THE POSITION OF GREAT BRITAIN
An observant correspondent recently wrote from Shanghai to a New York newspaper: "China has missed catching the fire of the West in the manner of j.a.pan, and has lain idle and supine while neighbour and foreigner despoiled her. Her statesmanship has been languid and irresolute, and her armies slow and spiritless in the field. Observers who know China, and are familiar at the same time with the symptoms of opium, say that it is as if the listless symptoms of the drug were to be seen in the very nation itself. Many conclude that the military and political inertia of the Chinese is due to the special prevalence of the opium habit among the two cla.s.ses of Chinamen directly responsible: both the soldiers and the scholars, among whom all the civil and political posts are held in monopoly, are notoriously addicted to opium."
The point which these chapters should make clear is that opium is the evil thing which is not only holding China back but is also actually threatening to bring about the most complete demoralization and decadence that any large portion of the world has ever experienced. It is evident, in this day of extended trade interests, that such a paralysis of the hugest and the most industrious of the great races would amount to a world-disaster. Already the United States is suffering from the weakness of the Chinese government in Manchuria, which permits j.a.pan to control in the Manchurian province and to discriminate against American trade. This discrimination would appear to have been one strong reason for the sailing of the battleship fleet to the Pacific. If this relatively small result of China"s weakness and inertia can arouse great nations and can play a part in the moving of great fleets, it is not difficult to imagine the world-importance of a complete breakdown. Every great Western nation has a trade or territorial footing in China to defend and maintain. Every great Western nation is watching the complicated Chinese situation with sleepless eyes. Such a breakdown might quite possibly mean the unconditional surrender of China"s destiny into the hands of j.a.pan; which, with j.a.pan"s growing desire to dominate the Pacific, and with it the world, might quite possibly mean the rapid approach of the great international conflict.
We have seen, in the course of these chapters, that China appears to be almost completely in the grasp of her master-vice. The opium curse in China is a dreadful example of the economic waste of evil. It has not only lowered the vitality, and therefore the efficiency of men, women, and children in all walks of life, but it has also crowded the healthier crops off the land, usurped no small part of the industrial life, turned the balance of trade against China, plunged her into wars, loaded her with indemnity charges, taken away part of her territory, and made her the plundering ground of the nations. She has been compelled to look indolently on while j.a.pan, alight with the fire of progress, has raised her brown head proudly among the peoples of the West. So China has at last been driven to make a desperate stand against the encroachments of the curse which is wrecking her. The fight is on to-day. It is plain that China is sincere; she must be sincere, because her only hope lies in conquering opium. She has turned for help to Great Britain, for Britain"s Indian government developed the opium trade ("for purposes of foreign commerce only") and continues to-day to pour a flood of the drug into the channels of Chinese trade. Once China thought to crowd out the Indian product by producing the drug herself, as a preliminary to controlling the traffic, but she has never been able to develop a grade of opium that can compete with the brown paste from the Ganges Valley.
This summing up brings us to a consideration of two questions which must be considered sooner or later by the people of the civilized world:
1. Can China hope to conquer the opium curse without the help of Great Britain?
2. What is Great Britain doing to help her?
In attempting to work out the answer to these questions, we must think of them simply as practical problems bearing on the trade, the territorial development, and the military and naval power of the nations. We must try for the present to ignore the mere moral and ethical suggestions which the questions arouse.
First, then: can China, single-handed, possibly succeed in this fight, now going on, against the slow paralysis of opium?
China is not a nation in the sense in which we ordinarily use the word. If we picture to ourselves the countries of Europe, with their different languages and different customs drawn together into a loose confederation under the government of a conquering race, we shall have some small conception of what this Chinese "nation" really is. The peoples of these different European countries are all Caucasians; the different peoples of China are all Mongolians. These Chinese people speak eighteen or twenty "languages," each divided into almost innumerable dialects and sub-dialects. They are governed by Manchu, or Tartar, conquerors who spring from a different stock, wear different costumes, and speak, among themselves, a language wholly different from any of the eighteen or twenty native tongues.
In making this diversity clear, it is necessary only to cite a few ill.u.s.trations. There is not even a standard of currency in China. Each province or group of provinces has its own standard tael, differing greatly in value from the tael which may be the basis of value in the next province or group. There is no government coinage whatever. All the mints are privately owned and are run for profit in supplying the local demand for currency, and the basis of this currency is the Mexican dollar, a foreign unit. They make dollar bills in Honan Province. I went into Chili Province and offered some of these Honan bills in exchange for purchases.
The merchants merely looked at them and shook their heads. "Tientsin dollar have got?" was the question. So the money of a community or a province is simply a local commodity and has either a lower value or no value elsewhere, for the simple reason that the average Chinaman knows only his local money and will accept no other. The diversity of language is as easily observed as the diversity of coinage. On the wharves at Shanghai you can hear a Canton Chinaman and a Shanghai Chinaman talking together in pidgin English, their only means of communication. When I was travelling in the Northwest, I was accosted in French one day by a Chinese station-agent, on the Shansi Railroad, who frankly said that he was led to speak to me, a foreigner, by the fact that he was a "foreigner" too. With his blue gown and his black pigtail, he looked to me no different from the other natives; but he told me that he found the language and customs of Shansi "difficult," and that he sometimes grew homesick for his native city in the South.
That the Chinese of different provinces really regard one another as foreigners may be ill.u.s.trated by the fact that, during the Boxer troubles about Tientsin, it was a common occurrence for the northern soldiers to shoot down indiscriminately with the white men any Cantonese who appeared within rifle-shot.
This diversity, probably a result of the cost and difficulty of travel, is a factor in the immense inertia which hinders all progress in China.
People who differ in coinage, language, and customs, who have never been taught to "think imperially" or in terms other than those of the village or city, cannot easily be led into cooperation on a large scale. It is difficult enough, Heaven knows, to effect any real change in the government of an American city or state, or of the nation, let alone effecting any real changes in the habits of men. Witness our own struggle against graft. Witness also the vast struggle against the liquor traffic now going on in a score of our states. Even in this land of ours, which is so new that there has hardly been time to form traditions; which is alert to the value of changes and quick to leap in the direction of progress; which is essentially h.o.m.ogeneous in structure, with but one language, innumerable daily newspapers, and a close network of fast, comfortable railway trains to keep the various communities in touch with the prevailing idea of the moment, how easy do we find it to wipe out race-track gambling, say, or to make our insurance laws really effective, or to check the corrupt practices of corporations, or to establish the principle of local munic.i.p.al ownership? To put it in still another light, how easy do we find it to bring about a change which the great majority of us agree would be for the better, such as making over the costly, c.u.mbersome express business into a government parcels post?
But there are large money interests which would suffer by such reforms, you say? True; and there are large money interests suffering by the opium reforms in China, relatively as large as any money interests we have in this country. The opium reforms affect the large and the small farmers, the manufacturers, the transportation companies, the bankers, the commission men, the hundreds of thousands of shopkeepers, and the government revenues, for the opium traffic is an almost inextricable strand in the fabric of Chinese commerce. In addition to these bewildering complications of the problem, there is the discouraging inertia to overcome of a land which, far from being alert and active, is sunk in the lethargy of ancient local custom.
No, in putting down her master-vice, China must not only overcome all the familiar economic difficulties that tend to block reform everywhere, but, in addition, must find a way to rouse and energize the most backward and (outside of the age-old grooves of conduct and government) the most unmanageable empire in the world.
On what element in her population must China rely to put this huge reform into effect? On the officials, or mandarins, who carry out the governmental edicts in every province, administer Chinese justice, and control the military and finances. But of these officials, more than ninety per cent. have been known to be opium-smokers, and fully fifty per cent. have been financially interested in the trade.
Still another obstacle blocking reform is the powerful example and widespread influence of the treaty ports. Perhaps the white race is "superior" to the yellow; I shall not dispute that notion here. But one fact which I know personally is that every one of the treaty ports, where the white men rule, including the British crown colony of Hongkong, chose last year to maintain its opium revenue regardless of the protests of the Chinese officials.
Putting down opium in China would appear to be a pretty big job. The "vested interests," yellow and white, are against a change; the personal habits of the officials themselves work against it; the British keep on pouring in their Indian opium; and by way of a positive force on the affirmative side of the question there would appear to be only the lethargy and impotence of a decadent, chaotic race. How would you like to tackle a problem of this magnitude, as Yuan Shi K"ai and Tong Shao-i have done? Try to organize a campaign in your home town against the bill-board nuisance; against corrupt politics; against drink or cigarettes. Would it be easy to succeed? When you have thought over some of the difficulties that would block you on every hand, multiply them by fifty thousand and then take off your hat to Tong Shao-i and Yuan Shi K"ai. Personally, I think I should prefer undertaking to stamp out drink in Europe. I should know, of course, that it would be rather a difficult business, but still it would be easier than this Chinese proposition.
So much for the difficulties of the problem. Suppose now we take a look at the results of the first year of the fight. There are no exact statistics to be had, but based as it is on personal travel and observation, on reports of travelling officials, merchants, missionaries, and of other journalists who have been in regions which I did not reach, I think my estimate should be fairly accurate. Remember, this is a fight to a finish.
If the Chinese government loses, opium will win.
The plan of the government, let me repeat, is briefly as follows: First, the area under poppy cultivation is to be decreased about ten per cent.
each year, until that cultivation ceases altogether; and simultaneously the British government is to be requested to decrease the exportation of opium from India ten per cent. each year. Second, all opium dens or places where couches or lamps are supplied for public smoking are to be closed at once under penalty of confiscation. Third, all persons who purchase opium at sale shops are to be registered, and the amount supplied to them to be diminished from month to month. Meantime, the farmer is to be given all possible advice and aid in the matter of subst.i.tuting some other crop for the poppy; opium cures and hospitals are to be established as widely as possible; and preachers and lecturers are to be sent out to explain the dangers of opium to the illiterate millions.
The central government at Peking started in by giving the high officials six months in which to change their habits. At the end of that period a large number were suspended from office, including Prince Chuau and Prince Jui.
In one opium province, Shansi, we have seen that the enforcement was at the start effective. The evidence, gathered with some difficulty from residents and travellers, from roadside gossip, and from talks with officials, all went to show that the dens in all the leading cities were closed, that the manufacturers of opium and its accessories were going out of business, and that the farmers were beginning to limit their crops.
The enforcements in the adjoining province, Chih-li, in which lies Peking, was also thoroughly effective at the start. The opium dens in all the large cities were closed during the spring, and the restaurants and disorderly houses which had formerly served opium to their customers surrendered their lamps and implements. Throughout the other provinces north of the Yangtse River, while there was evidence of a fairly consistent attempt to enforce the new regulations, the results were not altogether satisfying. Along the central and southern coast, from Shanghai to Canton, the enforcement was effective in about half the important centers of population. In Canton, or Kw.a.n.gtung Province, the prohibition was practically complete.
The real test of the prohibition movement is to come in the great interior provinces of the South, Yunnan and Kweichou, and in the huge western province of Sze-chuan. It is in these regions that opium has had its strongest grip on the people, and where the financial and agricultural phases of the problems are most acute. All observers recognized that it was unfair to expect immediate and complete prohibition in these regions, where opium-growing is quite as grave a question as opium-smoking. The beginning of the enforcement in Sze-chuan seems to have been cautious but sincere. In this one province the share of the imperial tax on opium alone, over and above local needs, amounts to more than $2,000,000 (gold), and, thanks to the constant demands of the foreign powers for their "indemnity" money, the imperial government is hardly in a position to forego its demands on the provinces. But recognizing that a new revenue must be built up to supplant the old, the three new opium commissioners of Sze-chuan have begun by preparing addresses explaining the evils of opium, and sending out "public orators" to deliver them to the people. They have also used the local newspapers extensively for their educational work; and they have sent out the provincial police to make lists of all opium-smokers, post their names on the outside of their houses, and make certain that they will be debarred from all public employment and from posts of honour. The chief commissioner, Tso, declares that he will clear Chen-tu, the provincial capital, a city of 400,000 inhabitants, of opium within four years; and no one seems to doubt that he will do it as effectively as he has cleared the streets of the beggars for which Chen-tu was formerly notorious. When Mr. J. G. Alexander, of the British Anti-Opium Society, was in Chen-tu last year, this same Commissioner Tso called a ma.s.s-meeting for him, at which the native officials and gentry sat on the platform with representatives of the missionary societies, and ten thousand Chinese crowded about to hear Mr. Alexander"s address.
The most disappointing region in the matter of the opium prohibition is the upper Yangtse Valley. In the lower valley, from Nanking down to Soochow and Shanghai (native city), the enforcement ranges from partial to complete. But in the upper valley, from Nanking to Hankow and above, I could not find the slightest evidence of enforcement. At the river ports the dens were running openly, many of them with doors opening directly off the street and with smokers visible on the couches within. The viceroy of the upper Yangtse provinces, Chang-chi-tung, "the Great Viceroy," has been recognized for a generation as one of China"s most advanced thinkers and reformers. His book, "China"s Only Hope," has been translated into many languages, and is recognized as the most eloquent a.n.a.lysis of China"s problems ever made by Chinese or Manchu. In it he is flatly on record against opium. Indeed, when governor of Shansi, twenty odd years ago, this same official sent out his soldiers to beat down the poppy crop. Yet it was in this viceroyalty alone, among all the larger subdivisions of China, that there was no evidence whatever last year of an intention to enforce the anti-opium edicts. The only explanation of this state of things seems to be that Chang-chi-tung is now a very old man, and that to a great extent he has lost his vigour and his grip on his work. Whatever the reason, this fact has been used with telling effect in pro-opium arguments in the British Parliament as an ill.u.s.tration of China"s "insincerity."
The situation seems to sum up about as follows: The prohibition of opium was immediately effective over about one-quarter of China, and partially effective over about two-thirds. This, it has seemed to me, considering the difficulty and immensity of the problem, is an extraordinary record.
Every opium den actually closed in China represents a victory. Whether the dens will stay closed, after the first frenzy of reform has pa.s.sed, or whether the prohibition movement will gain in strength and effectiveness, time alone will tell. But there is an ancient popular saying in China to this effect, "Do not fear to go slowly; fear to stop."
We have seen, then, that while the Chinese are fighting the opium evil earnestly, and in part effectively, they are still some little way short of conquering it. Also, we must not forget, that all reforms are strongest in their beginnings. The Chinese, no less than the rest of us, will take up a moral issue in a burst of enthusiasm. But human beings cannot continue indefinitely in a bursting condition. Reaction must always follow extraordinary exertion, and it is then that the habits of life regain their ascendency. Remarkable as this reform battle has been in its results, it certainly cannot show a complete, or even a half-complete, victory over the brown drug. And meantime the government of British India is pouring four-fifths of its immense opium production into China by way of Hongkong and the treaty ports. It should be added, further, that while the various self-governing ports, excepting Shanghai, have very recently been forced, one by one, to cover up at least the appearance of evil, the crown colony of Hongkong, which is under the direct rule of Great Britain, is still clinging doggedly to its opium revenues. The whole miserable business was summed up thus in a recent speech in the House of Commons: "The mischief is in China; the money is in India."
What is Great Britain doing to help China? His Majesty"s government has indulged in a resolution now and then, has expressed diplomatic "sympathy"
with its yellow victims, and has even "urged" India in the matter, but is it really doing anything to help?
There are reasons why the world has a right to ask this question.
If China is to grow weaker, she must ultimately submit to conquest by foreign powers. There are nine or ten of these powers which have some sort of a footing in China. No one of them trusts any one of the others, therefore each must be prepared to fight in defense of its own interests.
It is not safe to tempt great commercial nations with a prize so rich as China; they might yield. Once this conquest, this "part.i.tion," sets in, there can result nothing but chaos and world-wide trouble.
The trend of events is to-day in the direction of this world-wide trouble.
The only apparent way to head it off is to begin strengthening China to a point where she can defend herself against conquest. The first step in this strengthening process is the putting down of opium--there is no other first step. Before you can put down opium, you have got to stop opium production in India. And therefore the Anglo-Indian opium business is not England"s business, but the world"s business. The world is to-day paying the cost of this highly expensive luxury along with China. Every sallow morphine victim on the streets of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York is helping to pay for this government traffic in vice.
But is Great Britain planning to help China?
The government of the British empire is at present in the hands of the Liberal party, which has within it a strong reform element. From the Tory party nothing could be expected; it has always worshipped the Things that Are, and it has always defended the opium traffic. If either party is to work this change, it must be that one which now holds the reins of power.
And yet, after generations of fighting against the government opium industry on the part of all the reform organizations in England, after Parliament has twice been driven to vote a resolution condemning the traffic, after generations of statesmen, from Palmerston through Gladstone to John Morley, have held out a.s.surances of a change, after the Chinese government, tired of waiting on England, has begun the struggle, this is the final concession on England"s part:
The British government has agreed to decrease the exportation of Indian opium about eight per cent. per year during a trial period of three years, in order to see whether the cultivation of the poppy and the number of opium-smokers is lessened. Should such be the case, exportation to China will be further decreased gradually.
The reader will observe here some very pretty diplomatic juggling. There is here none of the spirit which animated the United States last year in proposing voluntarily to give up a considerable part of its indemnity money. The British government is yielding to a tremendous popular clamour at home; but nothing more. Could a government offer less by way of carrying out the conviction of a national parliament to the effect that "the methods by which our Indian opium revenues are derived are morally indefensible"? The English people are urging their government, the Chinese are diplomatically putting on pressure, the United States is organizing an international opium commission on the ground that the nations which consume Indian and Chinese opium have, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, a finger in the pie.
And by way of response to this pressure the British government agrees to lessen very slightly its export for a few years, or until the pressure is removed and the trade can slip back to normal!
There are not even a.s.surances that the agreement will be carried out.
While this very agitation has been going on, since these chapters began to appear in _Success Magazine_, the annual export of Bengal opium has increased (1906-1908) from 96,688 chests to 101,588 chests. And it is well to remember that after Mr. Gladstone, as prime minister, had given a.s.surances of a "great reduction" in the traffic, the officials of India admitted that they had not heard of any such reduction.
A few months ago, the Government issued a "White Paper" containing the correspondence with China on the opium question, so that there is no dependence on hearsay in this arraignment of the British att.i.tude. Let us glance at an excerpt or two from these official British letters. This, for example:
"The Chinese proposal, on the other hand, which involves extinction of the import in nine years, would commit India irrevocably, and in advance of experience, to the complete suppression of an important trade, and goes beyond the underlying condition of the scheme, that restriction of import from abroad, and reduction of production in China, shall be brought _pari pa.s.su_ into play."
Not content with this rather sordid expression, His Majesty"s Government goes on to point out that, under existing treaties, China cannot refuse to admit Indian opium; that China cannot even increase the import duty on Indian opium without the permission of Great Britain; that before Great Britain will consider the question of permanently reducing her production China must prove that the number of her smokers has diminished; that the opium traffic is to be continued at least for another ten years; and then indulges in this superb deliverance:
The proposed limitation of the export to 60,000 chests from 1908 is thought to be a very substantial reduction on this figure, and the view of the Government of India is that such a standard ought to satisfy the Chinese Government for the present.
Even by their own estimate, after taking out the proposed total decrease of 15,300 chests in the Chinese trade, the Indian Government will, during the next three years, unload more than 170,000 chests of opium on a race which it has brought to degradation, which is to-day struggling to overcome demoralization, and which is appealing to England and to the whole civilized world for aid in the unequal contest.
We must try to be fair to the gentlemen-officials who see the situation only in this curious half-light. "It is a practical question," they say.
"The law of trade is the balance-sheet. It is not our fault as individuals that opium, the commodity, was launched out into the channels of trade; but since it is now in those channels, the law of trade must rule, the balance-sheet must balance. Opium means $20,000,000 a year to the Indian Government--we cannot give it up."
The real question would seem to be whether they can afford to continue receiving this revenue. Opium does not appear to be a very valuable commodity in India itself. Just as in China, it degrades the people. The profits in production, for everybody but the government, are so small that the strong hand of the law has often, nowadays, to be exerted in order to keep the _ryots_ (farmers) at the task of raising the poppy. There are many thoughtful observers of conditions in India who believe it would be highly "practical" to devote the rich soil of the Ganges Valley to crops which have a sound economic value to the world.
But more than this, the opium programme saps India as it saps China. The position of the Englishman in India to-day is by no means so secure that he can afford to indulge in bad government. The spirit of democracy and socialism has already spread through Europe and has entered Asia. In j.a.pan, trade-unions are striking for higher wages. In China and India, are already heard the mutterings of revolution. The British government may yet have to settle up, in India as well as in China, for its opium policy. And when the day for settling up comes, it may perhaps be found that a higher balance-sheet than that which rules the government opium industry may force Great Britain to pay--and pay dear.