Troubled China by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 24, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 42.

Troubled China

By Editor

CHINA has her troubles. A despatch from Peking September 20 states that a total of 2,000 insurgents besieging Cheng-Tu have been killed, but the foreign residents have not been able to leave the capital.

A cablegram from Shanghai, September 9, states that the floods in the province of Anhwei have destroyed 235,000 acres of rice. No hope remains for the crops. Half a million people are homeless, and are sheltered in straw huts, awaiting relief. Sickness, plague, and famine will probably follow.

A Chinese doctor, Ng Poon Chew, in Sierra Educational News for September, states that "the dawn of Chinese awakening is coming," but he does not set before us a roseate future. He declares that "the Chinese as a race believe in peace, not war, regarding brains above muscle, right above might," so much so that they had never provided themselves against foreigners. But now, he says: "We have learned a lesson from the Western nations. It has crystallized into the fact that might is right, and

nations are measured by the size of the big stick. Give us ten years, and we shall be in a position to defend ourselves. In all history we never had a standing army. We might have had a running or a sitting army, but we will have a standing army of one million soldiers. We have imported men who are the followers of the humble Christ, the Prince of Peace, to show us how to kill and be killed."

These are words worthy of weight; but another Chinese, a mandarin, writes in La Revue, of Paris, and declares that China is sinking under the results of her own vices. These vices, he declares, are gambling, drunkenness, and debauchery. The passion for gambling is such that it is carried to the utmost extreme. They will even use the combats of quails, crickets, and grasshoppers for the purpose of betting. They will stake their houses, their fields, and at last their wives, and sometimes the Chinese gamester will place upon the table the very clothes he wears. He will often go so far as to cut a joint out of his adversary. When a man has nothing more to lose, he and his fellows gather round tables where they put up as special stakes their fingers, which they cut off from each other with horrible stoicism. Consequently, wide-spread destitution.

Intemperance is another fearful evil, one of the great causes of pauperism. Sellers of the Chinese alcohol give a year's credit, and "when this passion for drink has seized, upon the head of a family, destitution with all its dismal train of suffering enters the home. Interest is paid on the debt, and the creditor takes land and house and furniture and clothes. And the debauchery of China is equal to its intemperance and gambling." He wonders what will come, and what hope there is, and says that to give answer, "the philosophers come, the economists come, the reformers come, the revolutions, they also come; but the solution of the question never comes." And it never can come, we may add, save under the regenerating power of Jesus Christ.