taken place in America, the growing dislike of Japan as militaristic and ruthlessly imperialistic is largely due to this influence. They want, in effect, this body to act as mediators between Japan and the public opinion of the United States, having become seriously troubled by the growing power of the latter in the world in general and in China in particular. In the search for an x of American policy which will be the key to the lock, there are certain known quantities. One is that every appeal to American sympathy on the ground of the growing liberalism of Japan should meet with neither credulity nor cynicism, but with a request to know what this liberalism is doing, especially what it is doing about China and Siberia. And we should not be content with generality; we should insist on details. Prominent among the details should be facts regarding what the great industrial and financial interests are actually doing in relation to the government at home and developments in China. What are the Okuras, the Mitsubishis, the Mitsuis, the Yokohama Specie Bank doing? It is all very well to talk about the power of militarism in Japan and the desire of the liberals to curb it; but there is no country in the world where financial interests are more concentrated, more powerful or in closer and more direct connection with the government. Why are these interests not using their power to curb and direct the policy of the government? Is it because, while deploring this policy for foreign consumption, they have striven to profit by it in China and Siberia? One thing more. There are signs that the present Chinese government now recognizes that the Twenty-one Demands and the treaties which grew out of them are more important than the Shantung decision, not because the latter is not important but because it is an effect of the former affair. This government is likely soon to approach the Japanese government with a request for cancellation of these treaties. The attitude of the Japanese government and people toward this request will be an acid test of their professions regarding a change of policy and heart. The public opinion of the United States ought to be thrown openly, unanimously and intelligently in support of the request. There is no possible settlement of the problem of the peace of the Far East till the slate is wiped clean of these treaties. Till they are out of the way, all professions of reform and better relations will only create new suspicions in China, and every act will be seen to be merely a manoeuvring for an improved strategic position. The first move in breaking the existing deadlock is to obliterate the treaties connected with the Twenty-one Demands. Any sincere friend of Japanese liberalism will try to make it clear to his Japanese friends that this is the first step in effective Japanese-American cooperation, because it is the precondition of any act on the part of the United States which would not make us the guilty accomplice of Japan and a partner with Japan in the fear and dislike with which she is now regarded. The cancellation of everything connected with the Twenty-one Demands is the only way to put the relations of Japan and China upon a friendly footing. Securing this friendly relation between these two Oriental countries should be the animating purpose of American opinion and action. Then the lock will begin to give. |
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| 296 | 1921.04.13 |
Dewey, John. The consortium in China [ID D28483]. If anyone wants a picture in miniature of the difficulties in the way of a concert of nations or of any kind of cooperative inter-national relations, the Consortium to finance China will satisfy him up to the hilt. No one, prior to experience of it, could have believed that so many contradictory accounts of simple matters could get into circulation or so many cross-currents get into motion. No matter from what angle it is approached—and as time goes by it seems to be nothing but angles—there are opposite statements and opposite fears. Every day, for example, the American group in general and Mr. Lamont and Mr. Stevens in particular, are attacked by hostile interests in China, Chinese and foreign, for maintaining secrecy about its terms. Yet seemingly authentic reports state that the American group, backed by the American State Department, has pressed, from the day when the agreement was signed, for full publicity. This demand was checked first by the Japanese and then by the British. It was lately announced that the American demand had been sufficiently successful so that all the documents had been communicated to the Chinese government and made public. So they subsequently were. 'As might have been expected the terms of the agreement are so technical that its publication, while it blocks one source of hostile criticism, throws no great light upon the aims and methods of the Consortium'. For of course the terms form an agreement of the banking groups among themselves, not an agreement to which the Chinese government is a party. Only when—if ever—some actual agreement is made with the latter will there be adequate data for judgment. Meantime a statement of the cross-currents will be amusing if not enlightening. Reputable Japanese statesmen, as soon as the agreement was signed, stated that the Manchurian claims of Japan had been recognized by the other nations in the Consortium and her interests there safeguarded. Kokusai, the official Japanese news agency, gave to the press in both Japan and China a speech purporting to be by the leading Japanese banking partner, the President of the Yokohama Specie Bank, which gave a definite and almost circumstantial statement of the reservations secured by Japan. Weeks afterwards, the President of the bank completely repudiated the alleged speech. Kokusai never circulated the repudiation, and no explanation of the discrepancy has ever been made public. Meantime Mr. Lamont for the American group and Sir Charles Addis for the British have explicitly denied the report of assent to Japanese reservations, and have praised the wisdom of Japanese statesmen in yielding. The latter are chary in accepting the praise. Hara, the prime minister, and Uchida, the foreign minister, have both lately repeated, although in more guarded terms, the story of due satisfaction afforded Japan in respect to Manchuria. Meantime the Consortium is attacked in Japan as a piece of American capitalistic imperialism to circumvent legitimate Japanese aspirations in Asia, and in China it is denounced as a surrender by the United States to Japan. Why, it is asked, did the United States consent to Japan’s becoming a partner at all? Why did she not insist upon excluding Japan wholly? If she did admit Japan, why does she allow Japan to retain her railway rights in Manchuria while also permitting, by means of Consortium loans, the introduction of Japanese money into the interior, where so far Japanese money has not gone?—the reference being to the proposed railway into Szechuan. Thus the same scheme is both a checkmate to further Japanese conquest of China by means of railways and banks, and a means for extending Japanese influence in China with the complicity of the three other signatory Powers. The humor of the popular Chinese attitude of opposition is increased by the fact that the present Japanese hold upon China was secured by Chinese governmental acceptance of loans made by Japan individually, a kind of loan that would become impossible under the Consortium. The weighing of alternatives is not as yet a Chinese political habit. While some American liberals are denouncing the Consortium as financial imperialism, committing the United States to embark upon a career of foreign financial exploitation, it is attacked in China by business interests, including some American ones, as another piece of Wilsonian idealism, a Utopian scheme to save China from being any longer the happy hunting ground of international concessionaires. For in pledging the banks which enter the Consortium to make loans only through the international combination, and virtually pledging the American government to give its moral and political support only to this group, it restricts what is euphemistically termed (in China as elsewhere) free competition and private enterprise. In other words, there are some American business interests which have become aware of the willingness of Chinese officials to give away their nation’s assets in return for loans with which to line their own pockets, and who, accordingly, find any scheme idealistic and impracticable which would limit their predatory activities. It is fair to add that their opposition seems to be somewhat 'accelerated' by support from Chinese officialdom. Another humor of the situation is that while Chinese officialdom is practically a unit in opposing the Consortium, the press is reporting meetings and processions of Chinese in America opposing the Consortium, on the ground that it is going to make loans to the Chinese government which will be used for political purposes. And this attitude of the Chinese in America, while accentuated by the fact that they are mostly Cantonese and southern sympathizers, reflects the popular attitude in China. The opposition of the officials to the Consortium is easily understood. It has been stated over and over again—and by Mr. Stevens, the representative in China of the American banking group,—that no loans would be made for administrative or political purposes but only for constructive purposes, such as building railways. It has also been made clear that all such loans will be carefully supervised and audited to see that they actually go for the purposes designated. The opposition of the Chinese people is accounted for by the fact that their fear and suspicion of their own government officials is second only to their fear and suspicion of Japan. In passing, it may be remarked that it would have had a happy psychological effect if the Consortium had been called by some other name. For the term Consortium is associated in the Chinese mind with the Consortium which made the so-called Reorganization Loan which was the means of consolidating the power of Yuan Shih Kai. That the United States government refused to permit American bankers to become partners in that Consortium, while it has taken the lead in forming a new one, is of little moment in comparison with the dreaded name, Consortium. Even the more thoughtful Chinese believe in the good intentions of America rather than in her wisdom and skill and freely anticipate that, when it comes to doing business, the other national partners, with their greater experience and their greater political stakes, will put it all over American plans. Illumination upon the political-financial situation came when the subject of exclusion of Chinese bankers from membership in the Consortium was under discussion. In conversation with representative Chinese I expressed, in common with other Americans, regret for the failure to include native banks. The reply was most enlightening. Liberal Chinese said that such inclusion would be the finishing touch to confirm their fears. For the banking group which would be most naturally included were the 'political bankers'. Chinese officials long ago learned the way of making one hand wash the other. Money extracted from the government was used to found banks, which then made loans to the government at exorbitant rates, and so on around the circle. In addition, these banks naturally exercised great influence in support of the government. They brought about an alliance between powerful financial influences and the corrupt and semi-militaristic officialdom which is the political curse of China. The rates at which foreign loans are made to the Chinese government often seem unjust. Eight and ten per cent interest with ten to fifteen per cent discount on the face of the loan, hardly seems equitable. But these rates pale by the side of those of domestic loans, where twenty to thirty per cent interest is not uncommon. If, the Chinese liberals added, there was any likelihood that the bankers, known indifferently as the Shanghai or industrial bankers, were to be included, the case would be quite different, but of that there seemed no likelihood in the present condition of affairs. Space remains for one more touch to the picture. While the opponents of the Consortium have represented it as most anxious to make loans, almost to force loans upon China, its American representatives, ever since Mr. Lamont visited the country, have disclaimed any great desire to do so. They have said that they would await specific proposals from the Chinese government; they have asserted that if China could finance herself, and never call upon the Consortium for funds, the American bankers would be more than satisfied. These statements have been received with incredulity. They have been the occasion of much sarcasm about the unusual and suddenly displayed philanthropy of bankers. Some newspapers supposed to represent American interests in China have been foremost in these ironical expressions. The statements of American representatives of the Consortium that there was plenty of demand for surplus capital at home, that investments in China at the present time were not particularly at-tractive, that the banks had no funds of their own to put permanently into China but would have to pass on their investments to the general public, that the American bankers were mainly animated by a desire to get China on its feet industrially as a customer and to put an end to the partition of China through special concessions to special nations, have been received in apathetic silence when they were not met with open derision. So far, I have confined myself to reporting the way in which the Consortium has been received. I now venture to express my own opinion. I am credulous enough to take these statements at their face value. In fact I believe they give the key to the situation. The Consortium was not initiated by American bankers. It is matter of record that the first move came while the war was still on, from the State Department under Mr. Lansing—who is presumably familiar with the Chinese policy of John Hay and interested in its becoming an actuality, instead of, as is largely the case, a scrap of paper. In short, as far as the American government’s side is concerned, the move is political rather than financial. And the politics involved are not imperialistic but are in behalf of the principle which comes so readily to the lips of all diplomats of all nations: the maintenance of the Open Door and the preservation of the territorial integrity of China. It is evident that the chief opposition to this policy lies in separate nationalistic loans made for 'administrative purposes' and leading to concessions which partition China. The fact that Japan, Great Britain, France and England were allies in the war, that Germany and Russia were automatically out of it, gave an opportunity for making the professed policy a reality instead of a pious phrase. Mr. Lansing grasped the opportunity. In short, the Consortium policy exists between two stools, the political and the financial. It is subject to all the dangers which attend such a position. This fact is well known to Japanese, French and British political and financial interests, even if it is ignored by Chinese sentiment and by American public opinion. The United States is thus playing a lone hand in what is ironically called a Consortium. Its policy meets with active, though generally secret, opposition from the officials of the nation it is intended to benefit and with apathy and suspicion from the people. It is not likely that either France or Great Britain will be able to supply their portion of any loans made by the Consortium. Their share will have to come from the American investor. The American investor has no concealed political ambitions to compensate for unwillingness to make investments that are more or less risky from a strictly economic standpoint. The term of the Consortium is five years. If its operations can be stalled for five years, France and Great Britain will perhaps be in a condition to resume business on their own account. Meantime our late 'associate', Great Britain, is anything but anxious to see American prestige and influence increased in the Far East. If her dislike is not so openly proclaimed to the four heavens as that of Japan, it does not follow that her opposition is less efficacious. Incidentally, there are some signs that a drive will be made upon the new administration, partly from sources professing to speak for the interests of China but really speaking for its officials, and partly from some other nations in the Consortium, to make it modify its terms as part of what will be called a 'permanent settlement' of the problem of the Pacific. The renewal of the British- Japanese Alliance promises to be an accomplished fact. Japan has the right to expect something from her ally. If a political, or reorganization, or administrative loan could be arranged, active Chinese opposition would melt away; the people would still be opposed and would cherish resentment against America, but they would doubtless acquiesce as they acquiesce in so many things which they hate. Such a loan could be presented to the American public as a wise and kind concession to Chinese needs, and an improvement upon the hard terms of the present Consortium policy. Incidentally, problems of Manchuria, Shantung and Siberia would come up for discussion, and a plea be made for a magnanimous recognition, in the interests of peace, of Japan's need for economic expansion. It will be gathered from what has been said that the prospects for the Consortium are not bright. Its apparent failure, however, may mark a real success, provided the present policy remains unmodified. If a blockade or embargo can be established for even five years upon predatory foreign loans to China, the Consortium meantime doing nothing, a precedent may be established which will make such loans difficult, if not impossible, in the future. The effect may be to throw China back upon her own resources. The best thing that could happen to China would be for her to be put on a starvation diet for a while and to have to face her own problems with her own capacities. A few weeks ago, a native banking group not composed of political banks made a loan for the purchase of railway rolling stock. It was accompanied by conditions of supervision of expenditures more drastic than a foreign group could exact. It was also accompanied by an open threat of political action against the government if the funds loaned were not used honestly. It is perhaps too much to say that the loan could never have taken this form if the Consortium were not the only alternative in sight. But the existence of the Consortium certainly facilitated the creation of an honest domestic loan. It is an indication of the way the Consortium may succeed even if it fails,—fails, that is, to make a loan. |
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| 297 | 1921.04.30-05.02 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Educators as leaders in society' : delivered at the First Teachers College of Fujian. = Jiao yu zhe wei she hui ling shou. In : Chen bao fu kan ; April 30-May 2 (1921). |
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| 298 | 1921.04.25-26 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The aims of a university'. = Da xue di zhi chu. In : Chen bao fu kan ; April 25-26 (1921). |
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| 299 | 1921.04.28-05.09 ? | John Dewey stays in Guangzhou : addresses students in High Normal School and Guangzhou Christian College. |
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| 300 | 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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| 301 | 1921.05 | John Dewey visits the provinces Fujian and Guangdong. |
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| 302 | 1921.05.03-06 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Self-activity and self-government' at the Fujian First High School. = Ze dong yu zi zhi. In : Chen bao fu kan ; May 3-6 (1921). |
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| 303 | 1921.05.07 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The organization of educational associations in America and their influence on society' : delivered at the Educational Association of Fujian Province. = Meiguo jiao yu hui zhi zu zhi ji qi ying xiang yu she hui. In : Chen bao fu kan ; May 7 (1921). |
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| 304 | 1921.05.08-09 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The relationship between education and the state' at the Fujian YMCA, Fuzhou. = Jiao yu yu guo jia zhi guan xi. In : Chen bao fu kan ; May 8-9 (1921). |
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| 305 | 1921.05.11-12 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Educational principles for teaching the youth' : delivered at the Beijing Women's Teachers College. = Jiao shou qing nian di jiao yu yuan li. Fu Yin recorder. In : Chen bao fu kan ; May 10-11 (1921). |
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| 306 | 1921.05.13-14 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Education and industry' : delivered at the Fuzhou YMCA. = Jiao yu yu shi ye. In : Chen bao fu kan ; May 13-14 (1921). |
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| 307 | 1921.05.26 (publ.) |
Wu tuan ti gong jian Duwei zhi yan lun zhi. In : Chen bao ; May 26 (1921). [Report from the farewell banquet for John Dewey]. "Dewey was not only teaching us ; he was teaching Europeans and Americans about us. There have been politicians and diplomats in the country before. However, their reports about us were usually distorted by their own particular interests and agenda. Many came to visit for a few days and returned with a book of one or two thousand pages. Dewey was different. He reported our situations truthfully to the reading public in America. He would occasionally point out our problems and weaknesses, but he had great love for us". Jessica Wang : Dewey returned the kindness of his Chinese hosts by acknowledging that he had a wonderful time and learned very much from his visit. He stressed his admiration for the young people in China – their enthusiasm for new learning and their concern with the well-being of society at large – but he kindly reminded the Chinese that the problems of China could be solved only by actually trying to solve them. |
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| 308 | 1921.06 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Farewell address' at the Beijing Teachers College. |
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| 309 | 1921.06 |
Chinese students' monthly ; vol. 16, no 8 (June 1921). "Mr. [John] Dewey's career in China is one of singular success. From the times of his arrival to the present, continual ovation follows his footprints. Bankers and editors frequent his residences ; teachers and students flock to his classrooms. Clubs compete to entertain him, to hear him speak ; newspapers vie with each other in translating his latest utterances. His speeches and lectures are eagerly read, his biography has been elaborately written. The serious-minded comment on his philosophy ; the light-hearted remember his name." |
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| 310 | 1921.06.17-19 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Impressions of South China' in Beijing. In : Chen bao fu kan ; June 17-19 (1921). |
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| 311 | 1921.06.20-21 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The relationship between elementary education and the state' : delivered at the Fujian YMCA, Fuzhou. = Guo min jiao yu yu guo jia zhi guan xi. Shu Lan, Wei Xuan recorder. In : Chen bao fu kan ; June 20-21 (1921). |
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| 312 | 1921.06.23 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'Spontaneity in learning' : delivered at the Fuzhou YMCA, Fujian. = Zi dong di yan jiu. In : Chen bao fu kan ; June 23 (1921). |
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| 313 | 1921.06.24-27 (publ.) |
Dewey, John. Present opportunities in the teaching profession : delivered at the Beijing Teachers College. = Jiao shi zhi ye zhi xian zai ji hui. Wang Zuoran interpreter, Shu Lan recorder. In : Chen bao fu kan ; June 24-27 (1921). In his last public lecture in Beijing, John Dewey began by saying that because he had given so many lectures, he actually had nothing much to add. However he felt reluctant to decline the invitation and thus agreed to give a farewell speech. |
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| 314 | 1921.06.28-29 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The relationship of the natural and social environments with human life' : delivered at Fuzhou YMCA, Fujian. = Tian ran huan jing she hui huan jing yu ren sheng zhi guan xi. In : Xue deng ; June 28-29 (1921). |
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| 315 | 1921.06.30-07.01 (publ.) | John Dewey : Habit and thought : delivered at the Fuzhou YMCA, Fujian. = Xi guan yu si xiang. In : Chen bao fu kan ; June 30-July 1 (1921). |
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| 316 | 1921.06.30 |
Hu, Shi. Duwei xian sheng yu Zhongguo. [Speech at National Beijing University]. In the future, as 'experimental schools' gradually arise, John Dewey's educational theory will have the opportunity for experimentation ; and that will be when Dewey's philosophy blooms and bears fruit ! At the present time Dewey is just a famous name, but ten or twenty years from now Dewey's name will be attached to innumerable Dewey-style 'experimental schools', directly or indirectly influencing education in all China. Will not that kind of influence be one hundred thousand times larger than it is now ? |
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| 317 | 1921.07 | John Dewey : Lecture 'The scientific spirit and morality' at the Guangdong Provincial Education Association. |
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| 318 | 1921.07 |
John Dewey : Lecture 'The importance of dynamic morality' : delivered at the Guangdong Teachers College. In : Guangdong sheng jiao yu hui za zhi ; July (1921). Dewey said, 'the static and passive morality which is characteristic of the Chinese people may produce strong and enduring character, but it stresses obedience and filial piety ; dynamic morality, on the other hand, stresses creativity, venturesomeness and willingness to assume responsibility'. He argued that static and passive morality was appropriate for an authoritarian state ; but 'in a democratic state where maintenance of social equilibrium and progress of social reconstruction are functions of individual responsibility, dynamic morality must be cultivated. China's survival, he insisted, hinged on the cultivation of dynamic morality through schooling. |
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| 319 | 1921.07 | John Dewey : Lecture 'Education for interaction' : delivered at the Guangdong Provincial Educational Association. In : Guangdong sheng jiao yu hui za zhi ; July (1921). |
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| 320 | 1921.07.06 |
Dewey, John. Hinterlands in China [ID D28487]. One of the two Presidents of China—it is unnecessary to specify which—recently stated that a renewal of the Anglo- Japanese alliance meant a partition of China. In this division, Japan would take the north and Great Britain the south. Probably the remark was not meant to be taken literally in the sense of formal conquest or annexation, but rather symbolically with reference to the tendency of policies and events. Even so, the statement will appear exaggerated or wild to persons outside of China who either believe that the Open Door policy is now irrevocably established or that Japan is the only foreign Power which China has to fear. But a recent visit to the south revealed that in that section, especially in Canton, the British occupy much the same position of suspicion and dread which is held by the Japanese in the north. Upon the negative side, the Japanese menace is negligible in the province of Kwantung, in which Canton is situated. There are said to be more Americans in Canton than Japanese, and the American colony is not extensive. Upon the positive side the history of the Cassel collieries contract is instructive. It illustrates the cause of the popular attitude toward the British, and quite possibly explains the bitterness in the remark quoted. The contract is noteworthy from whatever standpoint it is viewed, whether that of time, of the conditions it contains or of the circumstances which accompany it. Premising that the contract delivers to a British company a monopoly of the rich coal deposits of the province for a period of ninety years and—quite incidentally of course—the right to use all means of transportation, water or rail, wharves and ports now in existence, and also to 'construct, manage, superintend and work other roads, railways, waterways as may be deemed advisable'—which reads like a monopoly of all further transportation facilities of the province—first take up the time of the making of the contract. It was drawn in April of last year and confirmed a few months later. It was made, of course, with the authorities of the Kwantung province, subject to confirmation at Peking. During this period, Kwantung province was governed by military carpet-baggers from the neighboring province of Kwangsei, which was practically alone of the southern provinces allied with the northern government, then under the control of the Anfu party. It was matter of common knowledge that the people of Canton and of the province were bitterly hostile to this outside control and submitted to it only because of military coercion. Civil strife for the expulsion of the outsiders was already going on, continually gaining headway, and a few months later the Kwangsei troops were defeated and expelled from the province by the forces of General Chen, now the civil governor of Kwantung, who received a triumphal ovation upon his entrance into Canton. At this time the present native government was established, a change which made possible the return of Sun Yat Sen and his followers from their exile in Shanghai. It is evident, then, that the collieries contract giving away the natural resources of the people of the province, was knowingly made by a British company with a government which no more represented the people of the province than the military government of Germany represented the people of Belgium during the war. As to the terms of the contract, the statement that it gave the British company a monopoly of all the coal mines in the province, was not literally accurate. Verbally, twenty-two districts are enumerated. But these are the districts along the lines of the only railways in the province and the only ones soon to be built, including the as yet uncompleted Hankow-Canton railway. Possibly this fact accounts for the anxiety of the British partners in the Consortium that the completion of this line be the first undertaking financed by the Consortium. The document also includes what is perhaps a novelty in legal documents having such a momentous economic importance, namely, the words 'etc.' after the districts enumerated by name. For this concession, the British syndicate agreed to pay the provincial government the sum of $1,000,000 (silver of course). This million dollars is to bear six per cent interest to the company, and capital and interest are to be paid back to the company by the provincial government out of the dividends (if any) it is to receive. The nature of these 'dividends' is set forth in an article which should receive the careful attention of promoters elsewhere as a model of the possibilities of exploiting contracts. The ten million capital is divided equally into 'A' shares and 'B' shares. The 'A' shares go unreservedly to the directors of the company, and three millions of the “B” shares are to be allotted by the directors of the company at their discretion. The other two million are again divided into equal portions, one portion representing the sum advanced by the company to the province and to be paid back as just specified, while the other million—one-tenth of the capitalization—is to be a trust fund the dividends of which are to go for the 'benefit of the poor people of the province' and for an educational fund for the province. But before any dividends are paid upon the 'B' shares, eight per cent dividends are to be paid upon the 'A' shares and a dollar a ton royalty upon all coal mined. Those having any familiarity with the coal business with its usual royalty of about ten cents a ton can easily calculate the splendid prospects of the 'poor people' and the schools, prospects which represent the total return to the provinces of a concession of untold worth. The contract also guarantees to the company the assistance of the provincial government in expropriating the owners of all coal mines which have been granted to other companies but not yet worked. These technical details make dry reading, but they throw light upon the spirit with which the British company undertook its predatory negotiations with a government renounced by the people it professed to govern. In comparison with the relatively crude methods of Japan in Shantung, they show the advantages of wide business experience. As for the circumstances and context which give added menace to the contract, the following facts are significant. Hong Kong, a British crown colony, lies directly opposite the river upon which Canton is situated. It is the port of export and import for the vast districts served by the mines and railways of the province. It is unnecessary to point out the hold upon all economic development which is given through a monopolistic control of coal. It is hardly too much to say that the enforcement of the contract would enable British interests in Hong Kong to control the entire industrial development of the most flourishing of the provinces of China. It would be a comparatively easy and inexpensive matter to provide the mainland with a first class modem harbor and port near Canton. But such a port would tend to reduce the assets of Hong Kong to the possession of the most beautiful scenery in the world. There is already fear that a new harbor will be built. Many persons think that the concession of building such railways, etc., 'as are deemed advisable for the purpose of the business of the company and to improve those now existing' is the object of the contract, even more than the coal monopoly. For the British already own a considerable part of the mainland, including part of the railway connecting the littoral with Canton. By building a cross-cut from the British owned portion of this railway to the Hankow-Canton line, the latter would become virtually the Hankow-Hong Kong line, and Canton would be a way- station. With the advantages thus secured, the project for building a new port could be indefinitely blocked. During the period in which the contract was being secured, a congress of British Chambers of Commerce was held in Shanghai. Resolutions were passed in favor of abolishing henceforth the whole principle of special nationalistic concessions, and of cooperating with the Chinese for the upbuilding of China. At the close of the meeting the Chairman announced that a new era for China had finally dawned. All of the British newspapers in China lauded the wise action of the Chambers. At the same time, Mr. Lamont was in Peking, and was setting forth that the object of the Consortium was the abolition of further concessions, and the uniting of the financial resources of the banks in the Consortium for the economic development of China itself. By an ironical coincidence, the Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank, which is the financial power behind the contract and the new company, is the leading British partner in the Consortium. It is difficult to see how any of the British can henceforth accuse the Japanese of bad faith if any of the banking interests of that country should enter upon independent negotiations with any government in China. By the time the scene of action was transferred to Peking in order to secure the confirmation of the central government, the Anfu regime was no more, and as yet no confirmation has been secured. The new government at Canton has declined to recognize the contract as having any validity. An official of the Hong Kong government has told an official of the Canton government that the Hong Kong government stands behind the enforcement of the contract, and that Kwantung province is a British Hinterland. Within the last few weeks the Governor of Hong Kong and a leading Chinese banker of Hong Kong who is a British subject have visited Peking. Rumors were rife in the south as to the object of the visit. British sources published the report that one object was to return Weihaiwei to China—in case Peking agreed to turn over more of the Kwantung mainland to Hong Kong as a quid pro quo. Chinese opinion in the south was that one main object was to secure the Peking confirmation of the Cassel contract, in which case $900,000 more would be forthcoming, $100,000 having been paid down when the contract was signed with the provincial government. Peking does not recognize the present Canton government but regards it as an outlaw. The crowd that signed the contract is still in control of the neighboring province of Kwangsei and they are relied upon by the north to effect the military subjugation of the seceded province. Fighting has already, indeed, begun, but the Kwangsei militarists are badly in need of money; if Peking ratifies the contract, a large part of the funds will be paid over to them—all that isn't lost by the wayside to the northern militarists. Meantime British news agencies keep up a constant circulation of reports tending to discredit the Kwantung government, although all impartial observers on the spot regard it as altogether the most promising one in China. These considerations not only throw light on some of the difficulties spoken of in a previous article concerning the functioning of the Consortium, but they give an indispensable background for judging the actual effect of the renewal of the Anglo- Japanese alliance. By force of circumstances each government, even against its own wish, will be compelled to wink at the predatory policies of the other; and the tendency will be to create a division of spheres of influence between the north and south in order to avoid more direct conflicts. The English liberals who stand for the renewal of the alliance on the ground that it will enable England to exercise a check on Japanese policies, are more naive than was Mr. Wilson with his belief in the separation of the economic and political control of Shantung. It cannot be too often repeated that the real point of friction between the United States and Japan is not in California but in China. It is silly—unless it is calculated—for English authorities to keep repeating that under no circumstances does the alliance mean that Great Britain would support Japan in a war with the United States. The day the alliance is renewed, the hands of the militarists in Japan will be strengthened and the hands of the liberals—already weak enough—be still further weakened. In consequence, all the sources of friction in China between the United States and Japan will be intensified. I do not believe in the predicted war. But should it come, the first act of Japan—so everyone in China believes—will be to seize the ports of northern China and its railways in order to make sure of an uninterrupted supply of food and raw materials. The act would be justified as necessary to national existence. Great Britain in alliance with Japan would be in no position to protest in anything but the most perfunctory way. The guarantee of such abstinence would be for Japan the next best thing to open naval and financial support. Without the guarantee they would not dare the seizure of Chinese ports. In recent years diplomatists have shown themselves capable of unlimited stupidity. But it is not possible that the men in the British Foreign Office are not aware of these elementary facts. If they renew the alliance they knowingly take the responsibility for the consequences. |
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| 321 | 1921.07.08 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The meaning of democracy' : delivered at the Fujian Shang-yu Club. = Min zhi di yi yi.In : Chen bao fu kan ; July 8 (1921). |
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| 322 | 1921 | John Dewey left China and returned to the United States. |
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| 323 | 1921 |
Sun, Fuyuan. Duwei bo shi jin ri qu le [ID D28543]. [Dr. Dewey is gone today]. "The Dr. Dewey in your head may be the professor at the podium at Columbia University, or the person who occasionally talked to your or had lunch with you. The Dr. Dewey in someone else's head may not be the Dewey from the podium or the dinner table, because he may never meet Dewey in person. His Dr. Dewey may be the Dewey of the 'Five major lectures series' – the ideational Dewey, not the physical Dewey. Yet another person's Dr. Dewey may not reside in the real person or his works, but in the picture on the first page of that book. Since different people have different 'Deweys' in mind, and since 'Dr. Dewey' is exactly the synthesis of these different conceptions, then how does the physical Dewey that is gone today compare to this 'Dr. Dewey' in our heads ?" |
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| 324 | 1921.07.20, 27 |
Dewey, John.Divided China [ID D28488]. I About six months ago the Peking government issued an edict proclaiming the unification of China. On May 5th Sun Yat Sen was formally inaugurated in Canton as president of all China. Thus China has within six months been twice unified, once from the northern standpoint and once from the southern. Each act of 'unification' is in fact a symbol of the division of China, a division expressing differences of language, temperament, history, and political policy as well as of geography, persons and factions. This division has been one of the outstanding facts of Chinese history since the overthrow of the Manchus ten years ago and it has manifested itself in intermittent civil war. Yet there are two other statements which are equally true, although they flatly contradict each other and the one just made. One statement is that so far as the people of China are concerned there is no real division on geographical lines, but only the common division occurring everywhere between conservatives and progressives. The other is that instead of two divisions in China, there are at least five, two parties in both the north and south, and another in the central or Yangtse region, each one of the five splitting up again more or less on factional and provincial lines. And so far as the future is concerned, probably this last statement is the most significant of the three. That all three statements are true is what makes Chinese politics so difficult to understand even in their larger features. By the good fortune of circumstances we were in Canton when the inauguration occurred. Peking and Canton are a long way apart in more than distance. There is little exchange of actual news between the two places; what filters through into either city and gets published consists mostly of rumors tending to discredit the other city. In Canton, the monarchy is constantly being restored in Peking; and in Peking, Canton is Bolshevized at least once a week, while every other week open war breaks out between the adherents of Sun Yat Sen, and General Chen Kwang Ming, the civil governor of the province. There is nothing to give the impression—even in circles which accept the Peking government only as an evil necessity—that the pretensions of Sun Yat Sen represent anything more than the desires of a small and discredited group to get some slight power for themselves at the expense of national unity. Even in Fukien, the province next north of Kwantung, one found little but gossip whose effect was to minimize the importance of the southern government. In foreign circles in the north as well as in liberal Chinese circles upon the whole, the feeling is general that bad as the de facto Peking government may be, it represents the cause of national unity, while the southern government represents a perpetuation of that division of China which makes her weak and which offers the standing invitation to foreign intrigue and aggression. Only occasionally during the last few months has some returned traveller timidly advanced the opinion that we had the 'wrong dope' on the south, and that they were really trying 'to do something down there'. Consequently there was little preparation on my part for the spectacle afforded in Canton during the week of May 5th. This was the only demonstration I have seen in China during the last two years which gave any evidence of being a spontaneous popular movement. New Yorkers are accustomed to crowds, processions, street decorations and accompanying enthusiasm. I doubt if New York has ever seen a demonstration which surpassed that of Canton in size, noise, color or spontaneity—in spite of tropical rains. The country people flocked in in such masses, that, being unable to find accommodation even in the river boats, they kept up a parade all night. Guilds and localities which were not able to get a place in the regular procession organized minor ones on their own account on the day before and after the official demonstration. Making all possible allowance for the intensity of Cantonese local loyalty and the fact that they might be celebrating a Cantonese affair rather than a principle, the scene was sufficiently impressive to revise one’s preconceived ideas and to make one try to find out what it is that gives the southern movement its vitality. A demonstration may be popular and still be superficial in significance. However, one found foreigners on the ground—at least Americans—saying that in the last few months the men in power in Canton were the only officials in China who were actually doing something for the people instead of filling their own pockets and magnifying their personal power. Even the northern newspapers had not entirely omitted reference to the suppression of licensed gambling. On the spot one learned that this suppression was not only genuine and thorough, but that it meant a renunciation of an annual revenue of nearly ten million dollars on the part of a government whose chief difficulty is financial, and where—apart from motives of personal squeeze—it would have been easy to argue that at least temporarily the end justified the means in retaining this source of revenue. English papers throughout China have given much praise to the government of Hong Kong because it has cut down its opium revenue from eight to four millions annually with the plan for ultimate extinction. Yet Hong Kong is prosperous, it has not been touched by civil war, and it only needs revenue for ordinary civil purposes, not as a means of maintaining its existence in a crisis. Under the circumstances, the action of the southern government was hardly less than heroic. This renunciation is the most sensational act of the Canton government, but one soon learns that it is the accompaniment of a considerable number of constructive administrative undertakings. Among the most notable are attempts to reform the local magistracies throughout the province, the establishment of municipal government in Canton— something new in China where local officials are all centrally appointed and controlled—based upon the American Commission plan, and directed by graduates of schools of political science in the United States; plans for introducing local self-government throughout the province; a scheme for introduction of universal primary education in Canton to be completed in three steps. These reforms are provincial and local. They are part of a general movement against centralization and toward local autonomy which is gaining headway all over China, a protest against the appointment of officials from Peking and the management of local affairs in the interests of factions—and pocket-books— whose chief interest in local affairs is what can be extracted in the way of profit. For the only analogue of provincial government in China at the present time is the carpet-bag government of the south in the days following our civil war. These things explain the restiveness of the country, including central as well as southern provinces, under Peking domination. But they do not explain the setting up of a new national, or federal government, with the election of Mr. Sun Yat Sen as its president. To understand this event it is necessary to go back into history. In June, 1917, the parliament in Peking was about to adopt a constitution. The parliament was controlled by leaders of the old revolutionary party who had been at loggerheads with Yuan and with the executive generally. The latter accused them of being obstructionists, wasting time in discussing and theorizing when the country needed action. Japan had changed her tactics regarding the participation of China in the war, and having got her position established through the Twenty-one Demands, saw a way of controlling Chinese arsenals and virtually amalgamating the Chinese armies with her own through supervising China's entrance into the war. The British and French were pressing desperately for the same end. Parliament was slow to act, and Tang Shao Yi, Sun Yat Sen and other southern leaders were averse, since they regarded the war as none of China's business and were upon the whole more anti-British than anti-German—a fact which partly accounts for the share of British journals in the present press propaganda against the Canton government. But what brought matters to a head was the fact that the constitution which was about to be adopted eliminated the military governors or tuchuns of the provinces, and restored the supremacy of civil authority which had been destroyed by Yuan Shih-kai, in addition to introducing a policy of decentralization. Coached by members of the so-called progressive party which claimed to be constitutionalist and which had a factionalist interest in overthrowing the revolutionaries who controlled the legislative branch if not the executive, the military governors demanded that the president suspend parliament and dismiss the legislators. This demand was more than passively supported by all the Allied diplomats in Peking with the honorable exception of the American legation. The president weakly yielded and issued an edict dispelling parliament, virtually admitting in the document the illegality of his action. Less than a month afterwards he was a refugee in the Dutch legation on account of the farce of monarchical restoration staged by Chang Shun—who at the present time is again coming to the front in the north as adjutant to the plans of Chang Tso Lin, the present 'strong man' of China. Later, elections were held and a new parliament elected. This parliament has been functioning as the legislature of China at Peking and elected the president, Shu Shi Chang, the head of the government recognized by the foreign Powers:—in short it is the Chinese government from an international standpoint, the Peking government from a domestic standpoint. The revolutionary members of the old parliament never recognized the legality of their dispersal, and consequently refused to admit the legal status of the new parliament, called by them the bogus parliament, and of the president elected by it, especially as the new legislative body was not elected according to the rules laid down by the constitution. Under the lead of some of the old members, the old parliament, called by its opponents the defunct parliament, has led an intermittent existence ever since. Claiming to be the sole authentic constitutional body of China, it finally elected Dr. Sun president of China and thus prepared the act of the fifth of May, already reported. Such is the technical and formal background of the present southern government. Its attack upon the legality of the Peking government is doubtless technically justified. But for various reasons its own positive status is open to equally grave doubts. The terms 'bogus' and 'defunct', so freely cast at each other, both seem to an outsider to be justified. It is less necessary to go into the reasons which appear to invalidate the position of the southern parliament because of the belated character of its final action. A protest which waits four years to assert itself in positive action is confronted not with legal technicalities but with accomplished facts. In my opinion, legality for legality, the southern government has a shade the better of the technical argument. But in the face of a government which has foreign recognition and which has maintained itself after a fashion for four years, a legal shadow is a precarious political basis. It is wiser to regard the southern government as a revolutionary government, which in addition to the prestige of continuing the revolutionary movement of ten years ago has also a considerable sentimental asset as a protest of constitutionalism against the military usurpations of the Peking government. It is an open secret that the southern movement has not received the undivided support of all the forces present in Canton which are opposed to the northern government. Tang Shao Yi, for example, was notable for his absence at the time of the inauguration, having found it convenient to visit the graves of his ancestors at that time. The provincial governor, General Chen Kwang Ming, was in favor of confining efforts to the establishment of provincial autonomy and the encouragement of similar movements in other provinces, looking forward to an eventual federal, or confederated, government of at least all the provinces south of the Yangtse. Many of his generals wanted to postpone action until Kwantung province had made a military alliance with the generals in the other southwestern provinces, so as to be able to resist the north should the latter undertake a military expedition. Others thought the technical legal argument for the new move was being overworked, and while having no objections to an out and out revolutionary movement against Peking, thought that the time for it had not yet come. They are counting on Chang Tso Lin's attempting a monarchical restoration and think that the popular revulsion against that move would create the opportune time for such a movement as has now been prematurely undertaken. However in spite of reports of open strife freely circulated by British and Peking government newspapers, most of the opposition elements are now loyally suppressing their opposition and supporting the government of Sun Yat Sen. A compromise has been arranged by which the federal government will confine its attention to foreign affairs, leaving provincial matters wholly in the hands of Governor Chen and his adherents. There is still room for friction however, especially as to the control of revenues, since at present there are hardly enough funds for one administration, let alone two. II The members of the new southern government are strikingly different in type from those one meets elsewhere whether in Peking or the provincial capitals. The latter men are literally mediaeval when they are not late Roman Empire, though most of them have learned a little modern patter to hand out to foreigners. The former are educated men, not only in the school sense and in the sense that they have had some special training for their jobs, but in the sense that they think the ideas and speak the language current among progressive folk all over the world. They welcome inquiry and talk freely of their plans, hopes and fears. I had the opportunity of meeting all the men who are most influential in both the local and federal governments; these conversations did not take the form of interviews for publication, but I learned that there are at least three angles from which the total situation is viewed. Governor Chen has had no foreign education and speaks no English. He is distinctively Chinese in his training and outlook. He is a man of force, capable of drastic methods, straightforward intellectually and physically, of unquestioned integrity and of almost Spartan life in a country where official position is largely prized for the luxuries it makes possible. For example, practically alone among Chinese provincial officials of the first rank he has no concubines. Not only this, but he proposed to the provincial assembly a measure to disenfranchise all persons who have concubines. (The measure failed because it is said its passage would have deprived the majority of the assemblymen of their votes.) He is by all odds the most impressive of all the officials whom I have met in China. If I were to select a man likely to become a national figure of the first order in the future, it would be, unhesitatingly, Governor Chen. He can give and also command loyalty— a fact which in itself makes him almost unique. His views in gist are as follows: The problem of problems in China is that of real unification. Industry and education are held back because of lack of stability of government, and the better elements in society seclude themselves from all public effort. The question is how this unification is to be obtained. In the past it has been tried by force used by strong individuals. Yuan Shih-kai tried and failed; Feng Kuo Chang tried and failed; Tuan Chi Jui tried and failed. That method must be surrendered. China can be unified only by the people themselves, employing not force but the methods of normal political evolution. The only way to engage the people in the task is to decentralize the government. Futile efforts at centralization must be abandoned. Peking and Canton alike must allow the provinces the maximum of autonomy; the provincial capitals must give as much authority as possible to the districts, and the districts to the communities. Officials must be chosen by and from the local districts and everything must be done to encourage local initiative. Governor Chen's chief ambition is to introduce this system into Kwantung province. He believes that other provinces will follow as soon as the method has been demonstrated, and that national unity will then be a pyramid built out of the local blocks. With extreme self-government in administrative matters, Governor Chen will endeavor to enforce a policy of centralized economic control. He says in effect that the west has developed economic anarchy along with political control, with the result of capitalistic domination and class struggle. He wishes to avert this consequence in China by having government control from the first of all basic raw materials and all basic industries, mines, transportation, factories for cement, steel, etc. In this way the provincial authorities hope to secure an equable industrial development of the province, while at the same time procuring ample revenues without resorting to heavy taxation. Since almost all the other governors in China are using their power, in combination with the exploiting capitalists native and foreign, to monopolize the natural resources of their provinces for private profit, it is not surprising that Governor Chen's views are felt to be a menace to privilege and that he is advertised all over China as a devout Bolshevist. His views have special point in view of British efforts to get an economic stranglehold upon the province—efforts which are dealt with in another article. Another type of view lays chief stress upon the internal political condition of China. Its adherents say in effect: Why make such a fuss about having two governments for China, when, in point of fact, China is torn into dozens of governments? In the north, war is sure to break out sooner or later between Chang Tso Lin and his rivals. Each military governor is afraid of his division generals. The brigade generals intrigue against the division leaders, and even colonels are doing all they can to further their personal power. The Peking government is a stuffed sham, taking orders from the military governors of the provinces, living only on account of jealousies among these generals, and by the grace of foreign diplomatic support. It is actually bankrupt, and this actual state will soon be formally recognized. The thing for us to do is to go ahead, maintain in good faith the work of the revolution, give this province the best possible civil administration; then in the inevitable approaching debacle, the southern government will be ready to serve as the nucleus of a genuine reconstruction. Meantime we want, if not the formal recognition of foreign governments, at least their benevolent neutrality. Dr. Sun still embodies in himself the spirit of the revolution of 1911. So far as that was not anti-Manchu it was in essence nationalistic, and only accidentally republican. The day after the inauguration of Dr. Sun, a memorial was dedicated to the seventy-two patriot heroes who fell in an abortive attempt in Canton to throw off the Manchu yoke, some six months before the successful revolt. The monument is the most instructive single lesson which I have seen in the political history of the revolution. It is composed of seventy-two granite blocks. Upon each is engraved: Given by the Chinese National League of Jersey City, or Melbourne, or Mexico, or Liverpool, or Singapore, etc. Chinese nationalism is a product of Chinese migration to foreign countries; Chinese nationalism on foreign shores financed the revolution, and largely furnished its leaders and provided its organization. Sun Yat Sen was the incarnation of this nationalism, which was more concerned with freeing China—and Asia—from all foreign domination than with particular political problems. And in spite of the movement of events since that day, he remains essentially at that stage, being closer in spirit to the nationalists of the European irredentist type than to the spirit of contemporary young China. A convinced republican, he nevertheless measures events and men in the concrete by what he thinks they will do to promote the independence of China from foreign control, rather than by what they will do to promote a truly democratic government. This is the sole explanation that can be given for his unfortunate coquetting a year ago with the leaders of the now fallen Anfu Club. He allowed himself to be deceived into thinking that they were ready to turn against the Japanese if he would give them his support; and his nationalist imagination was inflamed by the grandiose schemes of little Hsu for the Chinese subjugation of Mongolia. More openly than others, Dr. Sun admits and justifies the new southern government as representing a division of China. If, he insists, it had not been for the secession of the south in 1917, Japan would now be in virtually complete control of all China. A unified China would have meant a China ready to be swallowed whole by Japan. The secession localized Japanese aggressions, made it evident that the south would fight rather than be devoured, and gave a breathing spell in which public opinion in the north rallied against the Twenty-one Demands and against the military pact with Japan. Thus it saved the independence of China. But, while it checked Japan, it did not checkmate her. She still expects with the assistance of Chang Tso Lin to make northern China her vassal. The support which foreign governments in general and the United States in particular are giving Peking is merely playing into the hands of the Japanese. The independent south affords the only obstacle which causes Japan to pause in her plan of making northern China in effect a Japanese province. A more than usually authentic rumor says that upon the occasion of the visit of the Japanese consul general to the new president (no other foreign official has made an official visit), the former offered from his government the official recognition of Dr. Sun as president of all China, if the latter would recognize the Twenty-one Demands as an accomplished fact. From the Japanese standpoint the offer was a safe one, as this acceptance of Japanese claims is the one thing impossible to the new government. But meantime the offer naturally confirms the nationalists of Dr. Sun's type in their belief that the southern split is the key to maintaining the political independence of China; or, as Dr. Sun puts it, that a divided China is for the time being the only means to an ultimately independent China. These views are not given as stating the whole truth of the situation. They are ex parte. But they are given as setting forth in good faith the conceptions of the leaders of the southern movement and as requiring serious attention if the situation of China, domestic and international, is to be understood. Upon my own account, and not simply as expressing the views of others, I have reached a conclusion quite foreign to my thought before I visited the south. While it is not possible to attach too much importance to the unity of China as a part of the foreign policy of the United States, it is possible to attach altogether too much importance to the Peking government as a symbol of that unity. To borrow and adapt the words of one southern leader, while the United States can hardly be expected to do other than recognize the Peking as the de facto government, there is no need to coddle that government and give it face. Such a course maintains a nominal and formal unity while in fact encouraging the military and corrupt forces that keep China divided and which make for foreign aggression. In my opinion as the outcome of two years' observation of the Chinese situation, the real interests of both China and the United States would be served if, in the first place, the United States should take the lead in securing from the diplomatic body in Peking the serving of express notice upon the Peking government that in no case would a restoration of the monarchy be recognized by the Powers. This may seem in America like an unwarranted intervention in the domestic affairs of a foreign country. But in fact such intervention is already a fact. The present government endures only in virtue of the support of foreign Powers. The notice would put an end to one kind of intrigue, one kind of rumor and suspicion, which is holding industry and education back and which is keeping China in a state of unrest and instability. It would establish a period of comparative quiet in which whatever constructive forces exist may come to the front. The second measure would be more extreme. The diplomacy of the United States should take the lead in making it clear that unless the promises about the disbanding of the army, and the introduction of general retrenchment are honestly and immediately carried out, the Powers will pursue a harsh rather than a benevolent policy toward the Peking government, insisting upon immediate payment of interest and loans as they fall due and holding up the government to the strictest meeting of all its obligations. The notification to be effective might well include a virtual threat of withdrawal of recognition in case the government does not seriously try to put its profuse promises into execution. It should also include a definite discouragement of any expenditures designed for military conquest of the south. Diplomatic recognition of the southern government is out of the question at present. It is not out of the question to put on the financial screws so that the southern government will be allowed space and time to demonstrate what it can do by peaceful means to give one or more provinces a decent, honest and progressive civil administration. It is unnecessary to enumerate the obstacles in the way of carrying out such a policy. But in my judgment it is the only policy by which the Great Powers will not become accomplices in perpetuating the weakness and division of China. It is the most straightforward way of meeting whatever plans of aggression Japan may entertain. |
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| 325 | 1921.07.21? |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey children [July 21, 1921?] On Sayurday [23 July 1921] we are going up Paoshan. Laoshan is the second of the great mts of Shantung Perhpas yu know that Shantung means eastern mountains. The have a saying here Taishan is the greatest in height but Laoshan is the most magnificent of the Mountains of the province. I spose it sounds like a proverb in the native tongue. Well we are going with a picnic association of Chinese students. and shall probably spend the night on top Sat. On Snday we come back here and sail for Kobe on Tuesday the 2nd. I will tell you later what is a picnic association and about the trip. We have met some misssionaries and they tell us the worst thing about the Jap management here now is the red tape, We had a specimen of the usefullnes of red tape this mroning. As soon as the Chinese gentlemen were well seated and had begun talking in our room there was a knock at the door, In walked a dapper ajp. The rooms here are so fixed that he was in an outer room and we were seated in the inner one. Well Lucy caught him quick and backed him out while talking. His errand was to bring a blank to be filled out to request the privilege of embarking from this Japanese port to another J port. The blank had the heading of the South Manchurian R. Way. It must be very good polcy to have many kinds of small business on hand which enables you to make an excuse to enter the guests room whenever any thing is going on which it is desirable to see, It was interesting to see that there was no conversation here on the part of the Chinese gentlemen which might not have hd witnesses safely, Tonight we shall go to a Chinese restaurant and we shall see what goes on there. One of them was recommended as knowing every thing worth knowing and seldom opening up, We hope we may smile on him and get him open. He was educated by a missionary whom we saw yesterday who lives in Weihsien. where very interesting things happened during the first occupation of this province. That story has much which the American people know nothing about and perhaps will not believe when they are told, I should like to have friend Wilson compelled to listen to those stories everyday the rest of his life. We have been for the drive and have seen all the old German forts now deserted. It beats the bnd to see how they have abolished every ger word The streets look as if they had been born with the Emp when nothing else but Jap words existed, Before the i[n]vasion of Chinese civilization as they themselves have the nerve to say. The Imperial interpreter called on Pa a little wisp or wasp of a thing with a pinched face who said he knew Pa was here because he had read it in the papers, We said but not to him well you need not have added the because. A man is waiting down stairs to escort us to the dinner party and this must start for Tsinan at nine tonight, so heres a goodby perhaps the last in China if this can be called China, Glad we have the dinner tonight to remind us of that part of the world. And here is the red letter telling you the winecups are clean and ready and waiti[n]g for you. Love and love till we get more time to write, Mama. |
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| 326 | 1921.07.22 |
Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey family Tsinanfu, July 22. [1921] I've got to do this by hand as Mamma is using the machine to write marginal notes in a book of rubbings. We got some more of those books from Chufu with the story of Confucious' life that Evelyn got last year, and Mamma is getting the story translated bit by bit. She's typing the translation in the margin so the thing will be most complete and natty. Some girls who are being sent to U.S. by the provincial government did the translating and they nearly had hysterics over it. Some of the tales are screamingly funny. [begin TL] Its just occured to me that Dad is lecturing and I can use his machine. We had a wonderful trip to Chufu and Taishan this time, much better than last year as it was cool and we had more time. It rained most of the time we were in Chufu but we went and saw the things anyway. We were taken to call on the Confucian duchess but she refused to see us. The gentlemen who conducted us were furious as it had all been arranged ahead of time and the old lady was too lazy or something to bother with us. The major domo of the palace was toting the baby duke around the court and he was heard to remark that we all wore glasses and they didnt want to have anything to do with people of that kind. They took us out to the tomb of an emperor who died five thousand years ago and to the temple of the king who drove Confucius out of the kingdom of Lu. Confucius certainly has the better of him now. We stayed in a school house and lived on bad Chinese food. It can be trying when it is bad, too. Chiefly eggs and at the end of three days I had reached a state where the sight of an egg made me sick. The Chinese went right on eating them, tho. At Taian we had better luck as we were being taken care of by the magistrate. We slept that night in a school and had a delicious dinner. We started early the next morning and had breakfast at a nunnery about a quarter of the way up. It was a regular feast and the Chinese gentlemen all drank brandy for breakfast. This machine sticks like the devil, I dont see how Papa writes on it at all. The trip up the mountain was lovely. It was a partly cloudy day and the light on the plain below was beautiful. There has been a lot of rain here this spring and the brook bed was full of water, a real mountain stream and clear and nice. We got to the top about half past two. I had a chair this time and got out and walked past the place where Evelyn and I collapsed last year, just to show them I could do it. Its a shame Evelyn never got to the top as it is one of the most stunning views I ever saw. Taishan is the highest mountain around and the lower ranges and the valleys look just like the relief maps in school. You can see the Yellow River and beyond to the north and to the south a great plain. Theres been plenty of rain this year and the country is very rich and green, much more beautiful that I have ever seen it before. In fact there has been about all the rain the country can stand for awhile. There are floods already at places on the Yangtse and the people here are quite worried about the Yellow river. There have been two days without rain now and that ought to give time for some of the water to run off and they say of there is no more for a few days longer they will be all right. In 1917 there were very bad floods, last year famine, and this year floods again, it doesnt give the people much chance to recuperate between catastrophes. They have resumed the airoplane service between here and Peking after stopping for nearly two weeks because of floods in the landing field. One of the aviators I know came in last night and offered to take me back to Peking today and bring me back again tomorrow. It sounded awfully tempting but quite impossible, of course. I guess I never told you that I was taken up to see Peking from an airoplane. We were up for ten minutes and going beautifully along towards the city when the engine died. We landed in the middle of a corn field and walked three miles back to the aerodrome. And that ended that episode. I was very much disappointed because I loved the sensation of flying and I have wantd to see Peking from an air ship ever since Ive been there Such is life. We leave here for Tsingtau on Sunday, stay there till the following Tuesday, probably, and then go across to Japan. Its getting quite exciting being so near home, Im beginning to realize that we are leaving China. Well, I must go and do the family ironing. Evelyn will be pleased to know that we are still carrying the electric iron around. Loads of love to you all and well see you soon. Lucy |
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| 327 | 1921.07.22-23 (publ.) | John Dewey : Lecture 'The work of educators'. = Jiao yu zhe di gong zuo. In : Chen bao fu kan ; July 11-23 (1921). |
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| 328 | 1921.07.24 |
Russell, Bertrand. To the Editor of The Japan Chronicle, Tokyo, 24. July (1921). In : The Japan Chronicle ; 26. July (1921). Sir, In your issue of July 24th there is a leaderette with whose general scope I am in agreement, but ending in a suggestion which seems to me misleading and not wholly just, to the effect that 'Professor Dewey… is not a good authority or an unprejudiced witness'. I do not know that any one of us could claim to be an unprejudiced witness where national bias enters in. I have myself struggled against the distorting influence of nationalism on my own thoughts for many years, yet I am still conscious of being by no means unprejudiced in an issue between Britain and a foreign country. Doubtless Professor Dewey also may be described – along with the rest of the human race – as a prejudiced witness in this sense, but in this sense only. He favours the Consortium. I do not. He sees in the extension of America's influence on China the best hope of China's regeneration. I do not. But these are very difficult questions in regard to which either opinion may be held rationally. As to the statement that Professor Dewey 'is not a good authority', he has been in Canton and seen the leading men, and is, no doubt, repeating what they told him. Nor is he the only authority for the statement in question, which is repeated with more detail by Mr. Philip Haddon in the 'Review of the Far East' for July 16th. And certainly some explanation has to be sought for the extreme hostility of Hongkong to the Government of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. The favour shown to that Government by the Americans also needs explanation, which, I hope, will be provided by some American as 'unpatriotic' as myself. |
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| 329 | 1921.07.24-09.24 (publ.) |
1921.07.24-27 / 1921.09.19-24 (publ.) 1) John Dewey : Lectures delivered at Jinan, Shandong. Wang Zuoran interpreter. 1) 'Social factors'. = She hui zuo yao su. 2) 'The social factor in education'. = Jiao yu zhi she hui di yao su. 3) 'The relationship between school subjects and society'. = Xue xiao ke mu yu she hui zhi guan xi. 4) 'The relationship between the organization and administration of the schools and society'. = Xue xiao di xing zheng he zu zhi yu she hui zhi guan xi. In : Chen bao fu kan ; July 24-27 (1921). 5) 'Psychological factors in education'. = Jiao yu zhi xin li di yao su. In : Chen bao fu kan ; Sept. 19-21 (1921). 6) 'The relationship between school and society'. = Xue xiao yu she hui di guan xi. In : Chen bao fu kan ; Sept. 22-24 (1921). |
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| 330 | 1921.07.25 |
Letter from John Dewey to Dewey family July 25. [1921] Dearest family, We are at least on the train on the way to Tsingtau, and for the first tme I feel as if we were really leaving China, and I am feeling quite sentimental about it. We didnt get off yesterday becase friday th[e] students came and asked to give us a farewell tea party, that day, what little there was left of it, was already occupied, and there were a lunch party farewell and a dinner, and an afternoon tea party already arranged for saturday, so to stay sunday was the only thing possible. I think what the stirred up the boys was the fact that the girls normal school of had arranged an afternoon reception for friday and they they thot they would lose face. You can gather the sadvanced stage of "female education" in Shantung by the fact that this is the only girls school of high school grade in the entire province, thirty eight millions population, I mean govt school, there are more missionary schools. There were about thirty girls staying at the school during the vacation, and they have lots of l[i]fe and pep, also most of them quite pretty. It shows what habit does, but I see many more pretty women now than I did first, because I have got used now to thier soft features that blend together. Lucy is more the Chinese type though still too western. It was a very intresting afternoon; I didnt have to speak for one thing, and after mamma got thru, she asked the girls to expess their wishes and plans, and after a while three of them got up [a]nd made very inte[r]esting speeches on the backwardness[?] of girls [e]ducation, the difficulty they had in securing prepareaparaion for even the few higher schools they were, one of hem almost wept as she told how the men didnt want the women educated. Another said that she and several of her class-mates were going to tart a primary school after they graduated, as the govt schools didnt allow enough liberty and were too subject too interference from officials. The principal is a man but seemed more in sympathy with the wishes of the girls than most of them, at least his daughter was one who made quite a free speech. The province used to end sixty students to Japan every year, now thy are going to send forty to America and twenty to Japan. More of the speeches here dwelt upon the friendship of America than they have anywhere else, and it rather pathetic to see how they are depending upon us. They expect us somehow to work a miracle for them. Their enthusiasm for the Pacific conference is tempered by a certain amount of scepticism however on acct of the Versailles confrence. It is rather surprising how great the nowledge among educated people is of the war outcome and who how absolutely uniform the judgement is. A chinese who has recently gone to Geneva wrote back that there was no league of nations, but only an organization to enforce the Versailles treaty. A speaker at the dinner last night made much of the fact that England and France and France and Italy had already begun quarrelling among themselves as evidence that Europe was too selfish settle the Pacific question and that America and China must settle it, as America was the only question they trusted. He was a Japane[se] returned student and an old Chinese scholar too, the kind that begins by aplogizing that they have been able to give only very litle ad a very poor food and in general they regret the sufferings they have inflicted upon their guests, all te time they are doing more fr you than anybody else ever thought of doing. The provincial assembly took the lead in one farewell dinner, and the speaker after getting thru the introductory compliments in which he assured us tha all the progress Shantung had made in the last two years ^and half^ was due to our previous viit and that the interest in America in the Shantung question was ue holly to my writings got down to business and discusses the AJ alliance and the Pacific conference very intelligently. Well what I started out to stay was that among the students going to America this summer are three four girls, two are ging to Texas and two to Oberlin. It is a sign that some change is occurring that they were invited to most of the public functions, being the only "females" present aside from Du Wei Furin and Du Wei Ni su. After making five farewell speeches in two days in response to their speeches of welcome etc, you can imagine I how reduced I was. In spite of everything they made us some presents, two pieces if the best Shantung silk, two pieces of framd embroidery, etc. We hd another deomstration that you cant beat the game. I boght my own tickets to Tsingtao in advance in conn[e]ction with steamer tickets to Kobe. Were they downhearted? Not they. We are accompanied on our trip by two guides, one the asst commissioner of education who speaks no English and the other a young man who understands ad seaks some english and who can also speak Japanese. To change the subject. A young man who has succeeded in learning a little English said that he had not been in Chufu but he was sure that it was very mysterious. Also that he believed that Taishan was a natural not an artificial mountain. As it six thousand feet high more or less, I was reluctantly obliged to concede the correctness of his remark. A foreigner who speaks good Chinese got in conversation with a soldier ho seemed to be above the average and asked him how and why he got into that business. He said he used to be a merchant, and he found he had to do everybody, his friends included, so he looked around for a calling where that wouldnt happen and decided uon soldiering where you only had too do your enemies. Then he was asked if he sent his pay home now. An he said, He only had enough to entertain his friends so he allowed his relatives to support his family. Upon the whole I think this story contains more sides of Chinese life than any other one I have heard. The newspper men in Tsinan ae vry interprising. At every lecture they circuklated copies of the speechs made at he 1st time, and at last evenings banquet they gave us little pamphlets with the reports of my six andyr your mothers two speeches. Can you wonder I hate to leave a country where educational lectures are treated as news? Its another of the strange contradictions here, next to no schools and money for the m , and so much more interest in educational discussion than in any other country. We saw in thee paper that when Mr Russell was approached by the reporters when he reached Japan handed them out a slip in which he said that having died (in Japan) three months before, it was obviously impossible for him to say anything for publication. Also we saw by the poiper that Mr Ono had engaged the entire roof garden of Hot[e]l Peking last evening for a banquet to Japanese and Chinese bankers. He told us that he would robably be back in Japan before we got away, but according to the newspapers he has not yet had much success in his mission of renewing loans. This part of Shantung is much more fertile and proserous than the parts which the road to Nanking goes thru. In fact it is the best farming country Ive seen north of the Yangste. There has been a tremendous amount of rain, and some of the famine districts where the drought had been the worst, are now flooded, many villages entirely under water. This country we are going thru is high and dry however tho everything is very green from the rain. We stayed at a German hotel in Tsinan, and the proprietors with German thrift run a buthcer shop and a tannery and leather factory. We have blown ourselves to four big leather bags. They are not so handsome, but good leather and very strong, they with several portfolios cost about a hundred sxty mex, which as leather goods were in America is about half price And I dont know whether we could get such strong ones. We now have ten pieces of checked bagage, and only nine pieces of hand baggae in the car with us. We have a certain number of presents for people in Japan, and hope we can cut down by one piece. It will take one of my checks I guess to pay excess baggage in Japan and the U S… Lots and lots of love Dad |
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| 331 | 1921.07.28 |
Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey family THE GRAND HOTELS, LIMITED. TSINGTAO. [July 28, 1921] Pa and Lucy have gone out to walk and I am staying at home to nurse my side. I have the door locked for it is not safe to assume that your room is your own in this hotel. Some D Jap just opens the door and walks in whenever he wants to. One stranger came this morning before I was out of bed, The otehrs had gone ou[t.] I thought it might be the boy wanting to come in to do the room so I went in my nightdress and opened the door, Bu stepped back and stranger boldly presented himself at the crack of the door which I made narrower as fast as I could, He said in suave tones, Is the doctor No he didny say that either, he just said Doctor Dewey? I said he is not in and as I shut the door I heard him murmer thank you. They are certainly the best illustration of the vulgarity of trying to follow customs they know nothing about that the world can show. This was nothing to what the manager of the hotel has ju[st] done, Lucy was undressed and said to me some one knocking. So I started but before I got underway this man opened the door wide and looked in at Lucy who requested him to withdraw, He closed the door and when I got there I asked him in no uncert[a]in tone to please never walk into this room without being invited again. It had happened enough times that strange men had com[e] in and we did not like it, He looked me squarely in the face without changing a muscle and said he wanted t[o] speak to the doctor and he thought he was in. I finihed by saying that he would please not think again but remember that this room was ours and not his and that we expected him not to come in unless he was invited. he wound off by saying he thought the doctor was in and that was why he did it, I couldnt take time to go into that question but left it to Pa. At one point he looked as if he were going to laugh at me but thot better of that but continued to stare and to wonder how I dared to talk to him like that. There is no doubt this has its reason for he was entirely brazen to the end of the talk and he will do it again of the door is not kept locked, I hate to go off for two days as we are planning to do on Saturday when we go. Lucy and I conversed with Mr Ding last night at the bankers dinner, He has a son at Cornell studing engineering. Also a nephew. He has one little daughter six of who he seems very proud. He will send her to the states. He said he coud see the difference between his mother and his wife, His m never went to school his wife has. He believes it is very important to educate the mothers, Says the Chine women are good financiers, they make excell accountants in the banks and good shopkeepers. Unde[r] the old system a certain number have always succ in this way, they get their training in the family where all work together Regarding the Pacific conference he said it that man Nono, (Ono) who is trying to get Chin appoint as the Chinese representative, I know that man, I have seen him oftenly, Why he does not know anything, he just does not know anything. The loan which Mr Ono has come to arrange is not ye[t] settled. No I do not think it is settled yet. The Pekin Govt is bad, The Tuchuns are bad. I think Wang [Ching-wei] of Hupei will have to go, but we can not get rid of the system immediately. I think some one will follow Wang and he will be just as bad and after that we may throw it all away. The defeat of Kwangsi make it look as if the system were failing fast. No one would have thought it possible that Lu Yung Ting would fall down as he has done. They thought he was strongly entrenched, but now he is down and out, he wil have to go soon perhaps at once. It looks now as if the Canton Govt would have a chance. Speakig of women in business he said the women of his family in Yangchow run a silk store, They do the ent business of buying and judging themselves as well as administering the shop. It is the best store in Yangchow The rich women like to buy there better than of the men they get better skill and better attention. Yangchow is one of the old rich aristocratic towns above the Yngste on the Pukow R.R. It is famou[s] for good food and effete living. A rich town.6 [Alice Chipman Dewey] |
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| 332 | 1921.07.28 |
Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey family Tsingtau July 28. [1921] Dear Family. Here we are in this historic, not to mention famous, spot. I am trying to write with Dads machine and first it hesistates, then it shimmies and ends up with a long glide at the end. I cant keep up with its speed so dont blame any little inperfections on me. We have a lovely room here on the top of the building looking out over the bay towards the real Tsingtao, which is a little bit of an island with a light house on it. The water is covered with square sailed fishing junks and there are mountains in the background. Its really a lovely place and the Germans hve built a fine city here. The architecture is pure German with broad streets, lots of trees, both in the city and on the hills around. As Papa remarks, its no wonder the Germans are sore for this is in many respects the finest piece f work we have seen in China. Last night the Chamber of Commerce and business men gave us a dinner. And gosh how they hate the Japs. They seem to have really liked the Germans and got along well with them but not so the present possessors. The Germans confined themselves to wholesale business but the Js are gradually driving out the Chinese retailers and small shop keepers. There are thirty thousand Japs here, the figures for the Chinese varies fom fifty to seventy thousand. Its an absolutely Japanese city to appearances, they run most of the shops and sell goods of J manufacture. There are some Chinese stores but they are small and not very numerous. Every one agrees that business is not very good just now and the town seems very dead. I gather its just temporary as those business men said last night that business on the whole was as good as before the war. I am absolutely feeble minded today, the letdown from the constant rush in this damp climate has left me a rag so Ill leave this and write more later. [Lucy Dewey] |
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| 333 | 1921.07.29 |
Letter from Lucy Dewey to Dewey family THE GRAND HOTELS, LIMITED. TSINGTAO, July 29. [1921] I've given up the typewriter as a hopeless job. They took us out the other day to the old German fortification on the point. The Japs didn't do much damage there, only one of the guns had been injured at all. The Japs evidently do not consider the place tenable as they are not doing anything with it and these great guns are all rusting with their machinery. There are new forts up on a hill, higher & farther inland, which our cab drive said are not so large as the Germans. What a beastly thing war is, anyway, it made it all seem very real & vivid to see those fortifications with the shell holes and barbed wire. Yesterday we didn't do much. Mamma has cracked her old broken rib and it bothers her a great deal. She stayed at home quietly all day yesterday to try and rest it and we stayed with her except for a short excursion down-town. She says her rib is some better this morning. Last night Dad & I went to the movies, it was quite an amusing show. This morning I am going out to swim with a girl I knew in Peking who is here for her vacation. It's very misty today—hasn't been really clear since we got here & we may give up the trip to the mountains tomorrow. Mamma is not very keen about it, especially as it involves spending the night and sleeping on board beds with all your ribs is not the most comfortable way to pass a night. If there is no chance for a view I think the whole thing will be given up, probably. I must run along to my swim. This will be continued in our next. [Lucy Dewey] |
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| 334 | 1921.09.28 |
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. |
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| 335 | 1921.10 |
Dewey, John. The tenth anniversary of the Republic of China [ID D28490]. A Message For those who believe in the Chinese people and who also believe in their genuinely democratic character, the Tenth Anniversary of the declaration of the Republic of China is an occasion for both congratulation and sorrow. Congratulation that the country has at least faced toward a goal where its strength, happiness and freedom may be found; regret that the Republic is still so largely only a name, and that under cover of this name autocratic and militaristic forces have won power in China's domestic affairs. If we look at the political condition of the country, either in the nation at large, in most of the provinces or the cities, we have to admit that while the Revolution of ten years ago succeeded in overthrowing the Manchu dynasty, it is not as yet a complete revolution in any positive sense. The revolution as a transfer of power and authority to the people, as a liberation of the common people from a corrupt, despotic and ignorant oligarchy has still for the most part to be accomplished. Nevertheless two years stay in China and visits to capitals of eleven of its provinces have convinced me that the signs of progress are unmistakable. I even believe that many of the things which, taken superficially, are discouraging, in reality mark the stirring of forces which in the next decade are going to accomplish great things for China. I shall not go into detail, but the most impressive single feature of my stay in China was witnessing the sure and rapid growth of an enlightened and progressive public opinion. The power of moral and intellectual force in China is so great that all lovers of China may take heart and courage and have faith that the people are going to win in their great struggle for a Republic which will be one in fact and not merely in name. As one of these lovers of China and as one who has faith in its destiny, I wish to add my humble voice to the many which upon the Tenth of October will acclaim the foundation of China as a Republic. |
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| 336 | 1921.10.03 |
Letter from John Macrae to John Dewey October 3. 1921. Prof. John Dewey, | 2880 Broadway, | New York City. My dear Professor Dewey: I am taking a liberty with a busy and a distinguished man. Your daughter, Miss Evelyn, informs me that you are back in New York; this I take to be official. I read your article in the NEW REPUBLIC on China. You probably have stored in your brain and graven across your heart a good deal of valuable feeling on the subject of China. I should like to publish a book by you on China; and I should like to publish another book by you on your feeling regarding the whole Asiatic and Japanese question,—in fact, I urge you to write such a book and to let me publish it for you. It is good to realize that you are back here, and that you will devote your marvellous gifts to the education of America. With my very kind personal regards, I am Sincerely yours, | [John Macrae] |
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| 337 | 1921.10.10 | John Dewey speaks to the Chinese students clubs of Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and to the Columbia University, New York, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China. |
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| 338 | 1921.10.12 |
Dewey, John. Federalism in China [ID D28491]. The newcomer in China in observing and judging events usually makes the mistake of attaching too much significance to current happenings. Occurrences take place which in the western world would portend important changes—and nothing important results. It is not easy to loosen the habit of years; and so the visitor assumes that an event which is striking to the point of sensationalism must surely be part of a train of events having a definite trend; some deep-laid plan must be behind it. It takes a degree of intellectual patience added to time and experience to make one realize that even when there is a rhythm in events the tempo is so retarded that one must wait a long time to judge what is really going on. Most political events are like daily changes in the weather, fluctuations back and forth which may seriously affect individuals but which taken one by one tell little about the movement of the seasons. Even the occurrences which are due to human intention are usually sporadic and casual, and the observer errs by reading into them too much plot, too comprehensive a scheme, too far-sighted a plan. The aim behind the event is likely to be only some immediate advantage, some direct increase of power, the overthrow of a rival, the grasping at greater wealth by an isolated act, without any consecutive or systematic looking ahead. Foreigners are not the only ones who have erred, however, in judging the Chinese political situation of the last few years. Beginning two years ago, one heard experienced Chinese with political affiliations saying that it was impossible for things to go on as they were for more than three months longer. Some decisive change must occur. Yet outwardly the situation has remained much the same not only for three months but for two years, the exception being the overthrow of the Anfu faction a year ago. And this occurrence hardly marked a definite turn in events, as it was, to a considerable extent, only a shifting of power from the hands of one set of tuchuns to another set. Nevertheless at the risk of becoming a victim of the fallacy which I have been setting forth, I will hazard the remark that the last few months have revealed a definite and enduring trend—that through the diurnal fluctuations of the strife for personal power and wealth a seasonal political change in society is now showing itself. Certain lines of cleavage seem to show themselves, so that through the welter of striking, picturesque, sensational but meaningless events, a definite pattern is revealed. This pattern is indicated by the title of this article—a movement toward the development of a federal form of government. In calling the movement one toward federalism, there is, however, more of a jump into the remote future than circumstances justify. It would be more accurate, as well as more modest, to say that there is a well defined and seemingly permanent trend toward provincial autonomy and local self-government accompanied by a hope and a vague plan that in the future the more or less independent units will recombine into the United or Federated States of China. Some who look far into the future anticipate three stages; the first being the completion of the present secessionist movement; the second the formation of northern and southern confederations respectively; the third a reunion into a single state. To go into the detailed evidence for the existence of a definite and lasting movement of this sort would presume too much on the reader's knowledge of Chinese geography and his acquaintance with specific recent events. I shall confine myself to quite general features of the situation. The first feature is the new phase which has been assumed by the long historic antagonism of the north and the south. Roughly speaking, the revolution which established the republic and overthrew the Manchus represented a victory for the south. But the transformation during the last five years of the nominal republic into a corrupt oligarchy of satraps or military governors or feudal lords has represented a victory for the north. It is a significant fact, symbolically at least, that the most powerful remaining tuchun or military governor in China—in some respects the only powerful one who has survived the vicissitudes of the last few years—namely Chang Tso Lin, is the uncrowned king of the three Manchurian provinces. The so-called civil war of the north and south is not, however, to be understood as a conflict of republicanism located in the south and militarism in the north. Such a notion is directly contrary to facts. The 'civil war' till six or eight months ago was mainly a conflict of military governors and factions, part of that struggle for personal power and wealth which has been going on all over China. But recently events have taken a different course. In four of the southern provinces, tuchuns who seemed all powerful have toppled over, and the provinces have proclaimed or tacitly assumed their independence of both the Peking and the former military Canton governments—the province in which Canton is situated being one of the four. I happened to be in Hunan, the first of the southerly provinces to get comparative independence, last fall, not long after the overthrow of the vicious despot who had ruled the province with the aid of northern troops. For a week a series of meetings were held in Changsha, the capital of the province. The burden of every speech was 'Hunan for the Hunanese'. The slogan embodies the spirit of two powers each aiming at becoming the central authority; it is a conflict of the principle of provincial autonomy, represented by the politically more mature south, with that of militaristic centralization, represented by Peking. As I write, in early September, the immediate issue is obscured by the fight which Wu Pei Fu is waging with the Hunanese who with nominal independence are in aim and interest allied with the south. If, as is likely, Wu Pei Fu wins, he may take one of two courses. He may use his added power to turn against Chang Tso Lin and the northern militarists which will bring him into virtual alliance with the southerners and establish him as the antagonist of the federal principle. This is the course which his earlier record would call for. Or he may yield to the usual official lust for power and money and try once more the Yuan Shih-kai policy of military centralization with himself as head, after trying out conclusions with Chang Tso Lin as his rival. This is the course which the past record of military leaders indicates. But even if Wu Pei Fu follows precedent and goes bad, he will only hasten his own final end. This is not prophecy. It is only a statement of what has uniformly happened in China just at the moment a military leader seemed to have complete power in his grasp. In other words, a victory for Wu Pei Fu may either accelerate or may retard the development of provincial autonomy according to the course he pursues. It cannot permanently prevent or deflect it. The basic factor that makes one sure that this trend toward local autonomy is a reality and not merely one of those meaningless shiftings of power which confuse the observer, is that it is in accord with Chinese temperament, tradition and circumstance. Feudalism is past and gone two thousand years ago, and at no period since has China possessed a working centralized government. The absolute empires which have come and gone in the last two millenniums existed by virtue of non-interference and a religious aura. The latter can never be restored; and every episode of the republic demonstrates that China with its vast and diversified territories, its population of between three hundred and fifty and four hundred million, its multitude of languages and lack of communications, its enormous local attachments sanctified by the family system and ancestral worship, cannot be managed from a single and remote centre. China rests upon a network of local and voluntary associations cemented by custom. This fact has given it its unparalleled stability and its power to progress even under the disturbed political conditions of the past ten years. I sometimes think that Americans with their own traditional contempt for politics and their spontaneous reliance upon self-help and local organization are the only ones who are naturally fitted to understand China's course. The Japanese with their ingrained reliance upon the state have continually misjudged and misacted. The British understand better than we do the significance of local self-government; but they are misled by their reverence for politics so that they cannot readily find or see government when it does not take political form. It is not too much to say that one great cause for the overthrow of the Manchus was the fact that because of the pressure of international relations they attempted to force, especially in fiscal matters, a centralization upon the provinces wholly foreign to the spirit of the people. This created hostility where before there had been indifference. China may possibly not emerge from her troubles a unified nation, any more than a much smaller and less populous Europe emerged from the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire, a single state. Indeed one often wonders, not that China is divided, but that she is not much more broken up than she is. But one thing is certain. Whatever progress China finally succeeds in making will come from a variety of local centres, not from Peking or Canton. It will be effected by means of associations and organizations which even though they assume a political form are not primarily political in nature. Criticisms are passed, especially by foreigners, upon the present trend of events. The criticisms are more than plausible. It is evident that the present weakness of China is due to her divided condition. Hence it is natural to argue that the present movement being one of secession and general disintegration will increase the weakness of the country. It is also evident that many of China's troubles are due to the absence of any efficient administrative system; it is reasonable to argue that China cannot get even railways and universal education without a strong and stable central government. There is no doubt about the facts. It is not surprising that many friends of China deeply deplore the present tendency while some regard it as the final accomplishment of the long predicted breakup of China. But remedies for China's ills based upon ignoring history, psychology and actual conditions are so utopian that it is not worth while to argue whether or not they are theoretically desirable. The remedy of China’s troubles by a strong, centralized government is on a par with curing disease by the expulsion of a devil. The evil is real, but since it is real it cannot be dealt with by trying a method which implies its non-existence. If the devil is really there, he will not be exorcized by a formula. If the trouble is internal, not due to an external demon, the disease can be cured only by using the factors of health and vigor which the patient already possesses. And in China while these factors of recuperation and growth are numerous, they all exist in connection with local organizations and voluntary associations. The increasing volume of the cry that the 'tuchuns must go' comes from the provincial and local interests which have been insulted and violated by a nominally centralized but actually chaotic situation. After this negative work is completed, the constructive rebuilding of China can proceed only by utilizing local interests and abilities. In China the movement will be the opposite of that which occurred in Japan. It will be from the periphery to the centre. Another objection to the present tendency has force especially from the foreign standpoint. As already stated, the efforts of the Manchu dynasty in its latter days to enhance central power were due to international pressure. Foreign nations treated Peking as if it were a capital like London, Paris or Berlin, and in its efforts to meet foreign demands it had to try to become such a centre. The result was disaster. But foreign nations still want to have a single centre which may be held responsible. And subconsciously, if not consciously, this desire is responsible for much of the objection of foreign nationals to the local autonomy movement. They well know that it is going to take a long time to realize the ideal of federation, and meantime where and what is to be the agency responsible for diplomatic relations, the enforcing of in-demnities and the securing of concessions? In one respect the secessionist tendency is dangerous to China herself as well as inconvenient to the powers. It will readily stimulate the desire and ability of foreign nations to interfere in China's domestic affairs. There will be many centres at which to carry on intrigues and from which to get concessions instead of one or two. There is also danger that one foreign nation may line up with one group of provinces, and another foreign nation with another group, so that international friction will increase. Even now some Japanese sources and even such an independent liberal paper as Robert Young's Japan Chronicle are starting or reporting the rumor that the Cantonese experiment is supported by subsidies supplied by American capitalists in the hope of economic concessions. The rumor was invented for a sinister purpose and is persisted in through jealousy. But it illustrates the sort of situation that may come into existence if there are several political centres in China and one foreign nation backs one and another nation, another. The danger is real enough. But it cannot be dealt with by attempting the impossible—namely checking the movement toward local autonomy, even though disintegration may temporarily accompany it. The danger only emphasizes the fundamental fact of the whole Chinese situation; that its essence is time. The evils and troubles of China are real enough, and there is no blinking the fact that they are largely of her own making, due to corruption, inefficiency and absence of popular education. But no one who knows the common people doubts that they will win through if they are given time. And in the concrete this means that they be left alone to work out their own destiny. There will doubtless be proposals at the Pacific Conference to place China under some kind of international tutelage. This article and the events connected with the tendency which it reports will be cited as showing this need. Some of the schemes will spring from motives that are hostile to China. Some will be benevolently conceived in a desire to save China from herself and shorten her period of chaos and confusion. But the hope of the world's peace, as well as of China’s freedom, lies in adhering to a policy of Hands Off. Give China a chance. Give her time. The danger lies in being in a hurry, in impatience, possibly in the desire of America to show that we are a power in international affairs and that we too have a positive foreign policy. And a benevolent policy of supporting China from without, instead of promoting her aspirations from within, may in the end do China about as much harm as a policy conceived in malevolence. |
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| 339 | 1921.11 |
Dewey, John. China and disarmament [ID D28493]. In cordially acceding to the request of the editor of the Chinese Students' Monthly to say a few words about the coming Pacific Conference, I do so more because I am glad of an opportunity to give expression to my interest in China than because I feel I have anything to add to what is already matter of general discussion and knowledge. It is quite clear that the difficulties which will face the Conference are enormous. In the United States as well as in Great Britain and Japan there are those who feel that the limitation of armaments is the most important matter, and that it was an unwise move to complicate that difficulty by introducing the discussion of such a vexed problem as the conflict of international policies in the Far East. There are others (with whom I find myself in sympathy) who regard the adjustment of policies as the fundamental issue, who feel that even a sweeping reduction of armaments will not of itself materially improve international relations although it may relieve the burden of taxation; who feel that if a settlement of policies is attained, the causes of competition in armament will be largely eliminated; and that the growth of peaceful domestic sentiment and opinion in each country will compel retrenchment, when once the grounds for mutual suspicion and fear are done away with. Then there is a large number in every country which looks upon the whole matter with what President Hibben of Princeton has well termed 'cynical pessimism'. Some are influenced by the disillusionment which followed the Versailles peace treaties. They believe that each country is going in to get what it can for itself in the way of aggrandizement, and they have no faith that diplomatists who represent the present political order will accomplish anything constructive. Then there are the economic radicals who believe that the rivalry of powers is the necessary expression of the existing capitalistic system, and that it is absurd to look for any real amelioration as long as capitalism is powerful. This division of public sentiment creates an atmosphere which adds to the difficulties of a successful outcome. I am not writing in this vein, however, to encourage despair, but to suggest one direction in which the Conference may be a success, a direction which it seems to me is of chief importance for China. It is possible that a by-product of the Conference may be more valuable than any direct results which will be obtained. I mean by this a better understanding, a greater knowledge of the conditions which obtain in the Far East. In spite of the fact that the world seems to be suffering from a kind of moral fatigue as a result of the overstrain of the war, I believe that a new social consciousness is gradually forming in every country, a new type of liberal and international thought, and that this new consciousness is going to have more and more influence in shaping the international conduct of every nation. It is not necessary to point out how awakened American public opinion is regarding everything which concerns China as compared with a few years ago. I am not enough of an inflamed patriot to assume that all of this awakening takes a form which is good for my own country or in the long run for China. Some of it, unfortunately, is mainly negative, an accompaniment of rivalry with and fear and suspicion of Japan as a potential rival, economic and naval. But with the mass of the American people, it is the product I think of real interest in the Chinese people, sympathy for them, and a wish that they have an opportunity to work out their own destiny free from that external interference which in the past has been such an unhappy feature of the intercourse of the world's great powers with China. Now this more sensitive feeling about justice for China is not confined to the United States. I believe that it is rapidly growing in England and will become more articulate as soon as the subsidence of war passions permits a revival of political liberalism in Great Britain. In Japan there is a growing section of the population which is uneasy about the past policy of Japan toward China and who wish to bring about its revision. It is still comparatively unorganized and almost impotent against the power of the forces represented by the Imperial General Staff. But the feeling is there and is constantly growing in strength especially in the younger generation. Now one great opportunity presented by the Conference is that of enlightening and to some extent crystallizing this sentiment and opinion in all countries. Even in Japan a favorite phrase in connection with the Conference is the need of laying all the cards on the table. What we may call the educative effect of the Conference, the indirect effect of its discussions in bringing conditions and issues to light, may in the long run outweigh the actual success of the Conference with respect to its direct and avowed aims. I do not say this to minimize the importance of the direct aims nor because I believe that failure is inevitable with respect to them. There are rather two motives for emphasizing this phase of the matter. Other more competent persons will deal with the direct military, naval and political issues, and this educative aspect of the matter may easily be slurred over. And also this phase of the matter is the one, it seems to me, which is the most natural concern of the body of Chinese students and shows where their influence can be most useful in connection with the Conference. The world has had altogether too much propaganda of late, and I should be sorry to write anything which would encourage more of a bad thing. But there is an opportunity for Chinese students to help the world, at least the American part of it, understand better the difficulties and problems of China, internal and foreign, and in a truthful way to develop intelligent sympathy with an international policy of justice toward weak nations in general and China in particular. There are some who think that our new interest in China is because Americans want to displace other nations in order to play a greater part there itself. I hope this isn't true; I do not believe it is true. But if there is any such danger, the Conference provides an opportunity for Chinese students to present the rights of China to its own independent development and self-determination, free from intervention and tutelage which is professedly benevolent as well as free from interference which is openly hostile. |
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| 340 | 1921.11.2, 9 |
Dewey, John. A parting of the ways for America [ID D28492]. I The realities of American policy in China and toward China are going to be more seriously tested in the future than they ever have been in the past. Japanese papers have been full of protests against any attempt by the Pacific Conference to place Japan on trial. Would that American journals were full of warnings that America is on trial at the Conference as to the sincerity and intelligent goodwill behind her amicable professions. The world will not stop with the Pacific Conference; the latter, however important, will not arrest future developments, and the United States will continue to be on trial till she has established by her acts a permanent and definite attitude. For the realities of the situation cannot be exhausted in any formula or in any set of diplomatic agreements, even if the Conference confounds the fears of pessimists and results in a harmonious union of the powers in support of China’s legitimate aspirations for free political and economic growth. The Conference, however, stands as a symbol of the larger situation; and its decisions or lack of them will be a considerable factor in the determination of subsequent events. Sometimes one is obliged to fall back on a trite phrase. We are genuinely at a parting of the ways. Even if we should follow in our old path, there would none the less be a parting of the ways, for we cannot consistently tread the old path unless we are animated by a much more conscious purpose and a more general and intelligent knowledge of affairs than have controlled our activities in the past. The ideas expressed by an English correspondent about the fear that America is soon to be an active source of danger in the Far East are not confined to persons on foreign shores. The prevailing attitude in some circles of American opinion is that called by President Hibben cynical pessimism. All professed radicals and many liberals believe that if our course has been better in the past it has been due to geographical accidents combined with indifference and with our undeveloped economic status. Consequently they believe that since we have now become what is called a world-power and a nation which exports instead of importing capital, our course will soon be as bad as that of any of the rest of them. In some quarters this opinion is clearly an emotional reaction following the disillusionments of Versailles. In others, it is due to adherence to a formula: nothing in international affairs can come out of capitalism and America is emphatically a capitalistic country. Whether or not these feelings are correct, they are not discussable; neither an emotion nor an absolute formula is subject to analysis. But there are specific elements in the situation which give grounds for apprehension as to the future. These specific elements are capable of detection and analysis. An adequate realization of their nature will be a large factor in preventing cynical apprehensions from becoming actual. This article is an attempt at a preliminary listing, inadequate, of course, as any preliminary examination must be. While an a priori argument based on a fatalistic formula as to how a “capitalistic nation” must conduct itself does not appeal to me, there are nevertheless concrete facts which are suggested by that formula. Part of our comparatively better course in China in the past is due to the fact that we have not had the continuous and close alliance between the State Department and big banking interests which is found in the case of foreign powers. No honest well-informed history of developments in China could be written in which the Russian Asiatic Bank, the Foreign Bank of Belgium, the French Indo-China Bank and Banque Industrielle, the Yokohama Specie Bank, the Hongkong-Shanghai Bank, etc., did not figure prominently. These banks work in the closest harmony, not only with railway and construction syndicates and big manufacturing interests at home, but also with their respective foreign offices. It is hardly too much to say that legations and banks have been in most important matters the right and left hands of the same body. American business interests have complained in the past that the American government does not give to American traders abroad the same support that the nationals of other states receive. In the past these complaints have centred largely about actual wrongs suffered or believed to have been suffered by American business undertakings carried on in a foreign country. With the present expansion of capital and of commerce, the same complaints and demands are going to be made not with reference to grievances suffered, but with reference to furthering, to pushing American commercial interests in connection with large banking groups. It would take a credulous person to deny the influence of big business in domestic politics. As we become more interested in commerce and banking enterprises what assurance have we that the alliance will not be transferred to international politics? It should be noted that the policy of the open door as affirmed by the great powers—and as frequently violated by them—even if it be henceforth observed in good faith, does not adequately protect us from this danger. The open door policy is not primarily a policy about China herself but rather about the policies of foreign powers toward one another with respect to China. It demands equality of economic opportunity for different nations. Were it enforced, it would prevent the granting of monopolies to any one nation: there is nothing in it to render impossible a conjoint exploitation of China by foreign powers, an organized monopoly in which each nation has its due share with respect to others. Such an organization might conceivably reduce friction among the great powers, and thereby reduce the danger of future wars—as long as China herself is impotent to go to war. The agreement might conceivably for a considerable time be of benefit to China herself. But it is clear that for the United States to become a partner in any such arrangement would involve a reversal of our historic policy in the Far East. It might be technically consistent with the open door policy, but it would be a violation of the larger sense in which the American people has understood and praised that ideal. He is blind who does not see that there are forces making for such a reversal. And since we are all more or less blind, an opening of our eyes to the danger is one of the conditions of its not being realized. One of the forces which is operative is indicated by the phrase that an international agreement on an economic and financial basis might be of value to China herself. The mere suggestion that such a thing is possible is abhorrent to many, especially to radicals. There seems to be something sinister in it. So it is worth explaining how and why it might be so. In the first place, it would obviously terminate the particularistic grabbing for 'leased' territory, concessions and spheres of influence which has so damaged China. At the present time, the point of this remark lies in its implied reference to Japan, as at one time it might have applied to Russia. Fear of Japan's aims in China is not confined to China; the fear is widespread. An international economic arrangement may therefore be plausibly presented as the easiest and most direct method of relieving China of the Japanese men-ace. For Japan to stay out would be to give herself away; if she came in, it would subject Japanese activities to constant scrutiny and control. There is no doubt that part of the fear of Japan regarding the Pacific Conference is due to a belief that some such arrangement is contemplated. The case is easily capable of such presentation as to make it appeal to Americans who are really friendly to China and who haven't the remotest interest in her economic exploitation. The arrangement would, for example, automatically eliminate the Lansing-Ishii agreement with its embarrassing ambiguous recognition of Japan's special interests in China. The other factor is domestic. The distraction and civil wars of China are commonplaces. So is the power exercised by the military governors and generals. The greater one's knowledge, the more one perceives how intimately the former evil is dependent upon the latter. The financial plight of the Chinese government, its continual foreign borrowings which threaten bankruptcy in the near future, depend upon militaristic domination and wild expenditure for unproductive purposes and squeeze. Without this expense, China would have no great difficulty henceforth in maintaining a balance in her budget. The retardation of public education whose advancement—especially in elementary schools— is China's greatest single need is due to the same cause. So is the growth in official corruption which is rapidly extending into business and private life. In fact, every one of the obstacles to the progress of China is connected with the rule of military factions and their struggles with one another for complete mastery. An economic international agreement among the great powers can be made which would surely reduce and possibly eliminate the greatest evils of 'militarism'. Many liberal Chinese say in private that they would be willing to have a temporary international receivership for government finance, provided they could be assured of its nature and the exact date and conditions of its termination—a proviso which they are sensible enough to recognize would be extremely difficult of attainment. American leadership in forming and executing any such scheme would, they feel, afford the best reassurance as to its nature and terms. Under such circumstances a plausible case can be made out for proposals which, under the guise of traditional American friendship for China, would in fact commit us to a reversal of our historic policy. There are radicals abroad and at home who think that our entrance into a Consortium already proves that we have entered upon the road of reversal and who naturally see in the Pacific Conference the next logical step. I have previously stated my own belief that our State Department proposed the Consortium primarily for political ends, as a means of checking the policy pursued by Japan of making unproductive loans to China in return for which she was getting an immediate grip on China's natural resources and preparing the way for direct administrative and financial control when the day of reckoning and foreclosure should finally come. I also said that the Consortium was between two stools, the financial and the political and that up to the present its chief value had been negative and preventive, and that jealousy or lack of interest by Japan and Great Britain in any constructive policy on the part of the Consortium was likely to maintain the same condition. I have seen no reason thus far to change my mind on this point, nor in regard to the further belief that probably the interests of China in the end will be best served by the continuation of this deterrent function. But the question is bound to arise: why continue the Consortium if it isn't doing anything? The pressure of foreign powers interested in the exploitation of China and of impatient American economic interests may combine to put an end to the present rather otiose existence led by the Consortium. The two stools between which the past action of the American government has managed to swing the Consortium may be united to form a single solid bench. At the risk of being charged with credulous gullibility, or something worse, I add that up to the present time the American phase of the Consortium hasn't shown perceptible signs of becoming a club exercised by American finance over China's economic integrity and independence. I believe the repeated statements of the American representative that he himself and the interests he represents would be glad if China proved her ability to finance her own public utilities without resorting to foreign loans. This belief is confirmed by the first public utterance of the new American minister to China who in his reference to the Consortium laid emphasis upon its deterrent function and upon the stimulation it has given to Chinese bankers to finance public utilities. And it is the merest justice to Mr. Stevens, the American representative, to say that he represents the conservative investment type of banker, not the 'promotion' type, and that thus far his great concern has been the problem of protecting the buyer of such securities as are passed on by the banks to the ultimate investor—so much so that he has aroused criticism from American business interests impatient for speedy action. But there is a larger phase of the Consortium concerning which I think apprehensions may reasonably be entertained. Suppose, if merely by way of hypothesis, that the American government is genuinely interested in China and in making the policy of the open door and Chinese territorial and administrative integrity a reality, not merely a name, and suppose that it is interested in doing so from an American self-interest sufficiently enlightened to perceive that the political and economic advancement of the United States is best furthered by a policy which is identical with China's ability to develop herself freely and independently: what then would be the wise American course? In short, it would be to view our existing European interests and issues (due to the war) and our Far Eastern interests and issues as parts of one and the same problem. If we are actuated by the motive hypothetically imputed to our government and we fail in its realization, the chief reason will be that we regard the European question and the Asiatic problem as two different questions, or because we identify them from the wrong end. Our present financial interest in Europe is enormous. It involves not merely foreign governmental loans but a multitude of private advances and commitments. These financial entanglements affect not merely our industry and commerce but our politics. They involve much more immediately pressing concerns than do our Asiatic relations, and they involve billions where the latter involve millions. The danger under such conditions that our Asiatic relations will be sacrificed to our European is hardly fanciful. To make this abstract statement concrete, the firm of bankers, J- P. Morgan & Co., which is most heavily involved in European indebtedness to the United States, is the firm which is the leading spirit in the Consortium for China. It seems almost inevitable that the Asiatic problem should look like small potatoes in comparison with the European one, especially as our own industrial recuperation is so closely connected with European relations, while the Far East cuts a negligible figure. To my mind the real danger is not that our big financial interests will determine to set out upon selfish exploitation of China: intelligent self-interest, tradition and the fact that our chief asset in China is our past freedom from a predatory course, dictate a course of cooperation with China. The danger is that China will be subordinated and sacrificed because of primary preoccupation with the high finance and politics of Europe, that she will be lost in the shuffle. The European aspect of the problem can be made more concrete by reference to Great Britain in particular. That country suffers from the embarrassment of the Japanese alliance. She has already made it sufficiently clear that she would like to draw America into the alliance, making it tripartite, since that would be the easiest way of maintaining good relations with both Japan and the United States. There is no likelihood that any such step will be consummated. But British diplomacy is experienced and astute. And by force of circumstances our high finance has contracted a sort of economic alliance with Great Britain. There is no wish to claim superior virtue for America or to appeal to the strong current of anti-British sentiment. But the British foreign office exists and operates apart from the tradition of liberalism which has mainly actuated English domestic politics. It stands peculiarly for the Empire side of the British Empire, no matter what Party is in the saddle in domestic affairs. Every resource will be employed to bring about a settlement at the Pacific Conference which, even though it includes some degree of compromise on the part of Great Britain, will bend the Asiatic policy of the United States to the British traditions in the Far East, instead of committing Great Britain to combining with the United States in making a reality of the integrity of China to which both countries are nominally committed. It does not seem an extreme statement to say that the immediate issues of the Conference depend upon the way in which our financial commitments in Europe are treated, either as reasons for our making concessions to European policy or on the other hand as a means of securing an adherence of the European powers to the traditional American policy. A publicist in China who is of British origin and a sincere friend of China remarked in private conversation that if the United States could not secure the adherence of Great Britain to her Asiatic policy by persuasion (he was deploring the Japanese alliance) she might do so by buying it—through remission of her national debt to us. It is not necessary to resort to the measure so baldly suggested. But the remark at least suggests that our involvement in European, especially British, finance and politics may be treated in either of two ways for either of two results. In this article I have set forth as conservatively as possible some of the reasons which seem to justify reasonable apprehension regarding our course at the Conference and in the future. In a further article I shall set forth the reasons for hoping that our ways will not part in this direction, and the main factor that seems to me involved in our deliberate entrance upon a better course. II That the Chinese people, generally speaking, has a less antagonistic feeling towards the United States than towards other powers seems to me an undoubted fact. The feeling has been disturbed at divers times by the treatment of the Chinese upon the Pacific coast, by the exclusion act, by the turning over of our interest in the building of the Peking-Canton (or Hankow) railway to a European group, by the Lansing-Ishii agreement, and finally by the part played by President Wilson in the Versailles decision regarding Shantung. Those disturbances in the main, however, have made them dubious as to our skill, energy and intelligence rather than as to our goodwill. Americans, taken individually and collectively, are to the Chinese—at least such was my impression—a rather simple folk, taking the word in its good and its deprecatory sense. In noting the Chinese reaction to the proposed Pacific Conference, it was interesting to see the combination of an almost unlimited hope that the United States was to lead in protecting them from further aggressions and in rectifying existing evils, with a lack of confidence, a fear that the United States would have something put over on it. Friendly feeling is, of course, mainly based upon a negative fact, the fact that the United States has taken no part in 'leasing' territories, establishing spheres and setting up extra-national postoffices. On the positive side stands the contribution made by Americans to education, especially medical and that of girls and women, and to philanthropy and relief. Politically, there are the early service of Burlingame, the open door policy of John Hay (though failure to maintain it in fact while securing signatures to it on paper has a great deal to do with the Chinese belief in our defective energy) and the part played by the United States in moderating the terms of the settlement of the Boxer outbreak, in addition to a considerable number of minor helpful acts. China also remembers that we were the only nation to take exception to the treaties embodying the Twenty-one Demands. While our exception was chiefly made on the basis of our own interests which these treaties might injuriously affect, a sentiment exists that the protest was a pledge of assistance to China when the time should be opportune for raising the whole question. And without doubt the reservation made on May 16, 1915, by our State Department is a strong card at the forthcoming Conference if the Department wishes to play it. From the American standpoint, the open door principle represents one of the only two established principles of American diplomacy, the other being, of course, the Monroe Doctrine. In connection with sentimental or idealistic associations which have clustered about it, it constitutes us in some vague fashion, in both Chinese and American public opinion, a sort of guardian or at least spokesman of the interests of China in relation to foreign powers. Although, as was pointed out in a former article, the open door policy directly concerns other nations in their relation to China rather than China herself, yet the violation of the policy by other powers has been so frequent and so much to the detriment of China, that American interest, prestige and moral sentiment are now implicated in such an enforcement of it as will redound to the advantage of China. Citizens of other countries are often irritated by a suggestion of such a relationship between the United States and China. It presents itself as a proclamation of superior national virtue under cover of which the United States aims to establish its influence in China at the expense of other countries. The irritation is exasperated by the fact that the situation as it stands is an undoubted economic and political asset of the United States in China. We may concede without argument any contention that the situation is not due to superior virtue but rather to contingencies of history and geography—in which respect it is not unlike many things that pass for virtues with individuals. The contention may be admitted without controversy because it is not pertinent to the main issue. The question is not so much how the state of affairs came about as what it now is, how it is to be treated and what consequences are to flow from it. It is a fact that up to the present the intelligent self-interest of America has coincided with the interests of a stable, independent and progressive China. It is also a fact that American traditions and sentiments have gathered about this consideration so that now there is widespread conviction in the American people of moral obligations of assistance and friendly protection owed by us to China. At present, no policy can be entered upon that does not bear the semblance of fairness and goodwill. We have at least so much protection against the dangers discussed in the prior article. Among Americans in China and presumably at home there is a strong feeling that we should adopt stronger and more positive policies for the future than we have maintained in the past. This feeling seems to me fraught with dangers unless we make very clear to ourselves in just what respects we are to continue and make good our traditional policy in a more positive manner. To some extent our past policy has been one of drifting. Radical change in this respect may go further than appears upon the surface in altering other fundamental aspects of our policy. What is condemned as drifting is in effect largely the same thing that is also praised as non-interference. A detailed settled policy, no matter how 'constructive' it may appear to be, can hardly help involving us in the domestic policies of China, an affair of factions and a game which the Chinese understand and play much better than any foreigners. Such an involvement would at once lessen a present large asset in China, aloofness from internal intrigues and struggles. The specific protests of Chinese in this country—mainly Cantonese—against the Consortium seem to me mainly based on misapprehension. But their general attitude of opposition nevertheless conveys an important lesson. It is based on a belief that the effect of the Consortium will be to give the Peking government a factitious advantage in the internal conflict which is waging in China, so that to all intents and purposes it will mark a taking of sides on our part. It is well remembered that the effect of the 'reorganization' loan of the prior Consortium—in which the United States was not a partner—was to give Yuan Shih-kai the funds which seated him, and the militarist faction after him, firmly in the governmental saddle. Viewing the matter from a larger point of view than that of Canton vs. Peking, the most fundamental objection I heard brought by Chinese against the Consortium was in effect as follows: The republican revolution in China has still to be wrought out; the beginning of ten years ago has been arrested. It remains to fight it out. The inevitable effect of increased foreign financial and economic interest in China, even admitting that its industrial effect was advantageous to China, would be to create an interest in stabilizing China politically, which in effect would mean to sanctify the status quo, and prevent the development of a revolution which cannot be accomplished without internal disorders that would affect foreign investments unfavorably. These considerations are not mentioned for the sake of throwing light on the Consortium: they are cited as an illustration of the probability that a too positive and constructive development of our tradition of goodwill to China would involve us in an interference with Chinese domestic affairs injurious to China's welfare, to that free and independent development in which we profess such interest. But how, it will be asked, are we to protect China from foreign depredations, particularly those of Japan, how are we to change our nominal goodwill into a reality, if we do not enter upon much more positive and detailed policies? If there was in existence at the present time any such thing as a diplomacy of peoples as distinct from a diplomacy of governments, the question would mean something quite different from what it now means. As things now stand the people should profoundly distrust the politicians' love for China. It is too frequently the reverse side of fear and incipient hatred of Japan, colored perhaps by anti-British feeling. There should be no disguising of the situation. The aggressive activities of other nations in China, centring but not exhausted at this time in Japan, are not merely sources of trouble to China but they are potential causes of trouble in our own international relationships. We are committed by our tradition and by the present actualities of the situation to attempt something positive for China as respects her international status. To live up to our responsibility is a most difficult and delicate matter. We have on the one side to avoid getting entangled in quasi-imperialistic European policies in Asia, whether under the guise of altruism, of putting ourselves in a position where we can exercise a more effective supervision of their behavior, or by means of economic expansion. On the other side, we have to avoid drifting into that kind of covert or avowed antagonism to European and Japanese imperialism which will only increase friction, encourage a combination especially of Great Britain and Japan—or of France and Japan—against us, and bring war appreciably nearer. We need to bear in mind that China will not be saved from outside herself. Even if by a successful war we should relieve China from Japanese encroachments, from all encroachments, China would not of necessity be brought nearer her legitimate goal of orderly and prosperous internal development. Apart from the question of how far war can now settle any fundamental issues without begetting others as dangerous, there is the fact that China of all countries is the one where settlement by force, especially by outside force, is least applicable and most likely to be enormously disserviceable. China is used to taking time for her problems: she can neither understand nor profit by the impatient methods of the western world which are profoundly alien to her genius. Moreover, a civilization which is on a continental scale, which is so old that the rest of us are parvenus in comparison, which is thick and closely woven, cannot be hurried in its development without disaster. Transformation from within is its sole way out, and we can best help China by trying to see to it that she gets the time she needs in order to effect this transformation, whether or not we like the particular form it assumes at any particular time. A successful war in behalf of China would leave untouched her problems of education, of factional and sectional forces, of political immaturity showing itself in present incapacity for organization. It would affect her industrial growth undoubtedly, but in all human probability for the worse, increasing the likelihood that she would enter upon an industrialization which would repeat the worst evils of western industrial life without the immunities, resistances and remedial measures which the west has evolved. The imagination cannot conceive a worse crime than fastening western industrialism upon China before she has developed within herself the means of coping with the forces which it would release. The danger is great enough as it is. War waged in China's behalf by western powers and western methods would make the danger practically irresistible. In addition we should gain a permanent interest in China which is likely to be of the most dangerous character to ourselves. If we were not committed by it to future imperialism, we should be luckier than we have any right to hope to be. These things are said against a mental protest to admitting even by implication the prospect of war with Japan, but it seems necessary to say them. These remarks are negative and vague as to our future course. They imply a confession of lack of such wisdom as would enable me to make positive definite proposals. But at least I have confidence in the wisdom and goodwill of the American and other peoples to deal with the problem, if they are only called into action. And the first condition of calling wisdom and goodwill into effective existence is to recognize the seriousness of the problem and the utter futility of trying to force its solution by impatient and hurried methods. Pro-Japanese apologetics is dangerous; it obscures the realities of the situation. An irritated anti-Japanism that would hasten the solution of the Chinese problem merely by attacking Japan is equally fatal to discovering and applying a proper method. More specifically and also more genetically, proper publicity is the greatest need. If, as Secretary Hughes has intimated, a settlement of the problems of the Pacific is made a condition of arriving at an agreement regarding reduction and limitation of armaments, it is likely that the Conference might better never be held. In eagerness to do something which will pass as a settlement, either China's—and Siberia's—interests will be sacrificed in some unfair compromise, or irritation and friction will be increased—and in the end so will armaments. In any literal sense, it is ridiculous to suppose that the problems of the Pacific can be settled in a few weeks, or months—or years. Yet the discussion of the problems, in separation from the question of armament, may be of great use. For it may further that publicity which is a precondition of any genuine settlement. This involves public diplomacy. But it also involves a wider publicity, one which will enlighten the world about the facts of Asia, internal and international. Scepticism about Foreign Offices, as they are at present conducted, is justified. But scepticism about the power of public opinion, if it can be aroused and instructed, to reshape Foreign Office policies means hopelessness about the future of the world. Let everything possible be done to reduce armament, if only to secure a naval holiday on the part of the three great naval powers, and if only for the sake of lessening taxation. Let the Conference on Problems devote itself to discussing and making known as fully and widely as possible the element and scope of those problems, and the fears—or should one call them hopes?—of the cynics will be frustrated. It is not so important that a decision in the American sense of the Yap question be finally and forever arrived at, as it is that the need of China and the Orient in general for freer and fuller communications with the rest of the world be made clear—and so on, down or up the list of agenda. The commercial open door is needed. But the need is greater that the door be opened to light, to knowledge and understanding. If these forces will not create a public opinion which will in time secure a lasting and just settlement of other problems, there is no recourse save despair of civilization. Liberals can do something better than predicting failure and impugning motives. They can work for the opened door of open diplomacy, of continuous and intelligent inquiry, of discussion free from propaganda. To shirk this responsibility on the alleged ground that economic imperialism and organized greed will surely bring the Conference to failure is supine and snobbish. It is one of the factors that may count in leading the United States to take the wrong course in the parting of the ways. |
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Dewey, John. The issues at Washington. III-IV [ID D28494]. III. China's Interest China's relation to the Conference and to the possibility of war is a peculiar one. She is admitted on all hands to be the storm centre. But her share is passive, not active. She breeds trouble by exciting the cupidity of other nations, not by what she herself does. Yet what she is and still more what she isn't, her internal disorganization and inefficiency is such a factor in making her a lure for other nations that it must be reckoned with. There are, so to speak, three Chinas. There is the China which generates friction and antagonism among the nations, the China of international relationships. There is domestic China, torn, distracted, factional, largely corrupt in government. And there is the China of the Chinese people, populous, patient, industrious, self-governing by nonpolitical methods, solid, enduring and persistent beyond the power of the Western imagination to figure, the real China of the past and of the potential future when China is transformed. In objecting to international coordination of finance for railways and mines as a solution of present difficulties, on the ground that it treats China as a patient rather than as an active living force, it is the second and third of these Chinas that are in mind. Mr. Brailsford expressly provides for the first China. He stipulates that she 'must be an active and willing partner' in the arrangements made; that Chinese bankers must share in the syndicate; that she must retain political control of her railways; that provision be made for ultimate reversion of economic ownership and control; that an arbitral tribunal be established to which China can appeal against the 'tremendous power' of syndicated international finance. There is no slighting on Mr. Brailsford's part of the rightful share of China in fixing her international relationships. Why, then, object to his plan? Because, to put it dogmatically and briefly, the worst thing in China, its present political and administrative condition, makes it impossible for China to be an active and willing partner, while the good things in China, her transformation into what she may and should become, make it undesirable—first, for herself and then for the world—that she should be a passive and coerced partner. The interest of China is that she have an opportunity to develop, and to develop in her own way. In my judgment, this is also the interest of the peace of the world, since any peace secured by other means is a temporary truce which only postpones an ultimate explosion. Present domestic internal conditions in China make the formula of China's entrance into an international arrangement as an active and willing partner a barren thing. It is as remote from facts as the formulae of the past about its territorial and administrative integrity. Like them, it is a form of words when realistically confronted with actual conditions. There is danger that, like them, it will become a means by which foreign offices will quiet their consciences and deceive their peoples while predatory activities go on which are harmful to China and in the end productive of new sources of friction among the nations. There is no Government in China capable of speaking for the country, none having jurisdiction, none having the power to execute the conditions of the proposed agreement. It could be carried out only by continual foreign interference in Chinese domestic affairs. It is natural that Chinese, especially those in political life, speaking to foreigners should put the best face possible on her present state. But it is no kindness to China to gloss over the fact that the Government at present recognized by foreign powers is a hollow shell whose jurisdiction hardly extends beyond the walls of Peking. It lacks the confidence and support of the educated and the commercial class, of all bankers except those political bankers who have profited by its corruption and inefficiency. It is largely dominated by self-appointed military provincial governors and generals. This does not mean that foreign powers should recognize and deal with some other Government, such as the Cantonese. At present the latter is more decent and progressive. But its active jurisdiction hardly extends beyond two provinces. It is a fiction due to distance and ignorance which causes many Americans to think that the disturbed condition of China is due simply to a conflict between north and south. The importance of this conflict for China is immensely exaggerated. The fact is that there is a double conflict going on all over China which is independent of the conflict between north and south. One is the factional struggle of a large number of military provincial governors for increased power and revenue. To this are due the tremendous unproductive expenditure for soldiers, the ruling administrative inefficiency, neglect of schools and constant interference with normal commercial development. For legitimate industrial enterprises are now only an invitation to governmental graft and plunder. The other and promising conflict is that of the enlightened class—teachers, students, the more farsighted merchants, the bankers, the convinced republicans—against existing governments, both national and provincial. This movement now finds expression in a desire for local self-government and provincial autonomy. It is a movement based upon recognition of the fact that the revolution of 1911 was abortive, that the republic then established has now become a name, that as respects political administration—though not social and intellectual affairs—the country is now worse off than it was under the Manchus. Its purpose is to change the nominal revolution into a fact. The failure of the hopes entertained in 1911 only makes it the clearer that this transformation will not be accomplished in a day or in a few years. This state of affairs makes it impossible for China to enter as an active partner into any proposed international arrangement for her economic exploitation. Any agreement to which the nominal assent of China is given would involve constant interference in Chinese domestic politics. It would require increasing supervision of her affairs, a supervision which in a crisis could not be made effective without the presence of foreign soldiers. And Japan, be it noted, is the only country near enough to deliver large numbers of soldiers at short notice, and the country in which there would be least popular objection to armed interference in China. Moreover, Japan in such a situation would act as the authorized agent of the powers that had entered into the agreement involving international regulation of China's economic interests. To add that such an arrangement would tend to arrest the normal political development of China from within is perhaps a consideration too disinterested to appeal to any but idealists. But it also enlists American self-interest. If the United States became in the present state of China a partner in any arrangement for international exploitation of China, the effect would be to destroy the greatest asset of America in China—the good will of the Chinese people. The future cannot be predicted. But under certain circumstances the scheme might ultimately throw China into the arms of a Japanese Pan-Asianism, especially if Japan were to show more tact and sense than she has in the past. Linder other circumstances, it might create what would be virtually an offensive and defensive alliance with a restored Russia, or with Russia and Germany. That the proposed arrangement would arrest and distort the normal economic development of China is also a remote and disinterested suggestion. China has so far resisted the rapid introduction of Western industrialism. To most this seems to be a piece of stupid conservative inertia. To a few, it appears to be an expression of a sound instinct to resist the introduction of forces which man has not learned to control and which have caused the exploitation of man by man and brought about bitter class conflict. Educated Chinese have a unanimous and lively sense of the dangers of industrialism. In a vague and ethical sense of the word, they are almost to a man socialistic. If the Chinese are permitted to work out their own economic destiny, it is conceivable that they will evolve some better scheme than that which now troubles Western nations. The natural resources of China in coal and iron have been enormously exaggerated. The capacities of its vast and industrious working population with its habituation to low standards of living have been underestimated. He is a recklessly brave spirit who will take the risks of forcing the pace of the industrialization of China. There is a practical detailed objection to the proposed scheme. It is proposed that various nations should make pro-rata contributions to the syndicated fund. What nations are in condition to do so at the present time? The existing consortium is cited as a beginning in the right direction. So far the consortium has brought good rather than harm to China, barring the implied reservation of Japanese special rights in Manchuria. But so far its action has been negative and preventive. It has stopped national monopolistic loans. One reason for its failure to function in a more positive way has been the inability of England and European countries to export capital, an inability consequent upon the war. They have no desire to see the United States and Japan the active agents in financing China. An enlarged proposition of the same general nature would, in effect, mean that the United States and Japan would mainly supply the funds allotted to other nations. Hence the scheme would work out to give these two countries an economic lead in China. Such an arrangement does not appear calculated to reduce international friction. IV. Suggested Measures Previous articles have been given up to stating some of the conditions in the Far East which produce international friction. Conclusions so far have been chiefly negative. On the one hand, we have China, which moves slowly, which is just beginning her transformation socially and politically. On the other hand, there are acute urgent clashes of interest between Japan and the United States and remoter difficulties between England and the United States. Is it possible to find measures which will both safeguard China’s slow but normal and independent development and also remove the sources of discord among other nations? This seems to me to define the basic problem at Washington. A solution is not easy. It almost reminds one of the old question of what will happen when an irresistible force meets an insurmountable obstacle. The present writer has no cut and dried solution to offer. It does seem possible, however, to indicate the helpful way of approaching the problem. Coordination of action among other nations in respect to the issues of the Far East is a necessity. But there is a wide difference between a coordination of foreign powers which is directed at China and one which is directed toward one another. A solution should be sought which involves the minimum of international supervision and control of China, while it involves the maximum of practicable international supervision and control of individual nations' activities toward China. Let us try out international regulation on one another before we try it out on China. This seems to me the first formula with which to attack the problem of combining justice to China—and Siberia—with lessening of friction between other nations. This general formula translates into the concrete in some such fashion as follows: The Conference should establish a permanent international commission for Far Eastern affairs. In order to secure proper supervision of foreign activities in China without unduly interfering with China itself the Conference should establish a kind of constitution to govern the conduct of the commission. This should cover the following points: 1. All monopolies and monopolistic contracts should be absolutely forbidden. More space than these articles occupy would be required to give a history of monopolistic contracts which in the past have brought friction between other nations and limited the freedom of action of China. The nations should agree that every contract of China for public services and properties should be submitted to the commission, not for confirmation but for rejection if it implies any monopolistic features. 2. All consenting nations should agree to submit to the commission all existing contracts involving governmental action of Chinese governments, national and provincial. They should agree to gradual, if not immediate, cancellation of all monopolies provided for in these contracts, though, of course, this need not involve abandonment of specific works already undertaken. 3. All loans to Chinese governments, national and provincial, should be prohibited which make possible a diversion of Chinese funds to unproductive purposes, including so-called administrative loans. Such loans as are made by nationals of any of the countries entering into the agreement should establish credits to be drawn upon as work is actually done in constructing ports, building railways, developing mines, etc. Why has China given so many concessions and bartered away so many resources in the past? Not wholly because of foreign pressure. Internal corruption and inefficiency have played a part. The ordinary technique is as follows: Some group of Chinese officials needs money, partly for settling accounts, partly for their own pockets. Some foreign concern with banking affiliations offers to loan a certain number of millions, provided they are given a monopolistic concession or provided China will buy some materials, wireless apparatus, airplanes or whatever the foreign concern wishes to dispose of. The loan is not, however, in the form of a credit for the specified purchase. The loan is used to pay current debts and is squandered in 'administration', mostly squeeze. It becomes accordingly another debt to be met when it falls due by a repetition of the same process. If the Conference can take steps absolutely to prevent this sort of operation in the future it will be to the benefit of China, and will also eliminate one source of friction between the lending nations. 4. The commission should make an honest effort to list all Chinese obligations, including indemnities, which are outstanding, with full information regarding their terms. It should then see what can be done in the way of pooling and refunding. At present it is practically impossible in Peking itself to discover just what are the debts and revenues of China, especially the domestic ones. China's ability to avoid bankruptcy and meet its foreign obligations is so great that foreign nations holding Chinese securities are entitled to secure a definite system of auditing and publicity as a precondition of any more foreign loans for any purpose whatever. This involves some supervision of Chinese administrative finance, just as our third provision requires supervision, technological and by auditing, of expenditure on credits established. But it is a supervision for specific purposes that involves no political interference, and it is in the interest of a more honest and intelligent administration of public funds in China. As such, free from all the interference which accompanies present methods, it would be welcomed by intelligent Chinese. 5. There should be provision for the maximum of publicity about public works to be undertaken whether nationally or provincially, and for open bidding. China recently needed some locomotives for the only railway built wholly under Chinese direction and under exclusive Chinese management. The wants were made known and there was free international bidding. As a result, a Belgian firm secured the contract for most of the locomotives, an American firm for the remainder. If this practice could be made universal and compulsory for all purchases of supplies—in connection with the abolition of monopolies and 'preferences'— it would automatically do away with many of the financial practices which now create international friction and which further domestic corruption in China. 6. The consortium, already in existence, forms a nucleus for the commission on the side of finance. It should, however, be freed from its monopolistic features, its limitation to four powers and to select groups of bankers in the four countries. It should also be openly associated with authorized representatives of the governments concerned. There is now a tacit, a disguised alliance between the consortium bankers and their respective governments. It should be made avowed, so that there would be political responsibility and publicity for the bankers' activities. Up to the present the consortium has not been recognized by the Chinese Government, largely because the Government wants unproductive administrative loans which the consortium will not make. Its existence, however, has been the chief factor in stopping loans which meant only the further alienation of Chinese resources. However, the expenses of maintaining a consortium can hardly be kept up indefinitely for the sake of protecting China against the incapacity—and rapacity—-of its own officials. The Governments should assume their share of the expense. Then the consortium might function in a small way as an international syndicate, confining itself, at least until it had been tried out, to minor undertakings, branch railways and those having no strategic or political importance. 7. The Conference should take steps which will result in restoring to China control over her foreign tariffs. Foreign control of Chinese customs was established because of foreign debts and indemnities. It seemed to be the only way—probably it was the only way—by which foreign nations could be assured of repayment of loans and meeting of indemnities. But as a consequence, confirmed by a network of treaties, China cannot now regulate her tariff on imports. Not only that, but the assent of other nations to any change requires unanimity. Any single nation can now block an increase of a tariff which was fixed at 5 per cent ad valorem on an arbitrary basis and is not now over 7 1/2 per cent. The inability of China to increase her national revenues through customs charges is one of the occasions that make her resort to continuous foreign loans. The Conference should by concerted action and by moral or economic pressure on recalcitrant nations remedy this serious abuse. The suggested program will meet with two opposite objections. It will be regarded as too modest, as failing in constructive sweep. It will also be regarded as going too far, impracticable, involving too much surrender of vested interests by foreign nations, especially by Japan. For it implies a surrender of her claims to 'special' interests in China. There is no space to argue the whole matter. But it may be pointed out that action on these or similar concrete proposals is a test of the sincerity of the loud profession of the nations regarding their supreme hope for peace. Japan's economic interests, however it may be with her political, lie in establishing good relations with the Chinese people. At present her industrialists say they are compelled to employ courses which they would prefer not to use in getting hold of raw materials, etc., because of the corruption of provincial officials. Put the whole matter of purchases aboveboard and she would have the advantages of proximity and would not need to resort to measures which give her possession of materials only at the expense of irritating and alienating Chinese and making her an object of suspicion to the rest of the world. The United States ought also to assist in guaranteeing Japan direct access to oil supplies for industrial purposes, even if that means Mexico. It needs to be borne in mind that general advantage to traders and industrialists as distinct from profit to small groups of concessionaires and bankers depends wholly upon an increase of purchasing power by the Chinese people. China as she now stands isn’t a market that ranks high; it is not worth the fuss made over it. Give her a chance to develop herself and she will become a great market for regular peaceful trade, in which Japan has many natural advantages. It cannot be stated too often that the essence of the Chinese question is time. The West and Japan are in too much of a hurry. The war has increased impatience till the world is almost in a state of hysteria about the Far East. Such measures as are indicated, even though they are largely negative, will secure a breathing space. During this period the world can recover from the shock to its nerves and regain sanity. There will be opportunity for further needed measures to reveal themselves, and in a normal way. Put a stop to the piecemeal partition of China and the alienation of its resources from without; put a stop to the building of warships and the problems of the Far East will gradually present themselves in a proper perspective. It will not then be many years before the world will be able to look back with a smile at its state of alarm over the problems of the Pacific in 1921. Fail to do these things, and the small causes of friction will go on accumulating and present fears will be realized. After the catastrophe men will realize how little was actually at stake in comparison with the evil done and how a moderate amount of prevision and good-will might have prevented the conflagration. |
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| 342 | 1921.11.18 |
Dewey, John. Shrewd tactics are shown in Chinese plea [ID D28495]. The Chinese proposals are both shrewd and wise. It was good tactics for the Chinese delegates to present their own case instead of having it first presented by either the United States or Japan, thus saving the susceptibilities of both Oriental countries. It was shrewd to conceive the 10 points in broad fundamental terms. No nation can object to points 1 and 2, for example, regarding the territorial integrity and political independence of China and regarding the open door. All nations have repeatedly put their assent on paper. But the formal reassertions by all nations at this time of joint conclave puts China in a position of vantage in calling attention to the specific points in which prior agreements have been violated. It was shrewd not to make demands too immediate and to allow for compromise in time of execution, as for example, in Point 5, regarding removal of limitations on China's present freedom of action. It would not be of advantage to China itself to have an immediate abolition of extra-territorial rights nor to have the customs administrations turned over to her out of hand. She is entitled, however, to know the conditions under which these things will be done so she can have assurance that at a definite time in the future these things will be done, provided she takes certain specified steps. Point 3 is a shrewd way of approaching the Anglo-Japanese alliance and the Lansing-Ishii agreement, both of which concern China and in neither of which was she consulted. The proposition that she be notified of all engagements affecting her and be given a chance to share is so reasonable that a nation which declines to give assent at once puts itself under suspicion. Wisdom, as distinct from good tactics, centres to my mind in Point 4, to which 6 and 7 are auxiliary, and 10, to which presumably g is auxiliary. For 'provisions for a peaceful settlement of international disputes' is mere Pickwickian verbiage, without provision for future conferences. Neither provision can be carried into effect without something which, in fact if not name, will be a permanent committee of reference and arbitration in which China will sit as a partner and not as a victim. Point 4 contains the teeth of the document. It is a bold and just move to demand that all commitments, special rights, privileges, etc., be made public under the penalty of otherwise being voided, and that they and those already public be examined with reference to their validity and harmony with one another, and that they be construed strictly in favor of the grantor. These clauses go to the root of the matter. They will bring to light all of China's grievances against Japan in particular and other nations in general. They make open diplomacy a reality. They abolish that atmosphere of secrecy and intrigue which has been China's greatest enemy within as well as without. It is a bold move, because if this point is accepted and full publicity follows it will expose something of China’s own weakness and official corruption as well as the cupidity and intrigues of other nations. It is a guarantee of better internal government in China as well as a safeguard against other nations. It undoubtedly goes much further than appears on the surface. Nothing is said about the 21 demands. But it is impossible to harmonize some of the clauses of the treaties based on these demands with other commitments which China has made with other nations. The question of their validity brings up the state of duress under which the treaties were signed, an ultimatum with virtual threat of war. Nothing is said about Shantung. But so far as China’s consent is concerned the occupation of Shantung rests upon the 21 demands, while it also is in conflict with the terms of China's treaty with Germany, which made German leases and privileges inalienable to any third nation. Any nation which openly objects to articles 4, 6 and 7 at once comes under suspicion of harboring unfair designs. To give assent means rectification of some of the worst wrongs from which China suffers. The more one studies these articles in the light of past events the more far-reaching they are seen to be. The danger is that they will be accepted 'in principle' and then whittled down in fact. Coming to lesser points the Associated Press has reported that Point 8 is the one which most puzzles Japanese circles. Considering the point declares that China's rights as a neutral are to be fully respected in all future wars, and considering that Japan's wars with Russia and Germany were both fought in violation of Chinese neutrality, this puzzlement is not easy to understand. It becomes a little ominous in view of the accompanying suggestion that the point may mean that the powers guarantee China’s neutrality, reducing her to a Belgium, and that its enforcement along with other points goes back to a question of China's internal order and governmental unity. It is too early to predict, but it looks as if Japanese policy were going to be an expression of general sympathy with China’s aims, while laying emphasis upon her lack of internal unity, her so-called chaos, and the argument that in order to secure an eventual realization of China's aims and aspirations she must be put for a period under some kind of international tutelage. In the latter case, Japan would become in virtue of propinquity the actual guardian and trustee in behalf of the powers. In that case Japan will have gained her point as regards China plus the blessing of the powers. |
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| 343 | 1921.11.23 |
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. |
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| 344 | 1921.11.29 |
Dewey, John. Underground burrows [ID D28609]. Ever since the Conference was called I have believed that in the end publicity would be more important than the particular decisions reached. We are at a point where the chief guarantees for the peace and security of the world are found in the trust of the nations in one another’s good faith and good will. Publicity is the way to develop mutual trust. Nations who have no sinister plans have everything to gain from making their attitude known; nations with predatory policies are best restrained by the knowledge that their operations are subject to exposure and general discussion. Publicity means, of course, the utmost possible in the way of open diplomacy. But it also means an education of the public so that it will be immune against dishonest propaganda and reasonably intelligent in passing judgment on events as they happen. Coming to Washington for a few days with this prepossession in mind, my first concern was naturally to try to get an idea of the atmosphere. I wanted to know how much ventilation and circulation there was, whether things were stifling and close or open and relaxed. Thanksgiving was a critical time. At the beginning of the Conference the American eagle had made a great flight in the open. No one had expected so much frankness; having had a good taste of it, we all hoped for as much candid publicity in the discussion of Far Eastern issues. But it didn’t come. The American eagle seemed to be idly perched on a tree half asleep, while moles and woodchucks were burrowing underground and rabbits scurrying for cover. Two of the European nations at the Conference were accusing France of insincere statements and a desire to promote her own advantage, even if it wrecked the Conference. It was reported that the Chinese so resented the interpretation put by British delegates objected to even the measure of publicity involved in keeping records of meetings; that the Chinese delegation was losing the support of Chinese unofficial representatives because they were dickering privately with the Japanese over Shantung; that the British were saying nothing and lying low; that the Japanese after saying at first that a 50 per cent, navy was adequate for defensive purposes were holding out for 70 per cent.; that the Root principles were meant to refer only to the future and out of deference to Japanese and British susceptibilities would consolidate the status quo—and so on and so on. In short, there was an unmistakable atmosphere of nervousness; there was an air of distrust. The nervousness and distrust were associated with shutting down on the publicity that accompanied the naval proposals. The latter days of the week brought official denials of a number of the rumors mentioned above. There followed an unmistakable letting down of the tension of the previous days. Some of the reports, however, were not denied; they were confirmed. Out of the combination of denials and confirmations there formed in my mind a picture of the situation which I give for what it may be worth. As compared with the earlier days, there is an absence of disclosures on important topics. The public has no such clear and authorized idea of the position of the various nations on Far Eastern issues as it has on their attitude toward naval reductions. This, however, is not so much because important events going on behind the scenes are kept from the public as because the leading nations are hesitating from bringing up any issue which is so important that to talk about it would result in committing the nation and giving away its position. If there weren't so much public publicity there might be, so to speak, more private, more diplomatic, publicity. As it is, the nations seem to feel that they are approaching a mined field. No one wishes to step on it first for fear of the resulting explosion. Each delegation is rather waiting in hopes that some other delegation is going to make a false move which will redound to its own advantage. This means in effect that there are a series of committee meetings, occupied in part in reducing to stated form decisions already reached and in part with discussion of minor points, minor comparatively speaking. Extra-territoriality, postoffices and customs are not exactly minor points for China, the last in particular. But they are much less explosive than the 21 demands and Manchuria, or than Shantung. For it seems likely that the Chinese could get large concessions about the latter if they were willing to join other nations in admitting Japan's special rights and privileges in Manchuria and Mongolia. The present disposition seems to be to assist China in getting what she can on minor points, lest raising the bigger points would result in a breakup and China would depart having gained nothing. This phase of diplomacy was probably inevitable. It denotes some marking time and some deploying to sound other nations out, and to discover a policy by which each nation can later justify itself, in case nothing significant is done about the Far East. The Conference is entitled to breathing spells, especially when during them routine business is accomplished. But they cannot last indefinitely. The dangerous questions exist and they must be faced. The most important of all the issues of the Conference is still in suspense. When the 21 demands, Manchuria, Shantung and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance are dealt with is it to be in the light of open and avowed statements of the respective positions of Japan, Great Britain and the United States? Or are the main issues to be lost in a fog of irrelevant issues, pious generalities, evasions, dickerings, private understandings? The United States appears committed by a high authority to the former alternative. The next best thing to getting results is for the public of all countries to know just why they were not got and who has stood in the way and why. It is not too much to say that the failure or success of United States policies now depends upon their being backed up by an adequate demand for publicity on the part of all nations. Underground burrows have got to be dug open. Meantime Great Britain, to my mind, is the sphinx. I have found no one who professes to know exactly where she stands on any specific issue. Speaking for myself alone, I shall judge the probable outcome of the Conference by watching to see whether in the next week or two she breaks her sphinxlike silence. We know in general what the United States and China want. We know what Japan would like, although we do not know just what she would be willing to accept. It seems to be Great Britain's turn to come forward and tell what she wants. Opportunism is well enough under some circumstances. An excess of opportunism on the part of the British may spoil the Conference. |
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| 345 | 1921.12.05 |
Dewey, John. Angles of Shantung question [ID D28497]. Mathematicians sometimes treat a circle as a series of a great number of straight lines. As the angles increase, you get a circular effect. When they are infinite you get it all rounded off. So with a sphere. You start with a solid having many projecting angles, and finally get a ball which will roll. This is one way to see the Shantung question. There are plenty of angles. Can they be smoothed down till you get a smooth surface? If so, which way will the ball roll, toward China or toward Japan? The number of projecting angles make the issue thorny to the touch. They also make it difficult to judge the meaning and outcome of the discussions going on. They make it hard to tell what the object was in referring the matter to conversations between China and Japan, and who is to profit thereby. Only the insiders know, and it may be doubted whether they are any too sure, although they have their hopes. It is worth while, however, to point out some of the angles. Supposing the Senate had ratified the Versailles treaty. Our State Department would then hardly be in a position to request the Conference to take up the Chinese side of the Shantung question. Great Britain and France ratified, and, previous to ratification, had secret treaties with Japan operating adversely to China's claims. They must both be anxious to leave the trouble which they have had a share in creating to be settled between Japan and China. They don't want to admit they were wrong, and in view of the attitude of China and the United States they would be embarrassed at having openly to defend their past actions. Moreover, Great Britain has an alliance with Japan. She is hardly likely to go into a general conference and back China against her own ally. But, on the other hand, Great Britain wants to assure Americans that she is on the side of the United States and that the alliance was and never could be used against American policies. The obvious moral is to sidestep the issue. Let the Chinese and Japanese settle their own little family dispute between themselves. France is in even a more delicate position to question the Shantung clause of the Versailles treaty which would open the way to question other clauses. Any one who has read anything from French sources knows just how likely the French are to do anything which would create a precedent for opening up the Versailles treaty. One can guess what the United States angle is. The State Department knows the positions of France and Great Britain. It can use its friendly offices with China to suggest that under the circumstances China may well consider whether she is not likely to get more by direct negotiations with Japan than by bringing up the matter where she is likely to meet with additional opposition. Also the Administration wants the Conference to succeed. The Shantung question might wreck the Conference. It might displace the naval question in importance. Again the same lesson. Try a little direct talk between China and Japan with Balfour present as the official friend of Japan and Hughes as the unofficial friend of China. Where is the Chinese angle? China is anxious to recover Shantung. Japan has repeatedly asserted her desire to return Shantung in full political sovereignty, 'retaining only those economic privileges granted to Germany'. Japan has several times offered to enter into direct negotiations with China, in order, so she explains, that she may carry her promise into effect. But China obstinately declines. A remarkable situation to all appearances! China refuses to accept what she most wants when her neighbor self-sacrificingly offers it to her. It is so remarkable that there is clearly something below the surface. The Chinese hold that there is nothing to negotiate about, any more than Great Britain and France needed to negotiate with Belgium about the return of Belgium to Belgium when the Germans were expelled. They point out that the original treaty with Germany expressly disclaimed any political rights for Germany, as well as forbade any alienation of her concessions to another power. What, then, does Japan mean by offering to return political rights which she has not got, retaining 'only' everything she has got? Again, past experience has taught the Chinese that in China economic rights, when they include mines, railways and a port, become in practice something that looks and acts astonishingly like political control. And they know that during and after the war Japan carried this transformation scene much beyond anything which Germany had ever attempted. There is another Chinese angle. The Chinese are shrewd diplomats and the world's best bargainers. But in large matters they trust to the working of moral forces rather than to legal and formal arrangements based on a bargain. The educated liberals of China looked forward to the Conference mainly as an opportunity for China to make known to the world her national sentiments, aspirations and wrongs. This purpose can be realized only by a submission of the Shantung question to the entire Conference with a maximum of open diplomacy. Their desire is shocked by the arrangement which has been entered into. The shock accounts for the active opposition of non-official Chinese in Washington and elsewhere to direct conversations between China and Japan. They feel they are being cheated of their greatest opportunity. Probably they would prefer to let the Shantung question stay just as it is for a time, if their position could be made known to the whole world, rather than to get three-quarters of what they want, leaving Japan in control of the other quarter, especially if the settlement were made on the side. Meantime, there is the probability that the angles won't be smoothed off It is well to scrutinize and remember the exact language officially used. There are no negotiations, there are 'conversations'. The Chinese at least are quite a conversational people. There is nothing said about a settlement, but only about 'looking to a settlement'. There is no harm in looking. The Chinese will probably have their chance at publicity later, and then others will also have a chance to look and see what there is to see. |
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| 346 | 1921.12.07 |
Dewey, John. The Conference and a happy ending [ID D28610]. If the American people are going to bring an enlightened public opinion to bear on the Conference, we need more sob sisters and fewer joy brothers to report the Conference. The nations and diplomats who are interested in maintaining the status quo in the Far East have everything to gain by spreading a Pollyanna atmosphere over the doings of the Conference. Foreign diplomats are well aware of American national psychology. They know our sentimental optimistic streak and our desire to feel that we are playing a great part in promoting the idealistic welfare of the world. They know that when all is said and done, it is going to be important to the Washington administration to have the American people believe that American policies have won out as regards the Far East, and that it is essential to the administration to secure results as to navies. These things are among the best cards held by foreign diplomats. A disposition of the American public to put the best face possible on everything done by the Conference is one of the surest ways to help some of the worst things happen or at least to fail to get done some of the possible good things. Matters have reached, as this is written, the point where it is much more important to note what isn't done and said than what is said, because the former decides the meaning of the latter. The obvious exception is in the case of the reduction of armaments, where there are specific, statistical conditions to keep track of, not such generalities as are being fed to the public as regards the Far East. I suggest three matters, one for the United States, one for Great Britain and one for Japan, which will bear watching. What happens with reference to them will give a fair test for the reader of the daily news to apply to the outgivings from Washington, and will give him a means by which he can decide which way things are really going. Everything that has so far occurred bears out the original in-formation as to the general instructions under which the Japanese delegates were to operate. The information was that Japan was to favor in a hearty and sincere manner the reduction of armaments, provided that it was confined to the navy and applied in fair ratio to the three great powers; but was to discourage, so far as possible, the discussion of Far Eastern policies and secure postponement if some action threatened. It was also understood that she would put emphasis upon the disorganized state of China—as of course she is entitled to do up to a certain point— and insist that if anything was done about China it would require a political concert of the powers with a supervisory control of China to make sure of execution. The point of the latter policy is obvious. If it is accepted, Japan becomes, because of inevitable geographical facts, the trustee of the powers for China. If it fails, Japan can throw the blame upon others, especially upon the United States. She will say in effect that after talking as usual a great deal about her interest in China, the United States as usual failed to come to the point when it was a matter of doing something. It does not take much ingenuity to see that her policy may be to shape things so that there will be but two alternatives; one, doing nothing, leaving the status quo with all its advantages for Japan; the other, forcing to the front a plan for joint action which the United States will reject. Of course this policy does not preclude a number of incidental concessions which the Sino-Japanese relations call for anyway, and which a happy and hopeful American public will greet as victories for American policies. Admiral Kato helped create the wave of indiscriminate optimism by his prompt assent to the Hughes proposals. It was heralded to the American people as a wonderful concession to the United States, and accepted as such by those who had been taught that Japan was always a militaristic nation and who do not know the pressure she is under from the burden of naval expense, nor how small a navy actually suffices Japan for defensive purposes or even for offensive aims under the generous conditions of American reduction proposed by Hughes. Probably Japan got more than she had hoped for. There is nothing to object to in this fact. It is in the interest of the world as well as of Japan that the plan should be adopted. The significant thing is that publicity began to pour forth that Japan needed an 8 or at least 7 ratio to 10-10, instead of a 3-5-5 ratio. There is no unworthy suspicion of Japan attaching to the supposition that this is a mask for some real aim, and that what she is not talking about is more important than what she is loudly saying. It is no secret to Japan that American public opinion is much more active and informed on the subject of armaments than it is on the Far East. It is no secret to her that the administration has a great deal politically at stake in the success of the reduction of armament part of the Conference. It is no secret that while there is a good disposition toward China there is no absorbing interest nor exacting judgment as to what happens. It is possible that at the proper time Japan will reluctantly concede in the matter of naval armaments substantially what is asked of her, out of regard for her good friend, the United States, and her regard for the peace of the world—the proper time being gauged by the state of negotiations concerning China. Or she may stiffen up and imperil the success of limitation of armaments unless things go her way as to China. The gush about Briand and the French necessities for land armament must have been highly pleasing to Japan. It practically disposed of any chance for consideration that the question of reduction of soldiery and abolition of conscription may ever have had. Those who were in Japan at the time of the Versailles Peace Conference know the one thing which made a great popular impression. It was erroneously reported at one time that the abolition of conscription had been decided upon. It was several days before the error was corrected. It is impossible to imagine the extent of official consternation and the amount of popular satisfaction during this short period. The Japanese are a very patriotic people. But if anyone believes they are in love with compulsory military service, the enormous sigh of relief that greeted the false report was the lesson of a lifetime. The optimistic American outburst of sentiment that met the eloquence of Briand would perhaps have been dampened if it had been realized that if there had been a definite understanding between the French and Japanese, the French position is just the one that Japan would have asked France to take, so that Japan might be relieved of the burden of defending her system of conscription and her huge army. The optimists of the press also report Great Britain backing the American policy as to China. At the same time, it is reported that she insists upon keeping the Anglo-Japanese alliance. One set of newspaper headlines says 'Britain backing China and America but insists on entente with Japan'. This is much like saying that Britain wants white but insists upon black. The 'entente' means the alliance, although enlarged to take in the United States if possible. And the alliance is just the thing, so far as the Far East is concerned, which stands between Great Britain on the one hand and China and the United States on the other. But from all sources, even from far New Zealand, come in just the nick of time reports as to the necessity of continuing the alliance, with the United States if possible, without us if necessary. It doesn't show undue suspicion of Great Britain to ask what is the concealed aim, what is Great Britain really after. She knows well enough that the United States will not come into a tripartite agreement, that the Senate would not ratify it, even if the American diplomats agreed—which they know the Senate and American opinion too well to do. It is also familiar to them that in all human probability Canada stands ready to repudiate the dual alliance if it is renewed, and that opinion in England itself is so rapidly crystallizing against it that the power of the Foreign Office to renew it is uncertain. Why didn't Great Britain renew when the stage was all set, and when there was much less opposition at home than there is now, if her heart is so unalterably fixed? This talk is obviously trading talk, or aimed at some as yet unavowed point. Is it to back up Japan’s policy at a critical moment on the ground that the United States declines to enter into the only arrangement which is practicable? Quite likely not, but what then? There is a desire to create some situation which will bring pressure on the United States in some direction. As for the United States’s policy so far as revealed, the test question is whether Mr. Root’s four points are meant to sanction the status quo in China. If events as they continue to develop show that such is their main intent, then we may be sure that the administration in order to secure itself politically with the American people, is willing to bargain with Japan and Great Britain at the expense of China. There has been a cryptic intimation that the recognition of China’s sovereignty by these Root principles is equivalent to enforcing against her all the treaties and commitments which she has signed—for otherwise China would not be sovereign in her treaty-making power! This ingenious device is worthy of that type of American legal mind which has found that it is interference with the liberty of the American workingman to do anything to place him in a secure position of freedom. But it is almost inconceivable—unfortunately not quite—that the problems of the Far East should be approached in this spirit. Of course it is something to improve China’s condition for the future. But the forces which are operating because of the things that have been done in the past will not stop operating because a Conference of powers in Washington decides that such and such things shall be done in the future. The only successful way to regulate the future is by dealing with conditions that now exist. Diplomats are wont to square the circle and perform other impossibilities. To consecrate the status quo in China and then to resolve that things shall be done differently in the future is another of these miracles of diplomacy. Is the American press going to feed that portion of the American public which requires a happy ending to every novel and drama? Or is it going to take the risk of offending American sentiment and pride by ceasing to proclaim every move as a great advance, and every remark of a foreign diplomat as a tribute to American success, and a reason for swelling American pride? The danger is the greater because our vanity got such a terrible prick at Versailles—a wound that had much to do with our withdrawal into our shell. Now that we have put our heads out again, we are looking for solace and compensation. There are foreign diplomats skilled enough to salve our wounds while they achieve in fact their own ends. If we are not too much inclined to spend our energy in gladsome cheering, we are more likely to attain that Dewey, John. The Conference and a happy ending [ID D28610]. If the American people are going to bring an enlightened public opinion to bear on the Conference, we need more sob sisters and fewer joy brothers to report the Conference. The nations and diplomats who are interested in maintaining the status quo in the Far East have everything to gain by spreading a Pollyanna atmosphere over the doings of the Conference. Foreign diplomats are well aware of American national psychology. They know our sentimental optimistic streak and our desire to feel that we are playing a great part in promoting the idealistic welfare of the world. They know that when all is said and done, it is going to be important to the Washington administration to have the American people believe that American policies have won out as regards the Far East, and that it is essential to the administration to secure results as to navies. These things are among the best cards held by foreign diplomats. A disposition of the American public to put the best face possible on everything done by the Conference is one of the surest ways to help some of the worst things happen or at least to fail to get done some of the possible good things. Matters have reached, as this is written, the point where it is much more important to note what isn't done and said than what is said, because the former decides the meaning of the latter. The obvious exception is in the case of the reduction of armaments, where there are specific, statistical conditions to keep track of, not such generalities as are being fed to the public as regards the Far East. I suggest three matters, one for the United States, one for Great Britain and one for Japan, which will bear watching. What happens with reference to them will give a fair test for the reader of the daily news to apply to the outgivings from Washington, and will give him a means by which he can decide which way things are really going. Everything that has so far occurred bears out the original in-formation as to the general instructions under which the Japanese delegates were to operate. The information was that Japan was to favor in a hearty and sincere manner the reduction of armaments, provided that it was confined to the navy and applied in fair ratio to the three great powers; but was to discourage, so far as possible, the discussion of Far Eastern policies and secure postponement if some action threatened. It was also understood that she would put emphasis upon the disorganized state of China—as of course she is entitled to do up to a certain point— and insist that if anything was done about China it would require a political concert of the powers with a supervisory control of China to make sure of execution. The point of the latter policy is obvious. If it is accepted, Japan becomes, because of inevitable geographical facts, the trustee of the powers for China. If it fails, Japan can throw the blame upon others, especially upon the United States. She will say in effect that after talking as usual a great deal about her interest in China, the United States as usual failed to come to the point when it was a matter of doing something. It does not take much ingenuity to see that her policy may be to shape things so that there will be but two alternatives; one, doing nothing, leaving the status quo with all its advantages for Japan; the other, forcing to the front a plan for joint action which the United States will reject. Of course this policy does not preclude a number of incidental concessions which the Sino-Japanese relations call for anyway, and which a happy and hopeful American public will greet as victories for American policies. Admiral Kato helped create the wave of indiscriminate optimism by his prompt assent to the Hughes proposals. It was heralded to the American people as a wonderful concession to the United States, and accepted as such by those who had been taught that Japan was always a militaristic nation and who do not know the pressure she is under from the burden of naval expense, nor how small a navy actually suffices Japan for defensive purposes or even for offensive aims under the generous conditions of American reduction proposed by Hughes. Probably Japan got more than she had hoped for. There is nothing to object to in this fact. It is in the interest of the world as well as of Japan that the plan should be adopted. The significant thing is that publicity began to pour forth that Japan needed an 8 or at least 7 ratio to 10-10, instead of a 3-5-5 ratio. There is no unworthy suspicion of Japan attaching to the supposition that this is a mask for some real aim, and that what she is not talking about is more important than what she is loudly saying. It is no secret to Japan that American public opinion is much more active and informed on the subject of armaments than it is on the Far East. It is no secret to her that the administration has a great deal politically at stake in the success of the reduction of armament part of the Conference. It is no secret that while there is a good disposition toward China there is no absorbing interest nor exacting judgment as to what happens. It is possible that at the proper time Japan will reluctantly concede in the matter of naval armaments substantially what is asked of her, out of regard for her good friend, the United States, and her regard for the peace of the world—the proper time being gauged by the state of negotiations concerning China. Or she may stiffen up and imperil the success of limitation of armaments unless things go her way as to China. The gush about Briand and the French necessities for land armament must have been highly pleasing to Japan. It practically disposed of any chance for consideration that the question of reduction of soldiery and abolition of conscription may ever have had. Those who were in Japan at the time of the Versailles Peace Conference know the one thing which made a great popular impression. It was erroneously reported at one time that the abolition of conscription had been decided upon. It was several days before the error was corrected. It is impossible to imagine the extent of official consternation and the amount of popular satisfaction during this short period. The Japanese are a very patriotic people. But if anyone believes they are in love with compulsory military service, the enormous sigh of relief that greeted the false report was the lesson of a lifetime. The optimistic American outburst of sentiment that met the eloquence of Briand would perhaps have been dampened if it had been realized that if there had been a definite understanding between the French and Japanese, the French position is just the one that Japan would have asked France to take, so that Japan might be relieved of the burden of defending her system of conscription and her huge army. The optimists of the press also report Great Britain backing the American policy as to China. At the same time, it is reported that she insists upon keeping the Anglo-Japanese alliance. One set of newspaper headlines says 'Britain backing China and America but insists on entente with Japan'. This is much like saying that Britain wants white but insists upon black. The 'entente' means the alliance, although enlarged to take in the United States if possible. And the alliance is just the thing, so far as the Far East is concerned, which stands between Great Britain on the one hand and China and the United States on the other. But from all sources, even from far New Zealand, come in just the nick of time reports as to the necessity of continuing the alliance, with the United States if possible, without us if necessary. It doesn't show undue suspicion of Great Britain to ask what is the concealed aim, what is Great Britain really after. She knows well enough that the United States will not come into a tripartite agreement, that the Senate would not ratify it, even if the American diplomats agreed—which they know the Senate and American opinion too well to do. It is also familiar to them that in all human probability Canada stands ready to repudiate the dual alliance if it is renewed, and that opinion in England itself is so rapidly crystallizing against it that the power of the Foreign Office to renew it is uncertain. Why didn't Great Britain renew when the stage was all set, and when there was much less opposition at home than there is now, if her heart is so unalterably fixed? This talk is obviously trading talk, or aimed at some as yet unavowed point. Is it to back up Japan’s policy at a critical moment on the ground that the United States declines to enter into the only arrangement which is practicable? Quite likely not, but what then? There is a desire to create some situation which will bring pressure on the United States in some direction. As for the United States’s policy so far as revealed, the test question is whether Mr. Root’s four points are meant to sanction the status quo in China. If events as they continue to develop show that such is their main intent, then we may be sure that the administration in order to secure itself politically with the American people, is willing to bargain with Japan and Great Britain at the expense of China. There has been a cryptic intimation that the recognition of China’s sovereignty by these Root principles is equivalent to enforcing against her all the treaties and commitments which she has signed—for otherwise China would not be sovereign in her treaty-making power! This ingenious device is worthy of that type of American legal mind which has found that it is interference with the liberty of the American workingman to do anything to place him in a secure position of freedom. But it is almost inconceivable—unfortunately not quite—that the problems of the Far East should be approached in this spirit. Of course it is something to improve China’s condition for the future. But the forces which are operating because of the things that have been done in the past will not stop operating because a Conference of powers in Washington decides that such and such things shall be done in the future. The only successful way to regulate the future is by dealing with conditions that now exist. Diplomats are wont to square the circle and perform other impossibilities. To consecrate the status quo in China and then to resolve that things shall be done differently in the future is another of these miracles of diplomacy. Is the American press going to feed that portion of the American public which requires a happy ending to every novel and drama? Or is it going to take the risk of offending American sentiment and pride by ceasing to proclaim every move as a great advance, and every remark of a foreign diplomat as a tribute to American success, and a reason for swelling American pride? The danger is the greater because our vanity got such a terrible prick at Versailles—a wound that had much to do with our withdrawal into our shell. Now that we have put our heads out again, we are looking for solace and compensation. There are foreign diplomats skilled enough to salve our wounds while they achieve in fact their own ends. If we are not too much inclined to spend our energy in gladsome cheering, we are more likely to attain that 'happy ending' to the Washington drama which is so much needed by our mental habit and by our still sore pride. |
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| 347 | 1921 | Dewey, John. Chinese resignations [ID D28498]. |
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| 348 | 1921.12.09 |
Dewey, John. Chinese resignations [ID D28498]. The numerous resignations of influential men connected with the Chinese delegation to the Washington Conference raise the question as to the reasons for such action. The average American, I think, will regard them as unwise and illtimed. The action will appear somewhat unsportsmanlike, like quitting because you are afraid you are going to be beaten before you actually have been beaten. Chinese custom in such matters is different. The usual act of an official who differs from his superiors is to resign, more often as a protest or as a means of calling public attention to some action that he disapproves than as a final deed. Resignation as a means of publicity occupies in China something of the position once occupied in Russia by assassination. If Chinese representatives thought that the American public was not aware that affairs were going badly for China, if they thought that American public opinion could be stirred to greater activity by a dramatic gesture, it would be quite in their habit to resign. There are also other possible motives. One, at least, of the advisers who has protested by resignation belongs to a faction of Chinese politics which has been engaged for many months in an active struggle to get its men into the Cabinet. Nothing would be more likely to overthrow the present ministry than an act which would convince the Chinese people that the Cabinet is not duly protecting the interests of China, especially in Shantung. An American can hardly conceive the closeness with which the deliberations of the Conference are watched by the educated class in China. What for us is an interesting game, or at most an important event, is to them almost a matter of life and death. Sentiment is easily stirred under such circumstances, and it is a fairly safe guess that public feeling is already gathering against what it regards as supine action on the part of the Cabinet. No matter what the difficulties in Washington, the present Government will almost surely have to bear the brunt of failure and there will be a temptation to many to get out from under while there is still time. One speculation may be dismissed as probably unfounded. There has been a widespread report that the Peking Government is under the control of Chang Tso Lin, the military governor of Manchuria, while he is managed by the Japanese. Those who accept this rumor believe that the resignations may be directed against a pro-Japanese element in the government which instructs the delegation. But so far as international relations are concerned, a pro-Japanese policy in Washington is a myth. In the first place, foreign diplomats are never much under the control of Peking, and, in the second place, no Chinese politician would dare to be pro- Japanese in foreign politics, even if he wanted to be. It would be social and political suicide, if not physical. At the time of the Versailles Conference a pro-Japanese Cabinet was in power in Peking. There were reliable reports of an attempt on the part of Japan to influence the chief delegate from China as he passed through Tokio. But the delegates unanimously declined to sign the treaty and China made a separate peace with Germany. What could not be done then cannot possibly be done now. There were internal dissensions at Paris among the peace delegates and they may exist now at Washington. If so, however, they are more personal and factional than due to any difference as respects Japan. The resignations, whatever their cause, raise the question of how China is faring at Washington and what her reasonable expectations are. Roughly speaking, I fancy there are four parties in Chinese sentiment, leaving out of account any attempt to use the Conference for internal political purposes. One pins itself to the United States to such an extent that its hopes are unbounded. It says, in effect, that Wilson took Shantung away from China at Versailles and Harding is going to get it back at Washington. Another party wants, of course, good results, but is hopeful of nothing. A letter from one of the most distinguished leaders of intellectual China says that he had just made a public speech in which he warned his audience that China was due for a great shock, a great disappointment. This group is out of politics and is opposed to all existing political factions. They insist upon the need of internal reforms and are firmly convinced that when they are attained Japan cannot stand against China, and that other nations will be obliged to give up their wrongful possessions and practices. A third group, largely educated abroad, many as students of political science, are ardent nationalists. They have learned to talk about sovereignty. They are actively interested in such topics as extra-territoriality and foreign municipal concessions in China. The freeing of China from foreign legal interferences is their chief aim. The fourth and largest party, in my opinion, consists of those who will measure the failure or success of the Conference by what happens with reference to the 21 demands and Shantung. They don't care so much for postoffices, customs, consular courts, etc., which they regard as minor matters in comparison with the main issues. I have just seen a copy of a telegram addressed to the American public by the combined chambers of commerce and combined educational associations of China, the bodies most representative of the enlightened non-political opinion of China. The cablegram begins by thanking the American people for past aid. It ends by requesting American public opinion to back up China energetically in her two essential requirements—restoration of Shantung and abrogation of the 21 demands. Doubtless the State Department as well as the Chinese delegation is in a difficult and delicate position at Washington. But the Chinese delegates will naturally be held to a stricter accounting by the Chinese people than will American representatives by our citizens for whatever results are attained or not attained on these points. So far the Chinese have refrained to a surprising extent from direct propaganda in the United States. Resignations may be the forerunners of an active propaganda, mainly anti-Japanese. |
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| 349 | 1921.12.11 |
Dewey, John. Three results of treaty [ID D28611]. Senator Lodge's speech is the high-water mark of genuine eloquence in the Conference. While under its spell one is likely to read its glow and felicity into the agreement and find more in it than is actually there. The islands are not, of course, the danger point in the Pacific, but Asia. Nevertheless, the four-power treaty accomplishes three results. It sets a precedent of consultation among great powers. This goes further than two-powers' agreement to arbitrate. It puts an end to the Anglo-Japanese alliance. This is a great gain to better relations between the United States and Great Britain. Indirectly it renders war less likely between Japan and the United States. Indirectly it affords promise to China. She may be disappointed in other respects, but she has obtained from the Conference one great result. The chief object of the present pact in the mind of those who drew it was probably to afford a graceful means of ending the alliance. In the third place it ought to stop the American talk of a naval base at Guam. The Philippines would not, I think, ever have become a source of trouble between Japan and the United States. But a fortified naval base is a provocation to Japan. We Americans may not intend it as such, but if we were in the place of the Japanese we should feel about it as they do. Since the Philippines are now protected by the treaty, it is to be hoped that the Guam project will be abandoned. If it is, Japan's assent to the 5-5-3 naval ratio will probably soon follow. Negatively at least, the terms of the treaty are ground for congratulation. Our State Department has probably been subject to pressure to make an agreement which would include China in an agree¬ment of the powers. The islands are a safe place to attempt a diplomatic guarantee of the status quo. To have joined in guaranteeing it in China would have been a fatal blunder. That we are saved from. |
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| 350 | 1921.12.17 |
Dewey, John. A few second thoughts on four-power pact [ID D28612]. Second thoughts often change first impressions. In a previous letter to the Sun I expressed the belief that the chief point of the four-power treaty was to allow Great Britain and Japan to make a graceful exit from their alliance. A little more rumination convinced me that even if that were so the fourth clause, to the effect that the alliance would cease when the four-power treaty was ratified, should not have been introduced. The policy for this country was to keep pointing out to the British and Japanese the ugly influence exerted by the alliance upon our friendly relations with them, while stating that abrogation was their own affair, to be decided in view of their estimate of the importance of our good relations. Then there would have been neither a bargain nor an appearance of a bargain, nor of bringing pressure to bear upon the Senate for ratification. The inclusion of the clause suggests that our delegation, like President Wilson at Versailles, had something to sell, and in order to sell it was willing to make an offer. The thing to be sold is the 5-5-3 ratio in particular and naval reduction in general. The latter is close to a political necessity for the Administration; the former is important for the prestige of our delegates, a seeming diplomatic victory. But was a bargain necessary? The cold facts of the case are that Japan was likely to go bankrupt if she continued her naval program. If our delegation had been bold instead of cautious, if it had declared that the United States would reduce anyway, business and popular pressure would have compelled a similar reduction in Japan. And it would appear as if the financial relations of the United States and Great Britain were sufficient to secure a like policy on the part of England, provided Great Britain had assurance that we were going to reduce naval armaments. Moreover, it is highly probable that the Anglo-Japanese alliance would have had to go anyway or be seriously modified suggestion of surrender to bargaining on our part to secure something we could have got without bargaining is confirmed by a story which comes from highly dependable sources. Admiral Kato was at first willing to accept the 5-5-3 ratio. But the naval experts objected. Then they were told by the British experts that if they held out the United States would yield a larger quota to them. Japanese naval experts, according to reliable information, told others that their proposals had the approval of British experts and used this fact to justify their claim. At the same time, a propaganda was started by their means at home, so that the delegates became frightened about their reception at home if they consented to Hughes' original proposal. Kato weakened. This state of affairs imperiled the whole limitation issue. Thus the British indirectly created a situation which brought pressure to bear upon the United States to enter the four-power pact as a condition of securing the 5-5-3 ratio. Meantime Japan's propaganda at home got rather out of hand, especially because of reports that we were coercing Japan to accept our proposition, and a feeling of hostility was created which goes far to offset the moral effect of the naval reductions. Another second thought was caused by an inquiry made of me by a lawyer the day after the pact was announced. He asked if the treaty did not apply to Japan proper. He called attention to the wording by which a 'controversy arising out of any Pacific question' comes within the scope of the treaty. The query put a new face on the matter for me. Leaving China out of account, Japan is due for trouble sooner or later with the Far Eastern Republic, if not with all Russia. Are we committed to discussion and adjustment of this matter in a conference where Japan is represented and the Russians excluded? If so, this fact alone is sufficient, in my opinion, to justify the Senate in either rejecting the treaty or insisting upon a reservation that, if the controversy involves a nation which is not a party to the treaty, that power shall be entitled to representation in the conference on an equality with other powers. If the controversy concerned China, this would also protect her and our own good relations with her. No nation could refuse without exposing its own purposes. I still feel that the treaty has the benefit of allaying American suspicion about Japan and the Philippines, Australian fears of Japan and Japan's fears of us about Guam. So far it makes for real peace. But to put over a treaty nominally applying to insular possessions when it actually applies to Japan proper as well, and leaves out the two nations with which Japan may have a serious controversy, namely, Russia and China, is not to give up the Anglo-Japanese alliance. It is to make us a party to it, minus, of course, any explicit provision for armed assistance. More than one paper this morning asserts positively that the treaty includes Japan; one, close to the State Department in the past, denies it. The matter is too fundamental to be left in the ambiguity of which diplomacy is so fond. If any ambiguity is left, it is likely that some emergency will arise where the United States will not be willing to take part in adjusting matters against China and Russia. Then we shall be exposed to bitter charges of bad faith. In the end more bitterness will be stirred up than is now temporarily calmed down. It is noteworthy that President Harding is not sending the treaty at once to the Senate. This omission is probably connected with the fact that the nine-power pact which has been talked about, relating to China, is not settled upon. This means that one cannot be understood without the other. It also indicates that our delegates made a mistake in committing themselves upon one while the other was still uncertain. Final judgment must, therefore, be reserved upon the four-power agreement. If it is too early to condemn unreservedly, it is also too soon for approval. The two treaties must be judged together. If the additional agreement does not remove the uncertainties in the present treaty, and if it adds additional ambiguities on its own account, the American people ought to be getting ready to express a public opinion which will affect our own Senate and also the representatives of other powers. The intimation which has been put forth that the vague four Principles of Root are to form the core of further treaty is discoursing. China cannot get all she ought to have or all she hopes for. But the United States ought not to become a party to sacrificing her even to the extent of assent to ambiguous generalities. Such generalities, while they remove immediate friction between diplomats, are always in the end a threat to the peace of the world. Each power interprets them in its own wav and accuses others of bad faith. It is also to be hoped that the new treaty, instead of calling for a conference after some controversy has actually arisen, will substitute a series of annual or biennial conferences. Provision ought to be made also for popular or parliamentary representation at these conferences. The world is surely ready for that much concession to open diplomacy. Provision for a regular series of conferences will give China some security for the future in return for failure to obtain what she now requires. It will put the nations on their good behavior between times. It will avert the necessity of having to try to adjust matters which are always more or less accomplished facts, a necessity which is the bane of diplomatic meetings that occur only after controversy has become acute. It will do away with the objection to the four-power treaty, so ably urged by Senator Borah, that under present conditions the normal commitment to back up an adjustment means practically a promise to use force to carry it out. It will tend to avert future trouble instead of striking bargains and making compromises about troubles that have already got well under way. It represents an intelligent way to cooperate with other nations without getting into entangling alliances. |
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| 351 | 1922 |
Hu, Shi. Hu Shi wen cun. (Shanghai : Ya dong tu shu guan, 1922). 胡適文存 Ding Zijiang : Hu Shi attempted to treat John Dewey's scientific method as a precondition for resolving China's social and cultural problems. The establishment of a scientific tradition in China was a result of interactions between Hu's psychological need to have a Chinese resource for facing the superior culture of America, and his intellectual need to construct a reformist means for the drastic purpose of Deweyanizing China. Before Hu adopted Dewey's experimentalism, his view of Confucianism and Chinese cultural traditions were by no means negative, since later he began formulating a 'way' to reform them. This 'way' was based on Dewey's scientific method. Hu's discovery of Dewey decisively transformed his previous simple, vague, tentative, but genuinely reformist attitude into a clear and straightforward advocacy of reformist means to westernize China according to the model of modernity and modernization provided by Dewey's early philosophical framework. Because Dewey argued for gradual social and cultural change, Hu wanted China's development to follow this path to avoid the Russian style of revolution. For Dewey, China needed gradual and peaceful reform, not radical and violent revolution, since 'reformation' is a very efficient type of experiment or instrument for socio-political transitions. Hu intended to adopt Dewey's experimentalism to make an 'overall transformation' to Chinese culture, not only for socio-political change, but also for almost all fields of culture, including language, literature, and thought patterns, such as 'the poetry revolution', 'the vernacular movement' and the 'Chinese logic method'. Hu Shi followed his pragmatic master in seeking an 'ever-enduring process of perfecting' rather than perfection. Accordingly, he said it was requisite for the progress of the present society to uphold natural science and pragmatic philosophy and to abolish superstition and fantasy. Although Hu Shi devoted himself to spreading Dewey's experimentalism, his efforts were not as successful as expected. |
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| 352 | 1922 |
Mo, Fenglin. Ping Duwei ping min yu jiao yu [ID D28520]. Mo Fenglin reviewed John Dewey's book 'Democracy and education'. He first acknowledged Dewey's contribution in connecting education to broader experiences in life and the larger society. He criticized Dewey for neglecting religious and aesthetic dimensions of human experience. Life, he said, was not simply about coping with problems in the environment ; it should also be about appreciating life itself. Dewey was wrong to talk more about geography and history than about art. Furthermore, Dewey mistook inventions for fine arts. 'The intrinsic value of fine arts, such as Sophocles' and Shakespeare's plays, Phaedias' sculptures, is not to be compared to the instrumental value of an invented object such as a printing machine or a coin.' Dewey's 'child-centered' education was also a target of criticism. Mo accused Dewey of advocating random expressions of the impulses of youth, thus turning 'the autocracy of the adult' into 'an autocracy of the child'. He also thought that Dewey's emphasis on interest and play would sacrifice the importance of discipline and effort in the educational process. Even though Dewey's democratic theories of education successfully challenged an aristocratic style of learning enjoyed only by a privileged few, Dewey failed to consider what Mo called 'natural aristocracy'. Lastly, Mo faulted Dewey for putting too much emphasis on elementary education at the expense of adult learning. Dewey's 'Democracy and education' was a philosophy of elementary education, not a philosophy of education. Mo lamented the fact that Dewey's book was regarded as the bible of the field. |
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| 353 | 1922.10 |
Wang, Mouzu. Zhong hua jiao yu gai jin she yuan qi ji chang cheng. In : Xin jiao yu ; vol. 5 (Oct. 1922). "There were several famous men who rejected political careers and turned their full energy to the academic and educational worlds. It was then that Dr. [John] Dewey came to our country propagating his theories, informing us what the new education was, and what the way to the new education should be. Then educational thought in the entire country underwent a change, and this was the New Education Movement." |
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| 354 | 1922.10.22 |
Wu, Jiangling. Ping Duwei zhi jiao shen zhe xu zhi [ID D28523]. Wu complimented Dewey's effort to unite knowledge with experience so that learning was not limited to what was contained in books. She also perceived great value in Dewey's concept of school as a miniature society and his emphasis on learning by doing. She felt that Dewey's vision of education was too narrow because he talked only about controlling the environment. Wu asserted that Dewey advocated a life completely governed by rationality to the exclusion of sentiments. She also agreed that Dewey's focus on children did not qualify his book to be properly regarded as 'the philosophy of education'. |
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| 355 | 1922.11.01 |
Educational Conference : Standards of the new school system reflected the advocated by pragmatism. John Dewey's influence was particularly strong. 1) To adapt itself to a changed and changing society. 2) To promote the spirit of democracy. 3) To develop individuality. 4) To take into special consideration the economic status of the average citizen. 5) To adjust education to the needs of life. 6) To facilitate the spread of universal education. 7) To make itself flexible enough to allow for local variations. Dewey and his pragmatic educational philosophy had important influence on Chinese educational theories. Since the introduction of pragmatic educational philosophy, Chinese education theorists began to adapt the educational ideas to Chinese conditions and needs and attempted to establish systematic educational theories of their own. |
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| 356 | 1923 |
Lin, Zhaoyin. You Duwei ping min zhu han yu jiao xing zhi ji tang ruo yi wen [ID D28519]. Lin criticized Dewey for emphasizing process over purpose, society over the individual, the child over the adult, interest over discipline, rationality over sentiment, participation over contemplation and practical life over spiritual life. Dewey emphasized the importance of social sympathy and responsibility, but neglected the importance of individual interests and needs. In her opinion, schools should help transform society to serve individual needs better. Lin also thought that Dewey's process-oriented conception of education prevented him from specifying the aims of education, thus rendering the educational process haphazard and pointless. She also found Dewey's scientific, rational approach to life limited and inadequate. Dewey represented a typical Western mindset in its excessive desire to control nature rather than appreciate it. Dewey 'only knew the value of an active life but not that of a tranquil life. |
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| 357 | 1923.02 |
Dewey, John. China and the West : 'The problem of China' by Bertrand Russell [ID D28501]. Before his visit to China Mr. Russell had been in Russia. While journeying on the Volga he realized how 'profound is the disease in our Western mentality'—a mentality which even then the Bolsheviks were trying to force upon an essentially Asiatic population. The disease springs from excess of energy and its rationalizations. 'Our industrialism, our militarism, our love of progress, our missionary zeal, our imperialism, our passion for dominating and organizing, all spring from a superflux of the itch for activity'. The company on the Volga boat was 'noisy, quarrelsome, full of facile theories, with glib explanations of everything'. Yet one of the company lay at death's door, and 'all around us lay a great silence, strong as death, unfathomable as the heavens. It seemed that none had the leisure to hear the silence, yet it called to me so insistently that I grew deaf to the harangues of propagandists and the information of the well-informed'. One night while the vocal and futile arguing was going on, the boat stopped and Mr. Russell went ashore, and in the silence found on the sand a strange assemblage of human beings. . . The flickering names lighted up gnarled, bearded faces of wild men; strong, patient, primitive women, and children as slow and sedate as their parents… To me they seemed to typify the very soul of Russia, unexpressive, inactive from despair, unheeded by the little set of westernizers who make up all the parties of progress or reaction. . . Something of the patient silence communicated to me, something lonely and unspoken remained in my heart all through the comfortable familiar intellectual talk. And at last the I began to feel that all politics are inspired by a grinning devil, teaching the energetic and quick-witted to torture submissive populations for the profit of pocket or power or theory. . . From time to time I heard sad songs or the hunting music of the balalaika; but the sound mingled with the great silence of the steppes, and left me with a terrible questioning pain in which Occidental hopefulness grew pale. It was in this mood that I set out for China to seek a new hope. The passage gives more than the background of Mr. Russell' experience in China of which this book is a fruit. It is a symbol of the Problem of China, which in Mr. Russell's treatment becomes the problem of our Western civilization. The noisy, doctrinaire assertive, cocksure, propagandizing set of passengers is Western mentality going headlong to destruction. China is the brooding silence of nature, calm—indolent perhaps, but still tranquil in soul—tolerant, possessed of an unbroken instinctive sympathy with nature and power to draw consolation and happiness from simple things, content with death as with life because free from the corroding egotism of the West. The book, of course, is more than an expatiation on this philosophic theme. It is a remarkably clear and condensed account of the historical forces and factors which have led up to the present situation in the Far East together with an analysis of the present situation. The report supplements his personal experience with a judicious and discriminating use of secondary sources. As a result, the book is to me the most enlightening, as a matter of information and comment, of all the many works which have been recently written to put Western readers in touch with the issues of the Far East. It is extraordinarily well done; so well done in fact that only those who by some personal experience recognize the difficulties which have been overcome, will perceive how well it is done. But those who extract information from the book will miss its chief significance if they do not find on almost every page the haunting refrain of the note sounded in the passage quoted. Through 'industrialism and the high pressure at which most of us live' we have lost that 'instinctive happiness and joy of living' which China has retained. 'Our prosperity can be obtained only by wide-spread oppression and exploitation of weaker nations, while the Chinese are not strong enough to injure other countries, and they secure whatever they enjoy by means of their own merits and exertions alone… By valuing progress and efficiency we have secured power and wealth; by ignoring them Chinese, until we brought disturbance, secured upon the whole peaceable existence and a life full of enjoyment… Chinese have discovered, and have practised for many centuries a way of life which, if it could be adopted by all the world, would make all the world happy. We Europeans have not. Our way of life demands strife, exploitation, restless change, discontent and destruction. ' And America, it should be added, is Europe at its worst because it is Europe at its peak of energy, efficiency, and proselytizing intolerance, plus a complacent and impenetrable self-righteousness which in Europe is beginning to crumble. America presents the acme of the mechanistic outlook, 'something which exists equally in imperialism, Bolshevism and the Y.M.C.A… the habit of regarding mankind as raw material, to be molded by our scientific manipulation into whatever form may happen to suit our fancy... the cultivation of will at the expense of perception'. It is belief in government, in a life against nature, in the desirability of conversion to one's own point of view and creed that Chinese culture has escaped. Discriminating Chinese would probably be the first to admit that Mr. Russell has idealized their civilization, slighted its defects and exaggerated its excellences. China tends to become an angel of light to show up the darkness of Western civilization. Chinese virtues are made a whip of scorpions with which to lash the backs of complacent Westerners. I do not regard this fact, however, as a serious defect. For my own experience in China convinces me that Mr. Russell has justly stated the direction in which Chinese excellence exists, even though, in his soul's revulsion against the stupidities of the West, he has overstated its degree of attainment. And I do not find it in me to differ with Mr. Russell as to the extent and urgency of the need in the West to pause and to learn from the Orient. A ground of complaint lies elsewhere, I think. His method permits Mr. Russell to make a lucid exposition of the external, or political and economic, problem of China—with a lucidity which, emerging in an obscure world, must always be close, as it is with Mr. Russell, to irony. For, of course, it is precisely the restless predatory energy of the Occident which in itself and as communicated to Japan has created the present political industrial problems of China. With biting precision and his accustomed artistry of selection and elimination Mr. Russell has depicted this situation to all who still have eyes to see. But the internal and deeper problem of China, that of the transformation of its own culture and institutions, Mr. Russell hardly seems to touch. He mentions indeed some of the bad consequences of their family system, the lack of science in their tradition, their callousness. But he appears content to dismiss them with the remark that they have not brought in their train consequences as tragic as the defects of the Western mind have brought to the Western world. This may be quite true; and for who is chiefly interested in the West perhaps it suffices. I cannot see however that it throws much light upon the problem of Chin as that exists for the Chinese. A sense of the deepest problem of China as it exists in the consciousness of thoughtful Chinese is what one misses in Mr. Russell's pages. As a good European he is perhaps chiefly interested in European culture and what Europe has to learn from Asia; in comparison the stupendous and marvellous problem of the intrinsic remaking of the oldest, thickest, and most extensive civilization of the world does not attract his attention. It would be churlish to quarrel with Mr. Russell for what he has not done, in the view of what he has done so well. But the world still needs, although probably no one but a Chinese can give it to the world, a picture of the most wonderful drama now enacting anywhere in the world, and, I sometimes think, the most wonderful as well as the most difficult to bring to conclusion of any that human history has yet witnessed. Contact with the West has induced in China a ferment of reawakening, a true Renaissance. I rarely met a Chinese who, with all his sense of the unjust and cruel problems which the exploiting, aggressive West had forced upon China, who with all his sense of the evils of Western materialism, nationalism, and egotistic individualism, was without a grateful recognition of an awakening due to Western influence—an awakening which seemed necessary to prevent further decay of what was good in old culture as well as necessary to a new and richer life. The ultimate 'Problem of China' concerns, it seems to me, the question of what is to win in the present turmoil of change: the harsh and destructive impact of the West, or the internal re-creation of Chinese culture inspired by intercourse with the West. |
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| 358 | 1923.02.14 | Opposition to John Dewey's pragmatism derived its power from the new currents of Western philosophy, based on the thought of Hegel and Bergson, that began to appear in the 1920's. Zhang Junmai expressed this opposition to Dewey in a lecture delivered at Qinghua University in Beijing on February 14, 1923, dealing with philosophies of life. This led to a new controversy. Zhang was at the time returned from studies in Japan and Germany. His study of Bergson had given him a vision of reality radically opposed to the positivistic philosophies of the period, particularly when he saw these philosophies imported into China and used by Chinese scholars against the classical thought of the Chinese themselves. He was among the few Chinese at this time who had a true insight into what constitutes philosophical thought in the Western sense and what makes it distinct from inductive scientific thought. He insisted that our acquaintance with reality obtained through philosophy, aesthetics and religion is a higher and more necessary type of knowledge than that obtained by science and that, consequently, we must go beyond the range of the empirical sciences, both in subject matter and in method. | |
| 359 | 1924 |
Hu, Shi. Wu shi nian lai zhi shi jie zhe xue shi. [Weltphilosophie der letzten 50 Jahre]. [ID D28639]. Hu Shi schreibt eine Analyse über die historischen Überlegungen John Deweys : "Dewey zeigt in diesen Abschnitten auf, dass die antike und die neuzeitliche Haltung hinsichtlich der 'Erfahrung' deshalb differiert, weil die praktischen Erfahrungen der Menschen früher und heute in der Tat völlig voneinander abweichen. Die Erfahrung der Menschen in der Antike ist passiv, konservativ und blind, deshalb schätzen die Philosophen der Antike die Vernunft und die geistige Erfahrung besonders hoch. Unter dem Einfluss der experimentellen Wissenschaft führte die Erfahrung des heutigen Menschen zur aktiven Kontrolle der Natur, zum nach vorne gerichteten Suchen nach Erneuerung und zum bewusst [durchgeführten] Plan und Experiment. Dewey zeigt auf, dass die von den Kantianern angenommene Vernunft wirklich ausgedient hat. Vernunft, [das heisst] Intelligenz, ist die lebendige Anwendung der Erfahrung, darüber hinaus gibt es keine weitere Vernunft." "Der wichtigste Beitrag Darwins und Huxleys hinsichtlich der philosophischen Methode besteht in deren 'Agnostizismus' (cun yi zhu yi). Der Begriff Agnostizismus wurde von Huxley geschaffen, wörtlich übersetzt 'Nicht-Wissen-Ismus' (bu zhi zhu yi). Konfuzius sprach : 'Das, was man Weiss, für Wissen halten und das, was man nich weiss, für Nicht-Wissen halten, das ist Wissen'. Dieses Zitat ist wirklich eine gute Erklärung des 'Agnostizismus'. Aber die Wissenschaftler der Neuzeit gehen noch einen Schritt weiter, sie wollen fragen : 'Welches Wissen kann erst als nicht anzweifelbares Wissen gelten ? ' Huxley sagt, erst jenes ausreichend bewiesene Wissen kann man glauben, all das, was nicht ausreichend bewiesen werden kann, kann nur als Zweifel, aber nicht als Glauben gelten. Das ist das Hauptprinzip des Agnostizismus. Huxleys zentraler Punkt ist die Betonung des Beweises. Hinsichtlich jedes Aberglaubens, jeder Überlieferung hat er nur eine Kampfwaffe : das 'Heranziehen von Beweisen'. Obwohl diese Haltung in der Tat eine wissenschaftliche ist, ist sie jedoch nur ein Aspekt der wissenschaftlichen Methode, sie umfasst nur den negativen, zerstörerischen Aspekt. Huxley hat noch nicht den gesamten Bedeutungsgehalt der wissenschaftlichen Methode im Denken verstanden. Er verfasste noch ein kurzes Vorwort, in welchem er darauf hinweist, dass im vierten Kapitel des vorliegenden Bandes Descartes die unabdingbaren Bedingungen des wissenschaftlichen Urteils aufzeigt ; die übrigen acht Kapitel beschreiben alle die späteren Ergebnisse, die durch die Anwendung der Descartschen Methode auf jeden Aspekt [erzielt wurden]. Aber die Methode von Descartes besteht nur aus dem Wort 'Zweifel' ; Huxley hebt klar und deutlich hervor, dass Descartes' Methode lediglich darin besteht, keine Bereitschaft zu zeigen, einem Begriff Glauben zu schenken, der nicht völlig klar und verständlich ist. Sie besteht lediglich darin, das Wort 'Zweifel' von der sündhaften Position [zu befreien] und in die Verantwortung zu heben. Huxley erkannte deutlich, dass das Wort 'Zweifel' das Zentrum des wissenschaftlichen Geistes ist." "Henri Bergson vertritt auch eine Art Evolutionslehre, welche er 'kreative Evolution' (chuang zao de jin hua) nennt. Diese Lehre setzt einen dualen Ursprung voraus : ein Aspekt ist jene tote, passive Materie ; ein Aspekt ist jener 'élan vital' (Sheng huo de chong dong). Leben besteht lediglich in der Neigung, die Funktion / Anwendung dieses ursprünglichen Impulses in der Materie anzuregen. Dieser ursprüngliche Impuls ist die eigentliche Ursache der biologischen Evolution (sheng wu yan hua)." |
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| 360 | 1925.11.11 |
Dewey, John. Is China a nation or a market ? [ID D28618]. If it were not a fact and a fact of a kind more or less familiar, the Conference now in solemn conclave in Peking would be incredible. The orthodox axiom of all 'sound political science' is national sovereignty; in practice no phase of political independence is more jealously guarded than the right to control taxation and to levy tariffs, whether for revenue or for the rearing of infant industries. In session in Peking are representatives of the three great democracies of the world, Great Britain, the United States and France, each professing unqualified faith in the right of independent nations to self-government. In addition there is a wide-spread hostility to everything which smacks of 'internationalism'; for are not the 'Reds' internationalists, and are not the Reds a menace? From these premises, one would hardly conclude that the Conference in Peking sits an international assembly held to take part in governing China; that it arrogates to itself one of the most 'sacred' functions of sovereignty, that of fixing the tariff on foreign goods, and that it has no notion of yielding any more to the expressed desire and purpose of China concerning its own affairs than it shall find necessary in order to avoid serious trouble. It is doubtless highly theoretical to call attention to such flagrant discrepancies between political theory and practice. Nevertheless it may be one way to induce the American public to visualize the Chinese scene, and to realize that the State department of the United States has soon to decide whether it will continue to engage in the regulation of the internal affairs of China, contrary to the practically united will of the Chinese people, or whether it will have the courage and initiative to act in not merely a democratic but a decent way in permitting financial self-government to the Chinese government. There is no reason to doubt the kind sentiments of the State department; in all probability it means well by China, and its expressions of goodwill are not hypocritical camouflage. But the department is influenced by precedent, by routine, by the etiquette of diplomacy which might more easily fear a breach of manners toward other nations than a breach of justice towards China. And it is also exposed to direct and more or less powerful influence from business interests that want in behalf of their own pockets to keep the tariff of China on foreign goods at the lowest possible point. Is it too much to hope that the general public shall have an active concern in the decisions which are to be made, and shall bring greater pressure to bear upon the State department to act in a fair, humane and democratic way, than self-interest and hidden groups bring to bear in the opposite direction? It is futile to lecture the general public on its responsibilities in this matter; it is fed up with foreign responsibilities and wants to be left alone. But it may do no harm to assert with all possible emphasis that in China at present the American people is on trial, and that the attitude taken toward tariff autonomy by the United States will determine for long years the attitude taken by the Chinese towards us. Are our professions of goodwill to China sincere? Are our assertions of greater disinterestedness than animates other nations genuine? Or are they a combination of Pharisaism, sentimentality and highfaluting talk? That is the issue in the minds of most Chinese, and the way the American people meets the tariff question may determine for a generation the moral and political alignment of the Chinese people to western civilization in general and to American ideas and institutions in particular. Needless to say the illogical position of interference of democratic nations, themselves highly nationalistic, and mostly addicted to protective tariffs, with the internal affairs of China grew up gradually for historic reasons, and so was tolerated until it became familiar and a vested interest. At the outset, the Chinese people were indifferent, and it is almost correct to say that the Chinese government invited the interference. In the past, it has not worked altogether badly; considerable good came of it. If international conferences to help regulate the affairs of individual nations were the rule and not an exception confined to countries so weak that they can be safely meddled with, there might even be something to say for continuing the practice in China. But the past is not the present, and present China is bent upon a radical break with the past in all that concerns its own management of its own affairs. The danger is that diplomats will not face the reality and extent of this change, and will palter, compromise, truckle over details, do as little as they possibly can, and trust to future events to be able to get away with their evasion of the issue. It is not too much to say that unless the International Conference takes action which looks in a definite and stated way towards the resumption of Chinese tariff autonomy, not at some vague future time when all shall be well with the government of China but at a specified date under specified conditions, public opinion in China will force any Chinese government that may exist to resume tariff autonomy in defiance of the powers, and that at no distant date. To put the matter at its lowest level, it might be as well to make a virtue of necessity, and by anticipating events get the credit for a just and sensible act. It is understood that the powers are willing to permit China to level duties up to ten or fifteen percent. Japan is reported to have sprung a surprise by volunteering at the first meeting to agree to a raise up to twelve and a half percent. One feels helpless to comment adequately upon the situation. If the imagination will only work and think of a similar conference called to pass upon the affairs of France or Italy, or the United States, or even of a third- rate European power, there will be no need for any comment; a sense of the indignation and resentment of an awakened China and of the danger of giving cause for its continued growth, will take care of the affair. But it is more than the amount of tariff which China is to be permitted to levy that is under consideration. It is also proposed to decide for China what China shall do with the moneys when they are raised. There is a story that the assent of Japan to the American proposal of a Conference was secured by a tacit agreement that the United States would join in urging that the added funds be employed to pay off the Nishihara loans by Japan. The story may well be false—but it may also have a grain of fact in it. Doubtless China should meet her foreign obligations. But in view of the fact that these loans were made at a time when the Anfu pro-Japanese party was in power at Peking and are universally regarded as part of the betrayal of China to foreign interests, it is obvious that the popularity and prestige of the Conference will not be increased by any such proposals. And this situation illustrates the danger which now attends upon every pretension of foreign powers to decide China’s domestic affairs for her. Some decisions as to the use to be made by China of additional funds would be less unpopular than some others, but any attempt to decide and to enforce decision, anything more than advice which in the present entangled condition of Chinese finance is legitimate, will surely make trouble instead of alleviating an already troubled situation. It is trite to say that in the present condition of the world nations can no longer do the sort of thing which once they did as a matter of course and with impunity. But that trite fact is the essence of the Chinese situation. The only question is whether it is to be recognized only by small bits, grudgingly, and by yielding to trouble after it has broken out, or whether it will be recognized at once in its full force and whole-heartedly. If the United States shows a disposition to compromise, to postpone, to take half steps and quarter steps, to evade, to depend upon time-honored formulae that have nothing to do with the present situation, the case, difficult enough at best as between the powers, is lost in advance. If it leads with a definite and thoroughgoing policy of which financial autonomy for China is a central feature, something definite will be accomplished. The American public should bear in mind that there is no question of even what is called national honor and prestige at stake. There is only a vested interest. Reduced to its lowest terms, the question for American citizens to form a judgment upon is whether they wish the power of the United States government to be used to promote, at the expense of China and of the good relations of China and the United States, the pecuniary interests of a small group of manufacturers, merchants, commission agents and exporters. They are doubtless all enthusiastic high-tariff men at home, but they want to retain a cheap and easy hold on Chinese markets by keeping down the rate of duty. At bottom, this is what the solemn and dignified International Conference at Peking is about, in spite of the fact that it is possible to overlay this ground-work with many important but irrelevant matters. The issue is simple enough so that even a people sick of foreign questions and policies should be able to pass upon it, and do so with promptness and efficacy. Do we wish China to be treated as a free and self-respecting people should be treated or as a market upon which to dump goods for the pecuniary profit of a small number? |
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| 361 | 1926 | Gründung des China Institute in America in New York, N.Y. durch Kuo Pingwen, John Dewey und Hu Shi. |
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| 362 | 1926.05 |
Dewey, John. We should deal with China as nation to nation [ID D28619]. In the recent number of the Survey dealing with Oriental problems in their connection with the United States, Mr. Lewis Gannett reports a conversation with General Chiang Kai-shek in Canton. According to Mr. Gannett, the Chinese leader said: 'Thinking men in China hate America more than they hate Japan . . . Japan talks to us in ultimatums; she says frankly she wants special privileges—extraterritoriality, tariff control—in China. We understand that and know how to meet it. The Americans come to us with smiling faces and friendly talk; but in the end your government acts just like the Japanese. And we, disarmed by your fair words, do not know how to meet such insincerity'. I have no way of knowing how far such statements are representative of Chinese opinion. To some extent they are perhaps colored by local feeling at Canton, which resents the support given by the American government to the Peking government. But nevertheless it is significant that they are held by such a representative person as Chiang Kai-shek. Probably most Americans, including those sympathetic with China, will feel that the statements are unfair, and will incline to be irritated. I do not think they are fair either, but I quote them not to controvert them, but to indicate the great difficulty nations have in understanding each other. For I do not think that American opinion about China, and about the relations of the United States to China, are very fair either as a rule. Yet I do not think that on either side there is a desire to be anything but fair—leaving out the case of those who have something to gain by misrepresentations. The conclusion I would draw is that official and governmental relations ought to be such that the misunderstandings and unfair statements which develop will do as little harm as is possible. I recognize the great truth in what is constantly said about the importance of nations' understanding one another, appreciating one another's Culture, etc. This is all true. But such understanding and appreciation is of very slow growth, and it will be a long, long time before it will develop to a point where it can be counted upon to regulate international relations. Persons of the same country, of the same culture and tradition, even persons of the same family, find great difficulty in properly understanding one another. We are not as yet sufficiently civilized or sufficiently scientific in our methods to understand one another. I do not believe that for a very long time the mass of Americans are going to see the Orientals as they see and feel themselves, nor do I know any reason why we should expect the mass of Orientals to judge us from the standpoint we take in estimating our own conduct. It may seem harsh to say that we have to count, for a long time in the future, upon a large measure of misunderstanding between peoples. But I think a frank recognition of this fact would afford a measure of security and protection. It would lessen the amount of exasperation and irritation that grows up when a misunderstanding is revealed and patent. Above all, it would, as has been already suggested, indicate that the great thing is so to direct public policies that the inevitable misunderstandings will, when they arise, be shorn of power to result in practical harm. It is because I believe that present American governmental policies in China tend to invest misunderstandings with power to work actual evil that I would see those policies changed. It is quite 'natural' that state departments and diplomats should follow traditional policies. One of these traditional policies is that western nations should unite and pursue a common policy in China instead of each nation conducting its diplomacy independently. It is easy to see how from a historical point of view the method grew up. The inertia of diplomacy, the desire to follow precedents, the feeling that it is risky to do anything new, all operate to induce the American state department to continue to act in concert with the foreign offices of other nations in dealing with China. But because I believe it increases international misunderstanding between China and the United States, because it clothes these misunderstandings with power to work practical evil, and because it prevents our state department from actively manifesting and executing what is at least the passive desire of most Americans, I am opposed to it. I think that we should at once deal with China as nation to nation, and leave other nations to pursue a similar independent course. A policy of complete non-intervention may not seem benevolent, but I do not believe that any nation at present is wise enough or good enough to act upon an assumption of altruism and benevolence toward other nations. Till conditions have changed, the great thing is to leave one another alone, and give each nation a chance to manage its own affairs, no matter how inadequate and incompetent the management may seem to us to be. I think our present policy has also a tendency to prevent Chinese from facing frankly their own situation. As long as the unequal treaties exist, and as long as foreign nations encroach politically—or economically with political support—upon Chinese territory, the Chinese people will use this fact as an alibi. It will minimize its own responsibility for the bad condition of its own affairs and will throw all the blame upon foreigners. Only China can straighten out Chinese affairs. It seems to me that one reason they are not tackling the job with greater energy and persistence is because they can allege foreign policies, including that of the United States, as long as we engage in the diplomatic concert as an excuse. At present, in my opinion—and I recognize how readily opinion may be mistaken—thought and energy that should be directed by Chinese upon their own internal affairs are diverted largely to criticising and blaming foreigners. This is natural; we all love alibis and excuses. But the United States should, as far as it is concerned, abrogate all special privileges and onesided relations so that the attention of the Chinese may centre upon improving their own conditions. Another reason which has great weight with me in making me believe that our government should change its policy is that when a certain result is seen to be sure to come about sooner or later in any case, it is the part of good-sense to anticipate that result, and see to it that it comes about earlier, and with the least possible disturbance and ill-will. In any case, the present onesided relations with China cannot continue indefinitely. I do not agree with those who think that they can be abrogated without some disturbance, and without some harm resulting to China itself. But with the growing development of national sentiment in China, these evils and disturbances are in my opinion slight in comparison with those which will take place if things are allowed to drift until China of her own initiative and without negotiation with other nations denounces the existing treaties and arrangements. |
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| 363 | 1927 |
Dewey, John. The real Chinese crisis [ID D28466]. I should like to emphasize the word 'real' in my title. The apparent crisis is that which fills columns in the daily press; foreigners killed, houses looted, security so threatened that foreigners are being concentrated in a few ports and warned to leave the country, the turmoil of war and the barbarities of civil war. Yet in all the rumor, gossip and facts that come to us, there is a frequent note struck, which is a sign, to the discerning, of the real crisis through which China is passing. The entire animus of the latent—in some cases flagrant—propaganda to which we are treated is directed against the nationalistic movement and forces. The Northern forces are invariably let down as easily as pos¬sible. Why? The most direct way to get at the reality of the situation is to inquire what the tone of the news would have been, were it proved that the retreating Shantung troops—whose commander is an ex-bandit—had done the killing and the looting. The answer is that the incidents would surely have been glossed over; they would have been treated as unfortunate concomitants of civil war; it would have been noted that defeated armies were wont, on their retreats, to get out of hand. Doubtless, demands for indemnities would have been made in due course on the Peking government. But we should have had no appeals from Shanghai and London for concerted intervention, for blockades of Chinese ports. In other words, there would have been no clamor for us to take sides with the Cantonese against the Northerners. Just as the news has been colored against the Nationalists, it would have been smoothed over in favor of the Northerners. I cannot imagine anyone who has followed the course of events in China denying this statement. Again why? What is the significance of this double method in reporting news? If it were true that the Peking government genuinely represents the unity and integrity of China against a band of outlaw rebels, it could be understood. If it were true that there is a stable government in Peking which maintains general and possesses moral and legal authority, the discrimination could be understood. If the Northern troops were, in general, better disci-plined and comported themselves in a more orderly way, it could be understood. But it is notorious that each of these suppositions is contrary to fact. The Peking government has, for many years, been a blind crea¬ture in the hands of whatever military overlords happened to be in power. In common with many others, I have seen the President and Cabinet in power thunder against some general, de¬nounce him as a traitor, offer rewards for his head, and, a few weeks later, take it all back, and issue precisely similar edicts against the generals at whose behest the first pronunciamentos were made. I well remember my surprise, when, a newcomer in Peking, I was told by our minister, Mr. Reinsch, in a matter-of-fact way, that the Peking government would not last a month, save for the recognition of foreign powers. It did not take a long residence to convince me that he had revealed no secret of state. In the country at large, the Peking government commanded no authority. Its own supporters kept back its revenues for their own purposes, raised and supported their own troops for their own uses. And this was long before there was an organized pop¬ular rebellion against Peking. No, the explanation of the tone and temper of the news we are receiving lies in the simple fact that the Nationalist government represents a national movement, and that, under the circumstances, any national movement in China is bound to be anti-foreign—against, that is, the special privileges which foreign nationals enjoy because of old treaties. It is not surprising that the mass of foreigners in commercial and industrial centres like Hankow and Shanghai are against the so-called Cantonese revolution. Nor is their opposition wholly to be explained on strictly economic grounds. The American economic stake in China is not large; yet in the large centres, outside of missionary groups, Americans generally share the feelings of the English residents, feelings which centre and flourish in the foreign clubs, where most of the correspondents imbibe their ideas and gather the news they send. The whole mode of life has become history comparable with it; possibly none in our own day, even the World War. Such a statement, given our habitual provincialism and racial snobbishness, may seem foolishness to the wise. But I doubt if most of the great changes of history were not obscured to their contemporaries by superficial froth and clamor. We think of Asia as outside of our world, and it is hard for us to recognize that any changes going on there are of great importance. But when the changes have produced their consequences, and are seen in historic perspective, it is certain that the reconstitution of the life of the oldest and most numerous people of Asia will stand revealed as at least as significant as the transition of Europe out of medievalism into a modernized culture. Such questions as the bearing of the changes upon the special privileges of a few thousand foreigners, the control of India by Great Britain, and the other features which are now conspicuous, will fall into place as paragraphs in a volume. It is not easy to take a long view of contemporary events. But without such a view, we shall see in the events in China simply sound and fury, a confused medley of passions. This result is not only intellectually unfortunate; it is practically dangerous. For it marks a disposition upon which race and color prejudice and deliberate propaganda operate disastrously. Our historic sympathy with China is in danger of being undermined; further untoward events in China might draw us, on the basis of inflammation of emotions due to misunderstandings, into support of European policies which are contrary both to our traditions and to our interests. |
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| 364 | 1927-1930 |
Gründung und Leitung der Xiao Zhuang (Morning Village Normal School) in Nanjing von Tao Xingzhi. Tao creatively and critically implemented John Dewey's ideas in the normal school and its surrounding rural setting. He ded a 'half somersault' of Dewey's theory and transformed Dewey's 'education means life' to his 'life means education', Dewey's 'school as society' to his 'society as school', and Dewey's 'learning by doing' to his 'unity of three : teaching, learning, and reflective acting'. |
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| 365 | 1928 |
Dewey, John. To the Chinese friends in the United States [ID D28464]. From time to time cases of our Chinese friends seriously involved in difficulties with the authorities here have come under the notice of individual members of this Committee. Not infrequently a good deal of hardship and at times no little injustice have been worked upon these people because of the discrimina¬tory acts and attitudes of those charged with the administration of the laws. A real need was felt, therefore, for some organized effort to meet the situation. The direct outcome of this sentiment was the formation of the committee known as THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR LEGAL DEFENSE OF CHINESE. Its purpose is Specifically to secure to the Chinese of all classes in this country their full legal rights by providing access to adequate counsel and by any other related type of assistance it can give. The Committee also regards efforts to change discriminatory attitudes in the administration of the law as entirely within its scope. It is plain that the Committee has a real task on its hands, because of both the difficult nature and the very large scope of its work. It is plain, too, that successful furtherance of its purposes must depend upon the combined support of every Chinese and every American who is interested in this new effort. We have engaged Mr. John T. Find as executive secretary, and we earnestly hope that all our Chinese friends throughout the United States will cooperate with him and the members of this Committee either as individuals or as a group, to make this orga¬nization an effective instrument for promoting the legal interests of the Chinese people in this country and thereby strengthening the friendly relations between the United States and China. |
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| 366 | 1928 |
Dewey, John. China and the powers : intervention a challenge to nationalism [ID D28467]. General Crozier has furnished us with an interesting essay on the conditions in China which make it difficult for that country to establish a unified, stable and efficient Government. He has supplemented this account with a briefer essay on the comparative ease with which military conquest of that country could be accomplished. The two statements form the foundation for what is in effect a plea for intervention in China to be undertaken by preferably concerted action of several Great Powers. This intervention is to be wholly altruistic in character, based on desire to help China find her own unity, assist her in development of civil law and administration, free her from the rapacious interference by militarists and officials leagued with them, and is to terminate in turning over a smoothly running Government to the Chinese people. It reads like a dream. If tried, it might turn out a nightmare. His account of conditions in China, even if once substantially correct as far as it goes, leaves out a fundamentally important fact. He fails to give weight in estimating the probable reception of benevolent intervention by the Chinese to the extraordinary development of national sentiment in recent years. I should not have believed it possible to write about Chinese political affairs and make as little reference as he has done to this feature of the situation. It is quite true that it is not sufficiently strong or well organized to create a unified Government. It may well be years before that goal is reached. But it is powerful enough to bring to naught any such scheme as that proposed. The probability and the effectiveness of organized resistance to a Government resting upon foreign force is immensely under-estimated. It is true the Chinese still lack ability in positive and constructive combination. They have, however, an enormous capacity for negative organization, for resistance. The agitation against foreign interferences carried on in the last few years has already aroused that power into action. Increase of interference would render it an irresistible force. The Chinese are factional; but foreign intervention would weld them into a solid unit, as long as the foreigner was there. General Crozier thinks, apparently on the basis of reports from Hongkong, that they could not successfully unite for even a boycott without assistance from governmental powers, which naturally could not be had with the Government in the hands of foreign agents. Well, I happened to be in China eight years ago at the time the boycott against the Japanese was started. It was started by students. Instead of having support from the Government, the latter was pro-Japanese and set out to suppress the movement by force. In a few short weeks the Cabinet was overthrown; and it is commonly understood that the boycott was so harmful to Japanese interests that it is responsible for the change in Japan's attitude toward China. Since then things have moved fast and far. The merchants, as well as students, are now organized, while in all industrial cen¬'tres the workingmen are an organized power. Quite aside from boycotts and means of passive resistance, the proposed scheme of government would be brought to naught by Chinese noncooperation. Its success would depend upon enlisting Chinese so that they might be educated in modern administrative and legal procedures. The only Chinese that would engage in service in a Government conducted by foreigners, having armed support, would be from the corrupt, self-seeking class. These would be regarded as traitors by their countrymen. The foreign Government would be a mere shell. It might last for years and the Chinese be no nearer self-government than they are today In fact, with irritation, hatred and union on the basis of hostility to the foreigner it would produce, the last state would be worse than the first. General Crozier has himself stated so candidly the difficulties in the way of cooperative foreign intervention and of establishing an honest and intelligent Government really managed for the sake of the Chinese people, that it is not necessary to say much about that phase of the matter. As General Crozier says: "The only justification we admit for making use of our strength is the defense of our interests, of the lives and property of our nationals." He regards this as selfish. But it is the only recognized ground, and it is so because the political sense of nations knows how fantastic is the idea of a genuinely benevolent, self-denying, intelligent intervention. At that, interventions already conducted have too often been the causes of predatory aggression and exploitation of peoples subject to it. In the world in which we live General Crozier's ideal of a union of great and imperialistic Powers having the sole purpose of assisting another nation, a nation so unlike in customs and traditions as is China, is a dream. It took centuries for Western nations to emerge from political conditions not unlike those of China into our present semblance of honest and efficient self-government. It will take time for China to make the transition. She needs our help. But it must come by patience, sympathy and educative effort, and the slow processes of commerce and exchange of ideas, not by a foreign rule imposed by military force. |
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| 367 | 1930 |
Hu, Shi. Jie shao wo zi ji de si xiang (1930). [Introducing my own thought]. "Mr. [John] Dewey taught me how to think ; he taught me to think with strict regard to the antecedents and consequences of thought, to consider all schools of thought and concepts as mere hypotheses waiting for proof. Dewey and Huxley enabled me to understand the nature and function of the scientific method." It was also with Dewey that Hu received his systematic introduction to the function and significance of science and its method. Science, for Hu as for Dewey, was the whole realm of observational and experimental methods. It was a new philosophy of life which was 'built on the scientific knowledge of the past two or three hundred years'. |
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| 368 | 1930 |
Tao, Xingzhi. "The text books prepared according to the principle of teaching-learning-doing combination". In : Zhong hua jiao yu jie ; vol. 19 (1930). Tao devoted his life to the cause of educational reform in China. He was the first of John Dewey's Chinese followers to develop his own system of educational theory and practice, and the first to seek to extend Dewey's influence from the college level down to the rural school. |
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| 369 | 1934 |
Liang, Shuming. Duwei jiao yu zhe xue zhi gen ben guan nian. [Fundamental ideas in Dewey's philosophy of education : review of 'Democracy and education' by John Dewey] : Lecture delivered at Shandong Rural Reconstruction Research Institute. 杜威教育哲學之根本概念 Liang Shuming was deeply impressed by Dewey's seminal work, in which Dewey had presented a more profound and comprehensive conception of education than anything he had encountered before. Liang's essay is a penetrating analysis of Dewey's ideas from Confucian perspectives. Liang acclaims Dewey's conception of education for encompassing life itself. Liang argues that life is the central concept in Dewey and that his understanding of education derives from his view of life. Since Dewey understands human life to be ineluctably social, he sees education to be possible and necessary only where individual life intersects with social life. As Liang comments, 'where there are no people, there is no education ; and where there is only one person, there is no education'. Liang suggests that, in reading 'Democracy and education', one should start with chapter four, 'Education as growth', which explores the meaning of life from an individual perspective, and then continue with chapters three, two, one, and finally chapter seven. Liang believes that in so reading, one can better comprehend the meaning of individual life in the larger context of social life and thus better grasp Dewey's central contention that democracy is education and education is democracy. Liang comments that Dewey's philosophy is deep and thorough because he always tries to trace the origin of things, to 'start from the very beginning', as Liang puts it. According to Liang, Dewey rightly understands that the most active part of human life – and the universe at large – is 'renxin', the human heart-and-mind. As he observes, Dewey's writings are filled with profound insights into the nature of human sociality. He observes that Dewey and Confucius share the same conception of social individuals, for they both understand that humans are inevitably bound together by their very nature. Since human life is naturally social education, to be worthy of the name, must be essentially social and moral. Liang claims that by education Dewey means educating the human-hear-and-mind for a social life. He notes that Dewey end his book by reminding readers what it means to be moral : 'All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral' and particularly that 'interest in learning from all the contacts of life is the essential moral interest'. Liang laments the fact that most people fail to understand Dewey's view of morality because they have a narrow and rigid conception of morality as following rules or obeying duty. Even though Liang praises Dewey and sees many commonalities between Dewey and Confucius, he nonetheless points out what he thinks is lacking in Dewey's philosophy. Although Dewey has a penetrating understanding of the endlessly changing, lively, and dynamic aspects of life, he fails to see another side, that is, the unchanging and the absolute. According to Liang, Dewey makes circular arguments, such as, the end of education is more education, because 'he has not discovered morality, even though everything he said is quite moral'. Liang thinks that Dewey has taught people only how to apply intelligence in dealing with the practicalities of life, but not in reflecting inwardly upon the value of life. Liang's comment seems to reflect a prevailing criticism of Dewey in China during the 1920s and 30s – that he often fails to not the tranquil, spiritual, and aesthetic dimensions of human life. |
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| 370 | 1938.10.10 | John Dewey gets the 'grand cordon bleu honor' from the Government of China. |
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| 371 | 1942 |
Russell, Bertrand. A fresh look at empiricism, 1927-42. ). In : Russell, Bertrand. Basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959. (New York, N.Y. : Simon and Schuster, 1961). Dr. [John] Dewey and I were once in the town of Changsha during an eclipse of the moon : following immemorial custom, blind men were beating gongs to fritter the heavenly dog, whose attempt to swallow the moon is the cause of eclipses. Throughout thousands of years, this practice of beating gongs has never failed to be successful ; every eclipse has come to an end after a sufficient prolongation of the din. This illustration shows that our generalization must not use merely the method of agreement, but also the method of difference. |
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| 372 | 1942 |
Dewey, John. Message to the Chinese people. (1942). In : Dewey, John. Lectures in China, 1919-1920 [ID D28360]. [The Chinese text was a propaganda leaflet distributed over Chinese cities by the U.S. Army Air Force, 1942]. Your country and my country, China and the United States, are alike in being countries that love peace and have no designs on other nations. We are alike in having been attacked without reason and without warning by a rapacious and treacherous enemy. We are alike, your country and mine, in having a common end in this war we have been forced to enter in order to preserve our independence and freedom. We both want to see a world in which nations can devote themselves to the constructive tasks of industry, education, science, and art without fear of molestation by nations that think they can build themselves up by destroying the lives and the work of the men, women, and children of other peoples. We are alike, your country and mine, in being resolved to see this fight through to the end. In one important respect we are unlike. You have borne the burden, heat, and tragedy of the struggle much longer than we have. We are deeply indebted to you for the enduring and heroic struggle you have put up. Our task is severe but it is much easier than it would have been were it not for what you have done in holding a powerful enemy at bay through these long years of suffering. We are now comrades in a common fight and in defending our-selves ; all our energies are pledged to your defense and your triumph. The United Nations will win the whole war, and the United States and China will win against Japan. Of that there can be no more doubt than that the sun will rise tomorrow. Because we are a peaceful nation, we, like you, were taken at a disadvantage at the outset. I assure you that the early disaster has been a stimulus that has evoked the united energies and the unalterable resolve of the people of this county. We are in it with you and with the other peoples near you, and we shall carry on till complete victory is ours, and till you and they are forever relieved of the menace under which you have lived for so many years. For the twenty-one demands Japan made upon you a quarter of a century ago is an enduring memorial of how many years you have lived under a threat from which you shall not suffer in future years, and you are able to return to the peaceable task of building up you own culture in peaceful cooperation with other nations of goodwill. You have assumed by your heroic struggle a new position in the family of nations. You have won the undying respect and admiration of all nations that care for freedom. As the result of the victorious outcome of the war all inequalities to which you have been subject will be completely swept away. Our gratitude to you, our respect for you, our common struggle and sacrifice in the common cause, guarantee to China an equal place in the comity of nations when the light of victory dawns. Both of our nations, even in the midst of the sufferings we undergo and the sacrifices we make, can be of good cheer as we make a reality out of our vision of a world in which we can live without constant dread, and where we have taken a step forward toward a world of friendship and goodwill. In this new world you are assured the position of spiritual leadership, of Eastern Asia to which your enduring tradition of culture as well as your present heroic struggle so richly entitle you. We cannot forget that a Japan got her technical and mechanical resources, industry, and war from Western nations, so she got her literature, her art, and all that is best in her religion from you. The coming victory will restore to China her old and proper leadership in all that makes for the development of the human spirit. |
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| 373 | 1944.06.10 |
Letter from John Dewey to Tao Xingzhi. "My dear Dr. Tao, I have been happy to get news of you trough your former associate Professor Chu. I am glad to know your health remains good and that your educational work goes on, even under the difficult conditions you experience..." |
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| 374 | 1946 | John Dewey received the invitation to lecture in China and he decided to accept it, even though his family was concerned for his safety and health. The invitation was cancelled due to unsettling political situations. |
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| 375 | 1948 |
Feng, Yu-lan [Feng, Youlan]. A short history of Chinese philosophy [ID D10068]. Feng Youlan pointed out that what John Dewey and Bertrand Russell mainly lectured about in China was their own philosophy : “This gave their hearers the impression that the traditional philosophical systems had all been superseded and discarded. With little knowledge of the history of Western philosophy, the great majority of audiences failed to see the significance of their theories. One cannot understand a philosophy unless at the same time he understands the earlier traditions that it either approves or refutes. So these two philosophers, though well received by many, were understood by few. Their visit to China, nevertheless, opened new intellectual horizons for most of the students at that time. In this respect, their stay had great cultural and educational value. |
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| 376 | 1950-1951 |
Cao, Fu. Yuehan Duwei pi pan yin lun [ID D28696]. Chao Fu urged that criticism of Dewey should begin with a critique of his anti-Marxist, reactionary positions. While Marxism has been regarded as the absolute truth and guiding principles for all undertakings, including education, in the People's Republic, it has been constantly doubted and critized by Dewey, both in his lectures in China and in his writings on political and social philosophy. For example, while Marxists believe in using methods of violence to overthrow the old system, Dewy advocates the use of methods of intelligence or other nonviolent measures to gradually change and improve society. Marxist theory predicts that as capital squeezes out competition, the workers will become poorer and poorer, while Dewey argues that the workers will come to fare better and better as a result of competition. Marxists claim that Communism will inevitably win the final victory in the world, while Dewey maintains that the future is highly uncertain. |
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| 377 | 1950-1965 | John Dewey : Shortly after the Communist takeover of the Chinese mainland, organized efforts were made to criticize and discredit John Dewey's philosophy and its practical influence in China. This began in a number of articles singling out for attach Dewey's educational philosophy, grew into a vehement and systematic campaign directed against Hu Shi but usually involving Dewey as well, and continued sporadically through the articles and books directed either against Hu Shi or Dewey himself, or against pragmatism as a school of though. This reaction might be considered a continuation of the 'radical' response already discussed earlier, except that, this time, the earlier radicals have come into power. Indeed, Chen Duxiu himself has been discredited much earlier. The reactions of the 1950s are entirely negative. There is no longer any discussion of pros and cons, any impartial analysis of Dewey's thought and influence. What we have is a thoroughgoing critique of Dewey's pragmatic theory of truth, his experimentalist methodology, as well as his social, political and educational philosophy. The criteria for criticism are derived from Marxist theories and are assumed to be themselves free from error. Dewey is criticized for being an idealist, who regards as truth only the data of subjective experience, and neglects the reality of the objective world. The pragmatic theory of truth is attacked for being relativistic and diametrically opposed to the absolute verity of the materialist interpretation of the laws governing class struggle and historical development. Dewey's social, political and educational theories are regarded as serving the interests of American capitalism and imperialism. | |
| 378 | 1952 |
Hu, Shi. Duwei zhe xue. (1952). [ID D28685]. Dewey vertrat die Ansicht, dass Logik nichts anderes sei al seine Theorie der Untersuchung (A theory of inquiry). Von daher weicht seine Logik von der früheren Logik ab. Die frühere Logik beinhaltet die deduktive und die induktive Methode, den Obersatz, den Untersatz, die Suche nach Gemeinsamkeiten, Unterschieden und wechselseitigen Übereinstimmungen und Differenzen. Die sogenannte formale Logik (xing shi de luo ji). Diese Logik stützt sich allein auf den Beweis (lun zheng), sie wurde zu einer Form des Beweises, deshalb nannte Dewey sie 'Logik' (lun li xue). Sie ist formal, sie ist logisch (lun li)… Seit dem 19. Jahrhundert konzentrieren sich die Philosophen im Besonderen auf die induktive Methode der Logik. Dewey sagt : das könne nicht funktionieren ; die Methode des Denkens ist keine formale Methode ; der Mensch muss jederzeit auf die wahren Schwierigkeiten und die lebendigen Probleme reagieren und kann sich nicht an mechanische Formen klammern. |
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| 379 | 1952 |
Pan, Kaipei. Tao Xingzhi jiao yu si xiang de pi pan. (Beijing : Da zhong shu dian, 1952). 陶行知敎育思想的批判 Posthumous attack on Tao Xingzhi and John Dewey : 1) Tao and Dewey's brand of pragmatism denied the possibility of a 'scientific' system of historical laws, derived from analysis of 'objective' situations, and denied that social problems could be solved through the application of a universally valid theoretical system. 2) Tao and other Deweyan educators failed to understand that education was part of the social 'superstructure' and could have meaning only as the instrument of a social class. Tao's faith that education could be a primary force for social betterment was, in the Marxist view, part of a stubbornly persisting error, the 'theory of national salvation through education'. |
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| 380 | 1954 |
Brief von Mao Zedong an Li Da. 28.12.1954. 'When we criticize pragmatism [John Dewey], we must yet distinguish between what pragmatism means by such words as practicality and results, and what we mean when we use similar words, especially as most people are still confused about them.' |
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| 381 | 1955 |
Ai, Siqi. Shi yong zhu yi : fan ke xue de zhu guan wei xin lun duo fang ga lun. In : Zhe xue yan jiu ; Jan. (1955). "There are people who know that pragmatism is a kind of reactionary subjective idealist philosophy, but separate its methodology from its philosophical worldview, and say : Dewey's ideas of 'realism' and 'truth' are without value, but his method is scientific and correct. But The pragmatic methodology cannot be divided from its subjective idealism. True scientific methodology is built upon the recognition of the objective reality of the material world, its laws of development and its knowability, as offered by the materialist worldview. Pragmatism does not recognize [such truths]. It serves to help reactionaries to 'cope with the environment' in a last minute struggle preceding their imminent demise." |
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| 382 | 1955 |
Chen, Heqin. Dui Yuehan Duwei fan dong jiao yu zhe xue ji chu de pi pan [ID D28697]. "How was Dewey's poisonous pragmatic educational philosophy spread over China ? It was spread primarily through his lectures in China preaching his pragmatic philosophy and his reactionary educational ideas, and through that center of Dewey's reactionary educational ideas, and through that center of Dewey's reactionary thinking, namely, Columbia University, from which thousands of Chinese students, for over thirty years, have brought back all the reactionary, subjective-idealistic, pragmatic educational ideas of Dewey. As one who has been most deeply poisoned by his reactionary educational ideas, as one who has worked hard and longest to help spread his educational ideas, I now publicly accuse that great fraud and deceiver in the modern history of education, John Dewey !" |
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| 383 | 1956 |
Chen, Heqin. Pi pan Duwei fan dong jiao yu xue de zhe xue ji chu [ID D28575]. "The child-centered curriculum in living education has destroyed scientific knowledge's nature of system, design, and organization, debased the leading role of the teacher, obstructed the child's potentiality in world reconstruction through the mastery of scientific knowledge and consequently discouraged the will of the wild and the youth to reconstruct the fatherland and defend world peace. This is the consequence of my being hit by Dewey's second gunshot, namely, his pragmatic, reactionary theory of the child-centered curriculum – school is society, education is life. Doing in learning and teaching was not the same as 'practice' in Marxism-Leninism. 'practice' in Marxism-Leninism is social and purposeful, while 'doing' in the Deweyan method of teaching is trivial, fragmentary, and splitting scientific knowledge in an attempt to subject the youth to slavery at the service of American monopolizing capitalists." |
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| 384 | 1959 |
Hu, Shi. John Dewey in China [ID D28461]. John Dewey was born October 20, 1859, and died in 1952, in his ninety-third year. This coming October there will be a celebration of the Centennial of his birth in many parts of the free world. Forty years ago, early in 1919, Professor Dewey and his wife, Alice, left the United States for a trip to the Far East. The trip was to be solely for pleasure. But, before their departure from San Francisco, Dewey was invited by cable to give a series of lectures at the Imperial University of Tokyo and later at other centers of higher learning in Japan. While in Japan, he received a joint invitation from five educational bodies in China to lecture in Peking, Nanking, Shanghai, and other cities. He ac¬cepted the invitation, and the Deweys arrived in Shanghai on May I, 1919- just three days before the outburst of the Student Movement on May 4th in Peking. That was the Student Movement which is often referred to as 'The May Fourth Movement'. It was the Student Movement and its successes and failures that so much intrigued the Deweys that they changed their original plan to return to America after the summer months and decided to spend a full year in China. Dewey applied to Columbia University for a year's leave of absence, which was granted, and which was subsequently extended to two years. So, he spent a total of two years and two months in China, from May, 1919, to July, 1921. When Miss Evelyn Dewey wrote in her Preface to the volume of Dr. and Mrs. Dewey's letters that 'the fascination of the struggle going on in China for a unified and independent democracy caused them to alter their plan to return to the United States in the summer of 1919', she was referring to their keen interest in the Student Movement. It is in order, therefore, to give a brief sketch of the May Fourth Movement and its nationweide influence as background of this talk on John Dewey in China. World War I had ended only a few months before, and the Peace Conference in Paris was drafting the final terms of the peace treaty. The Chinese people had hoped that, with Woodrow Wilson's idealistic 'Fourteen Points' still echoing throughout the world, China might have some of her grievances redressed at the Peace Conference. But in the first days of May, 1919, authentic reports began to reach China that President Wilson had failed to render his moral support to China's demand that the former German possessions and concessions in Shantung be restored to China; and that the Peace Conference had decided to leave the Shantung question to Japan to settle with China. The Chinese delegation was helpless; the Chinese government was powerless. The people were disappointed and disheartened, but helpless. On Sunday, May 4th, the students in Peking called a mass meeting of all colleges and secondary schools to protest against the Paris decision and to call on the government to instruct the Chinese delegation in Paris to refuse to accept it. The whole thing was a spontaneous and unpremeditated outburst of youthful patriotism. The communists’ claim that 'the May Fourth Movement' was a part of the World Revolution and was planned and led by Chinese communists is sheerly a big lie. There was no communist in China in 1919. After the speeches and resolutions, the mass meeting decided on a demon¬stration parade which ended in forcing the closed gates of the house of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had been notorious for his pro-Japanese policies. The marching students went into the house and beat up one of the luncheon guests, who happened to be the Chinese Minister to Tokyo, recalled for consultation. In the turmoil, the house was set on fire—probably to frighten away the demonstrators. A number of students were arrested on their way back to their schools. That was what happened on the fourth of May, forty years ago. The Deweys were still in Shanghai when the news of the Peking student movement was first published and was immediately arousing sympathetic responses from students and the general public all over the country. When the Deweys arrived in Peking, they saw the student movement at its highest moments during the first days of June. Hundreds of students were making speeches in the streets, preaching to the people that China could regain her lost rights by boycotting Japanese goods. On June 5, the Deweys wrote to their daughters at home: 'This is Thursday morning, and last night we heard that about a thousand students were arrested the day before. They had filled the building of Law [of the National Peking University, used as a temporary ‘prison’], and have begun on the Science building.' Later, on the same day, they reported the most astonishing news: 'In the evening, a telephone call came that the tents [of the soldiers] around the university buildings where the students were imprisoned had been struck and the soldiers were leaving. Then the students inside held a meeting and passed a resolution asking the government whether they were guaranteed freedom of speech, because if they were not, they would not leave the building merely to be arrested again, as they planned to go on speaking. So they em¬barrassed the government by remaining in 'jail' all night.' The Deweys later explained that the government's ignominious surrender was due to the fact that the merchants in Shanghai had called a strike the day before as a protest against the arrest of the thousand students. And they re¬marked: 'This is a strange country. The so-called republic is a joke… But in some ways there is more democracy than we have. Leaving out the women, there is complete social equality. And while the legislature is a perfect farce, public opinion, when it does express itself, as at the present time, has re¬markable influence.' On June 16, the Deweys wrote home that the three pro-Japanese high officials (including the Minister of Foreign Affairs) had resigned from the government, and the students' strike had been called off. On July 2, they wrote home: 'The anxiety here is tense. The report is that the [Chinese] Delegates did not sign [the Peace Treaty].' Two days later, they wrote: 'You can't imagine what it means here for China not to have signed [the Peace Treaty]. The entire government had been for it. The President up to ten days before the signing said it was necessary [to sign]. It was a victory for public opinion, and all set going by these little schoolboys and girls.' I have quoted these letters to show a part of the first impressions Dr. and Mrs. Dewey had during their first two or three months in Peking. Somehow, this 'strange country' had a strange appeal to them. They decided to stay on, for a year at first, and finally for two years and two months. They visited 11 of the 22 provinces—4 provinces in the North, 5 in Central China, from Shanghai to Changsha, and 2 in the South, A word may be said about the preparations made for the reception of Dewey's lectures. A month before his arrival in China, I was asked by the sponsoring organizations to give a series of four lectures on the Pragmatic Movement, beginning with Charles S. Peirce and William James, but with special emphasis on Dewey. A series of articles on Dewey's educational philos¬ophy was published in Shanghai under the editorship of Dr. Chiang Monlin, one of his students in Teachers’ College at Columbia. A number of Dewey's students were asked to interpret his lectures in the Chinese language. For example, I was his translator and interpreter for all his lectures in Peking and in the provinces of Shantung and Shansi. For his several major series of lectures, we also selected competent recorders for re¬porting every lecture in full for the daily newspapers and periodicals. What came to be known as 'Dewey’s Five Major Series of Lectures' in Peking, total¬ing 58 lectures, were recorded and reported in full and later published in book form, going through ten large reprintings before Dewey left China in 1921, and continuing to be reprinted for three decades until the communists put a stop to them. The topics of the Five Series will give some idea of the scope and content of Dewey's lectures: I. 3 lectures on Modern Tendencies in Education II. 16 lectures on Social and Political Philosophy III. 16 lectures on Philosophy of Education IV. 15 lectures on Ethics V. 8 lectures on Types of Thinking His lectures in Peking included two other series: VI. 3 lectures on Democratic Developments in America VII. 3 lectures on Three Philosophers of the Modern Period (William James, Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell—these lectures were given at special request as an introduction to Russell before the latter's arrival in China in 1920 to deliver a number of lectures.) Dewey's lectures in Nanking included these series: 1. 10 lectures on the Philosophy of Education 2. 10 lectures on the History of Philosophy 3. 3 lectures on Experimental Logic Typing on his own typewriter, Dewey always wrote out his brief notes for every lecture, a copy of which would be given to his interpreter so that he could study them and think out the suitable Chinese words and phrases before the lecture and its translation. After each lecture in Peking, the Dewey notes were given to the selected recorders, so that they could check their reports before publication. I have recently re-read most of his lectures in Chinese translation after a lapse of 40 years, and I could still feel the freshness and earnestness of the great thinker and teacher who always measured every word and every sentence in the classroom or before a large lecture audience. After one year of public lectures in many cities, Dewey was persuaded by his Chinese friends to spend another year in China, primarily as a Visiting Professor at the National Peking University, lecturing and discussing with advanced students without the aid of an interpreter, and devoting a part of his time to lectures at the Teachers' College in Peking and in Nanking. He was interested in the few 'experimental schools' which had been established by his former students in various educational centers, such as Peking, Nanking, Soochow, and Shanghai. Some of the schools, such as the one at the Teachers' College in Nanking, were named Dewey schools. The Deweys left China in 1921. In October, 1922, the National Educational Association met in Tsinan to discuss a thorough revision of the national 4 school system and curriculum. Article 4 of the New Educational System of 1922 reads: 'The child is the center of education. Special attention should be paid to the individual characteristics and aptitudes of the child in organizing the school system. Henceforth, the elective system should be adopted for sec¬ondary and higher education, and the principle of flexibility should be adopted in the arrangement and promotion of classes in all elementary schools. ' In the new school curriculum of 1923 and the revised curriculum of 1929, the emphasis was placed on the idea that the child was the center of the school. The influence of Dewey's educational philosophy is easily seen in these revisions. Dewey went to China in May, 1919—forty years ago. Can we now give a rough estimate of his influence in China after the passing of forty years? Such an estimate has not been easy, because these forty years have been mostly years of great disturbance, of civil wars, revolutions, and foreign wars— including the years of the Nationalist Revolution, the eight years of the Japanese War and the Second World War, the years of the communist wars, and the communist conquest of the Chinese mainland. It is exceedingly dif¬ficult to say how much influence any thinker or any school of thought has had on a people that has suffered so much from the tribulations of war, revolu¬tion, exile, mass migration, and general insecurity and deprivation. In our present case, however, the Chinese communist regime has given us unexpected assistance in the form of nationwide critical condemnation and purging of the Pragmatic philosophy of Dewey and of his Chinese followers. This great purge began as early as 1950 in a number of inspired but rather mild articles criticizing Dewey’s educational theories, and citing American critics such as Kandel, Bode, Rugg, and Hook in support of their criticism. But the purge became truly violent in 1954 and 1955, when the Chinese communist regime ordered a concerted condemnation and purge of the evil and poisonous thoughts of Hu Shih in many aspects of Chinese intellectual activity—in philosophy, in history, in the history of philosophy, in political thought, in literature, and in histories of Chinese literature. In those two years of 1954 and 1955, more than three million words were published for the purging and exorcising of the 'ghost of Hu Shih'. And in almost every violent attack on me, Dewey was inevitably dragged in as a source and as the fountainhead of the heinous poison. And in most of the articles of this vast purge literature, there was a frank recognition of the evil influence of Dewey, Dewey's philosophy and method, and the application of that philosophy and method by that 'rotten and smelly' Chinese Deweyan, Hu Shih, and his slavish followers. May we not accept such confessions from the communist-controlled world as fairly reliable, though probably slightly exaggerated, estimates of the 'poisonous' influence left by Dewey and his friends in China? I quote only a few of these confessions from Red China: 1. 'If we want to critize the old theories of education, we must begin with Dewey. The educational ideas of Dewey have dominated and controlled Chinese education for thirty years, and his social philosophy and his general philosophy have also influenced a part of the Chinese people'. (The People’s Education, October, 1950). 2. 'How was Dewey's poisonous Pragmatic educational philosophy spread over China? It was spread primarily through his lectures in China preaching his Pragmatic philosophy and his reactionary educational ideas, and through that center of Dewey's reactionary thinking, namely, Columbia University, from which thousands of Chinese students, for over thirty years, have brought back all the reactionary, subjective-idealistic, Pragmatic educational ideas of Dewey. ... As one who has been most deeply poisoned by his reactionary edu¬cational ideas, as one who has worked hardest and longest to help spread his educational ideas, I now publicly accuse that great fraud and deceiver in the modern history of education, John Dewey! ' (By Ch’en Ho-ch'in, one of the great educators of the Dewey school, who was responsible for the moderniza-tion of the Shanghai schools, who was ordered to make this public accusation in February, 1955. It was published in the Wenhui Pao, February 28, 1955.) 3. 'The battlefield of the study of Chinese literature has, for over thirty years, been occupied by the representative of bourgeois idealism [that is, Pragmatism], namely, Hu Shih, and his school. Even years after the 'Libera¬tion' when the intellectual circles have supposedly acknowledged the leader¬ship position of Marxism, the evil influence of that school has not yet received the purge it rightly deserves'. (The People's Daily, the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party and Government, Nov. 5, 1954). 4. 'The poison of the philosophical ideas of Pragmatism [as represented by Hu Shih] has not only infiltrated the field of the study of Chinese literature, but has also penetrated deep into the fields of history, education, linguistics, and even the realm of natural science—of course, the greatest evil effect has been in the field of philosophy'. (Kuang-ming Daily, of Peking, Dec. 15, 1954). These confessions should be sufficient to give us an idea of the extent of the evil influence of Dewey and his followers and friends in China. According to these confessions, the Pragmatic philosophy and method of Dewey and his Chinese friends have dominated Chinese education for thirty years, and have infiltrated and dominated for over thirty years the fields of the study of Chinese literature, linguistics, history, philosophy, and even the realm of natural science! What is this Deweyan brand of Pragmatism or Experimentalism that is so much feared in communist China as to deserve three million words of purge and condemnation? As I examine this vast purge literature, I cannot help laughing heartily at all this fuss and fury. After wading through literally millions of words of abuse, I find that what those Red masters and slaves dread most and want to purge is only a philosophical theory of thinking which Dewey had expounded in many of his logical studies and which he had made popular in his little book, How We Think. According to this theory, thinking is not passive and slavish deduction from unquestioned absolute truths, but an effective tool and method for resolving doubt and overcoming difficulties in our daily life, in our active dealings with Nature and man. Thinking, says Dewey, always begins with a situation of doubt and perplexity; it proceeds with a search for facts and for possible suggestions or hypotheses for the resolution of the initial difficulty; and it terminates in proving, testing, or verifying the selected hypothesis by successfully and satisfactorily resolving the perplexing situation which had challenged the mind to think. That’s the Deweyan theory of think¬ing, which I have in the last forty years tried to popularize by pointing out that that was an adequate analysis of the method of science as well as an adequate analysis of the method of 'evidential investigation' (k’ao-chü, k'ao- cheng), which the great Chinese classical scholars of the last three centuries had been using so efficaciously and Fruitfully. That is the method of the dis¬ciplined common sense of mankind: it is the essence of the method of science, consisting mainly in a boldness in suggesting hypotheses, coupled with metic¬ulous care in seeking verification by evidence or by experimentation. Two corollaries from this conception of thinking stand out pre-eminently. First, the progress of man and of society depends upon the patient and suc¬cessful solution of real and concrete problems by means of the active use of the intelligence of man. 'Progress', says Dewey, 'is piecemeal. It is always a retail job, never wholesale.' That is anathema to all communists, who believe in total and cataclysmic revolution, which will bring about wholesale progress overnight. The second corollary is equally anathema to the communists, namely, that, in this natural and orderly process of rational thinking, all doctrines and all theories are to be regarded, not as absolute truths, but only as tentative and suggestive hypotheses to be tested in use—only as tools and materials for aiding human intelligence, but never as unquestioned and unquestionable dogmas to stifle or stop thinking. Dewey said in his Peking lecture on moral education: 'Always cultivate an open mind. Always cultivate the habit of intellectual honesty. And always learn to be responsible for your own thinking.' That was enough to scare the Commies out of their wits, and enough to start years of violent attack and abuse on Dewey and Pragmatism and the 'ghost of Hu Shih'. And the most amusing fact was that all those years of violent attack and all those millions of words of condemnation began in 1954 with a communist discussion of a popular Chinese novel of the eighteenth century entitled 'The Dream of the Red Chamber'. Why? Because nearly forty years ago I was tempted to apply the method of scientific research to a study of the authorship, the remarkable family background of the author, and the history of the evolu¬tion of the text of the novel. In the course of subsequent years, numerous hitherto-unknown materials were discovered and published by me, all of which have verified and strengthened my first researches. That was a conscious application of the Dewey theory of thinking to a subject-matter which was well known to every man and woman who could read at all. I have applied the same theory and method of thinking to several other Chinese novels, as well as to many difficult and forbidding problems of research in the fields of the history of Chinese thought and belief, including the history of Ch'an or Zen Buddhism. But the best-known example or material with which I illustrated and popularized the Deweyan theory of thinking was the great novel 'The Dream of the Red Chamber', Nearly thirty years ago (November, 1930), at the request of my publisher, I made an anthology of my Essays, in which I included three pieces on 'The Dream of the Red Chamber'. I wrote a preface to this anthology intended for younger readers. In my wicked moments, I wrote these words in introducing my three studies of that novel: My young friends, do not regard these pieces on 'The Dream of the Red Chamber' as my efforts to teach you how to read a novel. These essays are only a few Examples or illustrations of a method of how to think and study. Through these simple essays, I want to convey to you a little bit of the scientific spirit, the scientific attitude of mind, and the scientific method. The scientific spirit lies in the search for facts and for truth. The scientific attitude of mind is a willingness to put aside our feelings and prejudices, a willingness to face facts and to follow evidence wherever it may lead us. And the scientific method is only 'a boldness to suggest hypotheses coupled with a meticulous care in seeking proof and verification'. When evidence is lacking or insuf¬ficient, there must be a willingness to suspend judgment. A conclusion is valid only when it is verified. Some Ch'an (Zen) monk of centuries ago said that Bodhidharma came all the way to China in search of a man who would not be deceived by man. In these essays, I, too, wish to present a method of how not to be deceived by men. To be led by the nose by a Confucius or a Chu Hsi is not highly commendable. But to be led by the nose by a Marx, a Lenin, or a Stalin is also not quite becoming a man. I have no desire to lead anybody by the nose: I only wish to convey to my young friends my humble hope that they may learn a little intellectual skill for their own self-protection and endeavor to be, men who cannot be deceived by others. These words, I said then, were penned with infinite love and infinite hope. For these words, I have brought upon my head and the head of my beloved teacher and friend, John Dewey, years of violent attack and millions of words of abuse and condemnation. But, ladies and gentlemen, these same millions of words of abuse and condemnation have given me a feeling of comfort and encouragement—a feeling that Dewey's two years and two months in China were not entirely in vain, that my forty years of humble effort in my own country have not been entirely in vain, and that Dewey and his students have left in China plenty of 'poison', plenty of antiseptic and antitoxin, to plague the Marxist-Leninist slaves for many, many years to come. |
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| 385 | 1964 |
He, Minlin. Duwei jiao yu xue shuo dui yu wo guo dang qian jiao yu zhi ying xiang. [The influence of Dewey's theory of teaching method and subject matter upon Chinese education]. [ID D28583]. John Dewey was a reformer and a foreign philosopher ; his educational theory has had a tremendous influence upon Chinese education. Dewey lectured in China between 1919 and 1921 during which time he made a great many constructive suggestions to the existing Chinese educational system and curriculum. Even the present educational system was established also directly or indirectly under his influence. In spite of the fact that his prestige has been rapidly reduced in America, his philosophy of education and his way of thinking are still worthy to study. |
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| 386 | 1980-1992 |
John Dewey and Tao Xingzhi. Contemporary Chinese scholars hold three different views regarding the relationship between Tao Xingzhi and John Dewey's educational ideas. Some believe that Tao's educational theory is a direct product of Dewey's pragmatic philosophy and that Tao only made certain nonessential changes to adapt Dewey's theories to the Chinese conditions. A second school of thought maintains that there are essential differences between Tao and Dewey : Dewey's ideas belong to the old democratic pragmatism in capitalist societies while Tao's ideas belong to the new democratic culture in socialist countries ; Dewey's education serves the young students in schools while Tao's education serves people of all ages, especially those from poor, ordinary, and rural families. Dewey's purpose of education is to produce a labor force that serves bourgeois interests whereas Tao's purpose of education is to enlighten the oppressed and exploited masses of working people so that they become masters of their own fate and serve the interests of the common people ; and Dewey's educational methods try to make school imitate society and education imitate life whereas Tao's educational methods help students live the real life in the real, larger society. Many Chinese scholars argue that Tao's educational ideas originate from Dewey but they are better developed and more suitable for Chinese educational practice. They maintain that Tao creatively and critically adapted Dewey's educational ideas to Chinese education and successfully used education as an instrument in the Chinese people's anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist struggle, which has far more significant meaning than Dewey's promotion of education as an instrument in an individual student's adaptation to the immediate environment. Their interpretation of Dewey's views on the relationship among the individual, the school, and the society is narrow and misconceptualized, but the important thing is that they have affirmed the positive and powerful influence of Dewey on Tao's ideas. |
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| 387 | 1982 |
Second annual meeting of the Chinese Society for the Study of Educational History. They opened special panels on John Dewey and received enthusiastic responses from nay scholars. They proposed that the study of Dewey's educational theory should be conducted with a liberated mind and result in an honest, matter-of-fact evaluation. |
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| 388 | 1983 |
Zhang, Xiaoping. [From Dewey to Bruner]. In : 'Educational science, East China Teachers University' ; vol. 1 (1983). "John Dewey is a reactionary in his political ideology and class position, but he is also a respectable scholar and thinker because of his lifetime efforts, his intelligence, and his achievements. Dewey's ideas are products of a special era and a special society." |
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| 389 | 1983 |
Wu, Junsheng. Wen jiao lun ping cun gao. (Taibei : Zheng zhong shu ju, 1983). 文教論評存稿 "No other western educator has wielded quite as much influence on education in China as John Dewey and his pragmatism". |
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| 390 | 1983-1987 |
Jiang, Ling. Ji yu Duwei li lun jiao yu de te zheng fen xi (1983). [ID D28933]. Meng, Xiande. Lun Duwei jiao yu zhe xue ti xi zai jiao yu shi shang de di wei (1985). [ID D28688]. Zhao, Xianglin. Duwei. In : Wai guo xian dai jiao yu shi. (1987). [ID D28687]. Jiang, Meng and Zhao observe that by putting emphasis on education as life and growth rather than as the preparation for life, Dewey did not dispute the importance of preparation. Rather, he meant that only through meaningful activities in the process of education can one be prepared for life, in the real sense of the word. Despite these positive interpretations, Dewey's theory on educational goals still receives strong political criticism from some Chinese scholars, who charge that Dewey's real educational purpose is to serve the interests and needs of the bourgeoisie and monopoly capitalists in the United States. |
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| 391 | 1985 |
Zhang, Fakun. "Chuan tong jiao yu" yu "xian dai jiao yu" de yi zhi xing chu yi [ID D28689]. "The Chinese educators will not totally abandon their established educational system, but they now see the necessity of incorporating the useful elements from Western education, including Dewey's ideas, into the Chinese system. They will avoid going to either extreme - 'traditional education', as represented by Confucian and Herbart's educational theories, or 'modern education', as represented by Dewey and his advocates in China." |
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| 392 | 1985 |
Zhongguo da bai ke quan shu : tian wen xue. Hu Qiaomu [et al]. [Education]. [ID D28690]. Knowledge for John Dewey was the result of inquiry utilizing the scientific method. The individual attainment of this knowledge, then, is contingent upon that person's 'active' and methodological search for it. Dewey faced a child-centered, activity-oriented process of education and considered it essential that school and society become one. In order to analyze the position of pragmatism and Dewey's education thought in the Chinese educational debate during the 1980s, several types of sources have been examined. Chinese educational journals, and monographs dealing specifically with Western educational theories. Much of what is written about pragmatism and Dewey was heavily influenced by Dewey's prominent historical role in China, and as such subject to ideological colorations that Chinese accounts of other educational theories did not suffer from. Under the entry of 'Pragmatism' in the encyclopedia, we find it described as an 'important school in Western modern capitalist educational thought'. Its central ideas are equated with those of Dewey, and most of the entry concentrates on his work. He is termed an 'idealistic empiricist' because he considered experience to be the basic unit of the world, though it remains unclear precisely why he is labeled an idealist ; his pragmatic emphasis on experience as the product of interaction between an organism and its environment and as the central criteria for knowledge make it difficult to understand this categorization. One author attempted to explain why Dewey's thought was labeled idealistic : he stated that it is because Dewey 'brings the mind into the natural system, attaching great importance to the role of knowledge and regards the result as natural evolution. The entry goes on to cite some of Dewey's most prominent contributions to educational theory, namely his criticism of Herbart's formalistic, 'teacher-centered' educational thought and consequent emphasis on developing educational techniques and materials appropriate and relevant to a child's age and experience, his re-thinking of teacher-student relations with stress being placed on cooperation rather than confrontation, and finally his radically new conception of education's role in society. The entry concludes with a brief criticism of Dewey's attack on Marx's class-struggle theory and his advocacy of the use of the 'intelligent method' to solve social problems as well. A common point made by all the authors was Dewey's close attachment not only to the United States as his homeland but also to the period of great economic and social change in which he wrote. They pointed out the importance of the immense progress made in industrialization and capital accumulation during this period as opposed to the continuing stagnancy of the educational sector. They considered Dewey's thought to be the logical reaction to this state of affairs. The schools were no longer fulfilling the needs of society (the capitalists), ergo reform was needs. Dewey's educational theories were seen as serving the interests of the ruling bourgeoisie. His emphasis on developing individuality in the child was regarded as antithetical to the nurturing of communist morality, but a necessary ingredient of a capitalist system based on mutual competition. Dewey was attacked by several of the writers for attempting to conceal class differences and thus prevent class contradictions from becoming visible through a drowning diffusion of his concept of 'democracy'. By pitting individuals against each other on the economic market, and by giving them a false sense of political power, Dewey was accused of perpetuating the capitalist system and serving the interests of the oppressing class. Another related criticism shared by the majority of the Chinese writers was that Dewey disregarded the importance of the productive forces in determining social and economic relations which in turn delimit social consciousness. Norms, values and even ideals of the people are, according to the Chinese Marxists, inescapably tied to the fundamental economic production forms of a given society. Dewey was accused of ignoring the existing socio-economic context in which education takes place, making his 'social reform' in effect unattainable. In addition his learning theories themselves were criticized for not taking into account social relations within the classroom ; these relations were called in Deweyan terms by the Chinese 'indirect experience' and were considered an important part of a child's intellectual baggage. |
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| 393 | 1985 |
Shi, Weiping. Guan yu Duwei jiao yu mu di de hong guan fen xi [ID D28691]. Shi Weiping points out that the conclusion drawn in the 1950s of John Dewey's theory of educational purpose was too simplistic, subjective, and unfair. He cites different arguments from Dewey's own works to demonstrate that as a pragmatist, Dewey firmly believes in the role of education as a means of social reform for a democracy ; thus he has a very clear social goal for education. |
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| 394 | 1985 |
Wu, Yuanxun. Shi ping duwei de "cong zuo zhong xue" [ID D28692]. "We do not want children to learn by doing, but we do not oppose children's participation in practice. We can experiment with different structures of curriculum to create conditions for children to apply what they learn in practice." |
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| 395 | 1986 |
Fu, Tongxian ; Zhang, Wenyu. Jiao yu zhe xue. [ID D28693]. Fu Tongxian recognizes the worthy elements in John Dewey's theory : "Dewey tried to remind us that the purpose of education must conform to the development of the child, and must not be disconnected from the child's experiences and needs. Otherwise, education cannot reach any of its goals nor produce effective results. We feel that he is right on that point." |
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| 396 | 1986 | Tao Xingzhi and John Dewey were one of the major research topics by the China Society for the Study of Tao Xingzhi. | |
| 397 | 1989 |
Zhang, Yong. Duwei jiao yu li lun zhong de bian zheng fa [ID D28694]. Zhang concurs with Shi Weiping and concludes that John Dewey has a strong focus on the society in his discussion on creating a balance between individual growth and social development in the educational process. Zhang further quotes from Dewey's lectures in China, which offered explicit warning to Chinese educators against education without a purpose. Zhang observes that Dewey dialectically and appropriately handled the relationship between the child, the teaching materials, and the curriculum, and this is a significant contribution to education : "If we say that Marx creatively applied dialects to the study of political, social and economic issues, we have to admit that Dewey's contribution is as great as Marx's when he applied dialectics to the study of educational problems". |
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| 398 | 1997 |
Huang, Jiande. Xi fang zhe xue dong jian shi : 1840-1949. [ID D17438]. "John Dewey's influence has two sides : The negative and the positive. The negative influence is traced in his preference for social reform to Marxism, while the positive derives from his advocacy of pragmatism, new educational philosophy, and democracy. These ideas oppose dogmatism, and stress reflective thinking, drawing on spirits of practicality and innovation formed during America's pioneering years. Dewey conveyed to Chinese listeners American style characterized by pioneer spirit and determination to succeed, which are concurrent with the spirit of 'science' and 'democracy' that many Chinese intellectuals were promoting at this time." |
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| 399 | 1997 |
Liu, Fangtong. Dai xu : chong xin ren si he ping jia Duwei. Preface. In : [Dewey, John]. Xin jiu ge ren zhu yi : Duwei wei xuan [ID D28559]. [Re-understanding and re-evaluation Dewey]. "In the mid-fifties, dominated by the leftist political ideological line, a large-scale movement was launched in order to criticize pragmatism. This wave of critique mainly aimed to serve certain political purposes ; as a result, most critics divorced themselves from Dewey's pragmatism itself. Henceforth, the leftist political criterion dominated the academic criticism of Dewey and other western philosophers, resulting in oversimplified negation taking the place of objective and concrete analysis. As a result, the real image of Dewey and other western scholars as well as their theories was often twisted. Actually, the fundamental feature of Dewey's philosophy lies in its opposition against dualism, stressing that the world that man confronts, lives in and regards as the object of cognition, is the world in man's view (experience) that has been acted upon and reconstructed (humanized) instead of the world per se that exists outside of man." |
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Bibliography (123)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1918 |
[Dewey, John]. Si wei shu. Duwei zhu ; Liu Boming bian yi. (Nanjing : Gao deng shi fan xue xiao, 1918). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. How we think. (Boston : D.C. Heath, 1910). 思維術 |
Publication / DewJ91 | |
| 2 | 1919-1939 |
The Correspondence of John Dewey, 1871-1952. Electronic edition. Volume 2: 1919-1939. Past Masters : InteLex Corporation, 1999-. http://www.nlx.com/collections/132. [Auszüge aus Briefen, die China betreffen. Die Briefe wurden so übernommen, wie sie vom Dewey Center und Past Masters zur Verfügung gestellt wurden ; ohne Korrektur der Fehler]. |
Publication / DewJ3 |
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| 3 | 1919.10.08 | Dewey, John. The discrediting of idealism. In : New Republic ; vol. 20, 8.10. (1919). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 11 : 1918-1919. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ12 |
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| 4 | 1919.12 | Dewey, John. Chinese national sentiment. In : Asia ; vol. 19, Dec. (1919). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 11 : 1918-1919. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ18 |
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| 5 | 1919 |
[Dewey, John]. Meiguo zhi min zhi de fa zhan. Duwei jiang yan lu. Hu Shi, Han Lu, Tian Feng. (Beijing : Xue shu jiang yan hui, [1919]). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. American democracy. Vortrag in China 1919]. 美國之民治的發展 : 杜威講演录 |
Publication / DewJ77 | |
| 6 | 1919 |
[Dewey, John]. Xian dai jiao yu de qu shi. Duwei. (Beijing : Xue shu jiang yan hui, 1919). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The trend of modern education, Vortrag in China 1919]. 現代敎育的趨势 |
Publication / DewJ98 |
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| 7 | 1919 |
[Dewey, John].Xue xiao yu she hui zhi jin bu. Liu Jianyang yi. In : Ping min jiao yu ; no 3 (Oct. 25, 1919). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The school and society. (Chicago, Ill. : The University of Chicago Press, 1900). Chap. 1. 学小与社会制进步 |
Publication / DewJ55 | |
| 8 | 1919 |
[Dewey, John]. Xue xiao he er tong zhi sheng huo. Liu Jianyang yi. In : Ping min jiao yu ; no 7-9 (Nov. 22, 29, Dec. 6, 1919) Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The school and society. (Chicago, Ill. : The University of Chicago Press, 1900). Chap. 2. 学校何儿 童纸生活 |
Publication / DewJ154 | |
| 9 | 1919 |
[Dewey, John]. Jiao yu shang zhi min zhu zhu yi. Zhen Chang yi. In : Jiao yu za zhi ; vol. 11, no 5-6 (May 20, June 10, 1919). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Democracy and education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1916). Chap. 7. 敎育尚殖民注注译 |
Publication / DewJ160 | |
| 10 | 1919 |
[Dewey, John]. Jiao yu lian he hui. Xu Gantang yi. In : Xin jiao yu ; vol. 2, no 4 (Dec. 1919). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Ill advised. In : American teacher ; vol. 6 (Febr. 1917). 敎育聯合會 |
Publication / DewJ167 | |
| 11 | 1919 |
[Dewey, John]. Li ke jiao yu zhi mu di. Transl. from Japanese by Jiang Qi yi. In : Xin jiao yu ; vol. 1, no 5 (Augs. 1919). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The aims of science education. [Lecture given by Dewey in Japan in 1919]. 理克教育之幕棣 |
Publication / DewJ168 | |
| 12 | 1919 |
Dewey, John. Meiguo zhi min zhi de fa zhan. In : Jue wu ; Suppl. of Min guo ri bao ; June 21 (1919). [Democratic developments in America. Vortrag in China 1919]. 美國之民治的發展 |
Publication / DewJ56 |
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| 13 | 1919.07.08 | Dewey, John. The international duel in China. In : New Republic ; vol. 20, July 8 (1919). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 11 : 1918-1919. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ14 |
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| 14 | 1919.07.28 | Dewey, John. Militarism in China. In : New Republic ; vol. 20, July 28 (1919). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 11 : 1918-1919. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ15 |
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| 15 | 1919.09.12 | Dewey, John. The American opportunity in China. In : New Republic ; vol. 21, Sept. 12 (1919). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 11 : 1918-1919. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ16 |
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| 16 | 1919.10 | Dewey, John. Transforming the mind of China. In : Asia ; vol. 19, Oct. (1919). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 11 : 1918-1919. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ4 |
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| 17 | 1919.10.06 | Dewey, John. Our share in drugging China. In : New Republic ; vol. 21, Oct. 6 (1919). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 11 : 1918-1919. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ17 |
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| 18 | 1920 |
Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Ed. by Evelyn Dewey. (New York, N.Y. : E.P. Dutton ; London : J.M. Dent, 1920). http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31043. |
Publication / DewJ1 | |
| 19 | 1920 |
[Dewey, John]. Duwei wu da jiang yan. Duwei jiang ; Hu Shi yi ; Mu Wang, Fu Lu bi ji. (Beijing : Chen bao she, 1920). (Chen bao she cong shu ; 3). [Five lectures by Dewey in Beijing]. [Enthält] : She hui zhe xue yu zheng zhi zhe xue. Jiao yu zhe xue. Si xiang zhi pai bie. Xian dai san ge zhe xue jia. Lun li yan jiang ji lue. 杜威五大講演 |
Publication / Berg8 | |
| 20 | 1920 |
[Dewey, John]. Shi yan lun li xue. Duwei zhu ; Liu Boming kou yi ; Shen Zhensheng bi shu. (Shanghai : Tai dong tu shu ju, 1920). [Übersetzung von Vorträgen über Logik]. 試驗論理學 |
Publication / DewJ89 | |
| 21 | 1920 |
[Dewey, John]. Zhe xue shi. Duwei yan jiang ; Liu Boming yi. (Shanghai : Tai dong tu shu ju, 1920). [Übersetzung von Dewey, John. History of philosophy, Vorträge in China 1920]. 哲學史 |
Publication / DewJ103 | |
| 22 | 1920 |
[Dewey, John]. Wei lai zhi xue xiao. Xu Hanxiang yi. In : Jiao yu bu gong bao ; no 5-7, 9 (1920) ; no 1-2, 5, 7, 10-11 (1921) ; no 1, 4-7, 9-10 (1922). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Schools of tomorrow. (New York, N.Y. E.P. Dutton, 1915). 未來之学校 |
Publication / DewJ158 | |
| 23 | 1920-1923 |
[Dewey, John]. Jiao yu zhe xue gai lun. Zhu Wentai yi. In : Jiao yu bu gong bao ; no 12 (1920) ; no 9 (1921) ; no 2 (1923). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Democracy and education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1916). 敎育哲學槪論 |
Publication / DewJ159 | |
| 24 | 1920 |
[Dewey, John]. Fan dong li zen yang bang mang. In : Xin qing nian ; vol. 8, no 4 (Dec. 1, 1920). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. How reaction helps. In : New Republic ; vol. 24 (Sept. 1, 1920). 繁東理 怎样帮忙 |
Publication / DewJ169 |
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| 25 | 1920.02.25 | Dewey, John. The sequel of the student revolt. In : New Republic ; vol. 21, Febr. 25 (1920). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 12 : 1920. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ19 |
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| 26 | 1920.03.03 | Dewey, John. Shantung : as seen from within. In : New Republic ; vol. 21, March 3 (1920). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 12 : 1920. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ20 |
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| 27 | 1920.04 | Dewey, John. The new leaven in Chinese politics. In : Asia ; vol. 20, April (1920). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 12 : 1920. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ21 |
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| 28 | 1920.05 | Dewey, John. What holds China back. In : Asia ; vol. 20, May (1920). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 12 : 1920. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ22 |
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| 29 | 1920.06.30 | Dewey, John. China's nightmare. In : New Republic ; vol. 23, June 30 (1920). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 12 : 1920. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ23 |
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| 30 | 1920.10.06 | Dewey, John. A political upheaval in China. In : New Republic ; vol. 24, Oct. 6 (1920). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 12 : 1920. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ24 |
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| 31 | 1920.12.08 | Dewey, John. Industrial China. In : New Republic ; vol. 25, Dec. 8 (1920). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 12 : 1920. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ25 |
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| 32 | 1921 |
[Dewey, John ; Russell, Bertrand]. Duwei, Luosu yan jiang lu he kan. Zhang Jinglu bian ji. (Shanghai : Tai dong shu ju, 1921). [Übersetzung von Vorträgen von Dewey und Russell]. 杜威、羅素演講錄合刊 |
Publication / Russ15 | |
| 33 | 1921 |
[Dewey, John]. De yu yuan li. Yuan Shangren yi. (Shanghai : Zhong hua shu ju, 1921). (Jiao yu cong shu). [Übersetzung der Vorträge in China über Moral]. 德育原理 |
Publication / DewJ50 | |
| 34 | 1921 |
[Dewey, John]. Duwei jiao yu zhe xue. Duwei jiang yan ; Ni Wenzhou, Jin Haiguan, Guo Zhifang, Zhang Nianzu bi ji. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1921). (Nanjing gao deng shi fan xue xiao cong shu ; 4). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Lectures in the philosophy of education. (New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1899). 杜威敎育哲學 |
Publication / DewJ52 | |
| 35 | 1921 |
[Dewey, John]. Duwei san da jiang yan : jiao yu zhe xue zhe xue shi shi yan lun li xue. Liu Baiming, Shen Zhensheng yi. (Shanghai : Tai dong tu shu ju, 1921). [Übersetzung von Vorträgen von Dewey über Erziehung, Philosophie und Logik in China 1920]. 杜威三大讲演 : 教育哲学哲学史试验论理学 |
Publication / DewJ53 | |
| 36 | 1921 |
[Dewey, John]. Er tong yu jiao cai. Duwei zhu ; Zheng Zonghai yi. In : Jiao yu cong shu ; vol. 16 (1921). = (Shanghai : Zhong hua shu ju, 1922). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Child and the curriculum. (Chicago, Ill. : University of Chicago Press, 1902). (Contributions to education / University of Chicago ; 5). 兒童與敎材 |
Publication / DewJ57 |
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| 37 | 1921 |
[Dewey, John]. Ping min zhu yi yu jiao yu. Duwei jiang shu ; Chang Daozhi bian yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1921). (Gong xue she jiao yu cong shu). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Democracy and education : an introduction to the philosophy of education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1916). (Text-book series in education). 平民主義與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ87 | |
| 38 | 1921 |
[Dewey, John]. Xue xiao yu she hui. Liu Hengru yi. (Shanghai : Zhong hua shu ju, 1921). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The school and society. (Chicago, Ill. : The University of Chicago Press, 1900). 学校与社会 |
Publication / DewJ155 | |
| 39 | 1921 |
[Dewey, John]. Zhongguo di xin wen hua. In : Chen bao fu kan ; July 28-Aug (1921). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. New culture in China. In : Asia ; vol. 21 (July 1921). 中国地形文化 |
Publication / DewJ170 |
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| 40 | 1921.01.12 | Dewey, John. Is China a nation ? In : New Republic ; vol. 25 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ26 |
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| 41 | 1921.03.16 | Dewey, John. The Far Eastern deadlock. 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). | Publication / DewJ28 |
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| 42 | 1921.04.13 | Dewey, John. The consortium in China. In : New Republic ; vol. 26, April 13 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ27 |
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| 43 | 1921.05 | 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). | Publication / DewJ29 |
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| 44 | 1921.07 | Dewey, John. New culture in China. In : Asia ; vol. 21, July (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). | Publication / DewJ30 |
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| 45 | 1921.07.06 | Dewey, John. Hinterlands in China. In : New Republic ; vol. 27, July 6 (1991). 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). | Publication / DewJ31 |
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| 46 | 1921.09.28 | Dewey, John. Shantung again. In : New Republic ; vol. 28, Sept. 28 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ33 |
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| 47 | 1921.10 | Dewey, John. The tenth anniversary of the Republic of China. In : China review ; vol. 1, Oct. (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ34 |
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| 48 | 1921.10.12 | Dewey, John. Federalism in China. In : New Republic ; vol. 28, Oct. 12 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ35 |
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| 49 | 1921.11 | Dewey, John. China and disarmament. In : Chinese student's monthly ; vol. 17, Nov. (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ37 |
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| 50 | 1921.11.02,09 | Dewey, John. A parting of the ways for America. In : New Republic ; vol. 28, Nov. 2, 9 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ36 |
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| 51 | 1921.11.14-17 | Dewey, John. The issues at Washington. III-IV. In : Baltimore Sun ; Nov. 14-17 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ38 |
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| 52 | 1921 | Dewey, John. Shrewd tactics are shown in Chinese plea. In : Baltimore Sun ; Nov. 18 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ39 |
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| 53 | 1921.11.23 | Dewey, John. Four principles for China. In : Baltimore Sun ; Nov. 23 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ40 |
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| 54 | 1921.11.29 | Dewey, John. Underground burrows. In : Baltimore sun ; 29.11.1921. In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). [Conference Washington]. | Publication / DewJ148 |
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| 55 | 1921 | Dewey, John. Angles of Shantung question. In : Baltimore Sun ; Dec. 5 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ41 |
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| 56 | 1921.12.07 | Dewey, John. The Conference an a happy ending. In : New Republic ; vol. 29 (Dec. 7, 1921). | Publication / DewJ149 |
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| 57 | 1921.12.09 | Dewey, John. Chinese resignations. In : Baltimore Sun ; Dec. 9 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ42 |
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| 58 | 1921 | Dewey, John. Three results of treaty. In : Baltimore sun ; Dex 11 (1921). In : Dewey, John. The later works, 1925-1953. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydson ; textual ed., Patricia Baysinger. (Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1988). Vol. 3: 1927-1928. | Publication / DewJ150 |
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| 59 | 1921.12.17 | Dewey, John. A few second thoughts on four-power pact. In : Baltimore sun ; Dec. 17 (1921). | Publication / DewJ151 |
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| 60 | 1922.01 | Dewey, John. As the Chinese think. In : Asia ; vol. 22, Jan. (1921). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ43 |
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| 61 | 1922 |
[Dewey, John]. Jiao yu zhe xue. Duwei jiang Liu Boming yi ; Shen Zhensheng bi shu. (Shanghai : Tai dong tu shu ju, 1922). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Philosophy of education. [Lectures delivered by John Dewey at the University of Chicago during the winter and spring quarters 1899]. 敎育哲學 |
Publication / DewJ71 | |
| 62 | 1922.03.01 | Dewey, John. America and Chinese education. In : New Republic ; vol. 30, March 1 (19221). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ44 |
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| 63 | 1923 |
[Dewey, John ; Dewey, Evelyn]. Ming ri zhi xue xiao. Duwei zhu ; Zhu Jingnong, Pan Zinian yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1923). Übersetzung von Dewey, John ; Dewey, Evelyn. Schools of tomorrow. (New York, N.Y. : E.P. Duttun, 1915). 明日之學校 |
Publication / DewJ86 | |
| 64 | 1923 |
[Dewey, John ; Tufts, James Hayden]. Shi yan zhu yi lun li xue. Duwei, Tufuzi zhu ; Zhou Gucheng bian yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1923). Übersetzung von Dewey, John ; Tufts, James Hayden. Ethics. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1908). (American science series). 實驗主義倫理學 |
Publication / DewJ90 | |
| 65 | 1923 |
[Dewey, John]. Wo zhi jiao yu zhu yi. Zheng Zonghai yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1923). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. My pedagogic creed. (New York, N.Y. : E.L. Kellogg, 1897). 我之教育主义 |
Publication / DewJ153 | |
| 66 | 1923 | Dewey, John. China and the West : review of 'The problem of China' by Bertrand Russell. In : Dial ; vol. 74, Febr. (1923). In : Dewey, John. The middle works. Vol. 13 : 1921-1922. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 1976-1983). | Publication / DewJ45 | |
| 67 | 1924 |
[Dewey, John]. Wen hua jiao yu yu zhi ye jiao yu. Yi Zuolin. In : Jiao yu yu zhi ye ; no 61 (Dec. 3, 1924). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Culture and professionalism in education. In : School and society ; vol. 18 (Oct. 13, 1923). 文化敎育育职业敎育 |
Publication / DewJ171 | |
| 68 | 1925.11.11 | Dewey, John. Is China a nation or a market ? In : New Republic ; vol. 44 ; Nov. 11 (1925). In : Dewey, John. The later works. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, associate textual editors, Patricia Baysinger, Barbara Levine ; with an introd. by Sidney Hook, with a new introd. by John Dewey, edited by Joseph Ratner. (Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press. 1981-1990). Vol.l 2 : 1925-1927. | Publication / DewJ156 |
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| 69 | 1926.05 | Dewey, John. We should deal with China as nation to nation. In : Chinese students' monthly ; vol. 21 (May 1926). In : Dewey, John. The later works. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, associate textual editors, Patricia Baysinger, Barbara Levine ; with an introd. by Sidney Hook, with a new introd. by John Dewey, edited by Joseph Ratner. (Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press. 1981-1990). Vol.l 2 : 1925-1927. | Publication / DewJ157 |
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| 70 | 1927 | Dewey, John. The real Chinese crisis. In : New Republic ; vol. 50 (1927). In : Dewey, John. The later works, 1925-1953. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydson ; textual ed., Patricia Baysinger. (Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1988). Vol. 3: 1927-1928. | Publication / DewJ10 |
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| 71 | 1928 | Dewey, John. To the Chinese friends in the United States. In : Chinese student bulletin ; no 1 (1928). In : Dewey, John. The later works, 1925-1953. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydson ; textual ed., Patricia Baysinger. (Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1988). Vol. 3: 1927-1928. | Publication / DewJ9 |
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| 72 | 1928 | Dewey, John. China and the powers : intervention a challenge to nationalism. In : Current history ; vol. 28 (1928). In : Dewey, John. The later works, 1925-1953. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydson ; textual ed., Patricia Baysinger. (Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1988). Vol. 3: 1927-1928. | Publication / DewJ11 |
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| 73 | 1929 |
[Dewey, John]. Min ben zhu yi yu jiao yu. Zou Taofen yi ; Tao Zhixing [Tao Xingzhi] jiao. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1929). (Han yi shi jie ming zhu. Wan you wen ku ; 1, 278). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Democracy and education : an introduction to the philosophy of education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1916). (Text-book series in education). 民本主義與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ78 | |
| 74 | 1929 |
[Dewey, John]. Min ben zhu yi yu jiao yu. Duwei zhu ; Zou Enrun yi. Vol. 1-5. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1929). (Da xue cong shu). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Democracy and education : an introduction to the philosophy of education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1916). (Text-book series in education). 民本主義與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ79 |
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| 75 | 1930 |
[Dewey, John]. Gong chan zhu yi de zong jiao xing. Fan Zhongyun yi. In : Zui jin zhi guo ji zheng zhi xu bian (1930). [Über den religieusen Charakter des Kommunismus]. 共産主義的宗教性 |
Publication / DewJ58 | |
| 76 | 1930 |
[Dewey, John]. Jin bu di jiao yu yu jiao yu zhi ke xue. Zhu Ranli yi. In : Jiao yu za zhi ; vol. 22, no 12 (Dec. 20, 1930). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Progressive education and the science of education. In : Progressive education ; vol. 5 (July-Sept. 1928). 进步地敎育育敎育职 科学 |
Publication / DewJ172 | |
| 77 | 1931 |
[Dewey, John]. Jiao yu shang xing wei yu nu li : shi fan xue xiao yong. Duwei ; Zheng Zonghai, Zhang Yuqing, Yang Weiwen. [2nd ed.]. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1931). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Interest and effort in education. (Boston : H. Mifflin, 1913). (Riverside educational monographs). 教育上興味與努力 : 師範學校用 |
Publication / DewJ70 | |
| 78 | 1931 |
Fan, Zhongyun. Zui jin zhi guo ji zheng zhi xu bian 1930 nian. (Shanghai : Xin sheng ming shu ju, 1931). [Sammlung von Texten über die internationale Situation und China. Texte von A. Siegried, John A. Hobson, Leon Trotsky, N. Bassesches, John Dewey, Louis Fischer]. 最近之国际政治(续编)1930年 |
Publication / DewJ117 | |
| 79 | 1931 |
[Dewey, John]. Jin ri si da si xiang jia xin yang zhi zi shu. Hu Shi [et al.] zhu ; Xiang Zhen [et al.] yi. (Shanghai : Liang you tu shu yin shua gong si, 1931). (Yi jiao cong shu ; 1). 今日四大思想家信仰之自述 [Enthält] : Hu Shi de xin yang / Xiang Zhen yi. Wei'ersi de xin yang / Chu Anping yi. [H.G. Wells]. Aiyinsitan de xin yang / Wang Jungang yi. [Albert Einstein]. Duwei de xin yang / Xiang Zhen yi. Übersetzung von Russell, Bertrand. What I believe. (London : Kegan Paul, 1925). |
Publication / DewJ173 | |
| 80 | 1932 |
[Dewey, John ; Tufts, James Hyden]. Dao de xue. Duwei ; Tahutuo ; Jin Jialan yi. (Shanghai : Zhong hua shu ju, 1932). Übersetzung von Dewey, John ; Tufts, James Hayden. Ethics. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1908). (American science series). 道德學 |
Publication / DewJ47 | |
| 81 | 1932 |
[Dewey, John]. Jiao yu ke xue zhi chuan yuan. Zhang Dainian yi. (Beijing : Ren wen shu dian, 1932). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The sources of a science of education. (New York, N.Y. : H. Liveright, 1929). (The Kappa delta pi lecture series ; no 1). 敎育科學之传源 |
Publication / DewJ163 | |
| 82 | 1933 |
[Dewey, John]. Zhe xue zhi gai zao. Duwei zhu ; Xu Chongqing yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1933). (Han yi shi jie ming zhu). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Reconstruction in philosophy. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1920). 哲學之改造 |
Publication / DewJ104 | |
| 83 | 1934 |
[Dewey, John]. Zhe xue de gai zao. Duwei zhu ; Hu Shi, Tang Bohuang [Tang Yue] yi ; Zhonghua jiao yu wen hua ji jin dong shi hui bian yi wei yuan hui bian ji. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1934). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Reconstruction in philosophy. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1920). 哲學的改造 |
Publication / DewJ102 | |
| 84 | 1935 |
[Dewey, John ; Tufts, James Hyden]. Dao de xue. Duwei, Tahutuo zhu ; Yu Jiaju yi. (Shanghai : Zhong hua shu ju, 1935). Übersetzung von Dewey, John ; Tufts, James Hayden. Ethics. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1908). (American science series). 道德學 |
Publication / DewJ48 | |
| 85 | 1935 |
[Dewey, John]. Jiao yu ke xue zhi zi yuan. Duwei zhu ; Qiu Jinzhang yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1935). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The sources of a science of education. (New York, N.Y. : H. Liveright, 1929). (The Kappa delta pi lecture series ; no 1). 敎育科學之資源 |
Publication / DewJ69 | |
| 86 | 1935 |
[Dewey, John]. Si xiang fang fa lun. Duwei zhu ; Qiu Jinzhang yi. (Shanghai : Shi jie shu ju, 1935). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. How we think. (Boston : D.C. Heath, 1910). 思想方法論 |
Publication / DewJ93 | |
| 87 | 1936 |
[Dewey, John]. Ke xue de zong jiao guan. Wu Yaozong yi. (Shanghai : Qing nian xie hui shu ju, 1936). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Common faith. New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1934). 科學的宗敎觀 |
Publication / Wu, -Dewe1 |
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| 88 | 1936 |
[Dewey, John]. Si wei yu jiao xue. Duwei zhu ; Meng Xiancheng, Yu Qingtang yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1936). (Han yi shi jie ming zhu). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. How we think. (Boston : D.C. Heath, 1910). 思維與敎學 |
Publication / DewJ92 | |
| 89 | 1939 |
Dao de yu bian zheng fa. Duwei [et al.] zhu. Li Shuxun yi. (Shanghai : Ya dong tu shu guan, 1939). [Ethics]. 道德與辯證法 [Enthält] : Shou duan yu mu di / Duwei [John Dewey]. 手段與目的 Ta men de dao de yu wo men de dao de / Tuoluociji [Leon Trotzky]. 他們的道德與我們的道德 Eguo yu she hui zhu yi de li xiang / Maikesi Yisituoman. 俄國與社會主義的理想 Ke xue jia de Maikesi Yisituoman / Zhanmusi Pannamu. 科學家的麥克斯 |
Publication / DewJ49 | |
| 90 | 1940 |
[Dewey, John]. Jing yan yu jiao yu. Zeng Zhaosen yi. (Changsha : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1940). (Han yi shi jie ming zhu). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Experience and education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1938). (Kappa Delta Pi lecture series). 經騐與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ75 | |
| 91 | 1941 |
[Dewey, John]. Jing yan yu jiao yu. Duwei ; Li Xiangxu, Ruan Chunfang yi. (Guiyang : Wen tong shu ju, 1941). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Experience and education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1938). (Kappa Delta Pi lecture series). 經騐與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ76 | |
| 92 | 1942 | Dewey, John. Message to the Chinese people. (1942). In : Dewey, John. Lectures in China, 1919-1920 [ID D28360]. [The Chinese text was a propaganda leaflet distributed over Chinese cities by the U.S. Army Air Force, 1942]. | Publication / DewJ7 |
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| 93 | 1946 |
[Dewey, John]. Jing yan yu jiao yu. Li Peiyou yi. (Shanghai : Zheng zhong shu ju, 1946). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Experience and education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1938). (Kappa Delta Pi lecture series). 經騐與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ164 | |
| 94 | 1947 |
[Dewey, John]. Jin ri de jiao yu. Duwei ; Dong Shiguang yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1947). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Education today. Edited and with a foreword by Joseph Ratner. (New York, N.Y. : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1940). 今日的教育 |
Publication / DewJ73 | |
| 95 | 1947 |
[Dewey, John]. Er tong yu jiao cai. Duwei zhu ; Zheng Zonghai yi. (Shanghai : Zhong hua shu ju, 1947). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The child and the curriculum. (Chicago, Ill. : University of Chicago Press, 1902). 兒童與敎材 |
Publication / DewJ190 | |
| 96 | 1948 |
[Dewey, John]. Jiao yu yu shi yan zhu yi zhe xue. Xu Ying yi. (Shanghai : Zheng zhong shu ju, 1948). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Experience and education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1938). (Kappa Delta Pi lecture series). 敎育與實騐主義哲學 |
Publication / DewJ1165 | |
| 97 | 1950 |
[Dewey, John]. Meiguo shi yong zhu yi de fa zhan. Hu Dongye yi. (Taibei : Hua guo chu ban she, 1950). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The development of American pragmatism. (New York, N.Y. : Columbia University, 1925). 美國實用主義的發展 |
Publication / DewJ162 | |
| 98 | 1951 |
[Dewey, John]. Dang xin Shitailin di xiao lian. Duwei deng zhu ; Wu Dadong bian zhe. (Xianggang : Hua qiang gong si, 1951). [Anti-communist movements]. 當心史太林的笑臉 |
Publication / DewJ46 | |
| 99 | 1953 |
[Dewey, John]. Zi you yu wen hua. Yuehan Duwei yuan zhu ; Wu Junsheng yi. (Taibei : Guo li bian yi guan chu ban, 1953). (Shi jie ming zhu xuan yi). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Freedom and culture. (New York, N.Y. : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1939). (Minton Balch book). 自由與文化 |
Publication / DewJ107 | |
| 100 | 1953 |
[Dewey, John]. Ren xing yu xing wei. Zhou Wenhai yi. In : Xin si chao : no 27 (July, 1953). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Human nature and conduct. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1922). 人行與行為 |
Publication / DewJ161 | |
| 101 | 1954 |
[Dewey, John]. Zi you yu wen hua. Duwei yuan zhu ; Lin Yiliang [Stephen C. Soong], Lou Yizhe he yi. (Jiulong : Ren sheng chu ban she, 1954). (Ren sheng xue shu cong shu ; 2). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Freedom and culture. (New York, N.Y. : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1939). (Minton Balch book). 自由與文化 |
Publication / DewJ108 | |
| 102 | 1956 |
[Dewey, John]. Duwei lun li shi pan duan. Chen Bozhuang yi. In : Xian dai xue shu ji kan ; vol. 1, no 1 (Nov. 1956). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Logic : the theory of inquiry. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1938). Chap. 12. 杜威論例實判斷 |
Publication / DewJ166 | |
| 103 | 1959 |
[Dewey, John]. Wo de jiao yu xin tiao. Duwei zhu ; Zeng Zhaosen yi. (Xianggang : Xianggang jin bu jiao yu chu ban she, 1959). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. My pedagogic creed. (New York, N.Y. : E.L. Kellogg, 1897). [Text in Englisch und Chinesisch]. 我的敎育信條 |
Publication / DewJ94 |
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| 104 | 1960 |
[Dewey, John]. Duwei zhe xue. Duwei zhu ; Joseph Ratner xuan pian ; Zhao Yiwei deng yi. Vol. 1-2. (Taibei : Shi jie shu ju, 1960). (Da xue yong shu xuan yi). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Intelligence in the modern world : John Dewey's philosophy. Ed., and with an introd. By Joseph Ratner. (New York, N.Y. : Modern Library, 1939). 杜威哲學 |
Publication / DewJ54 | |
| 105 | 1960 |
[Dewey, John]. Min ben zhu yi yu jiao yu. Ben guan bian shen bu yi shu. Vol. 1-2. (Taibei : Taiwan shang wu yin shu guan, 1960). (Han yi shi jie ming zhu). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Democracy and education : an introduction to the philosophy of education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1916). (Text-book series in education). 民本主義與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ80 |
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| 106 | 1964 |
Xi fang xian dai zi chan jie ji zhe xue lun zhu xuan ji. Hong Qian zhu bian. (Beijing : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1964). 西方现代资产阶级哲学论著选辑 [Choix d'oeuvres philosophiques d'auteurs "bourgeois" contemporains : Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Mach, Wilhelm Windelband, Paul Natorp, Francis Herbert Bradley, Josiah Royce, Richard Kroner, William James, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Alfred Jules Ayer, Karl Raymund Popper, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Maritain, Joseph Maria Bochenski, Auguste Comte]. |
Publication / MarJ7 |
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| 107 | 1965 |
[Dewey, John]. Ren de wen ti. Yuehan Duwei zhu ; Fu Tongxian, Qiu Chun yi. (Shanghai : Shanghai ren min chu ban she, 1965). (Xi fang xue shu yi cong). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Problems of men. (New York, N.Y. : Philosophical Library, 1946). 人的问题 |
Publication / DewJ88 | |
| 108 | 1965 |
[Dewey, John]. Zhe xue zhi gai zao. Duwei zhu ; Xu Zhiqing yi ; Wang Yunwu zhu pian. (Taibei : Taiwan shang wu yin shu guan, 1965). (Han yi shi jie ming zhu. Wan yu wen ku hui yao). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Reconstruction in philosophy. (New York, N.Y. : H. Holt, 1920). 哲學之改造 |
Publication / DewJ105 | |
| 109 | 1969 |
[Dewey, John ; Russell, Bertrand]. Duwei, Luosu jiao yu jiang yan xuan cui. Duwei, Luosu jiang ; Lin Yixiong xuan yi. (Taibei : Shi di jiao yu, 1969). (Yi pin wen ku ; 1). [Übersetzung der besten Vorträge von Dewey und Russell]. 杜威,羅素教育講演選粹 |
Publication / Russ16 | |
| 110 | 1970 |
[Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Zhongguo shu jian. Duwei fu fu zhu ; Wang Yunru yi. (Taibei : Di ping xian chu ban she, 1970). Übersetzung von Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan. Ed. by Evelyn Dewey. (New York, N.Y. : E.P. Dutton ; London : J.M. Dent, 1920). 中國書簡 |
Publication / DewJ106 | |
| 111 | 1973 | Dewey, John. Lectures in China, 1919-1920. Transl. from the Chinese and ed. by Robert W. Clopton, Tsuin-chen Ou [Wu Junsheng]. (Honolulu : University Press of Hawaii, 1973). (An East-West center book). | Publication / DewJ5 |
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| 112 | 1974 |
[Dewey, John]. Jiao yu zhe xue. Zeng Jiyuan yi. (Taibei : You shi shu dian zong jing xiao, 1974). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Philosophy of education : problems of men. (Paterson : Littlefield, 1964). [Originally published as Problems of men, 1946]. 教育哲學 |
Publication / DewJ72 | |
| 113 | 1981 |
[Dewey, John]. Duwei jiao yu lun zhu xuan. Zhao Xianglin, Wang Chengxu bian yi. (Shanghai : Huadong shi fan da xue chu ban she, 1981). ). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Philosophy of education : problems of men. (Paterson : Littlefield, 1964). [Originally published as Problems of men, 1946]. 杜威教育论著选 |
Publication / DewJ51 | |
| 114 | 1985 |
John Dewey. Lectures in China, 1919-1920 on logic, ethics, education and democracy. Translated from the Chinese and edited by Robert W. Clopton and Tsuin-chen Ou [Wu Junsheng] with assistance of Henry C. Lu. (Taibei : Chinese Culture University Press, 1985). 杜威在華講學錄 |
Publication / DewJ174 | |
| 115 | 1989 |
[Dewey, John]. Min zhu zhu yi yu jiao yu. Duwei yuan zhu ; Lin Baoshan yi. (Taibei : Wu nan chu ban she, 1989). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Democracy and education : an introduction to the philosophy of education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1916). (Text-book series in education). 民主主義與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ81 | |
| 116 | 1990 |
[Dewey, John]. Min zhu zhu yi yu jiao yu. Yuehan Duwei zhu ; Wang Chengxu yi. (Beijing : Ren min jiao yu chu ban she, 1990). (Wai guo jiao yu ming zhu cong shu). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Democracy and education : an introduction to the philosophy of education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1916). (Text-book series in education). 民主主義與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ82 | |
| 117 | 1990 |
[Dewey, John]. Xue xiao yu she hui ; Er tong yu ke cheng. Duwei yuan zhu ; Lin Baoshan, Kang Chunzhi he yi. (Taibei : Wu nan tu shu chu ban gong si, 1990). (Jiao yu jing dian yi cong ; 2). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The school and the society. (Chicago, Ill. : University of Chicago Press, 1900). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The child and the curriculum. (Chicago, Ill. : University of Chicago Press, 1902). 學校與社會 : 兒童與課程 |
Publication / DewJ100 | |
| 118 | 1991 |
[Dewey, John]. Wo men zen yang si wei ; Jing yan yu jiao yu. Yuehan Duwei zhu ; Jiang Wenmin yi. (Beijing : Ren min jiao yu chu ban she, 1991). (Wai guo jiao yu ming zhu cong shu. Übersetzung von Dewey, John. How we think. (Boston : D.C. Heath, 1910). Übersetzung von Duwei, John. Experience and education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1938). (Kappa Delta Pi lecture series). 我们怎样思维 经验与教育 |
Publication / DewJ97 | |
| 119 | 1992 |
[Dewey, John]. Wo men ru he si wei. (Taibei : Wu nan tu shu chu ban gong si, 1992). (Jiao yu jing dian yi cong ; 5). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. How we think. (Boston : D.C. Heath, 1910). 我們如何思維 |
Publication / DewJ96 |
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| 120 | 1994 |
[Dewey, John]. Xue xiao yu she hui ; Ming ri zhi xue xiao. Yuehan Duwei zhu ; Zhao Xianglin, Ren Zhongyin, Wu Zhihong yi. (Beijing : Ren min jiao yu chu ban she, 1994). (Wai guo jiao yu ming zhu cong shu). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. The school and the society. (Chicago, Ill. : University of Chicago Press, 1900). Übersetzung von Dewey, John ; Dewey, Evelyn. Schools of tomorrow. (New York, N.Y. : E.P. Duttun, 1915). 学校与社会 ; 明日之学校 |
Publication / DewJ101 | |
| 121 | 1996 |
[Dewey, John]. Min zhu yu jiao yu. Duwei zhu ; Lin Yuti yi. (Taibei : Shi da shu yuan you xian gong si, 1996). (Shi yuan jiao yu cong shu ; 136). Übersetzung von Dewey, John. Democracy and education : an introduction to the philosophy of education. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1916). (Text-book series in education). 民主與敎育 |
Publication / DewJ83 | |
| 122 | 1997 |
[Dewey, John]. Xin jiu ge ren zhu yi : Duwei wei xuan. Sun Youzhong, Lan Kelin, Pei Wen yi. (Shanghai : Shanghai she hui ke xue yuan chu ban she, 1997). (Ming ren ming zhu yi cong). [Übersetzung ausgewählter Werke von Dewey]. 新旧个人主义 : 杜威文选 |
Publication / DewJ99 | |
| 123 | 2004 |
[Wartenberg, Thomas E.]. Lun yi shu de ben zhi : ming jia jing xuan ji. Tangmasi Huatengboge bian zhu ; Zhang Shujun, Liu Lanyu, Wu Peien yi zhe. Vol. 1-29. (Taibei : Wu guan yi shu guan li you xian gong si, 2004). Übersetzung von Wartenberg, Thomas E. The nature of art : an anthology. (Fort Worth : Harcourt College, 2002). 論藝術的本質 : 名家精選集 [Enthält] : Vol. 1. Yi shu ji mo fang : Bolatu = Art as imitation : Plato. Vol. 2. Yi shu ji ren zhi : Yalisiduode. = Art as cognition : Aristotle. Vol. 3. Yi shu ji zai xian zi ran : Aboti. = Art as representing nature : Leon Battista Alberti Vol. 4. Yi shu ji pin wei de dui xiang : Xiumo. = Art as object of taste : David Hume. Vol. 5. Yi shu ji ke gou tong de yu yue : Kangde. = Art as Communicable pleasure : Immanuel Kant. Vol. 6. Yi shu ji qi shi : Shubenhua. = Art as revelation : Arthur Schopenhauer. Vol. 7. Yi shu ji li xiang de dian xing : Heige’er. = Art as the ideal : G.W.F. Hegel. Vol. 8. Yi shu ji jiu shu : Nicai. = Art as redemption : Friedrich Nietzsche. Vol. 9. Yi shu ji qing gan jiao liu : Tuoersitai. = Art as communication of feeling : Leo N. Tolstoy. Vol. 10. Yi shu ji zheng zhuang : Fuluoyide. = Art as symptom : Sigmund Freud. Vol. 11. Yi shu ji you yi han de xing shi : Beier. = Art as significant form : Clive Bell. Vol. 12. Yi shu ji biao da : Kelinwu. = Art as expression : R.G. Collingwood. Vol. 13. Yi shu ji jing yan : Duwei. = Art as experience : John Dewey. Vol. 14. Yi shu ji zhen li : Haidege. = Art as truth : Martin Heidegger. Vol. 15. Yi shu ji qi yun : Banyaming. = Art as auratic : Walter Benjamin. Vol. 16. Yi shu ji zi you : Aduonuo. = Art as liberatory : Theodor Adorno. Vol. 17. Yi shu ji wu ding yi : Weizi. = Art as indefinable : Morris Weitz. Vol. 18. Yi shu ji qi shi : Gudeman. = Art as exemplification : Nelson Goodman. Vol. 19. Yi shu ji li lun : Dantuo. = Art as theory : Arthur Danto. Vol. 20. Yi shu ji ji gou : Diqi. = Art as institution : George Dickie. Vol. 21. Yi shu ji mei xue chan wu : Biersili. = Art as aesthetic production : Monroe C. Beardsley. Vol. 22. Yi shu ji wen ben : Bate. = Art as text : Roland Barthes. Vol. 23. Yi shu ji lian wu : Paibo. = Art as fetish : Adrian Piper. Vol. 24. Yi shu ji jie gou : Dexida. = Art as deconstructable : Jacques Derrida. Vol. 25. Yi shu ji nü xing zhu yi : Han'en. = Art as feminism : Hilde Hein. Vol. 26. Yi shu ji mai luo : Jiegede. = Art as contextual : Dele Jegede. Vol. 27. Yi shu ji hou zhi min : Aipiya. = Art as postcolonial : Kwame Anthony Appiah. Vol. 28. Yi shu ji xu ni : Daiweisi. = Art as virtual : Douglas Davis. Vol. 29. Dao lun. = About the authors. |
Publication / Schop20 |
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Secondary Literature (107)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1919 |
Zhi, Xi. Duwei bo de xue xiao yu she hui zhi. In : Xin chao ; vol. 2 (1919). [John Dewey's school and society]. 杜威博的學校與社會夂 |
Publication / DewJ65 | |
| 2 | 1919 |
Zhi, Xi. Duwei ta shi de de xing si dao. In : Xin chao ; vol. 2 (1919). [John Dewey's 'Moral principles in education']. 杜威他士的德行似到 |
Publication / DewJ66 | |
| 3 | 1919 |
Hu, Shi. Shi yan zhu yi. (Beijing : Xue shu jiang yan hui, 1919). (Xue shu jiang yan lu). [Vorträge von Hu Shi über Experimentalismus, Pragmatismus und Philosophie von John Dewey, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce]. 实验主义 |
Publication / DewJ125 | |
| 4 | 1919.03.31 |
Tao, Xingzhi. Duwei jiao yu li lun jie shao. In : Jiao yu shi bao ; March 31 (1919). [An introduction to Dewey's educational theories]. 杜威教育理论介绍 |
Publication / DewJ207 |
|
| 5 | 1919 |
Cai, Yuanpei . Zai Duwei bo shi 60 zhi sheng ri wan yang hui shang zhi yan shuo. In : Shen, Yihong. Duwei tan Zhongguo. (Hangzhou : Zhejiang wen yi chu ban she, 2001). (Shi ji hui sheng). [Speech given at the Banquet to celebrate John Dewey's sixtieth birthday in Beijing]. 在杜威博士60之生日晚養會上之演說 |
Publication / DewJ59 | |
| 6 | 1920 |
Xi, Ping. Wo dui Duwei shi yan ji de gan xiang zhi. In : Yue wu ; July 27 (1920). [My response to Dewey''s experimentalism]. 我對杜威式驗基的感想夂 |
Publication / DewJ68 | |
| 7 | 1920 |
Remer, C.F. John Dewey in China. In : Millard's review ; vol. 13 (July 3, 1920). Remer, C.F. John Dewey's responsibility for American opinion. In : Millard's review ; vol. 13 (July 10, 1920). |
Publication / DewJ84 | |
| 8 | 1921 |
Fei, Juetian. Duwei di she hui yu zheng zhi zhe xue. In : Ping lun zhi ping lun ; vol. 2 (1921). [A critique of John Dewey's social and political philosophy]. 杜威底社會與政治哲學 |
Publication / DewJ61 | |
| 9 | 1921.07.11 |
Sun, Fuyuan. Duwei bo shi jin ri qu le. Fulu. In : Chen bao ; July 11 (1921). [Dr. Dewey is gone today]. 杜威博士今日去了 |
Publication / DewJ85 | |
| 10 | 1922 |
Mo, Fenglin. Ping Duwei ping min yu jiao yu. In : Xue heng ; vol. 10 (1922). [A review of Dewey's 'Democracy and education']. 評杜威平 民與教育 |
Publication / DewJ64 | |
| 11 | 1922 |
Wu, Jiangling. Ping Duwei zhi jiao shen zhe xu zhi. In : Xue deng zhi ; Oct. 22 (1922). 評杜威之教身哲學夂 |
Publication / DewJ67 | |
| 12 | 1923 |
Lin, Zhaoyin. You Duwei ping min zhu han yu jiao xing zhi ji tang ruo yi wen. In : Jiao yu jie ; vol. 12 (1923). [A few questions about Dewey's democracy and education]. 游杜威平民主函與教行之幾倘疑問 |
Publication / DewJ63 | |
| 13 | 1923 |
Heng, Ru. Xian dai zhe xue yi luan. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1923). (Dong fang wen ku ; 34). [Abhandlung über John Dewey]. 現代哲學一臠 |
Publication / DewJ123 | |
| 14 | 1923 |
Nagano, Yoshio. Duwei jiao yu xue shuo zhi yan jiu. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1923). (Xin zhi shi cong shu). [A study of the educational theories of John Dewey]. 杜威教育學说之研究 |
Publication / DewJ136 | |
| 15 | 1924 |
Li, Shicen. Li Shicen lun wen ji. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1924). [Gesammelte Essays. Enthalten Artikel über Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Rudolph Eucken, Joh n Dewey, Bertrand Russell]. 李石岑論文集 |
Publication / Nie76 | |
| 16 | 1924 |
Hu, Shi. Wu shi nian lai zhi shi jie zhe xue shi. (Shanghai : Shi jie tu shu guan, 1924). [Weltphilosophie der letzten 50 Jahre ; enthält Eintragungen über Friedrich Nietzsche, René Descartes, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, Aldous Huxley]. 五十年來之世界哲學史 |
Publication / DewJ176 |
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| 17 | 1925 |
Hu, Shi ; Wang, Junqing. Hu Shi zhi bai hua wen chao. (Shanghai : Wen ming shu ju, 1925). [Abhandlung über John Dewey]. 胡適之白話文鈔 |
Publication / DewJ124 | |
| 18 | 1925 |
[Inaba, Iwakichi]. Zhongguo she hui wen hua. Yi Baisha. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1925). (Dong fang wen ku ; 32). [The social culture of China. Betr. u.a. John Dewey]. 中國社會文化 |
Publication / DewJ126 | |
| 19 | 1925 |
Xian dai zhe xue yi luan. Dong fang za zhi she. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1925). (Dong fang wen ku ; 34). [Essays on contemporary philosophy ; John Dewey]. 现代哲学一脔 |
Publication / DewJ143 |
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| 20 | 1926 |
Zhang, Jinglu. Duwei Luosu yan jiang lu he kan. Zhang Jinglu bian ji. (Shanghai : Tai dong shu ju, 1926). [Über die Philosophie von John Dewey und Bertrand Russell]. 杜威罗素演讲录合刊 |
Publication / Russ321 | |
| 21 | 1928 |
Shu, Xincheng. Jin dai Zhongguo jiao yu shi liao. Vol. 1-4. (Shanghai : Zhong hua shu ju, 1928). [Betr. u.a. John Dewey]. 近代中國敎育史料 |
Publication / DewJ206 | |
| 22 | 1950-1951 |
Cao, Fu. Yuehan Duwei pi pan yin lun. Part 1-2. In : Ren min jiao yu ; vol. 6 (1950) ; vol. 2 (1951). [Introduction to the criticism of John Dewey]. 约翰•杜威批判引论 |
Publication / DewJ218 |
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| 23 | 1951 |
Cao, Fu. Duwei pi pan yin lun. (Beijing : Ren min jiao yu she, 1951). (Ren min jiao yu cong shu ; 5). [Abhandlung über John Dewey]. 杜威批判引論 |
Publication / DewJ109 | |
| 24 | 1952 | Hu, Shi. Duwei zhe xue. (1952) In : Hu Shi zuo pin ji. Vol. 25. (Taibei : Yuan liu chu ban shi ye gu fen you xian gong si, 1988-1990. [Die Philosophie Deweys]. 杜威哲學 | Publication / DewJ208 |
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| 25 | 1953 |
[Nathanson, Jerome]. Duwei lun : min zhu sheng huo zhi zai zao. Wang Shulin yi. (Xianggang : Ren min chu ban she, 1953). Übersetzung von Nathanson, Jerome. John Dewey : the reconstruction oft he democratic life. (New York, N.Y. : Scribner, 1951). 杜威論 : 民主生活之再造 |
Publication / DewJ138 | |
| 26 | 1953 |
[Ratner, Joseph]. Duwei xue shuo gai lun : Duwei zhe xue fang fa lun. Latena bian zhu ; Wu Kegang yi. (Taibei : Shi jie shu ju, 1953). Übersetzung von Ratner, Joseph. Intelligence in the modern world : John Dewey's philosophy. (New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1939). (The modern library). 杜威學說槪論 : 杜威哲學方法論 |
Publication / DewJ139 | |
| 27 | 1955 |
Du, Yuanzai. Duwei jiao yu xue shuo. (Taibei : Fu xing shu ju, 1955). (Guo min xue xiao cong shu). [Abhandlung über John Dewey]. 杜威教育學說 |
Publication / DewJ116 | |
| 28 | 1955 |
Chen, Heqin. Dui Yuehan Duwei fan dong jiao yu zhe xue ji chu de pi pan. In : Wen hui bao ; Febr. 28 (1955). [Critique of the philosophic bases of John Dewey's reactionary pedagogy]. 对约翰•杜威反动教育学哲学基础的批判 |
Publication / DewJ219 |
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| 29 | 1956 |
Zhu, Zhixian. Pi pan shi yong zhu yi zhe Duwei zai xin li xue fang mian de fan dong guan dian. (Beijing : Ren min jiao yu chu ban she, 1956). [Abhandlung über John Dewey]. 批判實用主義者杜威在心理學方面的反動觀點 |
Publication / DewJ111 | |
| 30 | 1956 |
Chen, Heqin. Pi pan Duwei fan dong jiao yu xue de zhe xue ji chu : wo xiang zi chan jie ji da pian zi Duwei hui ji san qiang. (Shanghai : Xin zhi shi chu ban she, 1956). [Critique of the philosophic bases of John Dewey's reactionary pedagogy]. 批判杜威反动敎育学的哲学基礎 : 我向資產階級大騙子杜威回擊三槍 |
Publication / DewJ114 | |
| 31 | 1959 | Hu, Shih [Hu, Shi]. John Dewey in China. In : Philosophy and culture : East and West. Charles A. Moore, ed. (Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 1962). [Lecture delivered in 1959 at the Third East-West Philosophers’ Conference, University of Hawaii]. | Publication / DewJ6 | |
| 32 | 1960 | Berry, Thomas. Dewey’s influence in China. In : John Dewey : his thought and influence. Ed. John Edward Blewett. (New York, N.Y. : Fordham University Press, 1960). | Publication / DewJ186 |
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| 33 | 1961 |
Wu, Junsheng. Yuehan Duwei jiao shou nian pu chu gao. (Xianggang : Xin y shu yuan, 1961). [Biorgraphie von John Dewey]. 約翰杜威敎授年譜初稿 |
Publication / DewJ141 | |
| 34 | 1964 |
He, Minlin. Duwei jiao yu xue shuo dui yu wo guo dang qian jiao yu zhi ying xiang. In : 'Education and culture'. (Taipei : The Ministry of Education) ; no 317 (April 15, 1964). [The influence of Dewey's theory of teaching method and subject matter upon Chinese education]. 杜威敎育學說對於我國當前敎育之影響 |
Publication / DewJ122 | |
| 35 | 1965 |
Chen, Fengjin. Duwei de jiao yu xue shuo. (Taibei : You shi shu dian, 1965). [Abhandlung über John Dewey]. 杜威的敎育學說 |
Publication / DewJ110 | |
| 36 | 1965 |
Qiu, Youzhen. Guo Fu, Duwei, Makesi. (Taibei : You shi shu dian, 1965). [Abhandlung über Sun Yatsen, John Dewey, Karl Marx]. 國父杜威馬克斯 |
Publication / DewJ137 | |
| 37 | 1966 |
Sizer, Nancy F. John Dewey's ideas in China 1919 to 1921. In : Comparative education review ; vol. 10, no 3 (1966). http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1186560.pdf. |
Publication / DewJ203 |
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| 38 | 1967 |
Gao, Guangfu. Duwei jiao yu si xiang. (Taibei : Shui niu ju ban she, 1967) (Xian dai qing nian cong shu ; 4). [Abhandlung über John Dewey]. 杜威敎育思想 |
Publication / DewJ118 | |
| 39 | 1969 | Keenan, Barry. John Dewey in China : his visit and the reception of his ideas, 1917-1927. (Claremont, Calif. : Claremont Graduate School and University Center, 1969 ; Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1970). Diss. Claremont Graduate School, 1969. | Publication / Kee1 | |
| 40 | 1969 | Chen, Fengjin. Duwei jiao yu si xiang zhi yan jiu. (Taibei : Taiwan shang wu yin shu guan, 1969). (Ren ren wen ku ; 1143-1144). [Abhandlung über John Dewey]. | Publication / DewJ113 | |
| 41 | 1969 | John Dewey : a checklist of translations, 1900-1967. Compiled and ed. by Jo Ann Boydson with Robert L. Andresen. (Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1969). | Publication / DewJ189 |
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| 42 | 1972 | Ou, Tsui-chen. Dewey's lectures and influence in China. In : Guide to the works of John Dewey. Ed. by Jo Ann Boydston. (Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1972). | Publication / DewJ74 |
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| 43 | 1972 |
Wu, Junsheng. Jiao yu yu wen hua lun wen xuan ji. (Taibei : Taiwan shang wu yin shu guan, 1972). [Abhandlung über Erziehung bei John Dewey]. 敎育與文化論文選集 |
Publication / DewJ140 | |
| 44 | 1977 | Keenan, Barry C. The Dewey experiment in China : educational reform and political power in the early Republic. (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, Council on East Asian Studies, 1977). (Harvard East Asian monographs ; 81). | Publication / Kee3 |
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| 45 | 1977 |
Oei, Lee Tjiek [Ou, Lidian]. Duwei gong ju zhu yi dui Hu Shi ren lei zhe xue de ying xiang. Xu Qiuzhen yi. (Taibei : Cheng wen chu ban she, 1977). (Cheng wen jing wei cong shu ; 35. Zhe xue lei ; 8). Übersetzung von Oei, Lee Tjiek [Ou, Lidian]. Hu Shi's philosophy of man as influenced by John Dewey's intrumentalism. (New York, N.Y. : Fordham University, 1974). (Diss. Fordham University, 1974). 杜威工具主義對胡適人類哲學的影響 |
Publication / DewJ112 | |
| 46 | 1977 |
Li, Yuanhui. Duwei de jiao yu si xiang yan jiu. (Taibei : Wen shi zhe chu ban she, 1977). [Abhandlung über die Philosophie der Erziehung von John Dewey]. 杜威的敎育思想硏究 |
Publication / DewJ133 | |
| 47 | 1978 | Ou, Tsuin-chen. Dewey's influence on China's efforts for modernization. (Jamaica, N.Y. : St. John's University, Center of Asian Studies, 1978). (St. John's papers in Asian studies ; no 24). | Publication / DewJ202 |
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| 48 | 1980 |
Li, Changjing. Cong guo fu si xiang kan Duwei de zhi shi lu. (Taibei : Zhong hua min guo, 1980). (Zhuan ti xuan kan ; 28). [Über die Philosophie von John Dewey und Sun Yatsen]. 從國父思想看杜威的知識論 |
Publication / DewJ127 | |
| 49 | 1981 |
Gu, Shusen. Zhongguo li dai jiao yu zhi du. (Nanjing : Jiangsu ren min chu ban she, 1981). [Abhandlung über Erziehung und John Dewey]. 中国历代教育制度 |
Publication / DewJ120 | |
| 50 | 1981 |
Li, Changjing. Duwei de lun li si xiang. (Taibei : Zhong hua ming guo, 1981). (Zhuan ti xuan kan ; 44). [Über die Ethik von John Dewey]. 杜威的倫理思想 |
Publication / DewJ128 | |
| 51 | 1982 |
Li, Rizhang. Ke xue yu ren wen di hu fa Duwei. (Taibei : Yun chen wen hua shi ye gu fen you xian gong si, 1982). (Dang dai xue shu ju bo da xi. Zhe xue). [A list of works by John Dewey]. 科學與人文的護法杜威 |
Publication / DewJ132 | |
| 52 | 1983 |
Wu, Junsheng. Zeng ding Yuehan Duwei jiao shou nian pu. (Taibei : Taiwan shang wu yin shu guan, 1983). (Ren ren wen ku ; 2536-3637). [Biographie von John Dewey]. 增訂約翰杜威敎授年譜 |
Publication / DewJ142 | |
| 53 | 1985 |
Li, Changjing. Duwei jing yan gai nian pou xi. (Taibei : Zhong yang yan jiu yuan San min zhu yi yan jiu suo, 1985). (Zhuan ti xuan kan ; 66). [Contributions in concept of experience of John Dewey]. 杜威經驗槪念剖析 |
Publication / DewJ131 | |
| 54 | 1985 | Smith, John E. Pragmatism at work : Dewey's Lectures in China. In : Journal of Chinese philosophy ; vol. 12, no 3 (1985). | Publication / DewJ187 |
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| 55 | 1985 | Ching, Julia. China's responses to Dewey. In : Journal of Chinese philosophy ; vol. 12, no 3 (1985). | Publication / DewJ188 |
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| 56 | 1985 | Cauvel, J. Dewey’s message to China. In : Hypatia : essays in classics, comparative literature, and philosophy presented ot Hazel E. Barnes on her seventieth birthday. Ed. by William M. Calder, Ulrich K. Goldsmith, Phyllis B. Kenevan. (Boulder, Colo. : Colorado Associated University Press, 1985). | Publication / DewJ199 |
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| 57 | 1985 |
Meng, Xiande. Lun Duwei jiao yu zhe xue ti xi zai jiao yu shi shang de di wei. In : Duwei, He'erbate jiao yu si xiang yan jiu. (Jinan : Shandong jiao yu chu ban she, 1985). [On the significance of Dewey's educational philosophy in the history of education]. 论杜威教育哲学体系在教育史上的地位 / 杜威、赫尔巴特教育思想硏究 |
Publication / DewJ211 |
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| 58 | 1985 |
Zhang, Fakun. "Chuan tong jiao yu" yu "xian dai jiao yu" de yi zhi xing chu yi. In : Duwei, He'erbate jiao yu si xiang yan jiu. (Jinan : Shandong jiao yu chu ban she, 1985). [On the similarities between 'traditional education' and 'modern education']. "传统教育与现代教育"的一致性初议 / 杜威赫尔巴特教育思想硏究 |
Publication / DewJ212 |
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| 59 | 1985 |
Zhongguo da bai ke quan shu : tian wen xue. Hu Qiaomu [et al.]. (Beijing : Zhongguo da bai ke quan shu chu ban she, 1985). [Education ; enthält Eintragungen über John Dewey]. 中国大百科全书 |
Publication / DewJ213 |
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| 60 | 1985 |
Shi, Weiping. Guan yu Duwei jiao yu mu di de hong guan fen xi. In : Guo wai jiao yu can kao ; vol. 1 (1985). [A macro-analysis of Dewey's educational purpose]. 关于杜威教育目的的宏观分析 |
Publication / DewJ214 |
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| 61 | 1985 |
Wu, Yuanxun. Shi ping duwei de "cong zuo zhong xue". In : Duwei, He'erbate jiao yu si xiang yan jiu. (Jinan : Shandong jiao yu chu ban she, 1985). [On Dewey's 'learning by doing']. 试评杜威的 "从做中学" / 杜威、赫尔巴特教育思想硏究 |
Publication / DewJ215 |
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| 62 | 1987 |
Li, Changjing. Duwei de xing shang si xiang. (Taibei : Zhong yang yan jiu yuan, 1987). (San min zhu yi yan jiu suo cong kan ; 20). [Dewey's metaphysics]. 杜威的形上思想 |
Publication / DewJ130 | |
| 63 | 1987 |
Zhao, Yangxiong. Duwei yu Kong Meng jiao yu si xiang de yi tong. (Taibei : You shi wen hua shi ye gong si, 1987). [Abhandlung über John Dewey, Erziehung, Confucius und Mengzi]. 杜威與孔孟教育思想的異同 |
Publication / Dew144 | |
| 64 | 1987 |
Zhao, Xianglin. Duwei. In : Wai guo xian dai jiao yu shi. (Shanghai : Hua dong shi fan da xue chu ban she, 1987). (Jiao yu ke xue cong shu) 外国现代教育史 |
Publication / DewJ210 |
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| 65 | 1987 |
Zhang, Yong. Duwei jiao yu li lun zhong de bian zheng fa. In : Jiao yu yan jiu ; vol. 2 (1989). [The dialectics in Dewey's educational theory]. 杜威教育理论中的辩证法 |
Publication / DewJ217 |
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| 66 | 1988 |
Wu, Qingshan. Jiao yu si xiang zhuan ti yan jiu. (Gaoxiong : Fu wen tu shu chu ban she, 1988). [Abhandlung über Wang Yangming, Immanuel Kant, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, John Dewey]. 敎育思想專題硏究 |
Publication / Pest6 | |
| 67 | 1989 |
Li, Changjing. Duwei de ping jia li lun. (Taibei : Zhong hua min guo, 1989). (San min zhu yi yan jiu suo cong kan ; 23). [John Dewey's theory of valuation]. 杜威的評價理論 |
Publication / DewJ129 | |
| 68 | 1990 | Li, Moying. Hu Shi and his Deweyan reconstruction of Chinese history. (Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1990). (Diss. Boston University, 1990). | Publication / DewJ177 | |
| 69 | 1991 |
[Mayhew, Katherine Camp ; Edwards, Anna Camp]. Duwei xue xiao. Meixiu, Aidehuazi zhu ; Wang Chengxu [et al.] yi. (Shanghai : Hua dong shi fan da xue chu ban she, 1991). (Jiao yu ke xue cong shu). Übersetzung von Mayhew, Katherine Camp ; Edwards, Anna Camp. The Dewey School : the laboratory school of the University of Chicago : 1896-1903. (New York, N.Y. : Appleton-Century Co., 1936). 杜威学校 |
Publication / DewJ135 | |
| 70 | 1992 | Findeisen, Raoul David. Vier westliche Philosophen in China : Dewey und Russell, Bergson und Nietzsche. In : Minima sinica ; 1 (1992). | Publication / Find1 | |
| 71 | 1994 |
Liang, Shuming. Zhe heng zhi gen ben gai nian. In : Liang Shuming jiao yu lunz hu xuan. Ma Qiufan bian. (Beijing : Ren min jiao yu chu ban she, 1994). (Zhongguo jin dai jiao yu lun zhu cong shu). [Fundamental ideas in John Dewey's Philosophy of education]. 哲亨之根本概念 |
Publication / DewJ62 | |
| 72 | 1994 |
Guo, Xiaoping. Duwei. (Xianggang : Zhong hua shu ju you xian gong si, 1994). (Xi fang si xiang jia bao ku ; 6). [Abhandlung über John Dewey]. 杜威 |
Publication / DewJ121 | |
| 73 | 1994 | Kuang, Qizhang. Pragmatism in China : the Deweyan influence. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1994). Diss. Michigan State Univ., 1994. | Publication / DewJ192 |
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| 74 | 1995 |
Liu, Chuanguang. Zhen shi yu chao yue : xian dai xi fang si da si xiang jia ren sheng lun tan xi. (Guangzhou : Guangdong gao deng jiao yu chu ban she, 1995). (Ren sheng ke xue yan jiu cong shu). [Abhandlung über Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, John Dewey, Jean-Paul Sartre]. 真实与超越 : 现代西方四大思想家人生论探析 |
Publication / Nie243 | |
| 75 | 1995 | Kulander, Greg. The Chinese filter : assimilation of Western educational theories in the early 1980s. In : Cultural encounters : China, Japan, and the West : essays commemorating 25 years of East Asian studies at the University of Aarhus. Ed. by Soren Clausen, Roy Starrs, and Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg. Aarhus : Aarhus University Press, 1995. [Betr. John Dewey]. | Publication / DewJ147 | |
| 76 | 1995 |
Su, Zhixin. A critical evaluation of John Dewey's influence on Chinese education. In : American journal of education ; vol. 103, no 3 (1995). http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1085533.pdf. |
Publication / DewJ205 |
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| 77 | 1996 | Smith, Douglas C. The Confucius-Dewey synthesis : a comparative analysis of the philosophic and pedagogic ideas of Kung Fu-tze and John Dewey. In : Asian culture quarterly ; vol. 24, no 3 (Fall 1996). | Publication / DewJ182 |
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| 78 | 1996 | Grange, Joseph. The disappearance of the public good : Confucius, Dewey, Rorty. In : Philosophy East and West ; vol. 46, no 3 (1996). | Publication / DewJ197 | |
| 79 | 1996 | Su, Zhixin. Teaching, learning, and reflective acting : a Dewey experiment in Chinese teacher education. In :Teachers College record ; vol. 98, no 1 (1996). | Publication / DewJ220 | |
| 80 | 1997 |
Chu, Hongqi. Duwei jiao yu si xiang yin lun. (Changsha : Hunan jiao yu chu ban she, 1997). (Jiao yu li lun yu shi jian cong shu). [Abhandlung über die Philosophie der Erziehung von John Dewey]. 杜威敎育思想引论 |
Publication / DewJ115 | |
| 81 | 1999 | Hall, David L. ; Ames, Roger T. The democracy of the dead : Dewey, Confucius, and the hope for democracy in China. (Chicago, Ill. : Open Court, 1999). [John Dewey]. | Publication / Ames20 | |
| 82 | 1999 |
Kim, Bong-ki. Das Problem der interkulturellen Kommunikation am Beispiel der Rezeption Deweys in China. In : Duisburger Arbeitspapiere Ostasienwissenschaften = Duisburg working papers on East Asian studes ; no 19 (1999). http://www.uni-due.de/in-east/fileadmin/publications/gruen/paper19.pdf. |
Publication / DewJ183 |
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| 83 | 1999 |
Sun, Youzhong. John Dewey in China : yesterday and today. In : Transactions of the Chrles S. Peirce Society ; vol. 35, no 1 (1999). http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/40320746.pdf?acceptTC=true. |
Publication / DewJ201 |
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| 84 | 2000 |
Gu, Hongliang. Shi yong zhu yi de wu du : Duwei zhe xue dui Zhongguo xian dai zhe xue de ying xiang. (Shanghai : Hua dong shi fan da xue chu ban she, 2000). (20 shi ji Zhongguo zhe xue yu wen hua yan jiu cong shu). [The influence of John Dewey's philosophy on modern Chinese philosophy]. 实用主义的误读 : 杜威哲学对中国现代哲学的影响 |
Publication / DewJ119 | |
| 85 | 2001 |
Shen, Yihong. Duwei tan Zhongguo. (Hangzhou : Zhejiang wen yi chu ban she, 2001). (Shi ji hui sheng). [John Dewey über China]. 杜威談中國 |
Publication / DewJ60 | |
| 86 | 2001 |
Zhang, Baogui. Duwei yu Zhongguo. (Shijiazhuang : Hebei ren min chu ban she, 2001). (Da shi yu Zhongguo). [John Dewey und China]. 杜威与中国 |
Publication / DewJ145 | |
| 87 | 2001 | Eglauer, Martina. Wissenschaft als Chance : das Wissenschaftsverständnis des chinesischen Philosophen Hu Shi (1891-1962) unter dem Einfluss von John Deweys (1859-1952) Pragmatismus. (Stuttgart : F. Steiner, 2001). (Münchener ostasiatische Studien ; Bd. 79). | Publication / DewJ175 |
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| 88 | 2002 | Martin, Jay. The education of John Dewey : a biography. (New York, N.Y. : Columbia University Press, 2002). | Publication / DewJ134 | |
| 89 | 2002 | Chang, Changfu. The problem of the public : John Dewey's theory of communication and its influence on modern Chinese communication. In : Chinese communication studies : contexts and comparisons. Ed. by Xing Lu, Wenshan Jia, and D. Ray Heisey. (Westport, Conn. : Ablex Publishing, 2002). (Advances in communication and culture). | Publication / DewJ179 |
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| 90 | 2003 | Tan, Sor-hoon. Confucian democracy : a Deweyan reconstruction. (Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York Press, 2003). (Suny series in Chinese philosophy and culture). | Publication / DewJ146 | |
| 91 | 2003 |
Ames, Roger T. Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism : a dialogue. In : Journal of Chinese philosophy ; vol. 30, no 3-4 (2003). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-6253.00128/pdf. |
Publication / DewJ195 |
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| 92 | 2003 |
Grange, Joseph. John Dewey and Confucius : ecological philosophers. In : Journal of Chinese philosophy ; vol. 30, no 3-4 (2003). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-6253.00129/pdf. |
Publication / DewJ196 |
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| 93 | 2004 |
[Hall, David L. ; Ames Roger T.]. Xian xian de min zhu : Duwei, Kongzi yu Zhongguo min zhu zhi xi wang. Hao Dawei, An Lezhe zhu ; He Gangqiang yi ; Liu Dong jiao. (Nanjing : Jiangsu ren min chu ban she, 2004). (Hai wai Zhongguo yan jiu cong shu). Übersetzung von Hall, David L. ; Ames, Roger T. The democracy of the dead : Dewey, Confucius, and the hope for democracy in China. (Chicago, Ill. : Open Court, 1999). [John Dewey]. 先贤的民主 : 杜威孔子与中国民主之希望 |
Publication / Ames29 | |
| 94 | 2004 | Grange, Joseph. John Dewey, Confucius, and global philosophy. (Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York Press, 2004). (SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture). | Publication / DewJ178 | |
| 95 | 2004 | Tan, Sor-hoon. China's pragmatist experiment in democracy : Hu Shih's pragmatism and Dewey's influence in China. In : The range of pragmatism and the limits of philosophy. Ed. by Richard Shusterman. (Oxford : Blackwell, 2004). | Publication / DewJ184 | |
| 96 | 2006 |
Chinn, Ewing Y. John Dewey and the buddhist philosophy of the middle way. In : Asian philosophy ; vol. 16, no 2 (2006). http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09552360600772645. |
Publication / DewJ193 |
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| 97 | 2006 |
Hoyt, Mei Wu. John Dewey's legacy to China and the problems in Chinese society. In : Transnational curriculum inquiry ; vol. 3, no 1 (2006). http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci. |
Publication / DewJ198 |
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| 98 | 2007 |
Ding, Zijiang. A comparison of Dewey's and Russell's influences on China. In : Dao : a journal of comparative philosophy ; vol. 6, no 2 (2007). http://philpapers.org/rec/ZIJACO. |
Publication / Russ43 | |
| 99 | 2007 | Wang, Jessica Ching-Sze. John Dewey in China : to teach and to learn. (Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York Press, 2007). (Suny series in Chinese philosophy and culture). | Publication / DewJ2 |
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| 100 | 2007 |
Sun, Youzhong. The trans-Pacific experience of John Dewey. In : The Japanese journal of American studies ; no 18 (2007). http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/jaas/periodicals/JJAS/PDF/2007/No.18-107.pdf. |
Publication / DewJ181 |
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| 101 | 2008 |
Yi, Lei. Hu Shi and the movement to 'reexamine the national heritage'. In : Chinese studies in history ; vol. 42, no 2 (2008). http://jds.cass.cn/UploadFiles/ztyj/2011/12/201112111431096750.pdf. |
Publication / DewJ180 |
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| 102 | 2008 | Wang, Jessica Ching-Sze. When Dewey’s Confucian admirer meets his liberal critic : Liang Shuming and Eamonn Callan on John Dewey's democracy and education. In : Tan, Sor-hoon ; Whalen-Bridge, John (eds.) Democracy as culture : Deweyan pragmatism in a globalizing world. Albany : State University of New York Press, 2008. | Publication / DewJ191 | |
| 103 | 2010 |
Behuniak, James. John Dewey and the virtue of Cook Ding's dao. In : Dao ; vol. 9 (2010). http://www.springerlink.com/content/f713136644745024/fulltext.pdf?MUD=MP. |
Publication / DewJ194 |
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| 104 | 2010 |
Zou, Zhenhuan. Wu si qian hou jiang zhe di qu de 'Duweire' ji qi yu jiang an wen hua de guan lian. = The 'Dewey' fever' in Jiangsu and Zhejiang during the May fourth movement and its relation to the cultural tradition in Jiangnan. Li Li yi. In : Chinese studies in history ; vol. 43, no 4 (2010). http://mesharpe.metapress.com/media/3d3kwvwhlh7efb7 hwkak/contributions/4/2/3/1/42314x7r3uj332x8.pdf. |
Publication / DewJ200 | |
| 105 | 2012 | Chronology of John Dewey's life and work. http://www.siuc.edu/~deweyctr/pdf/CHRONO.pdf. | Web / DewJ8 |
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| 106 | 2012 |
Zhou, Hongyu. The spread and impact of Deweyan educational philosophy in China. http://www.tc.columbia.edu/centers/coce/pdf_files/v8.pdf. |
Publication / DewJ185 |
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| 107 | 2012 | Ames, Roger T. Tang Junyi and the very idea of Confucian democracy. In : Tan, Sor-hoon ; Whalen-Bridge, John (eds.) Democracy as culture : Deweyan pragmatism in a globalizing world. (Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York Press, 2008). [Betr. John Dewey]. | Publication / DewJ204 |