Mainland China

“ Her plight is sore to-day. But China has held together longer than any other empire in history. We Chinese never forget, and we do not meekly forgive. Again and again we have seemed to accept innovations, have tried them, have found them unacceptable, and then we have discarded them once and forever. We are in peril now; but the end is not yet. Already the word passes over China, as a breath of summer over the head-heavy poppy fields, ‘Back to Confucius’! And I—I descended from that great sage—I, too, who love China as I did not love your mother—I, too, have betrayed China—and you! ”

“ Now, darkened by the smoke of over thirty factories, it is flooded by an ever-increasing Chinese population, who jostle with Europeans in the thoroughfare, till it seems as if the struggle between the two races would be settled in the streets of Shanghai, and the European get driven to the wall. For the Chinaman always goes a steady pace, and in his many garments, one upon the top of the other, presents a solid, impenetrable front to the hurrying European ”

“ I have already had occasion to observe that the natural disposition of the Chinese should seem to have suffered almost a total change by the influence of the laws and maxims of government, an influence which, in this country more than elsewhere, has given a bias to the manners, sentiments, and moral character of the people ”

“ The Chinese build their towns in the strongest situations, near rapid rivers, and chiefly at the curves, in order that they may serve in part for enclosures; and if the towns are half a league in circuit, they build walls of a league in extent, so that in case of war they may hold a considerable number of defenders. ”

“ When the European realm expanded so as to include the whole planet, when Western civilization began to dominate the earth, and the Christian family of nations became the world-wide international system, the Chinese were forced to concede that the Far East could not be kept to itself. They have found it indispensable to respond, as individuals and as a people, to the new environment closing in on them. Doing so has necessitated the reexamination and restatement of nearly all basic values of Chinese life. ”

“ There is only one China in the world. Both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China. China's sovereignty and territorial integrity brook no division. Safeguarding China's sovereignty and territorial integrity is the common obligation of all Chinese people, the Taiwan compatriots included.
Taiwan is part of China. The state shall never allow the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces to make Taiwan secede from China under any name or by any means. ”

“ The Chinese are under the impression that there is no nation equal to theirs. They suppose themselves the centre of civilization for the last 2000 years, and claim that China knew the art of printing, invented gunpowder, and was learned in astronomy, long before us. They consider that China is the middle of the Universe, as is shown by the name, which, in their language, signifies "The Middle Kingdom." They look upon themselves as superior to us, as we think ourselves to them, calling us Barbarians, and considering all European nations as such. ”

“ SEVERAL outside forces have pressed steadily and heavily upon the exclusiveness and conservatism of the Chinese, and though they have not yet succeeded in changing the essential character of the nation, they have set in motion vast movements which have already convulsed great sections of the Empire and which are destined to affect stupendous transformations. ”

“ In the open ports, where a large foreign commerce has sprung up, an immense number of Chinese congregate from the interior. Many of them are adventurers who come to these places to engage in the general scramble for wealth. The Chinamen of the best class are, as a matter of fact, not the most numerous in the open ports. Moreover foreign ideas and customs prevail to a great extent in these foreign communities, and the natives, whatever they might have been originally, gradually become more or less denationalized, and present a modified type of their race. ”

“ With but few and unimportant exceptions they do not want us, and would be glad to see the last of all Europeans, together with their civilisation, their missionaries and their trade. This is not very flattering, accustomed as we are to regard ourselves somewhat in the light of pearls before swine, but it is the truth. On the other hand, we know that our footing in the country was gained and is maintained by force, which knowledge, in addition to that pressure of silent enmity of which we are at all [213] times conscious, brings our minds into a hostile attitude vis-à-vis the Chinese. ”

“ There has been too much of a disposition to think of the Chinese as a mass, almost as we would regard immense herds of cattle or shoals of fish. Why not rather think of the Chinese as an individual, as a man of like passions with ourselves? ”

“ For more than an hour we wandered about, poking into all sorts of dark corners, finally reaching the consulate at half-past nine instead of an hour earlier, and nowhere, either in thoroughfare or alley, was there any rowdyism, and this though it was the night of the Dragon Festival when all the people were making holiday. But then under ordinary conditions the Chinese is a peaceable man; he has his own interpretation of the rule of life: in order to live, let others live. ”

“ Can one wonder that the Chinese are liable to misunderstand the West, and were it not for the saintly life of many missionaries, the high character and strict justice of our Consuls—yes, and the admirable discipline and management of such great undertakings as that of Butterfield and Swire—the evil would be incurable; but though there are many specimens of the bad, there are also not a few men who by their lives have testified before the Chinese to the greatness of our social and moral traditions and to the religion by which they are inspired. ”

“ At the end of a certain period it is highly probable that the march of events may be accelerated, and when the mass of the Chinese people have been placed in contact with the results of Western progress, it is very probable that its great common-sense will do the rest. It is an appeal to their essentially commercial and money-making instincts that we must make if we wish to convert the Chinese, the most realistic and the least idealistic of nations. ”

“ Article 8 People, legal persons, organizations or other institutions from Mainland area shall not lobby in person or commission other lobbyist to do so; people, legal persons, organizations or other institutions from Hong Kong or Macau are also applicable. Article 9 During the process of lobbying, lobbyists shall not employ force, intimidation or other unjustifiable means, and shall not offer, promise or give a bribe or other improper benefit to a lobbied party. ”

“ Whatever and whoever may have altered, the Chinese certainly have not. Commissioner Lin, Viceroy Yeh, Prince Tuan, the empress-dowager, and all wielding authority, whether in name or not, have been true to the Chinese ideal. They have all alike been blind to the consequences of their acts, which have throughout been characterised by the strategy of fools—momentary success followed by overwhelming reverses, resulting at each succeeding encounter in a further invasion of the frontiers of their political independence. ”

“ Small as a dot in the ocean, Hongkong was yet formed large enough for its own destiny: to act as the thin end of the wedge which shall yet open up China to the civilization of the West; to form Britain's Key to the East, as the combined Malta and Gibraltar of the Pacific; to be China's guarantee of British support along the strategic line formed by India, the Straits Settlements and the China Sea. ”

“ We should be in touch with the Emperor and his court, and we could not fail to convert the most recalcitrant of mandarins to the adoption of our Western civilisation: perhaps even China might become a Christian country. We have now been at Peking for forty years, during which time successive ministers of all countries have preached, flattered, scolded, and threatened over the sweetmeats and tea of the Tsung-Li Yamên, and what is the result to-day? ”

“ Yes, Shanghai on a spring afternoon is a most interesting place; and yet as you turn your eyes to the river and catch sight of the dark grey warship, you realise that beneath all this peace and busy commerce lies the fear of the grim realities of war. China may assimilate the adjuncts of Western life, but she will never welcome the Western. The racial gulf that divides them is far too deep. ”

“ If what we believe to be civilisation is to be developed in China, it will be developed by the Chinese themselves. If they are going to possess railways, telegraphs, telephones, and all the machinery of that material advancement which we call progress, and sometimes civilisation, the Chinese themselves will be the importers and adapters and, in due course, the manufacturers thereof.
Now that the great fight in the Far East is over, it certainly looks as if the Chinese at last realised the fact that development is an inevitable necessity. ”

“ Every unit of Chinese society is homogeneous. The whole population are one—in blood, sentiments, and language;—and hence it contains none of those discordant elements, those unwillingly-yoked parts, which proved the destruction of the old “universal empires,” and which are destined ere long to annihilate the present territorial system of Europe. China, in fact, has ever been, and is, what European Germany and Slavonia, and every other great State of the future will be—a Race-Empire;—and therefore indestructible. ”

“ More strongly than ever do I feel that Europe and America have not done justice to the character of the Chinese. I do not refer to the bigoted and corrupt Manchu officials, or to the lawless barbarians who, like the ``lewd fellows of the baser sort'' in other lands, are ever ready to follow the leadership of a demagogue. But I refer to the Chinese people as a whole. Their view-point is so radically different from ours that we have often harshly misjudged them, when the real trouble has lain in our failure to understand them. ”

“ China's territorial sea along the mainland and its coastal islands takes as its baseline the line composed of the straight lines connecting basepoints on the mainland coast and on the outermost of the coastal islands; the water area extending twelve nautical miles outward from this baseline is China's territorial sea. ”

“ The introduction of European methods is certain to upset many of the old customs and traditions to which the Chinese hold with almost pathetic tenacity. It requires an amazing tact to govern the Chinese, a fact made daily manifest in Hong-Kong, and illustrated by the recent serious outbreak in the French concession at Shanghai, where a disturbance took place over the removal of a time-honoured sanctuary to make way for a public road. ”

“ In foreign affairs these ninety years were marked by the steadily growing influence of the Western powers, aimed at turning China into a colony. Culturally this period was that of the gradual infiltration of Western civilization into the Far East; it was recognized in China that it was necessary to learn from the West. In home affairs we see the collapse of the dynasty and the destruction of the unity of the empire; of four great civil wars, one almost brought the dynasty to its end. North and South China, the coastal area and the interior, developed in different ways. ”

“ On the Canal between Macao and Canton. may be, and often are, afraid of Europeans, but the Government was not so. Despotic in itself, ignorant of the power of foreign nations, very superior to the divided and small States that surround it, the Chinese esteem themselves not only the first nation in the world but the most powerful. ”

“ So far as our knowledge enables us to speak, the Chinese of the present age are in all essential points identical with those of the time of Confucius, and there is no reason to doubt that before his time the Chinese national character had been thoroughly formed in its present mold. The limits of the empire have varied from time to time under circumstances of triumph or disunion, but the Middle Kingdom, or China Proper, of the eighteen provinces has always possessed more or less of its existing proportions. ”

“ But those who do not wish to appropriate Chinese territory, but rather that both the Chinese and themselves should enjoy tranquillity, so as to develop each their own territories to their highest capacity, must wish to see in power men like Chang-chih-tung, the one Viceroy never even accused of peculation, and who never visits Peking, and other men of high aims and upright conduct—making mistakes possibly, but at least trying their best to elevate and guide the most peace-loving and law abiding people that ever existed. ”

“ Mere education in the science of the west, mere contact with western civilization, commerce, railways, telegraphs, mines, etc., can not be expected and are not calculated to regenerate China, because they have no direct moral or spiritual value, and the Chinese seem never to have been profoundly moved by other than moral and spiritual forces. ”

“ Rampant Leaders For quite a long time your leaders have been far too rampant. They have ordered aircraft to carry out wanton raids on the mainland, dropping leaflets and secret agents, bombing Foochow and harassing Kiangsu and Chekiang, reaching as far at Yunnan, Kweichow, Szechwan, the Kangting area, and Chinghai. ”