13th Oct.
Tue above is the title of an article by Mr. C. A. Moreing in the Septem-bor issue of the Nineteenth Contwry. It is a difficult article to condense, but the position of Mr. Moreing in the financial and engineering world at home makes his article of special value, apart from the interest it possesses for us as the work of an acute and independent observer of the situation in China last spring.
Mz. Moreing begins by pointing out what strikes all China residents when they go home for a trip, and that is, the little that is known about China at home after all. "We have British Consuls and Chinese Commissioners at the treaty ports, who issue annual reports or trade statis-i lo at the capital, at Shanghai, ata few minor places there are newspaper correspondents who send occasional items of information to the London Press. But to the home public generally the geography, the economic condition, and the government of China are as yet unfamiliar, and it may be owing to this that our democratically governed country, feeling that its sources of information and knowledge of China are out of all proportion to its business interests therein, has been unable to indicate sufficiently clearly to the British Government the precise policy that would find most favour in our country." This, while no doubt true, by no means, complimentary to Lord Salisbury. According to Mr. Moreing, Lord Salisbury has no policy of his own, the British public does not know enough to give jim its instructions, and the consequence is the flabbiness that has characterised and still characterises British action at Peking, where Sir Claude Macdonald is not allowed a free hand, and has the bad luck to be absent at one of the most serious crises and most important cara ties ever offered to a British Minister in China.
Mr. Moreing determined to come out and see China for himself, having prepared himself by writing in February last an interesting article on " England's Opportunity in China." To write about a thing of which one knows very little often tempts toa closer study of it. Mr. Moreing begins with Shanghai, and after a slight tribute to its attractiveness as a European city, explains how the compradores have ruined the old-fashioned British merchant, and how what is now wanted is the realisation of Mr. Bourne's suggestion "as to the crying need of some organisation for training in the Chinese language Englis youths selected for their business eapacity." Mr. Moreing points out how menacing to our interests is the action of Ru: and France in Ghina. He emphasises Mr. Bourne's warning as to the efforts France is making to establish her influence in Kuantung, Kuangsi, Hunan, Kueichou, and Szechuan; for, as we pointed' out some time ago, the French forward party in China pretend that the Britis! sphere of influence in the Yangtze Ichang. Mr. Moreing says, in re-Valley only goes as far west as ference to the French party of exploration in Hunan:—" These movements in a sphere which the British Government have clearly and openly declared to be inalienable appear to be very significant, and to merit the serious attention of Ministers with the view of taking some counteracting measures so as to assert our influence."
The Germans in China Mr. Moreing found to be fully prepared and indeed habituated, to act with the British. He left England with. the idea, which is too prevalent at home, that a modus _vivendi could be arranged with Russia, "which would enable Russia's designs in China to be reconciled with England's policy of free commercial intercourse, which, while it has proved so beneficial to its author, has also benefited other leading nations." But he found it is impossible. Russia and France are irretrievably committed tothe principle of spheres of influence and exclusive tariffs, which "I am firmly persuaded spells ruin for China and for British trade with the East." Mr. Morein holds that Manchuria is just as nite our sphere of influence as the Yangtze Valley; and he considers that harm has been done by talking of the latter as specially the British sphere, as it has conveyed "the inference to our own and other nations that re-
not so much within the British sphere, gions outside the aueto Were and might in case of necessity be relinquished to more pressing interests and more determined claims."
Mining and railways are the two principal directions in which British enterprise should naturally flow; they are both in their infancy in China, and the best field for both is in the north. That there is no popular objection to railways, Mr. Moreing saw for himself, and he also saw that the full fruit of railway extension will not be seen till a network of good roads be spread over the face of the country which shall act as feeders to the railway and media for local inter-communication." As to mining, Mr. Moreing proposed, he tells us, to the Chinese Government that a Mines Department under a high Chinese official shall be constituted with a European mining adviser, and that a Geological Survey and a Geological Museum should be organised for each province, the ex-enses being defrayed from royalties m the mines."
After a glance at Tientsin, of whose future Mr. Moreing is very hopeful, and at Newchwang, which he insists that our Government must not allow the Russians to leave out in the cold, he gives a brief account of the Kaiping Colliery and of Peking, and notices the apathy of the Foreign Ministers. He believes in the possible regeneration of China if England, the United States, and Germany, the nations most interested in keeping the- door open, would make common cause, and take China, in hand. Again he inveighs against the creation of spheres of influence, which mean partition in disguise, and which could not be determined without the arbitrament of war. " Great Britain's sphere of influence in China is ce-extensive with "the whole ~of that Empire, and she could not in honour relinquish her treaty rights therein, or abandon those of her subjects who have embarked their capital in provinces now coveted other Powers." The United States are bound to back us up in this policy—but unfortunately Lord Sal-asbury has abandoned it. In a postscript written after Mr. Moreing's return to England from China, be mentions his disgust at finding on the Newchwang Railway Exten-that our Government was giving way sion. He says what we. have said more than once, and it is to be hoped that his position will make the British public listen to him Newchwang is a treaty port of considerable importance, destined to develop still father in the opening up of Northern China; and to permit ourselves to be shut, out therefrom by acquiescing in Russia's sudden claim to treat the whole region as her sphere is a course fraught with peril to our national interests. Russia's most important moves have been made, as I have pointed out above, through dexterously_ availing herself of the absence of any clear understanding as to her own and her neighbours' territorial limits, It is, there-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.