CHAPTER XV

THE REPUBLIC IN COLLISION WITH REALITY: TWO TYPICAL INSTANCES OF "FOREIGN AGGRESSION"

Such, then, were the internal conditions which the new administration was called upon to face with the death of Yuan Shih-kai. With very little money in the National Treasury and with the provinces unable or unwilling to remit to the capital a single dollar, it was fortunate that at least one public service, erected under foreign pressure, should be brilliantly justifying its existence. The Salt Administration, efficiently reorganized in the s.p.a.ce of three years by the great Indian authority, Sir Richard Dane, was now providing a monthly surplus of nearly five million dollars; and it was this revenue which kept China alive during a troubled transitional period when every one was declaring that she must die. By husbanding this hard cash and mixing it liberally with paper money, the Central Government has been able since June, 1916, to meet its current obligations and to keep the general machinery from breaking down.

But in a country such as China new dangers have to be constantly faced and smoothed away--the interests of the outer world pressing on the country and conflicting with the native interest at a myriad points. And in order to ill.u.s.trate and make clear the sort of daily exacerbation which the nation must endure because of the vastness of its territory and the octopus-hold of the foreigner we give two typical cases of international trouble which have occurred since Yuan Shih-kai's death.

The first is the well-known Chengchiatun incident which occurred in Manchuria in August, 1916: the second is the Lao-hsi-kai affair which took place in Tientsin in November of the same year and created a storm of rage against France throughout North China which at the moment of writing has not yet abated.

The facts about the Chengchiatun incident are incredibly simple and merit being properly told. Chengchiatun is a small Mongol-Manchurian market-town lying some sixty miles west of the South Manchurian railway by the ordinary cart-roads, though as the crow flies the distance is much less. The country round about is "new country," the prefecture in which Chengchiatun lies being originally purely Mongol territory on which Chinese squatted in such numbers that it was necessary to erect the ordinary Chinese civil administration. Thirty or forty miles due west of the town cultivation practically ceases; and then nothing meets the eye but the rolling gra.s.slands of Mongolia, with their spa.r.s.e encampments of nomad hors.e.m.e.n and shepherds which stretch so monotonously into the infinities of High Asia.

The region is strategically important because the trade-routes converge there from the growing marts of the Taonanfu administration, which is the extreme westernly limit of Chinese authority in the Mongolian borderland. A rich exchange in hides, furs, skins, cattle and foodstuffs has given this frontier town from year to year an increasing importance in the eyes of the Chinese who are fully aware of the dangers of a laissez aller policy and are determined to protect the rights they have acquired by pre-emption. The fact that notorious Mongol brigand-chiefs, such as the famous Babachapu who was allied to the Manchu Restoration Party and who was said to have been subsidized by the j.a.panese Military Party, had been making Chengchiatun one of their objectives, brought concern early in 1916 to the Moukden Governor, the energetic General Chang Tso-lin, who in order to cope with the danger promptly established a military cordon round the district, with a relatively large reserve based on Chengchiatun, drawn from the 28th Army Division. A certain amount of desultory fighting months before any one had heard of the town had given Chengchiatun the odour of the camp; and when in the summer the j.a.panese began military manoeuvres in the district with various scattered detachments, on the excuse that the South Manchuria railway zone where they alone had the right under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty to be, was too cramped for field exercises, it became apparent that dangerous developments might be expected--particularly as a body of j.a.panese infantry was billeted right in the centre of the town.

On the 13th August a j.a.panese civilian at Chengchiatun--there is a small j.a.panese trading community there--approached a Chinese boy who was selling fish. On the boy refusing to sell at the price offered him, the j.a.panese caught hold of him and started beating him. A Chinese soldier of the 28th Division who was pa.s.sing intervened; and a scuffle commenced in which other Chinese soldiers joined and which resulted in the j.a.panese being severely handled. After the Chinese had left him, the man betook himself to the nearest j.a.panese post and reported that he had been grievously a.s.saulted by Chinese soldiers for no reason whatsoever.

A j.a.panese gendarme made a preliminary investigation in company with the man; then returning to the j.a.panese barracks, declared that he could find no one in authority; that his attempts at discovering the culprits had been resisted; and that he must have help. The j.a.panese officer in command, who was a captain, detailed a lieutenant and twenty men to proceed to the Chinese barracks to obtain satisfaction from the Chinese Commander--using force if necessary. It was precisely in this way that the play was set in motion.

The detachment marched off to the headquarters of the offending Chinese detachment, which was billeted in a p.a.w.nshop, and tried to force their way past a sentry who stood his ground, into the inner courtyards. A long parley ensued with lowered bayonets; and at last on the Chinese soldier absolutely refusing to give way, the lieutenant gave orders to cut him down. There appears to be no doubt about these important facts--that is to say, that the act of war was the deliberate attack by a j.a.panese armed detachment on a Chinese sentry who was guarding the quarters of his Commander.

A frightful scene followed. It appears that scattered groups of Chinese soldiers, some with their arms, and some without, had collected during this crisis and point-blank firing at once commenced. The first shots appear to have been fired--though this was never proved--by a Chinese regimental groom, who was standing with some horses some distance away in the gateway of some stabling and who is said to have killed or wounded the largest number of j.a.panese. In any case, seven j.a.panese soldiers were killed outright, five more mortally wounded and four severely so, the Chinese themselves losing four killed, besides a number of wounded. The remnant of the j.a.panese detachment after this rude reverse managed to retreat with their wounded officer to their own barracks where the whole detachment barricaded themselves in, firing for many hours at everything that moved on the roads though absolutely no attempt was made by the Chinese soldiery to advance against them.

The sound of this heavy firing, and the wild report that many j.a.panese had been killed, had meanwhile spread panic throughout the town, and there was a general _sauve qui peut_, a terrible retribution being feared. The local Magistrate finally restored some semblance of order; and after dark proceeded in person with some notables of the town to the j.a.panese barracks to tender his regrets and to arrange for the removal of the j.a.panese corpses which were lying just as they had fallen, and which Chinese custom demanded should be decently cared for, though they const.i.tuted important and irrefragible evidence of the armed invasion which had been practised. The j.a.panese Commander, instead of meeting these conciliatory attempts half-way, thereupon illegally arrested the Magistrate and locked him up, being impelled to this action by the general fear among his men that a ma.s.s attack would be made in the night by the Chinese troops in garrison and the whole command wiped out.

Nothing, however, occurred and on the 14th instant the Magistrate was duly released on his sending for his son to take his place as hostage.

On the 16th the Magistrate had successfully arranged the withdrawal of all Chinese troops five miles outside the town to prevent further clashes. On the 15th j.a.panese cavalry and infantry began to arrive in large numbers from the South Manchuria railway zone (where they alone have the Treaty right to be) and the town of Chengchiatun was arbitrarily placed by them in a state of siege.

Here is the stuff of which the whole incident was made: there is nothing material beyond the facts stated which ill.u.s.trate very glaringly the manner in which a strong Power acts towards a weak one.

Meanwhile the effect in Tokio of these happenings had been electrical.

Relying on the well-known j.a.panese police axiom, that the man who gets in his story first is the prosecutor and the accused the guilty party, irrespective of what the evidence may be, the newspapers all came out with the same account of a calculated attack by "ferocious Chinese soldiers" on a j.a.panese detachment and the general public were asked to believe that a number of their enlisted nationals had been deliberately and brutally murdered. It was not, however, until more than a week after the incident that an official report was published by the Tokio Foreign Office, when the following garbled account was distributed far and wide as the j.a.panese case:--

"When one Kiyokishy Yoshimoto, aged 27, an employe of a j.a.panese apothecary at Chengchiatun, was pa.s.sing the headquarters of the Chinese troops on the 13th instant, a Chinese soldier stopped him, and, with some remarks, which were unintelligible to the j.a.panese, suddenly struck him on the head. Yoshimoto became enraged, but was soon surrounded by a large number of Chinese soldiers and others, who subjected him to all kind of humiliation. As a result of this lawlessness on the part of the Chinese, the j.a.panese sustained injuries in seven or eight places, but somehow he managed to break away and reach a j.a.panese police box, where he applied for help. On receipt of this news, a policeman, named Kowase, hastened to the spot, but by the time he arrived there all the offenders had fled.

He therefore repaired to the headquarters of the Chinese to lay a complaint, but the sentry stopped him, and presented a pistol at him, and under these circ.u.mstances he was obliged to apply to the j.a.panese Garrison headquarters, where Captain Inone instructed Lieutenant Matsuo with twenty men to escort the policeman to the Chinese headquarters. When the party approached the Chinese headquarters, Chinese troops began to fire, and the policeman and others were either killed or wounded. Despite the fact that the j.a.panese troops retired, the Chinese troops did not give up firing, but besieged the j.a.panese garrison, delivering several severe attacks. Soon after the fighting ceased, the Chinese authorities visited the j.a.panese barracks, and expressed the desire that the affair be settled amicably. It was the original intention of the j.a.panese troops to fight it out, but they were completely outnumbered, and lest the safety of the j.a.panese residents be endangered, they stopped fighting. On examination of the dead bodies of seven j.a.panese soldiers, who were attacked outside the barracks, it was discovered that they had been all slain by the Chinese troops, the bodies bearing marks of violence."

Without entering again into the merits of the case, we would ask those who are acquainted with recent history whether it is likely that Chinese soldiers, knowing all the pains and penalties attaching to such action, would deliberately attack a body of twenty armed j.a.panese under an officer as the j.a.panese official account states? We believe that no impartial tribunal, investigating the matter on the spot, could fail to point out the real aggressors and withal lay bare the web of a most amazing state of affairs. For in order to understand what occurred, on the 13th August, 1916, it is necessary to turn far away from Chengchiatun and see what lies behind it all.

At the back of the brain of the j.a.panese Military Party, which by no means represents the j.a.panese nation or the j.a.panese Government although it exercises a powerful influence on both, is the fixed idea that South Manchuria and Inner Mongolia must be turned into a strongly held and fortified j.a.panese _enclave_, if the balance of power in Eastern Asia is to be maintained. Pursuant to this idea, j.a.panese diplomacy was induced many months ago to concentrate its efforts on winning--if not wringing--from Russia the strategically important strip of railway south of the Sungari River, because (and this should be carefully noted) with the Sungari as the undisputed dividing-line between the Russian and j.a.panese spheres in Manchuria, and with j.a.panese shallow-draft gun-boats navigating that waterway and entering the Nonni river, it would be easily possible for j.a.pan to complete a "Continental quadrilateral" which would include Korea, South Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, the extreme western barrier of which would be the new system of Inner Mongolian railways centring round Taonanfu and terminating at Jehol, for which j.a.pan already holds the building rights[23]. Policing rights--in the outer zone of this _enclave_,--with a total exclusion of all Chinese garrisons, is the preliminary goal towards which the j.a.panese Military Party has been long plainly marching; and long before anybody had heard of Chengchiatun, a scheme of reconnoitring detachments had been put in force to spy out the land and form working alliances with the Mongol bands in order to hara.s.s and drive away all the representatives of Chinese authority. What occurred, then, at Chengchiatun might have taken place at any one of half-a-dozen other places in this vast and little-known region whither j.a.panese detachments have silently gone; and if Chinese diplomacy in the month of August, 1916, was faced with a rude surprise, it was only what political students had long been expecting. For though j.a.pan should be the real defender of Chinese liberties, it is a fact that in Chinese affairs j.a.panese diplomacy has been too long dictated to by the Military Party in Tokio and attempts nothing save when violence allows it to tear from China some fresh portion of her independence.

And here we reach the crux of the matter. One of the little known peculiarities of the day lies in the fact that j.a.pan is the land of political inaction _because there is no tradition of action save that which has been built up by the military and naval chiefs since the Chinese war of_ 1894-95. Having only visualized the world in international terms during two short decades, there has been no time for a proper tradition to be created by the civil government of j.a.pan; and because there is no such tradition, the island empire of the East has no true foreign policy and is at the mercy of manufactured crises, being too often committed to petty adventures which really range her on the side of those in Europe the Allies have set themselves to destroy. It is for this reason that the Chinese are consistently treated as though they were hewers of wood and drawers of water, helots who are occasionally nattered in the columns of the daily press and yet are secretly looked upon as men who have been born merely to be cuffed and conquered. The Moukden Governor, General Chang Tso-lin, discussing the Chengchiatun affair with the writer, put the matter in a nutsh.e.l.l. Striking the table he exclaimed: "After all we are not made of wood like this, we too are flesh and blood and must defend our own people. A dozen times I have said, 'Let them come and take Manchuria openly if they dare, but let them cease their childish intrigues.' Why do they not do so? Because they are not sure they can swallow us--not at all sure. Do you understand? We are weak, we are stupid, we are divided, but we are innumerable, and in the end, if they persist, China will burst the j.a.panese stomach."

Such pa.s.sionate periods are all very well, but when it comes to the sober business of the council chamber it is a regrettable fact that Chinese, although foreign friends implore them to do so, do not properly use the many weapons in their armoury. Thus in this particular case, instead of at once hurrying to Chengchiatun some of the many foreign advisers who sit kicking their heels in Peking from one end of the year to the other and who number competent jurisconsults, China did next to nothing. No proper report was drawn up on the spot; sworn statements were not gathered, nor were witnesses brought to Peking; and it therefore happened that when j.a.pan filed her demands for redress, China had not in her possession anything save an utterly inadequate defence.

Mainly because of this she was forced to agree to forgoing any direct discussion of the rights and wrongs of the case, proceeding directly to negotiations based on the various claims which j.a.pan filed and which were as follows:--

1. Punishment of the General commanding the 28th Division.

2. The dismissal of officers at Chengchiatun responsible for the occurrence as well as the severe punishment of those who took direct part in the fracas.

3. Proclamations to be posted ordering all Chinese soldiers and civilians in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia to refrain from any act calculated to provoke a breach of the peace with j.a.panese soldiers or civilians.

4. China to agree to the stationing of j.a.panese police officers in places in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia where their presence was considered necessary for the protection of j.a.panese subjects. China also to agree to the engagement by the officials of South Manchuria of j.a.panese police advisers.

_And in addition_:--

1. Chinese troops stationed in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia to employ a certain number of j.a.panese Military officers as advisers.

2. Chinese Military Cadet schools to employ a certain number of j.a.panese Military officers as instructors.

3. The Military Governor of Moukden to proceed personally to Port Arthur to the j.a.panese Military Governor of Kwantung to apologize for the occurrence and to tender similar personal apologies to the j.a.panese Consul General in Moukden.

4. Adequate compensation to be paid by China to the j.a.panese sufferers and to the families of those killed.

The merest tyro will see at once that so far from caring very much about the killing of her soldiery, j.a.pan was bent on utilizing the opportunity to gain a certain number of new rights and privileges in the zone of Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia--notably an extension of her police and military-supervision rights. In spite, however, of the faulty procedure to which she had consented, China showed considerable tenacity in the course of negotiations which lasted nearly half a year, and by the end of January, 1917, had whittled down the question of j.a.panese compensation to fairly meagre proportions. To be precise the two governments agreed to embody by the exchange of Notes the five following stipulations:--

1. The General commanding the 28th Division to be reprimanded.

2. Officers responsible to be punished according to law. If the law provides for severe punishment, such punishment will be inflicted.

3. Proclamations to be issued enjoining Chinese soldiers and civilians in the districts where there is mixed residence to accord considerate treatment to j.a.panese soldiers and civilians.

4. The Military Governor of Moukden to send a representative to Port Arthur to convey his regret when the Military Governor of Kwantung and j.a.panese Consul General at Moukden are there together.

5. A solatium of $500 (Five Hundred Dollars) to be given to the j.a.panese merchant Yoshimoto.

But though the incident was thus nominally closed, and amicable relations restored, the most important point--the question of j.a.panese police-rights in Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia--was left precisely where it had been before, the most vigorous Chinese protests not having induced j.a.pan to abate in the slightest her pretensions.

During previous years a number of j.a.panese police-stations and police-boxes had been established in defiance of the local authorities in these regions, and although China in these negotiations recorded her strongest possible objection to their presence as being the princ.i.p.al cause of the continual friction between Chinese and j.a.panese, j.a.pan refused to withdraw from her contention that they did not const.i.tute any extension of the principle of extraterritoriality, and that indeed j.a.panese police, distributed at such points as the j.a.panese consular authorities considered necessary, must be permanently accepted. Here then is a matter which will require careful consideration when the Powers meet to revise their Chinese Treaties as they must revise them after the world-war; for j.a.pan in Manchuria is fundamentally in no different a position from England in the Yangtsze Valley and what applies to one must apply to the other. The new Chinese police which are being distributed in ever greater numbers throughout China form an admirable force and are superior to j.a.panese police in the performance of nearly all their duties. It is monstrous that j.a.pan, as well as other Powers, should act in such a reprehensible manner when the Chinese administration is doing all it can to provide efficient guardians of the peace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Famous or Infamous General Chang-Hsun, the leading Reactionary in China to-day, who still commands a force of 30,000 men astride of the Pukow Railway.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Bas-relief in a Peking Temple, well ill.u.s.trating Indo-Chinese influences.]

The second case was one in which French officialdom by a curious act of folly gravely alienated Chinese sympathies and gave a powerful weapon to the German propaganda in China at the end of 1916. The Lao-hsi-kai dispute, which involved a bare 333 acres of land in Tientsin, has now taken its place beside the Chengchiatun affair, and has become a leading case in that great dossier of griefs which many Chinese declare make up the corpus of Euro-Chinese relations. Here again the facts are absolutely simple and absolutely undisputed. In 1902 the French consular authorities in Tientsin filed a request to have their Concession extended on the ground that they were becoming cramped. The Chinese authorities, although not wishing to grant the request and indeed ignoring it for a long time, were finally induced to begin fitful negotiations; and in October, 1916, after having pa.s.sed through various processes of alteration, reduction, and re-statement during the interval of fourteen years, the issue had been so fined down that a virtual agreement regarding the administration of the new area had been reached--an agreement which the Peking Government was prepared to put into force subject to one reasonable stipulation, that the local opposition to the new grant of territory which was very real, as Chinese feel pa.s.sionately on the subject of the police-control of their land-acreage, was first overcome. The whole essence or soul of the disputes lay therein: that the lords of the soil, the people of China, and in this case more particularly the population of Tientsin, should accept the decision arrived at which was that a joint Franco-Chinese administration be established under a Chinese Chairman.

When the terms of this proposed agreement were communicated to the Tientsin Consulate by the French Legation the arrangement did not please the French Consul-General, who was under transfer to Shanghai and who proposed to settle the case to the satisfaction of his nationals before he left. There is absolutely no dispute about this fact either--namely that the main pre-occupation of a consular officer, charged primarily under the Treaties with the simple preservation of law and order among his nationals, was the closing-up of a vexatious outstanding case, by force if necessary, before he handed over his office to his successor.

It was with this idea that an ultimatum was drawn up by the French Consul General and, having been weakly approved by the French Legation, was handed to the Chinese local authorities. It gave them a time-limit of twenty-four hours in which to effect the complete police evacuation of the coveted strip of territory on the ground that the delay in the signature of a formal Protocol had been wilful and deliberate and had closed the door to further negotiations; and as no response came at the end of the time-limit, an open invasion of Chinese territory was practised by an armed French detachment; nine uniformed Chinese constables on duty being forcibly removed and locked up in French barracks and French sentries posted on the disputed boundary.

The result of this misguided action was an enormous Chinese outcry and the beginning of a boycott of the French in North China,--and this in the middle of a war when France has acted with inspiring n.o.bility. Some 2,000 native police, servants and employe's promptly deserted the French Concession _en ma.s.se_; popular unions were formed to keep alive resentment; and although in the end the arrested police were set at liberty, the friendly intervention of the Allies proved unable to effect a settlement of the case which at the moment of writing remains precisely where it was a year ago.[24]

Here you have the matter of foreign interests in China explained in the sense that they appear to Chinese. It is not too much to say that this ill.u.s.tration of the deliberate lawlessness, which has too often been practised in the past by consuls who are simply Justices of the Peace, would be incredible elsewhere; and yet it is this lawlessness which has come to be accepted as part and parcel of what is called "policy" in China because in the fifty years preceding the establishment of the Republic a weak and effeminate mandarinate consistently sought safety in surrenders. It is this lawlessness which must at all costs be suppressed if we are to have a happy future. The Chinese people have so far contented themselves by pacific retaliation and have not exploded into rage; but those who see in the gospel of boycott an ugly manifestation of what lies slumbering should give thanks nightly that they live in a land where reason is so supreme. Think of what might not happen in China if the people were not wholly reasonable! Throughout the length and breadth of the land you have small communities of foreigners, mere drops in a mighty ocean of four hundred millions, living absolutely secure although absolutely at the mercy of their huge swarms of neighbours. All such foreigners--or nearly all--have come to China for purposes of profit; they depend for their livelihood on co-operation with the Chinese; and once that co-operation ceases they might as well be dead and buried for all the good residence will do them. In such circ.u.mstances it would be reasonable to suppose that a certain decency would inspire their att.i.tude, and that a policy of give-and-take would always be sedulously practised; and we are happy to say that there is more of this than there used to be. It is only when incidents such as the Chengchiatun and Laihsikai affairs occur that the placid population is stirred to action. Even then, instead of turning and rending the many little defenceless communities--as European mobs would certainly do--they simply confine themselves to boycotting the offenders and hoping that this evidence of their displeasure will finally induce the world to believe that they are determined to get reasonable treatment.

The Chinese as a people may be very irritating in the slowness with which they do certain things--though they are as quick in business as the quickest Anglo-Saxon--but that is no excuse why men who call themselves superior should treat them with contempt. The Chinese are the first to acknowledge that it will take them a generation at least to modernize effectively their country and their government; but they believe that having erected a Republic and having declared themselves as disciples of the West they are justified in expecting the same treatment and consideration which are to be given after the war even to the smallest and weakest nations of Europe.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Russian diplomats now deny that the j.a.panese proposals regarding the cession of the railway south of the Sungari river have ever been formally agreed to.

[24] A further ill.u.s.tration of the action of French diplomacy in China has just been provided (April, 1917) in the protest lodged by France against the building of a railway in Kw.a.n.gsi Province by American engineers with American capital--France claiming _exclusive rights_ in Kw.a.n.gsi by virtue of a letter sent by the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs to the French Legation in 1914 as settlement for a frontier dispute in that year. The text of the letter is as follows:

"The dispute that rose in consequence of the disturbance at the border of Annam and Kw.a.n.gsi has been examined into by the Joint Committee detailed by both parties concerned, and a conclusion has been reached to the effect that all matters relating to the solution of the case would be carried out in accordance with the request of Your Excellency.

"In order to demonstrate the especially good friendly relations existing between the two countries, the Republican Government a.s.sures Your Excellency that in case of a railway construction or a mining enterprise being undertaken in Kw.a.n.gsi Province in the future, for which foreign capital is required, France would first be consulted for a loan of the necessary capital. On such an occasion, the Governor of Kw.a.n.gsi will directly negotiate with a French syndicate and report to the Government."