Longevity of the State—Government by prestige—Necessity of adaptation to European ideas—The Empress-dowager—Prince Kung—Wênsiang—Hu Lin-yi—Tsêng Kwo-fan—Tso Tsung-tang—Chang Chih-tung—Li Hung-chang—His long and consistent career—Efforts at reorganising national forces.
Longevity of the State—Government by prestige—Necessity of adaptation to European ideas—The Empress-dowager—Prince Kung—Wênsiang—Hu Lin-yi—Tsêng Kwo-fan—Tso Tsung-tang—Chang Chih-tung—Li Hung-chang—His long and consistent career—Efforts at reorganising national forces.
The long continuance of a State more populous than any other on record is a phenomenon which to thoughtful minds can hardly fail to evoke a feeling akin to reverence. De Quincey declared if he met a Chinaman he would make obeisance to him, saying, "There goes a man 2000 years old." Be the causes of this national longevity what they may, the fact should make us pause to consider on what foundation does this great vital national system rest? The most realistic word-painter of China represents the country as a collection of villages, each being a unit of self-government,[29]and in describing "village life" in minute detail, seems to depict the great empire, of which each village is a pattern in miniature. Dynasties may come and dynasties may go, but the Chinese families, their industries and their customs, go on for ever. It is remarkable with what ease the people adapt themselvesto changes in their ruling powers, regardless of race or origin; indeed it is a noteworthy fact that the rulers have for many centuries been more often foreign than native.[30]Foreign, however, not quite in the sense in which the word is so easily translated "barbarian" by the Chinese, and applied by them to the hated Aryans of the West. The rulers of China have been of cognate races, more or less imbued with the same generic ideas as the Chinese themselves, and with tastes akin to theirs. How this succession of dynasties, each established by violence, has coexisted with the continuity of the grand national idea of the emperor being the Son of Heaven can only be explained by the very practical character of the race, who accept the usurper as divinely appointed from the moment he has proved himself successful. What holds, and has held together from ancient times, this great aggregate of mankind in common usages and ideas is naturally a mystery to Occidentals, the cohesive principle not being perceptible to them. China occupies the unique position of a State resting on moralforce,[31]a conception almost as alien to the Western mind as material progress is to the Eastern, hence the proposition is apt to be received with amused contempt. Yet a State administered without police, and ruled without an army, is a something which cannot be explained away. Government by prestige is, other things being equal, surely the most economical as well as the most humane of all species of government; but an obvious consequence is that in emergencies the Government is beholden to volunteers, and is often driven to enlist the services of banditti and other forces proscribed by the law. Imperial prestige, which embraces the relations of the surrounding tributaries, is but an expansion of the authority of the head of the family and of the elders of the village, which rests on moral sanction only. The first collision, however, with the material forces of Christendom proved that in the system of the modern world the Chinese principle of government was an anachronism, and that moral must succumb to physical force. Yet in the midst of the world's triumph in the pricking of the great Chinese bubble, it had been well to reflect what the kind of bubble was that was being pricked. China with her self-contained, self-secreted knowledge, could not be expected to foresee how the impact of the West was likely to affect her ancient polity. She had nothing wherewith to compare herself, and no criterion of good or evil except her own isolated experience; nor did she know aught of human development except whatwas, so to speak, forcibly injected into her, but never assimilated. What, then, could she do to be saved but to take herself entirely to pieces like a house that has to be rebuilt on a new plan, and so fit herself for the companionship and competition of the worldly Powers, from whose pressure she could by no means escape? She had to put away the wisdom of ages, the traditions of a civilisation unbroken for thousands of years, and convert herself into a mechanical, scientific, and military Power. Something more radical than reform is involved in such a root-and-branch change: it was not improvement but transformation that was demanded.
That some such essential changes are necessary to the preservation of the Chinese empire is probably recognised by all who interest themselves in the subject—including a large ever-increasing number of the Chinese themselves; but the gravity of the revolution may well cause misgivings both as to its possibility and its incalculable effects. Who among the Chinese rulers is sufficient for such things?
It is not always possible to locate the nervous centre of any Government in the West, whether its form be autocratic or representative. With regard to that of China we may safely say it is never possible—at least for any foreigner. The attempts which have been from time to time made to assign acts of Government to the will or influence of certain individuals have in general proved in the sequel to have been far from hitting the mark. The monarch under whose authority the whole machine moves is not necessarily the directing will: indeed he is very often little better than a puppet. "The eunuchs, concubines, and play-actors,who constituted the Court of the late Emperor Hsien-fêng, the father of the present young emperor, had more influence probably in bringing on the war that led the Allies to Peking than any of the high officers or Ministers," wrote Sir Rutherford Alcock in 1871. Another writer put it in a more paradoxical form: "There is in China something more powerful than the Emperor, and that is the Viceroy; more powerful than the Viceroy, and that is the Taotai; more powerful than the Taotai, and that is the Weiyuen," meaning that the power of obstruction, extending through every grade of officialdom, is most widely diffused at the base. Official responsibility and moral responsibility do not therefore coincide—men in highest positions being unable to do the things they would, while the things they would not they are often obliged to do. The Government is consequently carried on by continual compromise beyond the limits to which we are accustomed in Western Governments, because it is not confronted with outspoken opposition with which it can reason, but with a network of secret machinations which can only be met by correlative tactics. But though Government in China may seem by this state of things to be reduced to an almost passive condition, yet the individuality of statesmen is not altogether destroyed. In some respects, indeed, the circumstances we have noted rather favour the influence of men of mark; for where the complicated machine is held in a state of equilibrium by innumerable neutralising checks, it would appear that any determined will could set it in motion in a given direction. The character of Chinese statesmen, therefore, is not a factor to be ignored in considering either the presentor the future of China, although the very partial knowledge of them which is accessible to Europeans must constantly lead to erroneous conclusions.
Of the statesmen who have appeared since the opening of Peking in 1860, it would probably be fair to consider the two emperors as negligible quantities. The potent personage in the empire during that period is no doubt the Empress-dowager, who has, in so far as any one can be said to have done so, ruled China for forty years. Apart from ethical considerations, which have less to do with matters of government than could be wished, the empress's characteristics are clearness of purpose, strength of will, a ready accommodation of means to ends, and frank acceptance of the inevitable. There are no signs of the bigot or the doctrinaire about her. Mundane in her objects, she is practical in seeking them; and if to hold an entirely anomalous position of authority opposed to legitimacy and the traditions of the dynasty and the empire be evidence of success, then the empress-dowager must be admitted to be a successful woman. In the position she has occupied, and still occupies, she would appear to be the principal force in the State. Whatever may be her power of initiative, which is so attenuated in the high State functionaries, her power of veto probably stands pre-eminent.
The anomalous relations which have subsisted between the empress-dowager and her imperial nephew are too intricate for us to attempt to unravel them. But the facts resulting from them, which are patent to the world, point to conditions which are not without danger to the empire. Indeed the Emperor himselfconstituted such a danger from the moment when as an infant he was placed on the Dragon Throne by usurped authority. His personal imperfections added materially to that danger, and his final efforts to free himself from the leading-strings of his patroness have indefinitely enhanced the evil by destroying the personal prestige of the sovereign. For what can be thought of a Son of Heaven who has his prerogatives doled out to him and again withdrawn by the will of another, and where is the force to meet the crisis in the State which may yet result from the illegitimacy of the emperors succession? The worship accorded throughout the empire to the Son of Heaven may indeed be transferred unimpaired to a new possessor of that dignity. But a reigning emperor shorn of his governing faculty must, one would think, put the allegiance of the people to a severe strain. How far such considerations may go in weakening the ties of loyalty in the provinces and in letting loose the spectre of rebellion cannot be known, but it may be guessed and feared.
Leaving out the Camarilla of the Court, of whom nothing certain can be predicated, the executive statesmen who have to outward appearance directed the public affairs of the Chinese empire for forty years may almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. Prince Kung, the highest in station and nearest to the throne, was rather a moderating than an active force in the State, and his attention was very much divided between public affairs and those of more personal concern. His colleague, Wênsiang, was a more energetic character. By common consent he was the mostconscientious as well as the most liberal-minded statesman that China has produced during the sixty years of foreign intercourse. Mr Adkins, who knew him intimately in the early days, says: "He was courteous in manner and a lively conversationalist. He once told me over the teacups that, if he could have his will, every brick and stone of Hongkong city should be torn down and thrown into the sea." This was not the kind of language he held at a later period; for, in a private interview with Sir Rutherford Alcock in 1869, while admitting the hostility of his class and that he himself had originally shared all their prejudices, he declared that his long and intimate relations with the foreign Legations had opened his eyes to the favourable side of the foreign character and progressive policy. Perhaps the best account of this Manchu statesman is that given by Sir Rutherford Alcock himself in an article in 'Fraser's Magazine,' 1871:—
Wênsiang is by far the most distinguished, both from his superior knowledge and his intellectual grasp of the position occupied by China in its relations with foreign States.... As a member of the Grand Secretariat, and vested with other high functions, his influence is very great, both personal and official—subject, nevertheless, to such attenuation as the active hostility of a very powerful party of anti-foreign functionaries within and without the palace can effect. This party, if party that can properly be called which is composed of nearly the whole of the educated classes of the empire—officials, literati, and gentry—are unceasing in their opposition to all progressive measures, whether emanating from the Foreign Board or elsewhere. But Wênsiang is held in especial hatred as the known advocate of a policy of progressive improvement with foreign aid and appliances. The failure of the Lay-Osborn fleet very nearly effected his ruin, and that of his patron the prince [Kung] also,and has ever since told against his influence. The cost and humiliation of that most disastrous experiment were all visited on his head, and it has no doubt tended not solely to impair his power, but also to render him more timid and less disposed to make any further venture in the same direction. He has the reputation among his own people of being honest, and foreigners know him to be patriotic and earnest in what he believes to be for the good of his country, while far in advance of all his contemporaries in enlightened views as to how in the actual situation of affairs that end may best be served. Upon occasions he can be both bitter and sarcastic, and speaks out his mind plainly enough against the pretensions of foreigners to shape everything to their own ends in China. He nevertheless gets little credit from the opposite faction for patriotism or a disinterested love of his country, and of late there has been remarked, with failing health, an expression of weariness, as if he were losing heart and hope, and began to feel unequal to any further struggle. With the ever-increasing demands for better execution of treaties—in things often materially and legally impossible in the present state of affairs, for larger facilities and increased privileges on the foreign side, and the gathering of hostile elements in front and all round him proceeding from the Chinese national party, who would refuse everything, and, if left to themselves, precipitate the country into another war with the Western Powers, he may well feel weary.
Wênsiang is by far the most distinguished, both from his superior knowledge and his intellectual grasp of the position occupied by China in its relations with foreign States.... As a member of the Grand Secretariat, and vested with other high functions, his influence is very great, both personal and official—subject, nevertheless, to such attenuation as the active hostility of a very powerful party of anti-foreign functionaries within and without the palace can effect. This party, if party that can properly be called which is composed of nearly the whole of the educated classes of the empire—officials, literati, and gentry—are unceasing in their opposition to all progressive measures, whether emanating from the Foreign Board or elsewhere. But Wênsiang is held in especial hatred as the known advocate of a policy of progressive improvement with foreign aid and appliances. The failure of the Lay-Osborn fleet very nearly effected his ruin, and that of his patron the prince [Kung] also,and has ever since told against his influence. The cost and humiliation of that most disastrous experiment were all visited on his head, and it has no doubt tended not solely to impair his power, but also to render him more timid and less disposed to make any further venture in the same direction. He has the reputation among his own people of being honest, and foreigners know him to be patriotic and earnest in what he believes to be for the good of his country, while far in advance of all his contemporaries in enlightened views as to how in the actual situation of affairs that end may best be served. Upon occasions he can be both bitter and sarcastic, and speaks out his mind plainly enough against the pretensions of foreigners to shape everything to their own ends in China. He nevertheless gets little credit from the opposite faction for patriotism or a disinterested love of his country, and of late there has been remarked, with failing health, an expression of weariness, as if he were losing heart and hope, and began to feel unequal to any further struggle. With the ever-increasing demands for better execution of treaties—in things often materially and legally impossible in the present state of affairs, for larger facilities and increased privileges on the foreign side, and the gathering of hostile elements in front and all round him proceeding from the Chinese national party, who would refuse everything, and, if left to themselves, precipitate the country into another war with the Western Powers, he may well feel weary.
Wênsiang, in short, suffered the fate of those who are too liberal and too far advanced for their surroundings, and became a martyr to his own disappointment. Old before his time, and overwhelmed with difficulties which he was unable to surmount, his mind became depressed, and his death in 1876 cost China the ablest, the best, and most devoted of her public men. No doubt there have been good and well-meaning men since his time, both in the Tsungli-Yamên, the Great Council, and in the provincial governments; but none of them has shown any quality of leadership, and all have for the mostpart been content with the maxim, "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof."
The comparatively early death of Hu Lin-yi, a Hunanese, Governor of the province of Hupei, who, in conjunction with Kuanwen, the Governor-General of the Hu provinces, originated the scheme for repressing the Taiping rebellion, prevented him from receiving the credit of that notable achievement. The institutions of the country paralysed its defence, for a provincial army was an object of dread to the Manchu rulers, while they possessed no imperial organisation to cope with the calamity. No attempt, therefore, could be made to organise a force to resist the rebellion, and so the devastation was allowed to spread from province to province without check. Hu Lin-yi set himself to overcome this difficulty, and thought out a scheme by which the rebellion might be overcome. Before taking any action, however, it was necessary that he should bring the Peking Government to his views, which he accomplished by first converting the Governor-General, who was a Manchu. The two thereupon joined in a memorial to the throne, praying that they might be permitted to raise in the Central Provinces a mobile military force to repel the invasion of the insurgents.
The nucleus of this force already existed in the province of Hunan, where volunteer levies under the leadership of Tsêng Kwo-fan, the father of the late Marquis Tsêng, Minister to Great Britain, had done good service in several small engagements with the rebels. The execution of the general scheme of defence against the rebels fell naturally, therefore, to thelot of Tsêng, who during his subsequent governor-generalship of the Lower Yangtze had the honour of putting an end to the ravages of the Taipings. No man was held in higher esteem among the counsellors of the Chinese empire than this sagacious statesman. At once moderate and resolute, he perceived the need of accommodation to the exigencies of the new time, and though he would have resisted the ingress of foreigners to the uttermost, he had the wisdom to see that this was no longer possible, and the advice tendered to his sovereign, while tempered to the susceptibilities of the Court, was distinctly in favour of respecting the treaties and avoiding conflict with foreign nations.
A contemporary of Tsêng Kwo-fan, and his equal in rank and authority, was Tso Tsung-tang, best known as the Conqueror of Kashgar, where he was credited with military exploits which history will scarcely ratify. He was a thoroughgoing man, blunt in manner, but straightforward, and loyal to his engagements. He was somewhat rash and uncompromising, seeking the end sometimes without considering the means, and his opinion on matters of State would have carried no weight but for his reputation for exemption from the prevailing vice of his class—financial corruption. This character obtained him toleration for many originalities. On one occasion he camped outside the walls of Peking for several days because he refused to pay the customary exactions of the officials in charge of the gates, so that his audience of the emperor seemed likely to be indefinitely postponed. But high officials in China of austere views have usually a man of business in attendance who oils the wheels while saving the face oftheir master. Tso's money matters were in the hands of a very politic gentleman of this class, and so the Grand Secretary's entry into the city was duly arranged. Tso had a lofty idea of the dignity of his country, and of the necessity for its defending itself against all enemies. To this end he threw his energies into the development of the arsenal and shipbuilding-yard at the Pagoda anchorage in the Foochow river. He was generally considered an opponent of his younger contemporary, Li Hung-chang, the one being held to stand for the old conservatism of China, and the other for its liberalisation. They were for many years the two chief provincials, the one being Imperial Commissioner for the southern and the other for the northern ports of China. It was customary for the emperor to refer important questions connected with foreign affairs to these two advisers, whose opinions must very often have neutralised each other. In the end Tso recognised the necessity for a change of policy for the preservation of the empire, but being himself too old to change he recommended his rival, Li Hung-chang, to the Throne as the fitting man to introduce needed innovations. If the records are to be implicitly trusted Tso would appear to have undergone a sort of death-bed repentance, for in his political testament, a document which is regarded with a kind of sacred authority in China, he recommended to the throne the improvements he had steadfastly opposed, including even the introduction of railways into the country.
Although out of the chronological order, we may mention here another eminent official, distinguished by many of the characteristics of Tso Tsung-tang, who has been Governor of the province of Shansi, Governor-General of the Canton provinces, and is now Governor-Generalof the central provinces. Wherever he has been, Chang Chih-tung has proved himself bold and original. His open mind has led him to take up schemes warmly without counting the cost, and under his inspiration immense sums have been spent in both his viceroyalties for which but little return was obtained, and of which indeed it was scarcely possible to render a clear account. His reputation for purity, however, has saved him from the consequences of his recklessness, both in the eyes of the people and of the Government, and enabled him to hold office long enough to show some results of his expensive enterprises. The great ironworks which he set up in Hanyang, with very little consideration as to how they were to become effective, have at last produced iron of a quality sufficient to make inferior rails, thus giving an earnest of the ultimate realisation of his dream of rendering China independent of foreign countries. Chang's literary power is of a very high order, his style is terse and incisive, and this is a weapon which renders him formidable in a country which cultivates literature as a religion. To say that Chang Chih-tung is the opponent of foreigners is merely to credit him with the ordinary patriotism of his countrymen. But though he often treats strangers with the studied discourtesy which characterised the older generation of Chinese officials, he has never allowed his prejudices to stand in the way of free intercourse with any foreigner whom he thought he could make subservient to some purpose of his own. As a statesman Chang Chih-tung has failed through intensity and want of comprehensiveness. In fact he is not a statesman, but a sciolist, and a trenchant essayist, unaccustomed toaccommodate his ideas to the circumstances of actual life. He, too, has been a bitter opponent of Li Hung-chang, which, however, did not hinder him from composing a most fulsome panegyric on that statesman on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, in which he was credited with all the attributes of all the heroes of Chinese mythology. The many fantastic schemes which Chang has originated would in any Western country have relegated their author to the custody of the Commissioners of Lunacy. One of these was to prevent foreign ships entering the Gulf of Pecheli by sinking tiers of junks between Shantung and Talien-wan; another was to catch the Japanese soldiers in a gigantic locust-trap, consisting of a deep trench to be dug at their supposed landing-place near Shanhai-kwan, and the fact of this proposal being seriously adopted and some miles of the trench actually dug by the Chinese soldiers reveals more of the military impotence of China than the most voluminous dissertations.
Without carrying the exhaustive process further, it is safe to say that whatever concrete statesmanship there has been in China during the past generation has been embodied in the person of Li Hung-chang. He alone has a continuous record, has followed a definite line, and kept his ideals, like a captive balloon, strictly attached to the earth on which he had to work. He also was a literate of distinction, having taken the highest degree, that of the Hanlin College. But though his literary tastes have not been left wholly uncultivated, they have never intruded themselves into his conduct of affairs, so that an estimate of his position cannot be based upon his writings, but only on hisactions. He indulged in no speculations, propounded no theories, but was eminently a man of fact. Contrary to all Chinese tradition he laid himself out for personal intercourse with foreigners, from whom he was never weary of learning, and in doing so he braved the odium of his peers, and incurred the charge of treason as a truckler to barbarians. Living in the eyes of the world, both of his own and foreign countries, for a period of nearly forty years, he has been the one familiar figure in modern China. His accessibility has afforded to travellers and visitors endless opportunities of delineation, so that if ever a Chinese of rank was known throughout the world it must be Li Hung-chang.
The interest attaching to this statesman consists in his having in his own person, and without a party, stood between the Old World and the New, having devoted his life to working out in practice amodus vivendibetween them. His methods have been wholly empirical and opportunist, and hence no synthesis of his plan of operations is available, except such as we may compose out of the facts themselves. A few cardinal principles, nevertheless, stand out clearly in the life-work of this statesman. One is that of reorganising the defensive forces of the empire in accordance with the lessons learned from foreign raids; a second has been so to observe the treaties made with foreigners as to afford them no ground for complaint; and a third, when causes of difference arose, whether by inadvertence or by design, to agree with the adversary quickly. The following out of the first two might very well have entailed upon Li the reproach of favouring foreigners; the following out of the thirdmay with greater justice have earned for him the character of a peace-at-any-price man. So consistently did he follow the line of action dictated by these principles, that no attacks on foreigners or on Christian missions have ever been tolerated within his jurisdiction. During the twenty-four years of his governor-generalship of Chihli, whose population is one of the most turbulent in the empire, there was not a single missionary outrage, his instructions to his district officials being peremptory, that, right or wrong, they must have no questions with foreigners. Had the other viceroys been similarly minded and equally resolute, no attacks on missionaries would have been recorded throughout the Chinese Empire. Though Li Hung-chang was as much anti-foreign at heart as every true Chinaman must be, he endeavoured, crudely following the example of the Japanese, to employ foreign men and appliances in order the more effectually to resist them. His pacific tendencies were no proof of pusillanimity, but rather of a deep consciousness, derived from personal experience, of the incapacity of China to resist foreign attack. Li Hung-chang's external policy, therefore, may be defined as the strengthening of the country to meet invasion, and the avoidance, while such preparations were being made, of every cause of collision with foreigners. These cardinal points had to be kept in view, like guiding stars, amid the exigencies of daily affairs, which alone were sufficient to fill up the measure of one man's capacity. The administration of two populous provinces, the superintendency of the maritime trade of half the empire, and incessant consultations concerning imperial affairs generally, constituted a burden whichno one man could bear. While to these were added the whole details of national defence, naval and military reorganisation, the construction of a navy on foreign lines, the whole of which was undertaken by Li Hung-chang, working not only without a party but practically without a staff, and at the mercy of technical advisers who owed him no allegiance. The briefest recapitulation of the duties so undertaken would be enough to stagger the credulity of the most active administrator of the West; the recital would suffice, without any proof from experience, to show that these labours of Hercules could never, in fact, be performed. But the difference between performance and non-performance marks the chasm which divides the Chinese from the Western world, and distinguishes the order of ideas and practice which make for the preservation, from those which tend to the disintegration, of the Chinese empire itself. The task from which the mass of Chinese statesmen have recoiled, and which has only been attempted in a persistent manner by Li Hung-chang himself, was probably beyond the power of any man and of any party.
But here the inquiry suggests itself, why a strong-headed and practical-minded man should have devoted a lifetime to impossible achievements, and why in a nation of great intellects the task should have been virtually relegated to one man? The Chinese are not fools; their mental capacity is second to that of no other race. Their culture is excessive, though narrow; and if we find them exhibiting in great national affairs no more intelligence than that shown by children in building castles of sand, it is naturalto conclude that there is some fundamental misconception either on their part or on ours of the problem before them. But if we consider the Chinese as belonging to the world of moral force, then their misconception of all that belongs to the world of physical force is not only explicable, but it is inevitable; for between the two there is no common ground on which even a compromise might be effected, and the one must eternally misunderstand the other.
The burden of the memorials of the Chinese high functionaries on this subject have been that the Middle Kingdom being overcome by the brute force of the rebellious barbarians, the obvious way to restore the lapsed authority of the empire was to acquire the instruments of foreign strength. This they diligently set themselves to do, but apparently without the slightest comprehension of the secret of the strength of the foreigners. The Chinese being what they were, could no more win the secret of the Western power by buying its weapons than a musical tyro could hope to rival the greatest artistes by possessing himself of a Stradivarius. Guns, ships, explosives of the latest type, are worse than dummies without the organised human force that gives them life. The element which would have infused vitality into the new organisation was the one thing beyond their imagination, and so far as they did comprehend it, it inspired them with aversion and awe, for it meant in their eyes delivering the keys of power into the hands of strangers. What was needed to regenerate the army, to create a navy, to reform the finances, was the liberal importation of men. This necessity was no doubt partially perceived by Li Hung-changand his like, but never entirely even by him; for he remained throughout the one-eyed man among the blind, groping after something which he could only guess at. Teachers from Europe and America were employed in the country, and natives were sent to foreign countries to be instructed; but the spirit of the new instruction was never allowed to vitalise the organisation, and consequently all the knowledge that was acquired by both methods remained barren and unfruitful. Thus Li Hung-chang's efforts fell short of their object, and China continued to be the land of moral force for the iron-shod physical forces to trample on.
From the earliest period of his career Li Hung-chang stood out far in advance of his fellows, and in all the troubles which have beset the empire during his time, it is he who has been thrust into the breach and made to bear the brunt of its misfortunes. Being the only man who did anything, he was naturally made responsible for all, and critics, both foreign and native, have had an easy task in laying bare his failures, which his contemporaries have escaped by confining themselves to official routine and playing for their own safety. Though the burden of the State has fallen upon the shoulders of Li Hung-chang more than upon any other individual, he has never flinched from the responsibility. The occurrences of 1894 and subsequently threw him into greater prominence than ever before. Forced to carry on the war with Japan, during which the defences of the empire for which he was responsible completely broke down, he was next also forced to make peace with that Power on veryhumiliating conditions. Seldom was a more pathetic scene witnessed than the virtual controller of the Chinese empire lying at the feet of a victorious enemy in a foreign country, with the bullet of an assassin in his cheek. More tragic still was his return to the capital with the treaty of Shimonoseki. An intense feeling against Li had been roused throughout the country. The provincial officials with singular unanimity denounced his treachery as they considered it, for the treaty was in their eyes no less disgraceful than the conduct of the war, for both of which Li alone was deemed responsible. The sentiment of the provinces was echoed in Peking, where his enemies in high places had almost secured the capital punishment of the negotiator, and failing that, his assassination, from which fate he was only saved by the veto of Prince Kung and the subsequent protection of the empress-dowager. He was also in an important sense under the protection of Russia, that Power having undertaken to hold him harmless from the consequences of his surrender to the Japanese. In order to take him out of the way of the conspiracies in Peking, Russia requested that an Imperial prince might be sent to the coronation ceremony in 1896. That being impossible by the laws of the empire, which Russia very well knew, a substitute of the highest rank had to be found, and thus Li Hung-chang was designated, by the approval of the empress-dowager and by the consent—reluctant it is believed—of the Emperor, for the mission of congratulation to the Czar. After the festivities at Moscow, Li made the tour of Europe and the United States, meeting everywhere with a distinguished reception.
Prestige gained, 1880-90—Yields to Japan in Korea while reasserting full suzerainty—The lessons of adversity—Schemes for naval and military reforms—Purchase and manufacture—Provincial system antagonistic to reform—Li Hung-Chang's efforts—Faithful service of foreign experts—Drill-instructors—Creation of a navy—Coast fortification—Superior efficiency of navy compared with army—Corruption and nepotism—Awakening of China apparent, not real.
Prestige gained, 1880-90—Yields to Japan in Korea while reasserting full suzerainty—The lessons of adversity—Schemes for naval and military reforms—Purchase and manufacture—Provincial system antagonistic to reform—Li Hung-Chang's efforts—Faithful service of foreign experts—Drill-instructors—Creation of a navy—Coast fortification—Superior efficiency of navy compared with army—Corruption and nepotism—Awakening of China apparent, not real.
The service of the navy in the conveyance of troops and of a special envoy to Korea in 1882 was the first which that luckless force was able to render to China. The service was repeated on two other occasions: when a High Commissioner was sent on a mission of imperial condolence in 1890, and again when an assassin was rescued from the revenge of counter-assassins and conveyed safely from China to Korea in 1894. The little kingdom thus played a considerable part in the awakening scenes of the suzerain empire.
On a retrospective view, indeed, it would appear that during the period in question China passed the culminating-point in her efforts to regain national prestige. She had just asserted herself in an unexpected manner in her dealings with Russia, playing a very different part in regard to her distant and worthless possessions in the north-west from what she had done twenty yearsbefore in regard to the integral part of her proper territories in the north-east, which she had surrendered with scarcely a protest. The world began to respect China as a power. Her decisive action in Korea showed that she was no longer disposed to permit her neighbours to trifle with the question of her suzerainty in that kingdom, and for ten years she was pre-eminent there in fact as well as of right. Yet with a significant qualification. For, being challenged by Japan while at war with France in 1885, she was unable to vindicate her sole supremacy in Korea, and was constrained to admit her rival into partnership. Thus was the first irrevocable step taken towards the future realisation of the Japanese designs on the peninsula. Acondominiummust ever be destructive to the policy of the less energetic member, and the treaty concluded between Li Hung-chang and Count Ito in 1885 was the fatal prelude to the events of ten years later. As the treaties granting to Russia a coequal right of navigating the Amur and a joint ownership of the Usuri province constituted the virtual surrender of Chinese rights, so any treaty with Japan, no matter on what conditions, respecting Korea, was a virtual abdication of the Chinese suzerainty. The right in common to send troops into Korea on notice given could have no other effect than to deliver up the kingdom to the Power which was the most alert in taking advantage of the agreement. In giving up half her rights China retreated from an inexpugnable position, and left herself no footing for defending the remaining half, when its turn came to be assailed.
But with the irony which is the very pathos of human and national decline, the outward pretence toauthority became more demonstrative as the substance of the claim slipped away. Not for two hundred and fifty years had China asserted her prerogative with such uncompromising arrogance as when she sent an imperial mission of condolence to the royal Court in 1890, years after the keystone of her Korean arch had been pulled away. It was also about this period that the Chinese Minister to England lent his name to a manifesto warning the world of the coming resurrection of China. "The sleep and the awakening" strictly followed the law above alluded to, that hollowness, not solidity, makes the loudest sound.
But so many interests are now inextricably interwoven with the destinies of China that her effort at reform and its failure compel us to give attention to the opening of a new chapter in the world's history. The humiliating foreign invasions, the three rebellions that shook the empire, and the numerous minor risings, had all left their impression. The lessons taught by these adversities had been taken to heart, and the rulers of the empire were called upon to devise a remedy. The first and most obvious desideratum was, of course, naval and military reform, or rather regeneration, whereby they might be strengthened to speak with their enemies in the gates. On this subject Chinese statesmen were absolutely at one with their officious foreign advisers: it was a subject which inspired many of the early homilies of the British Minister, if no others. There was, however, this essential difference in the conception of the means of carrying out the reform, that the foreign advisers of China were completely prepossessed by the notion that an imperial executive, if it did not exist, must bepromptly created, while nothing was further from the imagination of the Chinese. They were entirely prepossessed by their tradition and the state of things actually existing, which they did not dream of changing. That was the provincial system on which the administration of the empire rested. The fiasco of the Lay-Osborn flotilla, which was the first crude attempt to mix the oil and vinegar of the two conflicting systems, revealed the fundamental, irreconcilable divergence between the two sets of ideas, which rendered all advice from the one side to the other futile, and co-operation impossible. That palpable failure of the Central Government was calculated to discourage fresh innovations from the same quarter, and the incident was constantly referred to by diplomatists as having blighted the promising career of Wênsiang as a reformer, he being the minister personally responsible for the scheme.
The Chinese, nevertheless, proceeded according to their own lights to set their house in order in so far as its defensive services were concerned. The successful employment of foreign arms and foreign auxiliaries in the suppression of the Taiping rebellion showed them the way. It was a natural but a fatal error, which the Chinese have not to this day abjured, to attach too much importance to the arms, and too little to the man using them. They accordingly commenced in a rather wild and wayward manner to buy weapons and munitions, and then to set up in their own country the means of manufacturing the simpler kinds. The chief promoter, if not the originator, of these novelties was Li Hung-chang, who continued to be the presiding genius of military and naval reform, no matter in whatprovince his official duties happened to lie. The personal authority wielded by the Grand Secretary in provinces beyond his own government was really a step towards centralisation of the executive, and with time and an adequate succession of followers in the same path there is no telling what changes in the Government system might not have been evolved from such a nucleus. But the one-man power was unequal to any great result; it also weakened with age, opposition, and discouragement. The actual reforms inaugurated remained strictly provincial, and even local. There was no evidence of initiative or supervision from the Central Government. The nearest approach to it was the establishment of an arsenal at Tientsin by Chunghou, the first superintendent of trade for the northern ports, and a member of the imperial clan. It would almost appear as if the Government had no concern with the more distant parts of the country, and the strange anomaly presented itself to the onlookers of large sums being expended on the most modern artillery and in the manufacture of thousands of arms of precision while the Peking field force was equipped with bows and arrows.
There came a time at last when the necessity of some kind of centralisation was forced on the Government. It was after Prince Kung had been sent into retirement in 1884, when his younger brother, the father of the emperor, had decided to "come out" and take a part in the executive government, and especially after Prince Ch'un had made a short cruise in salt water in 1886, that a Naval Board was established in Peking itself with the prince at its head. The institution was of course laughed at, as the beginnings ofthings usually are, and its inefficiency was indeed glaring enough. It would have taken a generation in slow-moving China for such a board to have learned the rudiments of its duties.
What we are at the moment concerned with is the naval and military reform of the twenty-five years preceding the advent of Prince Ch'un to power. In the purchase of war material no single system was followed. The provincial rulers at Canton, Foochow, Nanking, and Tientsin no doubt had to sanction what was done within their respective provinces—a check which might be perfunctory or conscientious—but practically the management was in the hands of subordinate officials without knowledge or training or visible responsibility. As in war each Chinese regiment fights for its own hand, or runs away as the case may be, so in the supply of arms each local official did pretty much what seemed right in his own eyes. Hence the heterogeneous composition ofmatériel, one small body of troops carrying in a campaign thirteen different patterns of rifle, with ammunition still more curiously diversified.
Concerning the arsenals established under the auspices of the various governors-general from Canton even to Kirin in Manchuria, and under the technical management of foreigners, the most remarkable point to be noted—and it applies generally to the employment of foreigners in China—is the faithful service the Chinese have been able to command in circumstances where it was hardly to be expected. An ignorant employer and an expert employee is a combination apt to engender the worst abuses, and the way the Chinese selected their foreign executive—a marine engineerhere, a surgeon of a marching regiment there, a naval lieutenant somewhere else—was not the way, one would have thought, to obtain either honesty or efficiency. Yet the foreigners selected either possessed or acquired adequate qualifications, and one and all rendered devoted service to their employers. The position of these foreigners, however, never was or could be one of authority: whatever they did was under the orders of their Chinese superior, who was often too ignorant to weigh the reasons for what was done. In course of time the natives themselves became more instructed, but whether their half-knowledge was a help or a hindrance to the work of their foreign experts is problematical. Of the quality or quantity of thematérielturned out in the various Chinese arsenals it were useless to speak. It produced an illusory sense of security, and for a time imposed equally on native and foreigner.
Nor was training entirely neglected. Drill-masters were engaged. Schools were established in connection with the arsenals, where naval instruction especially was carried to a high standard. Students sent to Europe proved themselves most apt to assimilate the instruction given to them. Of those who distinguished themselves at Greenwich may be mentioned the present Minister to the Court of St James's. Cadets were also received into the British navy, and some very expert officers were turned out by these means. A large number of youths were at one time selected to be educated in the United States, remaining there long enough to learn to read and write English, and to become enamoured of Western life. This educational experiment was interesting in manyways. The youths who were sent to America under the care and at the instigation of the Cantonese, Yung Wing, who had himself been educated in the United States, were domiciled for the most part with private families there; and they so imbibed the influence of their surroundings that a high sense of honour was developed in them. The writer can speak from personal experience of the fidelity and efficiency of some of these students. Captain Clayson, who had several serving under him in the "Peiyang Squadron," has said that although on their return to China the authorities had distributed them in services other than those for which they had been trained, yet because of the school discipline they had been subjected to, and the sense of honour developed by their contact with Western people, he found them far more useful and trustworthy than the men who had been trained in Chinese naval schools. This experience seems to suggest that there are good moral qualities of the Chinese waiting, like the mineral ores in their country, for an awakening influence. In all these progressive efforts Li Hung-chang retained the lead, and his own province was well in advance in educational enterprises. Besides a military school with German, and a naval school with English, instructors, he set up within a mile of his Yamên a fairly furnished medical school with a hospital attached. His special corps of foreign-drilled troops was the best equipped and best disciplined force in the empire.
While all this progress was being made in the direction of military efficiency, the naval requirements of the country were not neglected. The failure of the undigested Lay-Osborn scheme showed the Chinese thatthe naval problem must be attacked in a different fashion. It was a false start, and they must begin again. Accordingly, profiting by what they had heard and seen of the efficient service rendered in their narrow waters by foreign gunboats, the Chinese Government contracted with the Armstrong firm for a small flotilla carrying one heavy gun with a wide range of fire. These craft were little more than floating gun-carriages; but notwithstanding broad beam and flat bottoms, they were moderately sea-worthy. They were known as the Alphabeticals, from being named after the Greek letters. This modest flotilla was the nucleus of the Chinese navy.
Attempts at naval construction were made at Shanghai, Foochow, and Canton; but beyond providing work and training for native artificers, and acting occasionally as transports on a small scale, despatch-carriers, and official yachts, the vessels turned out from native yards rendered no service to the country. The Chinese navy as a potential military arm only took shape when Li Hung-chang was able to carry the Government with him so far as to purchase effective war-ships in Europe, to institute a system of training under competent foreign officers, and to establish naval harbours with docks and workshops. Two iron-clad battleships, a respectable squadron of cruisers, and some smaller craft, manned by trained crews and officered by men who had received a regular naval education and perfectly understood their duties, constituted the fighting navy of China. The two English officers who supervised the training, Captain Tracy at Foochow and Captain Lang in the Gulf of Pechili, were thoroughly satisfied with the capacity of both officersand men, and what was distinguished as the Peiyang or Northern Squadron was brought up by the latter officer to such a state of efficiency that he reckoned that a further two years' drill would enable the Chinese to take its place, on a small scale, among the best equipped fleets in the world.
And while the navy was developing so satisfactorily, coast fortifications also made great progress. The mouths of rivers were all defended by the best modern guns; three naval ports in the Gulf of Pechili—Port Arthur, Weihai-wei, and Talien-wan—were fortified at great expense, and everything externally evinced a determination on the part of China to place herself in a position of independence, delivered from the fear of foreign attack, except of course by land, and even that had been partially provided for, as we have seen, by the military establishments in Manchuria.
Between the naval and the military preparations, however, there was an immense disparity. The force for which Li Hung-chang was personally responsible was carefully drilled, armed, fed, and paid, and, given competent leading, would no doubt have rendered a good account of itself; but the army as a whole was never brought to a state approaching efficiency. The navy, on the other hand, possessed the best ships and the best armament that money could buy, with the most modern appliances for war, and itspersonnelwas subjected to the most careful discipline. The fortress guns were also of the newest and best pattern, and nothing was spared, apparently, to fit them for the purpose for which they were intended. It was generally conceded that the fortresses so armed were safe from attack by sea.
The explanation of the great difference between the organisation of the sea and the land forces seems to be that the former, being a new creation, was beyond the range of criticism and was unhampered by any traditions, while the reform of the army was merely patching a worn-out garment. The immemorial conditions of military service were unchanged. No army was formed, but a series of local levies raised without cohesion or central control. The foreign instructors were kept strictly to their class-work, were subordinated to the people whom they had to instruct, and possessed no kind of authority. They were allowed to drill the men, while the officers for the most part held themselves above the drudgery of the parade-ground. The few who had acquired a smattering of military education in Europe were as helpless as the foreign drill-masters to move their wholly ignorant superiors. Hence abuses of the most grotesque kind did not creep but rushed into every camp and every school, reducing the scientific teaching to a hollow farce.
The familiar factors of peculation and nepotism had an important influence on these naval and military developments in China. Such things are no monopoly of the Chinese. If corruption could ruin a State, it would not be necessary to look so far afield as China for national disasters. But the form which the vice takes in China has a determining effect on the administration quite irrespective of the waste of resources and diminution of efficiency which are common to corruption in all its forms. Thus if we have to reconcile the lavish purchases of material with the attenuation ofpersonnel, we needonly reflect that the former bring large emoluments with little labour to the official employed, while the training of men involves much work and little profit. Further, if we want an explanation of the infinite diversity of the arms which are furnished to the troops, we may find it in the excessive competition among officials for a share of the traffic, and the interest which the higher authorities have in passing without inspection what is purveyed by their subordinates.
Nepotism in China is part and parcel of the family system, which is the palladium of the nation. Every military corps raised is essentially territorial; and if ever it is moved from one province to another, it looks to a territorial chief, and no stranger can command it. Li Hung-chang's disciplined troops, if not all of his own clan, were at least the natives of his province and spoke his dialect. His subordinate officials were blood relations and family adherents. It needs no argument to show how such a survival of feudalism militates against national organisation. Pure feudalism, indeed, would be less detrimental; for under it territorial exclusiveness would at least be balanced by territorial responsibility, but under the short-service system of China a governor or governor-general may during his three years' term throw everything into confusion and half ruin the finances of a province with which he is precluded from having any territorial tie, and then proceed to another and repeat the performance. The navy, though, as we have said, exempt from the incubus of tradition, was nevertheless unable to withstand the pressure of immemorial heredity.As the first and principal naval school happened to be at Foochow, it was natural that new battleships and cruisers should be officered and manned in the first instance by natives of Fukien province. The admiral, however, hailed from another province—that of Li Hung-chang. Though brave and capable, Admiral Ting was uneducated, and found it hard to hold his own among the captains and lieutenants who had been to Greenwich and could speak and write English, and some of them French. Neither the Chinese admiral nor the English co-admiral—who was led to believe he possessed authority, but was deceived—were able to repress the intrigues which ran riot among the Foochow officers,—intrigues having for their object the complete control of the fleet, the power of keeping out and admitting whom they chose without reference to qualifications, and the general determination to subordinate the naval service to their personal and family advantage. The presence of Captain Lang was a hindrance to their schemes, and they intrigued him out. But as the fleet belonged to the north, they were unable to exclude northern seamen from the country round Weihai-wei, who proved when the day of trial came the most intelligent and the staunchest force that China possessed.
The Peiyang Squadron was the nearest approach to an imperial navy that China ever possessed, and yet it was so far provincial that it could not be sent into the central or southern waters without creating jealousy on the part of the local authorities, just as if it had been a foreign force. In 1891, when anti-foreign riots in various places onthe Yangtze threatened to endanger the peace of the empire, the Imperial Government allowed foreign ships of war to proceed up the river for the purpose of preventing outbreaks rather than offend the susceptibilities of the provincial authorities by employing their own naval forces on that duty. During that critical period the Peiyang Squadron was cruising in Japanese waters while the Great River was being patrolled by foreign gunboats.
These various evidences of martial energy procured for China the credit of a real awakening, and ensured her the respect due to a serious Power. Yet the unsoundness of the foundation on which her new prestige rested was no secret to any one who took the trouble to consider the facts, for all the weaknesses we have mentioned, with many more, were notorious to every foreign resident in China; nor was there a naval officer of any nation who did not regard the fighting value of the Chinese fleet as nothing. Ships were good, officers and men in themselves were passable, but without organisation, while the whole force was governed by other than militant principles. The attempted military reorganisation could, in fact, have no vitality except as a branch of a general reform of the administration, the keystone of which was fiscal. Of this, however, the Chinese rulers seemed to take no heed, contenting themselves with snatching at what was superficial and conspicuous to the eye. The Chinese florists in the spring-time supply to hawkers shrubs covered with blossom which is so cleverly attached by fine wire to the twigs as almost to deceive the elect. This is practically what the ChineseGovernment bad been doing with their national defences, so that on the first trial they collapsed like a sapless flower. These experiences have an important bearing on the large problem of Chinese reform and reorganisation, and indeed on the continued existence of the empire.