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New Forces in Old China

A >> ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN >> New Forces in Old China




But it is useless to protest against the increased cost of living
in Asia. It is as much beyond individual control as the tides.
The causes which are producing it are not even national but
cosmopolitan.

Nor should we ignore the fact that this movement is, in
some respects at least, beneficial. It means a higher and
broader scale of life and such a life always costs more than a
low and narrow one. This economic revolution in Asia is a
concomitant of a Christian civilization which brings not only
higher prices but wider intellectual and spiritual horizons, a
general enlarging and uplifting of the whole range of life.
There are indeed some vicious influences accompanying this
movement, as brighter lights usually have deeper shadows.

But surely it is for good and not for evil that the farmers of
Hunan can now ship their peanuts to England and with the
proceeds vary the eternal monotony of a rice-diet; that the
girls of Siam are being taught by missionary example that
modesty requires the purchase of a garment for street wear
which will cover at least the breasts; that the Korean should
learn that it is better to have a larger house so that the girls of
the family need not sleep in the same room as the boys; and
that all China should discover the advantages of roads over
rutty, corkscrew paths, of sanitation over heaps of putrid garbage
and of wooden floors over filth-encrusted ground. Christianity
inevitably involves some of these things, and to some
extent the awakening of Asia to the need of them is a part of
the beneficent influence of a gospel which always and everywhere
renders men dissatisfied with a narrow, squalid existence.
To make a man decent morally is to beget in him a
desire to be decent physically.

The native Christians, especially the pastors and teachers,
are the very ones who first feel this movement towards a
higher physical life. Nor should we repress it in them, for it
means an environment more favourable to morals and to the
stability of Christian character as well as a healthful example
to the community in which they live. To say, therefore, that
the average annual income of a Hindu is rupees twenty-seven
(nine dollars) is not to adduce a reason for holding the pastors
and evangelists of India down to that scale. They should, indeed,
live near enough to the plane of their countrymen to keep
in sympathetic touch with them. But they should not be expected
or allowed to huddle in the dark, unventilated hovels of
the masses of the people, or, by confining themselves to one
scanty meal a day, have that gaunt, half-famished look which
makes my heart ache every time I think of the walking skeletons
I saw in India. I am not ashamed but proud of the fact
that it costs the average Christian more to live in Asia than it
costs the average heathen, that the houses of the Laos Christians
are better than the single-roomed sheds about them, that
the graduates of our Siam mission schools for girls wear shirt
waists instead of sunshine, that the members of any one of our
Korean churches spend more money on soap than a whole village
of their heathen neighbours whose bodies are caked with
the accumulations of years of neglect, that the sessions of our
Syrian churches are Christian gentlemen in appearance as well
as in fact, and that the houses of our Chinese Christians do not
mix pigs, chickens and babies in one lousy, malodorous
company.

But these altered conditions have not yet brought the ability
to meet them. The cost of living has increased faster than the
resources of the people. Only France and Russia are primarily
political in their foreign policy. England, Germany and
the United States are avowedly commercial. They talk incessantly
about ``the open door.'' Their supreme object in Asia
is to ``extend their markets.'' They are producing more than
they can use themselves, and they seek an opportunity to dispose
of their surplus products. They are less concerned to
bring the products of Asia into their own territories.
Indeed, Germany and particularly the United States have
built a tariff wall about themselves, expressly to protect
home industries from outside competition, and not a few
American manufacturers have recently been on the verge of
panic on account of Japanese competition. Europe and America
are trying to force their own manufactures on to Asia and
to take in return only what they please.

In time, this will probably right itself, in part at least.
While the farmers of the Mississippi Valley find living much
more expensive than it was two generations ago, they also find
that they get more for their wheat and that they eat better food
and wear better clothes and build better houses than their
grandfathers. The era of railroads ended the days of cheap
living, but it ended as well days when the farmer had to confine
himself to a diet of corn-bread and salt pork, when his
home was destitute of comforts and his children had little
schooling and no books. So the American working man of today
has to pay more for the necessaries of life than the working
man of Europe, but he is nevertheless the best paid, the
best fed, the best clothed and the best housed working man in
the world, a far better and more intelligent citizen because of
these very conditions.

The same changes will doubtless take place in Asia. That
great continent is capable of producing enormous quantities of
food, minerals and both raw and manufactured articles which
the rest of the world will sooner or later want. Already this
foreign demand is bringing comparative wealth to the rug
dealers of Syria, the silk embroiderers of China and the cloisonne'
and porcelain makers of Japan. But only an infinitesimal
part of the total population has thus far profited largely by
this wider market. Where one man amasses wealth in this
way, 100,000 men find that aggressive foreign traders exploit
their wares by flooding the shops with tempting articles which
they can ill-afford to buy. The difficulty is rapidly becoming
acute. My inquiries in Japan led me to the conclusion that
while the cost of the staple articles of living has increased
nearly 100 per cent. in the last twenty years, the financial ability
of the average Japanese has not increased thirty per cent.
In China, Siam, India, the Philippine Islands, and Syria I
found substantially similar anxieties though the proportions
naturally varied. ``True, there has been commerce since the
early ages, but caravans could afford to carry only precious
goods, like fine fabrics, spices and gems. These luxuries did
not reach the multitude, and could not materially change environment.
But modern commerce scatters over all the world
the products of every climate, in ever increasing quantities.''

So the economic revolution in Asia is characterized, as such
revolutions usually are in Europe and America, by wide-spread
unrest and, in some places, by violence. The oldest of continents
is the latest to undergo the throes of the stupendous
transformation from which the newest is slowly beginning to
emerge. The transition period in Asia will be longer and perhaps
more trying, as the numbers involved are vaster and more
conservative; but the ultimate result cannot fail to be beneficial
both to Asia and to the whole world.

It is therefore too late to discuss the question whether the
character and religions of these nations should be disturbed.
They have already been disturbed by the inrush of new ideas
and by the ways as well as by the products of the white man.
Like their ancient temples, the religions of Asia are cracking
from pinnacle to foundation. The natives themselves realize
that the old days are passing forever. India is in a ferment.
Japan has leaped to world prominence. The power of the
Mahdi has been broken and the Soudan has been opened to
civilization. The King of Siam has made Sunday a legal holiday
and is frightening his conservative subjects by his revolutionary
changes, while Korea is changing with kaleidoscopic
rapidity.

Whereas the opening years of the sixteenth century saw the
struggle for civilization, of the seventeenth century for religious
liberty, of the eighteenth century for constitutional government,
of the nineteenth century for political freedom, the
opening years of the twentieth century witness what Lowell
would have called:--

``One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt
Old systems and the word.''



X

FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN VICES

THE influences that are thus surging into the Middle
Kingdom are tremendous. The beginnings of China's
foreign trade date back to the third century, though
it was not until comparatively recent years that it grew to large
proportions. To-day the leading seaports of China have many
great business houses handling vast quantities of European and
American goods. The most persistent effort is made to extend
commerce with the Chinese. That the effort is successful is
shown by the fact that the foreign trade of China increased
from 217,183,960 taels in 1888 to 583,547,291 taels in 1904.
This shows the enormous gain of 168 per cent., though this is
slightly modified by the fact that the report for 1904 includes
goods to the value of 402,639 taels carried by Chinese vessels
which, though plying between native and foreign ports, were
not formerly reported through the customs. According to
official reports,[26] the foreign trade of China has been growing
rapidly during recent years, the only falling off having been
in the Boxer outbreak year 1900. In 1891, the imports into
China were, in round numbers, 134,000,000 taels and the
exports were 101,000,000, a total of 235,000,000, and an
excess of imports of 33 per cent. In 1904 the imports had
advanced to 344,060,608 taels and the exports to 239,486,683
taels, a total of 583,547,291 taels, an increase of 148 per cent.
and an excess of imports of 44 per cent. In 1899 the total
foreign trade of China had reached 460,000,000 taels. The
next year it dropped to 370,000,000 taels, but in 1901 it sprang
to 438,000,000 taels, and has advanced nearly 150,000,000
taels within the past three years.[27]


[26] ``Returns of Trade for 1904,'' published by the Maritime Customs
Department of China.

[27] ``Returns of Trade for 1904,'' published by the Maritime Customs
Department of China.


The share of the United States is larger than one might infer
from the reports, as no inconsiderable part of our trade goes to
China by way of England and Hongkong and is often credited to
the British total instead of to ours. American trade has, moreover,
rapidly increased since 1900. We now sell more cotton
goods to China than to all other countries combined, the exports
having increased from $5,195,845 in 1898 to $27,000,000
in 1905.[28] In the year 1904, 63,529,623 gallons of kerosene
oil valued at $7,202,110 were shipped from the United States
to China. The development of the flour trade has been extraordinary,
the sales having risen from $89,305 in 1898 to
$5,360,139 in 1904.


[28] Year ending June, 1905.


In Hongkong, I found American flour controlling the
market. I learned on inquiry that years before, a firm in
Portland, Oregon, had sent an agent to introduce its flour.
The rice-eating Chinese did not want it, but the agent stayed,
gave away samples, explained its use and pushed his goods so
energetically and persistently that after years of labour and the
expenditure of tens of thousands of dollars a market was created.
Now that firm sells in such enormous quantities that its
numerous mills must run day and night to supply the demand,
and the annual profits run into six figures. That city of Portland
alone exported to Asia, chiefly China, in 1903:--
849,360 barrels flour $2,974,620
522,887 bushels wheat 413,901
46,847,975 feet lumber 647,355
Miscellaneous merchandise 352,879
-------
Total $4,414,651


While cotton goods, kerosene oil and flour are our chief exports
to China, there is a growing demand for many other
American products. The utility of the American locomotive
has become so apparent that in 1899, engines costing $732,212
were sent to China and additional orders are received every
few months. With the enormous forests bordering the Pacific
Ocean in the states of Oregon and Washington, and with the
development of cheap water transportation, there is a rapidly
widening market in China for American lumber. Eastern Asia
is too densely peopled to have large forests, and those she has
are not within easy reach. Native lumber, therefore, is scarce
and often small and crooked. That in common use comes
from Manchuria and Korea. I was impressed in Tsing-tau to
find that the Germans are using Oregon lumber and to be told
that it is considered the best, and in the long run, the cheapest.
Oregon pine costs more than the Korean and Manchurian, but
it is superior in size and quality. The transportation charges
to the interior, however, are a heavy addition. Manchurian
pine can be delivered at such an interior city as Wei-hsien, via
the junk port of Yang-chia-ko and thence by land, for twenty
dollars, gold, per thousand square feet, which is considerably
less than the Tsing-tau retail price for Asiatic lumber. Oregon
lumber costs in Shanghai, thirty-two dollars gold, per thousand,
but an importer estimated that it could be delivered at Tsingtau
for twenty-five dollars gold per thousand in large quantities.

The exports of the United States to China, according to the
reports of Consul-General Goodnow of Shanghai, increased
from $11,081,146 in 1900 to $18,175,484 in 1901 and $22,698,282
in 1902, while for 1904 they reached the total of about
$24,000,000, a gain of nearly 125 per cent. since 1900 and of
several hundred per cent. as compared with 1894.

Meantime, the United States imported from China goods to
the value of $30,872,244 in 1904, which is an increase of $14,255,956
over the imports for 1901. Silk and tea are the principal
items in this trade, the figures for the former being $10,220,543
and for the latter $7,294,570, though of goatskins we
took $2,556,541, wool $2,325,445, and matting $1,615,838.
The United States is now the third nation in trade relations
with China. This is the more remarkable when we consider
the statement of the late Mr. Everett Frazar of the American
Asiatic Association that in January, 1901, there were only four
American business firms in all China. When our business men
establish their own houses in China instead of dealing as now
through European and Chinese firms, it is not unreasonable to
expect that the United States will outstrip its larger rivals Great
Britain and France, though, as I have already intimated, it is
one thing to ship foreign goods to China and quite another
thing to control them after their arrival, for the Chinese are
disposed to manage that trade themselves and they know how
to do it.

Unfortunately the stream of foreign trade with China has
been contaminated by many of the vices which disgrace our
civilization. The pioneer traders were, as a rule, pirates and
adventurers, who cheated and abused the Chinese most flagrantly.
Gorst says that ``rapine, murder and a constant appeal
to force chiefly characterized the commencement of Europe's
commercial intercourse with China.'' There are many
men of high character engaged in business in the great cities
of China. I would not speak any disparaging word of those
who are worthy of all respect. But it is all too evident that
``many Americans and Europeans doing business in Asia are
living the life of the prodigal son who has not yet come to himself.''
Profane, intemperate, immoral, not living among the
Chinese, but segregating themselves in foreign communities in
the treaty ports, not speaking the Chinese language, frequently
beating and cursing those who are in their employ, regarding
the Chinese with hatred and contempt,--it is no wonder that
they are hated in return and that their conduct has done much
to justify the Chinese distrust of the foreigner. The foreign
settlements in the port cities of China are notorious for their
profligacy. Intemperance and immorality, gambling and Sabbath
desecration run riot. When after his return from a long
journey in Asia, the Rev. Dr. George Pentecost was asked--
``What are the darkest spots in the missionary outlook?'' he
replied:--


``In lands of spiritual darkness, it is difficult to speak of `darkest
spots.' I should say, however, that if there is a darkness more dark
than other darkness, it is that which is cast into heathen darkness
by the ungodliness of the American and European communities that
have invaded the East for the sake of trade and empire. The corruption
of Western godliness is the worst evil in the East. Of course there are
noble exceptions among western commercial men and their families, but
as a rule the European and American resident in the East is a constant
contradiction to all and everything which the missionary stands for.''


Most of the criticisms of missionaries which find their way
into the daily papers emanate from such men. The missionaries
do not gamble or drink whiskey, nor will their wives and
daughters attend or reciprocate entertainments at which wine,
cards and dancing are the chief features. So, of course, the
missionaries are ``canting hypocrites,'' and are believed to be
doing no good, because the foreigner who has never visited a
Chinese Christian Church, school or hospital in his life, does
not see the evidences of missionary work in his immediate
neighbourhood. The editor of the Japan Daily Mail justly
says:--[29]


[29] April 7, 1901


``We do not suggest that these newspapers which denounce the missionaries
so vehemently desire to be unjust or have any suspicion that they
are unjust. But we do assert that they have manifestly taken on the colour
of that section of every far eastern community whose units, for some
strange reason, entertain an inveterate prejudice against the missionary
and his works. Were it possible for these persons to give an intelligent
explanation of the dislike with which the missionary inspires them, their
opinions would command more respect. But they have never succeeded
in making any logical presentment of their case, and no choice offers except
to regard them as the victims of an antipathy which has no basis in
reason or reflection, That a man should be anti-Christian and should de-
vote his pen to propagating his views is strictly within his right, and we
must not be understood as suggesting that the smallest reproach attaches
to such a person. But on the other hand, it is within the right of the
missionary to protest against being arraigned before judges habitually hostile
to him, and it is within the right of the public to scrutinize the
pronouncements of such judges with much suspicion.''


Charles Darwin did not hesitate to put the matter more
bluntly still. He will surely not be deemed a prejudiced witness,
but he plainly said of the traders and travellers who attack
missionaries:--


``It is useless to argue against such reasoners. I believe that,
disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as
formerly, they will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to
practice, or to a religion which they undervalue or despise.''


These facts are a suggestive commentary on the popular notion
that civilization should precede Christianity. The Rev. Dr.
James Stewart, the veteran missionary of South Africa, says that
it is an ``unpleasant and startling statement, unfortunately
true, that contact with European nations seems always to have
resulted in further deterioration of the African races. . . .
Trade and commerce have been on the West Coast of Africa
for more than three centuries. What have they made of that
region? Some of its tribes are more hopeless, more sunken
morally and socially, and rapidly becoming more commercially
valueless, than any tribes that may be found throughout the
whole of the continent. Mere commercial influence by its example
or its teaching during all that time has had little effect
on the cruelty and reckless shedding of blood and the human
sacrifices of the besotted paganism which still exists near that
coast.'' Of his experience in New Guinea, James Chalmers
declared:--``I have had twenty-one years' experience among
natives. I have lived with the Christian native, and I have
lived, and dined, and slept with cannibals. But I have never
yet met with a single man or woman, or with a single people,
that civilization without Christianity has civilized.''

Substantially similar statements might be made regarding
other lands.


``The more we open the world to what we call civilization, and the more
education we give it of the kind we call scientific, the greater are the
dangers to modern society, unless in some way we contrive to make all
the world better. Brigands armed with repeating rifles and supplied with
smokeless gunpowder are brigands still, but ten times more dangerous than
before. The vaste hordes of human beings in Asia and Africa, so long as
they are left in seclusion, are dangerous to their immediate neighbours;
but, when they have railroads, steamboats, tariffs, and machine guns, while
they retain their savage ideals and barbarous customs, they become dangerous
to all the rest of the world.''[30]

[30] Christian Register, December 3, 1903.


A Christless civilization is always and everywhere a curse
rather than a blessing. From the Garden of Eden down, the
fall of man has resulted from ``the increase of knowledge and
of power unaccompanied by reverence.... No evolution
is stable which neglects the moral factor or seeks to shake
itself free from the eternal duties of obedience and of faith.
. . . The Song of Lamech echoes from a remote antiquity
the savage truth that `the first results of civilization are to
equip hatred and render revenge more deadly, . . . a
savage exultation in the fresh power of vengeance which all the
novel instruments have placed in their inventor's hands.' ''[31]


[31] The Rev. Dr. George Adam Smith, D. D., ``Yale Lectures,'' pp. 95-97.


What is civilization without the gospel? The essential elements
of our civilization are the fruits of Christianity, and the
tree cannot be transplanted without its roots. Can a railroad
or a plow convert a man? They can add to his material comfort;
they can enlarge the opportunities of the gospel, but are
they the gospel itself? What does civilization without Christianity
mean? It means the lust of the European and American
soldiers which is rotting the native Hawaiians, the European and
American liquor which is debauching the Africans, the opium
which is enervating the Chinese, 6,000 tons a year coming from
India at a profit of $32,000,000 to the English Government.[32]


[32] The Rev. Dr. Henry van Dyke, Sermon.


How can such a civilization prepare the way for Christianity?
As a matter of fact, the Chinese already have a civilization,
and if our civilization is considered apart from its distinctively
Christian elements, it is not so much superior to the Chinese
as we are apt to imagine. The differences are chiefly matters
of taste and education. The truth is that always and everywhere,--

``civilization, so far from obliterating iniquity, imports into the world
iniquities of its own. It changes to some degree the aspects of iniquity, but
does not make them less. Further than that its effect is rather regularly
to dress iniquity in a less repulsive and more attractive form, and in that
way makes it more difficult to get rid of than before. There is no sin so
insinuating as refined and elegant sin, and of that civilization is the expert
patron and champion. The sin that is the devil's chief stock in trade
is not what is going on in Hester Street, but on the polite avenues.
. . . Evangelization conducts to civilization, but civilization has no
necessary bearing on evangelization; that is to say, there is in civilization
no energy inherently calculated to yield gospel facts. By carrying schools
and arts, trade and manufacture, among people that are now savages you
may be able to refine the quality of their deviltry, but that is not even
the first step towards making angels, or even saints of them.''[33]


[33] The Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, Sermon.


Lowell is said to have administered the following stinging
rebuke to the skeptical critics who sneered about missionaries
and declared the adequacy of civilization without them:--


``When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the
heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has
turned its attention to human society and has found a place on this planet
ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort and
security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted;
a place where age is reverenced, manhood respected, womanhood honoured,
and human life held in due regard; when skeptics can find such
a place ten miles square on this globe where the gospel of Christ has
not gone and cleared the way, and laid the foundation and made decency
and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati
to move thither and there ventilate their views.''

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