p. 14 | China's Need by I. H. Evans

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 15, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 32.

China's Need

By I. H. Evans

NOTWITHSTANDING all the greatness China has attained — for she certainly is great in many ways — still those who know and love her most, feel her lack the keenest; and all admit her civilization and her religions have failed to do for China what she needs most, and must have if she ever becomes what her people are capable of becoming, and if she ever takes a first place among the nations of to-day.

That the civilization of China can not do for China what needs to be done and done soon, is self-evident to the most sanguine of her truest friends. Twenty-five centuries of continued national existence should be sufficient to test the merits of any form of government and any mode of education. It is never safe to form an opinion of the merits of any system of administration by studying the benefits to those who administer the same, but by its effects upon those influenced and affected by such an administration. Rulers and those in authority are no true test of the effects of national policy; but the toiler, the peasant, the men who sweat and grind and carry burdens, are the ones who give the true key-note to the effects of administration.

Judged by the ignorance and poverty of the masses of its people, China, with all its boasted civilization, has fallen far short of what may justly and reasonably be expected. No nation in the world has a people who more appreciate knowledge and education than the Chinese people. Yet nowhere is there more universal ignorance, or such wide-spread illiteracy. It is said not one woman in 40,000 in China is able to read intelligently. There are millions of men, as well as women, unable to read more than a few characters. To the Chinese, current events and the history of other peoples are unknown quantities. Some four weeks after the death of the late emperor, the writer was traveling in the province of Honan, and a traveling companion incidentally stated that the late emperor was dead. This statement was made in an eating-house, among a score or more of men. The crowd denied the fact; and when it was reaffirmed, they became excited, and said it was a "foreign lie."

The modern sciences, until recently, were wholly ignored in China's system of education, and the chief aim of the student was to memorize the ancient classics and to prepare for the examination essay. Thus China was ever looking into the far distant past, with her face set backward, and all her efforts and energies spent in trying to produce, not modern improvements to meet the needs of its ever-increasing population, but to bring to life the dead past, and make it meet all the needs of the present.

The vast majority of the people are so poor there is no evident possibility of their being able, unaided, to ever avail themselves of school privileges, were they at their very doors. But China must educate her people, or drop out of the race for national existence and recognition as a nation of power and force. An elaborate school system has been planned, but how to make it effective is an undiscovered power.

Reform in Currency

If China hopes to develop its own resources and to hold its own with the sister nations of to-day, there must come a reform in its national currency. A more extortionate exchange system could hardly be devised than now exists throughout the nation. If progress along commercial lines is expected, there must come a change in the currency of the country, giving a just and uniform valuation to the circulating medium, so that the idea of speculation in the currency of the country shall be entirely eliminated. Till then, China must ever remain the helpless and hopeless victim of its bankers and financiers.

Execution of Justice

Among nations as among individuals, justice must be a portion of the life, or the respect of the people must be lost. In this the boasted civilization of China has signally failed. Her courts are not respected; they are feared, not because of the righteous judgments executed according to law, but they are feared because of the extortion and heartlessness of those who are supposed to defend the innocent. In her courts, justice on the merits of the case, after a fair and impartial trial, is a thing almost unknown. Everywhere it is the man who has the most cash who wins, and justice can not enter. No other people in the world would patiently endure for one year what is hoary with age in China. The people cry for justice, but it "standeth afar off." Until a reform is made in protecting the innocent and in punishing the guilty, there can never come to China that respect which is her due when righteously ruled.

Caring for the Poor and Unfortunate

Probably no other nation in the world has so many poor who are on the point of starvation as can be found in China. Surely there is no other people in the world among whom can be found so many beggars as among this people. Instead of the government's providing food and work for this mighty horde of poor, they are permitted to prey upon the public till the streets, the alleys, the railroad trains at stations, the wharves of port entries, are literally lined with beggars. The other day in the province of Honan I counted twenty-two beggars soliciting alms at one car while the train was stopping at the station. Among these beggars are worthy poor; but in China begging is a profession, and clothes are furnished and conditions defined for this active horde of people who are a prey upon business interests and society. The government takes no steps to check this growing evil, nor does it provide for those who are really in need.

Criminals in the gangue exposed on a public street. The frames are so broad as to prevent the hands from touching the head. Typical everywhere in China.

As with the poor, so with the unfortunates. The whole country is infested with every horrible disease; and the afflicted are neither isolated nor restricted to their own quarters, but are left free to roam in public places at will. Persons rotting with leprosy, persons with smallpox, persons with the bubonic plague, are at full liberty to roam about distributing death and life-misery upon those who are so unfortunate as to become infected, with no provisions for their isolation, or for caring for them in their time of need. With such conditions prevailing, there can not but be a great number of the poor people dying from neglect, and exposing many others to their dread maladies.

The Religions of China

Twenty-five centuries of undisputed sway over the hearts and lives of its people should be sufficiently long for any system of religion to demonstrate its ability to save and uplift a people. The religions of China have had this time-test with none to say them nay, and they have utterly failed to lift the people above the low level in which they found them twenty-five centuries ago. These religions have degraded womanhood till nowhere is she more neglected and despised than in the land of Confucius. Foot-binding has entailed unspeakable suffering among the peasantry for ages. The Chinese women are a race of hobbling cripples, suffering unspeakable misery, disabled from active work, and imposing upon themselves lifelong servitude and dependence by this foolish custom of foot-binding.

The religions of China have failed to build up the home where love and gentleness reigns and where social intercourse on terms of equality between parents and children are established. The religions of China have failed to educate the masses of the people, but have left them in the densest ignorance, imposing on them superstitions and imaginary evils, which the poor people have no means of preventing without recourse to the priesthood for help. China does not have within itself means of saving itself

or of lifting itself above the dead level which it now occupies.

Commerce

Some have suggested that commerce and financial aid were what would help China to a new life. Within her own borders there exist two of the best illustrations of what money and commerce can do for China; yet the Chinese have not learned the lesson, nor received the supposed help that lies within commercial lines. In the port cities where concessions have been made, or where absolute control has been left to the greatest commercial people the world has yet developed,—in the cities of Shanghai and Hongkong,—China has had for many years a living example of what commerce can do in uplifting a people, and surely China has failed to learn its lesson.

The Bible and the Christian Religion

But one thing is left in which we can have faith and hope to uplift the Chinese people, and that is the Christian religion. Can the Word of God and the principles of the Gospel of Christ save and uplift China, that her people may become educated, honest, just, and merciful? We answer, Judging from what has been done by these agencies to other peoples and nations, we believe that in God's Word alone lies the help China needs, and the only means available for her regeneration. That Word will generate new life and a new conscience into the Chinese people, which they greatly need. It will create within the hearts of the Chinese a bond of sympathy and mutual confidence which is now almost entirely lacking. It will teach the responsibility of parenthood, and how to direct and control the family; it will revolutionize the Chinese system of education, delete the dead matter, and invigorate with new life the Chinese youth as they study modern sciences and current events of international interest; it will provide for the education of the girls as well as the boys, and will teach the Chinese language in a rational manner; it will teach the sacredness of the marriage relation, and concubinage will be done away; it will instil into the courts the spirit of justice, and bribery will be banished; it will raise woman from her lowly estate to what her Maker designed her to be, a help meet for her husband; it will lift the home into that place of purity, cleanliness, and domestic harmony which alone will make life worth living; it will provide hospitals for the unfortunate, and homes for the helpless poor; it will uplift the nation as it uplifts the people, and a new spirit of patriotism will be engendered in the hearts of the people. What it has done for other lands, it will do, when it has free course, for the Chinese. In the language of another, Christianity will do for the Chinese what is most needed to be done. "It will make him a new man, with a new insight and a new outlook. It will give back his lost soul and spirit, and pour into all his avenues a new spirit and new life. There is not a human relation in which it will not be felt immediately, profoundly, beneficently. It will sanctify childhood, ennoble motherhood, dignify manhood, and purify every social condition." There is nothing else in all the world will so uplift China and give it the help it needs as will the Word of God and the influence of Christianity. China's greatest need is not money, not international interference, but simply the living Word of God, read, expounded, and received into the heart; and China will be helped in the best way it is possible to help her and her people.

I. H. EVANS.