The Chinese Revolution by J. N. Anderson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 4, 1912

The Chinese Revolution

By J. N. Anderson

J. N. ANDERSON

THE surpassing significance of the recent Chinese upheaval is more clearly seen when it is remembered that it was not the rising of a class of Chinese against the existing political order, but a race movement in which the entire Chinese world, almost to a unit, in China and out of China, swept away the Manchu dynasty (its rule began in 1644), and established a republic. The decree of abdication recognized this fact in the following utterance: "The whole country is tending toward a republican form of government. It is the will of Heaven, and it is certain that we could not reject the people's desire for the sake of one family's honor and glory." "The people" are the whole Chinese race, counting over four hundred millions; "the family" is the Manchu clan, numbering probably not over four millions. Racially and numerically, the contest was overwhelmingly with "the people;" but what was still more vital to the issue, the alien Manchu clan stood for non-progress, misrule, and despotism, while the Chinese stood for human progress, modern ideas, and the rights of the people.

The Occasion of the Revolution

The occasion of this race revolt was the attempt on the part of the Peking government to nationalize the railways, which hitherto had been constructed and controlled by the provinces. Foreign influence played a part in this scheme. The profits, legitimate or otherwise, accruing from an investment that meant the railroading of a country as vast as China, could not fail to tempt the cupidity of European and American financiers, being in turn abetted by their own governments, which were not slow to see that it would be vastly to their advantage to have China's steel roads under the control of a few Peking officials dependent on foreign capital and readily swayed by diplomatic influence.

The provinces protested for several reasons. Traditionally, the central government had for a long time committed all local interests to the provinces. In practise, the doctrine of states' rights had been carried to its logical end, and the provinces were not willing to give it up. The local officials were not willing to surrender the financial gains to the corrupt Peking Manchus. But the provinces still more objected to the floating of loans by the Peking government which the revenues of the provinces were pledged under mortgage to secure to money kings of Europe and America. The crisis was precipitated when Sheng Kung Pao, minister of imperial posts and communications, undertook to carry out the wish of the imperial court. This was in the province of Sze-chuan, where most of the landed gentry had subscribed to a joint-stock railway company with a capital of eight millions. "The government ordered the dissolution of the company, took possession of its properties, and paid the stockholders $5,350,000 in bonds, part of which carried no guaranteed interest, and most of which the unhappy subscribers regarded as worthless."

The minds of the people were still further excited by fearful calamities, such as the plague, the terrible, devastating floods, and the resulting famines and pestilence. These, with the superstitious fear of the gods, and the callous indifference of the government, whose officials were living in luxury with little concern for the sufferings of the people, were the occasions of the Chinese upheaval.

This spirit of discontent and hatred of the ruling clan, the foreign Manchu, had already become incarnate in a large class of intensely active revolutionary leaders, who had for years laid broad plans for the overturning of the galling Tartar rule. They saw the time was ripe, but they wished to win over the army and the navy, and hence would have postponed the uprising until 1913. But the revolutionary tide had set in with such force that nothing could stay it. The accidental explosion of a bomb in the Russian settlement in Hankow, Oct. 9, 1911, led to a thorough search of a house in which were found not only bombs, but revolutionary documents, including lists of names of revolutionists. Their choice lay between striking hard and quick, and sitting still and having their heads cut off and their cause at least temporarily lost. They chose to show their colors and strike. The province of Sze-chuan rose almost en masse, and a short work was made of the imperial officials and their underlings. Next the revolutionary current set toward the three contiguous cities of Hankow, Wu-chang, and Han-yang, all of which fell into their hands after some brisk fighting. Almost at once the greater part of central and southern China was in a state of active rebellion. Despite some very stubborn resistance on the part of the imperial government, the revolutionary tide swept the whole country, and it soon became apparent that "Heaven" had elected to give China to the Chinese, and to retire the antiquated and useless Manchus.

Such, in a word, was the passing of the Manchu supremacy and the setting up of the Chinese republic. But this is only a surface view. Back of and beneath all this overturning in the old Middle Kingdom, were those mighty undercurrents that are always present as the active forces in national, racial, and world convulsions.

The Underlying Causes of the Revolution

What, then, were the underlying causes that forced these tremendous changes? The spirit of the times is working to this end. A new spirit is abroad, recasting or overturning ancient institutions and hoary customs. Political and social changes of the first magnitude have recently swept through Turkey, Persia, Portugal, and Mexico. The masses of India and Russia are seething with this spirit of unrest and change. The most stupendous exhibition of the force and direction of this revolutionary spirit is the Chinese revolution, which came with such swiftness and decisiveness as fairly to daze the whole world. But true as all this is, it does not suffice to explain the race upheaval; for the question still remains, Whence came this spirit of irreconcilable antagonism to the old order? What was it that fired the Chinese race to the point of unseating the Manchus, and overturning many of their own ancient institutions? In the last analysis, it was and continues to be a conflict between light and darkness; and, viewed in that light, the active and primary cause was the invisible influence of Christianity. In this sense Robert Morrison was the first revolutionist when he began the translation of the Bible into Chinese, and the Chinese revolution thus began about one hundred years ago.

This spectacular and sweeping overturning of the existing order of affairs in China is but the outward expression of a no less radical change in the mind, the heart, the thought of the Chinese people. A multitude of secondary causes have operated to bring about this changed inward state, but primarily Christianity is the spring of it all. It is God moving in history to accomplish his eternal purpose for man. Western civilization and influence, trade, commerce, modern mechanical inventions, education, international law,—all these are not of the essence of Christianity, but results or concomitants, and have been powerful factors in the uplift of China. They have set new standards, and given China a new vision of her defects and her possibilities. But China's awakening must, after all, be attributed to the active Christian agencies.

The educational work of foreign missions in China is to-day represented by 2,029 elementary schools, and 1,116 academies, colleges, and normal, medical, theological, and industrial schools. Missionary activity along these lines has compelled the Chinese government to found modern schools, or lose their children to the mission school. To-day the schools of all grades under the Imperial Bureau of Education number 42,000, with 64,000 instructors and 875,000 pupils. The present aim of the Chinese government is to provide accommodation within the next ten years for the instruction of 45,000,000 children. Scores of old examination halls, with their thousands of cells, have been pulled down to make room for these new schools. In the meantime thousands of the brightest Chinese youths have gone abroad to be educated in European, Japanese, and American educational institutions.

Every book, every class recitation, every school, contributed directly to the awakening of the Chinese race that issued in the recent upheaval. Nor were the women of the Middle Kingdom left out of the count. "Many schools for girls have been established in China. The late empress dowager ordered a large lama convent turned into a school for girls, and directed the imperial high commissioners who were sent out in 1906 to study American institutions to give special attention to the institutions for the education of women."

Washington, D. C. (To be concluded)