The International Fetters of Young China.

1. Foreign Possessions in China.

Technically speaking, China is still a free country, as the number and extent of de jure foreign territories on Chinese soil are remarkably small. The story of these "possessions," euphemistically known as areas "leased" to the powers for a period of ninety-nine years, is easily told.

Hong-kong at the mouth of the Canton River, about 90 miles south of Canton, has been British since 1841. Its present population is about 500,000. Total area 391 square miles. Wei-hei-wei in the Shantung Province has been British since 1898. Area about 285 square miles. Population about 150,000.

France has been in possession of Kwang-chau-wan in Kwang-tung Province since 1898. Area about 190 square miles. Population 168,000.

In 1898 Germany obtained from China the port of Kiao-chao with exclusive railway and mining rights in Shantung Province. Area 200 square miles. Population 200,000. Since November 7, 1914, the Japanese have been in full possession of all authority in the port and in all former German concessions, viz., the mining privileges and the railway to Tsinan-fu, the capital of the Chinese territory. The Congress of Versailles (1919) has formally legalized Japan's stepping into Germany's shoes at every point.

Kwan-tung (with Port Arthur and Dalmy or Dairen) in the Liao-tung Peninsula in Southern Manchuria belonged to Russia from 1898 to 1904. But it has been in Japanese hands since the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905). Area 1256 square miles. Population 525,000.

The mastery of Macao at the mouth of the Canton River belongs to Portugal. Population 75,000. The Portuguese have been enjoying authority since 1862.

It is evident that the actual jurisdiction of European and Japanese governments within the geographical boundaries of China is almost inappreciable whether as regards mileage or in terms of population. And yet the sovereignty of the Chinese republic de facto is, like the sovereignty of Persia, a thing that does not exist except in the imagination of China's patriots or in the hallucination of the world's political idealists who do not want their pious wishes to be disturbed by the dry light of Realpolitik or in the legalism of jurists who are professionally bound to make a distinction between the political authority of a foreign state and the economic interest, financial control, or moral influence, and educational guidance of foreign peoples.

2. China's Sovereignty in Realpolitik.

On November 2, 1917, the United States came to an understanding with Japan in regard to "open door" and "special interests" in China; but neither of them felt it at all necessary to consult the Chinese government in the matter. It is only on the postulate that the sovereignty of China is an international fiction not worth the serious attention of the Great Powers that the Ishii-Lansing pact could have been consummated. The Japanese-American agreement has thus reproduced in the Far East the high-handedness of the notorious Anglo-Russian convention of August 1907, regarding the spheres of influence in Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet. It may indeed be regarded as a continuation in China of the policy which led to the delimitation of British and German spheres of interests in September, 1898, and of British and Russian in April, 1899, without seeking the sanction or approval of the Chinese Empire. In all these instances the sovereign rights of weaker states have been handled not on the principle of self-determination, but according to the interests, the geographical propinquity etc. of the powerful neighbors.

China's sovereignty is at best in its non-age. This was demonstrated in the summer of 1917 when the United States considered it part of its duty to administer a dose of political wisdom to the infant republic of Asia. After the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Germany (March 14) China's publicists and statesmen were divided into fiercely antagonistic camps over the question of finally declaring war. That constitutional crisis was availed of by America as an opportunity to play the boss. A note was accordingly sent to China on June 5 to the effect that the "entry of China into war with Germany or the continuance of the status quo of her relations with that government are matters of secondary importance and that the principal necessity for China is to resume and continue her political entity." Legitimately therefore was this paternal advice of the United States resented by Japan as an intervention in Chinese politics, at least an infringement of full self-determination.

These actions of the American government are merely "declaratory," i.e., they have only brought home to the world at large the fact that had been existing for a long time. The negation of China's sovereignty was brought about by others, for instance, by the French Republic. Thus in April, 1917, American engineers and American capitalists were prevented by France from building a railway in Kwang-si Province. This region bordering, as it does, the French dependency of Indo-China was claimed as France's industrial preserve; for in 1914 the Chinese Republic had made a promise that in case "a railway construction or mining enterprise be undertaken in Kwang-si Province in the future, for which, foreign capital is required," France would first be consulted for a loan of the necessary capital. France has by this right been enabled to exclude a foreign enterprise from her sphere of influence. Nor is this all. She has been predatory enough to rob China of her own territory in broad daylight. In November, 1916, a plot of Chinese ground about 333 acres adjoining the French "Concession" in Tien-tsin was occupied by an armed French detachment, and nine uniformed Chinese sentries locked up as prisoners of war in French barracks. The reason is simple. The local Chinese authorities had failed to reply to the ultimatum of the French consul-general within twenty-four hours regarding the extension of the French concession over the land in dispute. This is the traditional French method of colonization. It was by landing marines from a cruiser that the French "settlement" at Shanghai had been extended in 1898.

Now, oriental Japan would not be accepted as an honorable first class power by European and American nationalities unless she were adept in the use of all the methods of political exploitation, and brigandage popularized by the Occident through the Opium War and the annexations of Siberia, Annam, Tongking, Burma and Sikim. Consequently the sovereignty of China must have to suffer at the hands of Japan also who could not foolishly wait to see the entire Chinese pie swallowed up by Russia, England, and France. In August, 1916, therefore the small Chinese town of Chang-chia-tun in southern Manchuria was besieged by Japanese cavalry and infantry. The tempest arose, as is usual in such cases, of course, in a tea-cup. A young assistant of a Japanese apothecary appears to have been beaten by some Chinese soldiers for roughly handling a Chinese boy who had refused to sell his fish to the Japanese at the price offered. The Japanese "police box" was at once notified. Then followed the dispatch of a Japanese armed detachment and the imprisonment of the Chinese magistrate in a Japanese barrack. Further in January, 1917, a representative had to be sent by the Chinese military governor of Mukden to Port Arthur in order to convey regret to the Japanese authorities.

From Manchuria let us turn to other "dependencies" of the Chinese Republic and size up the extent of China's sovereignty in "Greater China." Owing to China's refusal to accept the boundary between inner and autonomous outer Tibet decided on at the Simla Conference (October 13, 1913—April 27, 1914), England prevented China's communication with Tibet via India, and the Chinese government had for some time no official representative or agent in Tibet. But late in 1916 China encountered a fresh set of demands from the British regarding the final settlement of affairs. By these terms no Tibetan rights can be conceded to other countries, appointment of officials can be made only after mutual consultation, and England alone should be engaged to assist in the development of industries in Tibet. These demands are undoubtedly a corollary to the partition of Tibet that China had been forced to recognize at Simla, and after a period of impotent protests have at last (1919) been met by the Republic to the satisfaction of the British Empire. Likewise has China's sovereignty been ruled out of existence in Mongolia where Russian initiative and pressure compelled the Chinese Republic to acknowledge an autonomous outer Mongolia and to recognize it virtually as a Russian protectorate (November 5, 1913—June, 1915). These two parallel and simultaneous incidents are natural links in the chain of events since Mongolia's declaration of independence from China (December, 1911) and the quick negotiation of a treaty between Tibet and Mongolia on January 21, 1912, by which each country recognized the other as independent. The joint Russo-British advance underlying these secessionist movements in Greater China followed logically from the pooling of interests effected by the Anglo-Russian convention of 1907.

The procedure adopted in the present instance is identical with the policy of gradual "assimilation" that the French Republic had followed in Indo-China after the annexation of Cochin-China in 1858—1862. The process of Frenchification consisted in the acknowledgment of the independence of Annam (a sort of "outer" Indo-China, adjacent to French dependency) in 1874 and the establishment of a protectorate over the southern frontiers of China and Tongking (an "inner" Indo-China, to use the recent phraseology) in 1885.

In so far as they lead to the curtailment of China's sovereign rights, it must be honestly recognized that the over-condemned demands of Japan (finally accepted by treaty on May 25, 1915) fall rather short of the Russian and British actions in Mongolia and Tibet. For, after all, the measures of Japan did not amount to more than a formal and definite acknowledgment of her sphere of influence by the Chinese government in southern Manchuria and eastern inner Mongolia on the lines of German and British spheres in April, 1899. In demanding certain economic concessions, viz., that without the consent of the Japanese capitalists China would not convert the Han-yeh-ping (iron and steel) works, a Chinese concern with capital loaned by Japanese financiers, into a state enterprise nor cause it to borrow and use foreign capital other than Japanese, Japan was only claiming the stereotyped minimum of a great power's "financial" control within a weak nation's jurisdiction. China has only to thank England, Russia, France and Germany for setting the precedent.

Rather it would not be unfair for Japan to argue that she has not by any means made the bargain that Russia secured through the Chinese Eastern Railway concession swindling China out of her sovereign rights in Manchuria (as the result of the Cassini-Li Hung-chang convention after the Korean War 1894-1895). And of course the British ultimatum of 1898 which wrung from China the concession of 2800 miles of railway extending over ten provinces has yet been too much for Japanese naval and military power to issue. In the recent engagement (May 25, 1915) China has no doubt conceded that she would not grant to any other Power the right to build any shipyard, coaling or naval station or any other military establishment on the coast of Fu-kien. The demand from Japan was not unnatural, if things are at all natural in China, since the Japanese island of Formosa faces the coast and might be threatened by a foreign power, e.g., America, with a base thereon. This is indeed a corollary to China's promise to Japan in 1898 that the Province of Fu-kien would not be alienated to any other Power. Such promises of non-alienation China had granted at the same time to England in regard to the vast and populous Yang-tsze Valley (February, 1898) and to France in regard to the provinces bordering on French Tong-king and also in regard to the island of Hai-nan (April, 1898). England had also claimed and obtained in April, 1898, the concession as to the non-alienation of Yun-nan and Kwang-tung to other powers, e.g., to France, on the ground that the former province was adjacent to Burma and that British trade was preponderant in the latter. Altogether, then, Japan has been "more sinned against than sinning" in her Chinese policy; but of course, so far as the infringement of China's sovereignty and territorial rights by the non-alienation demands is concerned, it is useless to weigh the powers in the balance and find which is the greater sinner.

Last but not least in importance as an instance of the nulli fication of China's sovereignty during the republican régime is the violation of her neutrality by Great Britain and Japan during the war on German Shantung. In August, 1914, in accordance with the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Japan blockaded the German port of Kiao-chao. But the Japanese and British invasion of the little territory ("leased" to Germany by China in 1898) was not accomplished only from the land side. It was effected also from the rear on Chinese soil, and the anti-German war was carried as far interior as Tsman-fu, 256 miles from the sea, the terminus of the German Shantung Railway. The violation of China's sovereign jurisdiction by the belligerents can be accounted for only on the assumption that the entire territory on which Germany possessed mining and other concessions, whatever might be its theoretical, i.e., legal status, had been a de facto German "possession." And at least Great Britain was fully aware of this Germanization of Shantung, since she had realized in 1898 that an English railway line could not be constructed through the province without Germany's consent. This identification of a "sphere of influence" with a virtual dependency has been paralleled in the course of the Great War by England's and Russia's violation of the neutrality of Persia in order to attack Turkey from the east in the Mesopotamian zone.

3. Bolshevik Renunciations.

Such is the order of facts bearing on China's jurisdiction or absence of jurisdiction as an independent nation from Mongolia's declaration of independence in December, 1911, to the Ishii-Lansing pact of November, 1917. Since then, no doubt, the Chinese Republic has been represented by two members at the Congress of Versailles, and has also been accorded the right to sign the draft of the league of rations constitution (February, 1919). But what through Russian and British intrigues or British and French rivalry on the one hand and Japanese counter-movements to neutralize the European aggressions in Asia and preserve the balance of power on the other, what through the friendly guardianship of one power or the hostile annexations of territory by another, and what through the contemptuous treatment of neutral rights by belligerents or mutual agreements between two neighbouring Powers as to the policy of peace in the Far East, or the rigid exclusion of third parties from industrial and railway development in its sphere of influence by a "most favored nation," the republic of China has during its short term of life experienced the logical consequences of political annihilation both in China proper and in Greater China that was imposed by the Powers on the Chinese Empire at the end of the Boxer revolt in 1901.

In the midst of this status quo of China's passive submission to everybody's demands there has suddenly been thrown a bombshell from Bolshevik Russia. This bolt from the blue is calculated not only to electrify Young China to a mood of active resistance, but also to cry halt to the traditional methods of the concessionnaires and empire-builders. For it consists in the announcement of nothing short of a policy of thorough-going renunciations and in the cancellation of all the "rights" of the imperial régime with the object of making it possible for the peoples of the East "to win back again their lost freedom." In regard to China, says Arsene Voznecienski (Chief of the Oriental Division of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs), the All-Russian Congress of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies on October 27, 1917 renounced the annexations of the Czar's regime in Manchuria and restored the sovereignty of China in those regions in which lies the Chinese Eastern Railway. The right of extra-territoriality of Russian citizens in China and Mongolia has also been renounced as well as all those contributions imposed upon the peoples of Mongolia and China under all sorts of pretexts by the old Russian government. It need be added that Soviet Russia has already recalled all consular guards which the Czar's government and the Kerensky government had sent to China.

This is an extraordinary and incredibly supermanic promulgation of a new international morality. Thus has been ushered into existence a new "categorical imperative," the Gîtâ or the Bible of a veritable Yugântara, the cataclysmic upheaval of a new era. It is not clear as yet as to how far this "self-denying ordinance" theory and fact of renunciations in the midst of the Kurukshetra or armageddon of the twentieth century have influenced the political psychology of Chinese statesmen and leaders of thought. Of course Young China cannot easily forget that ever since Peter the Great bequeathed his will to the Muscovites, especially since the annexation of the Siberian Maritime Province in 1866 Russia had been one of the first to perpetrate unjust aggressions on the Chinese dominions. But the new gospel of the political emancipation and sovereignty of all peoples is so world-sweeping or universal in its scope and so radical or fundamental in its Messianic good-will that the Bolsheviks have already won the highest encomium in Chinese estimation by being characterized as Huan-yi Tang or the party of the most far-reaching humanism. It may be surmised therefore that Young China's voice in the political conferences of nations would rise higher and higher as long as there is at least one nation on earth to preach and practise this creed of liberation of subject races from the domination by aliens;—and this independently of the consideration as to the amount of progress that the anti-propertyism of Bolshevik economics is likely to achieve among the masses and intelligentsia of Eastern Asia.

4. The Demands of Young China.

Be this as it may, the Bolshevik promises and actions in regard to the Far East have not come a moment too early. For, the right of China to live as an unfettered nation has been definitely demanding the attention of all her political leaders since at any rate the summer of 1917 (a few months previous to the Soviet announcements). Indeed the most important question discussed by the pro-war as well as anti-war party in China was the question as to the best means of fortifying her status as a sovereign state.

It is because Liang Chi-Chiao believed that active association with the allies in the war presented China with the "last opportunity to become a member of the family of nations" that he enthusiastically started the pro-war campaign. Nothing therefore could be more characteristic of his stand-point than the slogan, "Wanted—a Cavour."

Exactly opposite was the attitude of his political preceptor Kang Yu-wei, Sun Yat-sen, and Tang Shao-yi, who opposed the war by all means. They believed that China's participation in the war would not place her sovereignty on any more respectable basis than the maintenance of neutrality. For, cancellation of Boxer indemnities, abolition of extra-territoriality, retrocession of foreign concessions, and repeal or amendment of unjust treaties,—these constitute the irreducible minimum of Young China's demands as stated by Kang in his anti-war memorandum. "But none of these," said this veteran champion of China's rights, "have we demanded."

Since then, however, China's delegates to the Peace Conference have stated these claims in no unmistakable terms. But Young China at last understands with Kang that "it is absurd to expect our admission to the ranks of the first class powers simply by being allowed a seat at the Peace Conference and by taking a side with the Entente!"

The Chinese Republic does not have to repeat today the cessions of Hongkong, Eastern Siberia, Indo-China, Burma, Sikim, Formosa and Korea, or the "leases" of Kao-chao, Wei-hei-wei, Port Arthur, and Kwang-chau-wan that the old régime had to transact between 1842 and 1898. These are ancient stories and have at the worst left only painful memories. But the inheritance of the republic from the empire in the remaining portions of Greater China as well as within the bounds of China proper is full of knotty problems that are taxing the patience and diplomatic skill of its statesmen. It is nothing short of the Herculean might of a "Perseus the Deliverer" that can possibly rescue a nation out of the "Serbonian bog" of Chinese politics.

England is not satisfied, as we have seen, with the Chinese recognition of the autonomy of outer Tibet. She must have her own terms as to the boundary between inner and outer Tibet. Russia (of the old régime) was compelling autonomous outer Mongolia to cede territories to her, though the Republic claims that by the Kiakhta agreement of 1915 China still has "suzerainty" over Mongolia and is entitled to prevent any such cessions. Japan has been erecting "police boxes" here and there and everywhere in south Manchuria. But according to China this action is much more than what extraterritoriality implies. The Japanese government of Korea tries also to bring within its administrative jurisdiction all those Koreans by race who live in Yenchi, the borderland between Manchuria and Korea. The Republic claims that these Koreans are citizens of China and are by no means amenable to Japanese rule.

These are some of the outstanding problems arising in anomalous regions whose international status verges indefinitely between a "sphere of influence" or the more innocent "sphere of interest" and a protectorate or dependency.

The troubles of such international muddles were bequeathed by the Empire to the Republic within China proper also. Since the United States Secretary Hay's "open door policy" letter was issued to the powers in 1899 the "integrity" of China has surely been guaranteed by every power, who has proclaimed at the same time the policy of "open door" and "equal opportunity for all."¹ In a similar fashion had been guaranteed the integrity of Turkey in 1856 and of Morocco in 1880. But China as well as the rest of the world know how the "independence" of these states have been served by such scraps of paper. While theoretically speaking, therefore, legal sovereignty is in Chinese hands, Young China has by daily experience come to realize that the state of affairs requiring external guarantee of self-determination is not intrinsically different from the much-dreaded subjection to foreigners.

"To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering." And in international relations, not to have the sinews of war is tantamount to inviting thraldom and submitting to oppression. The foreign demands on China are indeed mostly non-political in nature. Mere "financial" control is generally what is stipulated by the foreign industrial and commercial syndicates. But the limitation of sovereignty and curtailment of political freedom follow as a matter of course—in fact, if not on paper.

5. The "Never-Ending Wrongs" of the Chinese People.

I. Sphere of Influence.

Young China has to feel the fetters and shackles at every step. Not an inch of Chinese soil is without foreign control of some sort or other. Since 1897-1898 the whole of China proper has been divided up into spheres of interest. The "sphere of interest" is a term that, loosely used, as it generally is, implies also "sphere of influence." In such areas "special" privileges, principally and legally of an economic character, are enjoyed by one Power to the exclusion of the rest, and the favored Power commands the monopoly in the matter of all concessions regarding loans, railway construction, mining, and so forth. Such a sphere is in reality a euphemism for actual political dominion. In any case it is an "exclusive" preserve, and as such, is logically the total antithesis of integrity, "open door" and "equal opportunity" for all. To ear-mark somewhere in China a sphere of influence for a certain Power and then to guarantee in it an open door constitute a contradiction in terms. It is absurd therefore to speak of China's "integrity" in the same breath with exclusive privileges or special interests enjoyed by the different powers each in its own sphere. And after all this it is adding insult to injury to remark that China still possesses "independence."

The voluntary retirement of Bolshevik Russia from the battle for concessions and spheres leaves China open to the competition of only one unit less. By no means does it liberate the Chinese republic from the thraldom of aliens. Rather, from the standpoint of the foreign aggressors, viz., England, France and Japan, the fewer the rivals, the better the chances for a monopolistic control. Nor of much intrinsic advantage to China itself is the expulsion of Germany from the Shantung area. The elimination of two great powers from the politics of eastern Asia is full of dangerous consequences to Chinese independence. For one thing, China's opportunities to play off the powers against one another are likely to come few and far between. And the problem is getting darker every day through the philistinism of the United States. Young China, especially that section of it which has not been demoralized by America's charity, knows quite well that the American people or government do not intend to be real friends of Chinese freedom. China's patriots may be excused for feeling that the statesmen, journalists and political agitators of the United States are much too obsessed by their own anti-Japanese interests and anti-Asian sentiments to understand rationally the exact situation in the Far East for which the ever-expanding British empire is primarily responsible.

II. Extra-territoriality.

Subservience is most keenly brought home to Young China whenever it comes in touch with a foreigner in business intercourse. The Chinese in their own land have to submit to foreign institutions in all transactions with outsiders.

Nationals of every foreign power enjoy extra-territoriality in Oriental countries. This alien dom is exercised in the Turkish Empire by what is known as "capitulations." Throughout the length and breadth of China the foreigners have had their own laws and tribunals since the treaty of Tientsin (1858). The extra-territorial jurisdiction of the consular courts is extremely falling to the children of the soil. The Japanese also had to suffer from this for a long time and have succeeded in getting rid of it only so late as 1911. Imperial China resented it at the convention of 1869. How Young China feels about this can be best understood from what friendly foreigners now say about the past experience of Japan. According to Brinkley in his History of the Japanese People "the struggle that ensued between foreign distrust and Japanese aspirations often developed painful phases, and did much to intensify the feeling of antagonism which had existed between the Japanese and foreign residents at the outset and which even today has not wholly disappeared."

The grievance is not merely a sentimental one. In the first place, each of the foreign powers tries its own nationals in its own courts. In the second place, the cases between persons of different nationalities are adjudicated according to the treaties between the powers involved "without interference on the part of China." In civil cases it is the foreign consulates that are to be appealed to in the first instance, and in criminal cases Chinese are tried and punished by Chinese authorities according to Chinese law and aliens by their own authorities and laws. In addition to these restrictions in regard to litigation affecting Chinese and aliens, China has to concede the total absence of jurisdiction over foreigners in other cases.

Besides, every foreign traveller in China is exempt from the territorial jurisdiction of the local authorities and has to be handed over to the nearest consuls of his own state in cases of delinquency. No Chinese authorities can search the house or boat or property of any foreigners on Chinese territory. Even independent post offices have been established by foreigners in twenty-five treaty ports, and Japanese have commenced starting police booths in Manchuria and Fukien. It is easy to conceive how under these circumstances the foreign commercial activities and social relations of the Chinese people are hampered to the detriment of their future development.

And of course the absence of judicial autonomy deprives China of a great part of sovereignty. Abolition of extra-territoriality looms large therefore in the demands of the Chinese republic. And the claim is being put forward by Young China on the ground that it has reformed the code of laws according to modern ideas, has instituted a new system of tribunals and has also promulgated the independence of the judiciary through the permanent constitution that is waiting to be accepted by parliament.

III. Treaty-ports.

Extra-territoriality is diffused in every part of the land. But it is in the "open" ports on the sea-coast, on the rivers or in the interior that it is concentrated. The first ports were opened to the British by the treaty of Nanking in 1842 at Amoy, Canton, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai. In 1858 the Treaty of Tientsin opened to the British the Yang-tsze River as well as several ports. Down to 1909, in addition to forty-eight "treaty-ports" twenty-seven places were declared open to international trade. Besides, on the Yang-tsze River today there are nine stages, and on the West River twenty-one stages described as ports of call. Each of these ports and stages, as extra-territoriality localized, is the embodiment of China's political humiliation and servitude.

Ten of these treaty ports have separate foreign "settlements." These have not indeed been leased out or sold to the powers; but the administrative management of these areas lies wholly in their hands. Practically, therefore, they do not belong to China and fall outside of her sovereign jurisdiction. The legal status of Shanghai or Hankow is certainly different from that of Hongkong or Macao, but in foreign and Chinese eyes the former do not differ from the latter, so far as actual political authority is concerned.

of Shanghai or Hankow is certainly different from that of Hongkong or Macao, but in foreign and Chinese eyes the former do not differ from the latter, so far as actual political authority is concerned.Political refugees from China, for instance, enjoy in these "settlements" all the immunities of asylum that they can possibly expect in England, Japan or America. The foreign consular authorities would hardly entertain any demands of the Chinese government as to extradition of political criminals. This circumstance may have been of considerable help in Young China's liberal movements. But here is an acid test of sovereignty that proves none the less that Shanghai, Hankow and other ports like these are not parts of Chinese territory but have become foreign (slightly internationalized perhaps) "possessions" by prescription.

IV. Financial Vassalage.

The most important source of China's subjection to foreigners consists in her inability to bear the burden of a modern state and the legacies of unsuccessful wars, including the misfortunes of the Boxer tragedy. Hence her financial indebtedness. At present there are four classes of Chinese debts. First in time and importance are the indemnity and war loans. Secondly there are the loans contracted for the building of railways. Loans for the construction of telegraph lines, the improvement of currency and the introduction of reforms in the general administrative system constitute a heavy third item. Lastly there are the provincial and private loans.

It must be understood that there is nothing derogatory in foreign loans as such. In modern times investments are international, and capital tends to seek a world market. Even great powers have to float loans among foreign peoples. But China's borrowings do not belong to the same category. They give rise to a "problem," because enormous security is demanded by the foreign creditors.

Revenues of the maritime customs (after payment of amortization and interest of the previous loans pledged on these revenues), total revenue of the salt gabelle, revenues of railway, profits of and mortgage upon railways, opium taxes, first charge upon likin (tax imposed upon goods in inland transit) and internal revenues in certain provinces, sundry taxes, rice tax, certain telegraph receipts, tobacco, wine, production and consumption taxes in Manchurian provinces, and the new salt surtax of the whole of China, these are the more important classes of securities that the Chinese republic has to ear-mark against its loans. "Collaterals" such as these were demanded in the loans to Persia by Great Britain and Russia, but were not necessary in America's private and government loans to France or Italy during the Great War.

China's finances indicate that every resource worth anything has been pledged and every inch of the soil mortgaged. The whole country may be said to have been auctioned off to foreigners. Besides, the terms of the loans give the creditors a legal (in addition to the moral) right to interfere in the administration of assets and the disbursements. Students of Turkish finance since 1881 are familiar with a similar but more effective European control of revenues in a degenerate state. America's refusal to participate in the Six-Power-Loan to Yuan Shih-kai in 1912 on the ground that it might lead to intervention in China's internal politics is the best commentary on the condition of China's sovereignty as affected by the financial situation. Today in China every important undertaking of the government, every work of public utility, the collection of revenue, the management of post offices, railways, or iron and steel factories is being bossed by foreign advisers and experts. The maritime customs, salt gabelle and some other departments in Chinese administration are almost as alien in personnel and inspiration or guidance as any government office in British India or Japanese Korea. This aspect of China's vassalage is likely to acquire notoriety in American public life in the coming years because by joining England, France and Japan in the New Loan Consortium (1920) on the usual terms the government of the United States and the American banking group have at last formally bidden adieu to the idealism of the last decade and submitted to the inevitable decree of historical determinism.

V. Turiff Restrictions and Boxer Indemnity.

China's financial vassalage and consequent curtailment of political independence are enhanced by two sets of unjust treaties with the powers that powerfully cripple her industry and commerce. The first are the tariff regulations agreed on between Great Britain and China by the treaty of Nanking in 1842 and the second is the Boxer treaty of 1901. In 1842 China bound herself not to levy a tariff exceeding 5 per cent ad valorem on imported and exported goods. In 1902 by the Mackay treaty with England China was granted the right to levy a surtax of 7 per cent on imported goods on certain conditions, and in 1917 the tariff was raised to an effective 5 per cent as a concession for China's joining the allies. By the "most favored nation" clause all treaty powers automatically enjoy the tariff privileges first extended to Great Britain.

The present uniform rate of 5 per cent ad valorem is too low to protect the infant industries of China and is at the same time quite inadequate as a fiscal resource. In 1914 only 9 per cent of China's total revenue was derived from customs, whereas import duties levied by Great Britain in spite of her "free trade" policy amounted to 22 per cent of her revenues. It is the meagreness of the customs receipts that has compelled China to retain the onerous medieval inland-transit duties called likin though they militate enormously against the domestic and foreign trade of the country. No wonder, then, that the restoration of tariff autonomy by revision of commercial treaties has been one of the most pressing demands of Young China both as an economic and as a political measure.

The inadequacy of China's revenues and the eternal necessity for foreign loans are further accounted for by the exorbitant indemnities imposed by the powers in 1901. Imperial China was saddled with a first charge of $350,000,000 on her revenues to be paid to thirteen nations (Russia, Germany, France, Great Britain, Japan, United States, Italy, Belgium, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Holland and Norway-Sweden). The terms of compound interest were so inequitable that after annual payments for sixteen years the outstanding debt in 1917 was still $560,000,000 (although by declaring war China's debts to Germany and Austria were cancelled by a stroke of pen)! Cancellation of the remaining indemnity (and not a mere postponement for five years as has been conceded by the allies in consideration of China's association with them against Germany) is therefore a cry that the Chinese delegates naturally raised before the Peace Conference (1919).

VI. Industrial Tutelage.

Young China has to feel every moment that the entire country is honey-combed with the foreign centers of economic activity. The railway, industrial, and mining concessions granted to the commercial syndicates of foreign nations are inevitably due to China's lack of brain and bullion. One need not be blind to the "development" of the country thus effected by foreigners. But it is a curse in disguise so far as the people are concerned. On the one hand, the concession-seekers are used to bring pressure upon their home governments in order that they may stand by them with their army and navy and with the prestige of their flag in the fields of their exploitation. Every industrial venture in China becomes in this manner an affair of "foreign politics." On the other hand, the rivalry of the concessionnaires among themselves, first, for profiteering and secondly, for the shibboleth of their nationalities introduces international complications into China's every day life.

The Bagdad Railway is the classic example of the stupendous international animosity created by a foreign commercial movement in the territory of an undeveloped people. Bagdad railways in China are plentiful as blackberries. The net result is perpetual intrigue, "management," corruption; and this affects also the spheres of life far removed from trade and industry. Even in the appointment of teachers for elementary or secondary schools, and in the selection of textbooks for boys and girls, the organizers of institutions have to consider the ulterior and more remote consequences of displaying sympathy with the countrymen of Washington, Nelson, Napoleon, or Bismarck. The industrial and commercial competition of foreign nations turns out thus to be the greatest single cause of demoralization in the public life of China. It has rendered any systematic policy or unified method of administration virtually impossible. The statesmen as well as the people of China are constantly swayed by every random gust of wind.

VII. Servitude of the Mind.

China has to submit to foreign intervention of a subtle and sinister character through the missionizing establishments of Christians and the philanthropic charity of America. It is recognized by all consular authorities that missionaries are great though nonofficial agents of their national industry and commerce. On the dominated peoples the evangelists exercise a tremendous influence, which in a few cases is purely cultural and moral, but in almost all instances, is due to their financial opulence and the name of the powers they represent. The influence extends from the saving of a life at court as amnesty to the removal of an officer from some high post.

The patriots of China are not blind to the fact that America's return (in 1908) of 40 per cent of the Boxer indemnity in order to be spent on education may have been dictated, in the first place, by the consideration that the indemnity was exorbitant, and secondly, by the consciousness, though belated, of her sins committed against Chinese immigrants from 1855 to 1904. But conceding that it was a disinterested transaction, students of international relations may legitimately feel that it is none the less an "intervention," because it does not happen to be the charity of individual citizens like that embodied in Rockefeller Foundations but the grant-in-aid from a sovereign state. Besides, it serves to demoralize Young China through the unseen but effective control on Chinese mind exercised by American action in the politics of eastern Asia. China's liberal statesmen fear it therefore as the most powerful weapon for perpetuating a strong anti-Japanese movement in their country, and not only for preventing the growth of friendly relations between the yellow races but also for crushing the development of a sound Asian policy among the Chinese. The moral backbone of the Chinese youth is likely to be destroyed by what to all intents and purposes constitutes an international bribery unless some counteracting spiritual forces be forthcoming. Young China has felt the humiliation already and seems to be quite alive to the danger. Under the nom de plume of Chung-hwa Sing somebody writes in the Chinese Student's Monthly (November, 1915): "Many of us are indemnity scholars. Your being in this country (United States) is the very memory of our national disgrace in 1900. " It is this spirit of resentment that is slowly preparing the Chinese risorgimiento of the coming decades.

6. The Psychology of the Semi-Slave.

From the standpoint of the "superior races" a full-fledged dependency like India, Madagascar, Java, or Korea is a closed question unless, as during war times, its cause is espoused by the enemy of the alien ruler. Normally it has no troubles except what may be created by the disarmed militarism and impotent insurrections of the subject race. But the daily life of people in a "sphere of influence," a Morocco, Abyssinia, Persia, or China, is a perpetual menace to the peace between the powers. For it is subject to thousand and one restrictions, imposed without law and resented without vigor, all the more serious because of their extent being boundless and significance mysterious. Such spheres are necessarily the eternal storm-centers of the world.

These "half-way houses" to foreign rule, where the legally constituted authority dare not exercise its jurisdiction except in a halting fashion, where indeed sovereignty is by law vested in one hand but in actual practice in a neighbor that happens to possess military and economic might, are the surest hotbeds of wholesale mischief. They do not fail to corrupt the financiers, diplomats, and concessionnaires at the same time that they vitiate and poison the mentality and outlook of the indigenous people. Thus they engender a social milieu in which normal humanity is kept in abeyance.

The subject races or slaves de jure can have a clear-cut and precise attitude to the foreign masters. The Polands of the world can "localize" the wrongs they suffer and concentrate their mind as to the remedy, although the nature and extent of its success depends in the ultimate analysis on the international intrigue and competition to which the ruling race is exposed. Even when rendered morally incapable of noteworthy civic or public virtues through long-standing political subjection, these unfortunate specimens of the race Adamic can still be vitalized by the galvanic spirituality of patriotism. Dynamic love of fatherland continues to survive as the last redeeming feature of dependent peoples. But the men and women of buffer-states, spheres of influence, semi-free nationalities and protectorates, i.e. the slaves de facto but not de jure are driven from pillar to post in the attempt to appease the myriads of gods. And in the repercussion that ensues the national animus of vindictiveness loses its intensity and impelling force. Human beings like these are the spiritual and moral pariahs of mankind, the only class of slaves that have no locus standi in the universe.

Such is the dehumanizing situation that the Chinese Republic has received as heirloom from the Imperial China of 1842-1911. The constitutional struggle of Young China is therefore of trifling importance compared with the international anomalies that are swaying its comatose existence between the actual atrophy of today and the possible extinction of tomorrow.

Notes

1. This has been done once again in November 1921 by the powers assembled for the so-called Disarmament Conference at Washington, D.C.↩