THE NEW "BREAK-UP" OF CHINA

BY HAROLD SCOTT QUIGLEY

LORD BERESFORD's term has become familiar as having presaged, nearly a generation ago, the impending partition of China among the Powers. Today that contingency is not feared but another apprehension, resulting from the movement for provincial autonomy, has taken its place. So significant has the autonomy movement become that the capital is no longer competent to speak for all China. The situation gives rise to the fear that this more and more marked tendency may culminate in the "break-up" of the Republic into a number of independent areas that may in time declare themselves and receive recognition as new States.

The prevailing attitude of the Provinces did not spring fullblown from the revolution by which China became a republic. Under the Imperial Government there were very clearly marked aspects of federalism in the relation between the central and provincial agencies of administration. The characterization of Manchu government given by W. F. Mayers has become classic: "The central government of China, so far as a system of this nature is recognized in the existing institutions, is arranged with the object rather of registering and checking the action of the various provincial administrations, than with that of assuming a direct initiative in the conduct of affairs. . . . The Central Government may be said to criticize rather than to control the action of the twenty-one provincial administrations, wielding, however, at all times the power of removal from his post of any official whose conduct may be found irregular or considered dangerous to the stability of the State".

In letter monarchical China was a unitary State. Legal instruments ran in the name of the Emperor, and the people thought of China as one magnificent and supreme whole. The officials were imposed upon them from above, their participation in the forms of governmental action was limited to village life, they were

accustomed to thinking of government as a specialized business which the mandarins were paid to do and which they, the "stupid people", would be great fools to worry about. The officials were, under ordinary circumstances, completely subservient to the imperial will, even to the point of accepting with submission the silken cord which commanded self-destruction. The most minute regulations for the guidance of the whole hierarchy of administration had been laid down through successive dynasties, and the principal function of the Central Government was to assure the observance of these rules.

On the other hand, the quoted statement of Mr. Mayers is well sustained by the facts that lay beneath the surface covering of regulations, appointments, and the vague popular idea of unity. One authority, in explaining the survival of the façade of Manchu absolutism after the great supports of that dynasty had dropped out of the structure, makes the startling but demonstrable statement that "not only has there never been any absolutism properly socalled in China, but . . apart from the most meagre and inefficient tax-collecting and some rough-and-ready policing in and around cities, there has never been any true government at all save what the people did for themselves or what they demanded from the officials as a protection against one another". Geographical force majeure rendered it impossible for the satraps of a government several weeks' or months' journey distant to show other than sincere regard to the prejudices of the areas within which they, outsiders, ruled. Only feudalism could have maintained autocracy in China, autocracy, that is, of the feudal lords, which would have meant another type of provincial autonomy. But feudalism had disappeared in China before the Christian era. The Imperial Province was therefore not a satrapy in which people of an inferior race were ruled by despots in little supported by military force, but at its best an aristocracy, at its worst an oligarchy, the expanded social polity existing in the smaller units, the village, town and district. The business of government was not extensive nor highly organized. It was administered, outside of the village, by centrally appointed officials; but it is to be recognized, on the one hand, that they took their cues-politically speaking-from the elders of the gentry class, and on the other

that the officials themselves were largely men of the same class who were by training sympathetic with the localized but benevolent attitude of the people among whom they were but primi inter pares. They were concerned to interpret local sentiment to the throne and to conduct themselves so as to avoid criticism from either throne or people. Assured of the customary contributions of sycee and grain, and unannoyed by petitions against injustice, the court was not inclined to interfere with provincial or local government.

It was largely the breakdown of the Manchu financial system under the strain of civil and foreign war and foreign indemnities that destroyed the dynasty. The breakdown was preceded by the imposition of a new tax, likin, levied on the transportation of merchandise within the country, which proved easily susceptible to gross manipulation, and by efforts to increase the land tax. Both of these expedients for providing the funds to meet hitherto unknown demands operated to arouse the latent antagonism of the Provinces to any measures designed to interfere with the regular current of their economic life. Provinces resented also the efforts of the Central Government to control the building of railways and the granting of concessions for other types of development, all of which offered new opportunities for profitable business and additional sources of "squeeze". In the words of Mr. J. O. P. Bland: "At an early stage it became clear that the patriotic agitation against the Central Government's foreign loans was nothing more than an expression of the Provinces' determination to handle their own railways and railway finance." The influence of provincial sentiment is illustrated by the case of the Chekiang railway, in which the Central Government was constrained, after a prolonged endeavor to handle the construction of the line, to turn it over to the provincial authorities and to hand over to them the proceeds of a foreign loan to dispose of without supervision. When the Central Government proceeded, in spite of provincial opposition, to enter into the Hukuang loan agreement for railway construction, in which revenues in Provinces to be benefited were pledged as security, revolt became flagrant and took the form of anti-dynastic agitation, contributing materially to the success of the Republican movement.

The Republican Revolution in 1911 gave the finishing blow to the nice balance of forces by which the old Chinese State had been held together. Heaviest among the imperial balance-weights had been the institution of monarchy, ancient, splendid, powerful,-sustained by the Confucian rules of li or propriety which inculcated toward the Emperor that attitude of obedience made obligatory by the same rules in the son toward the father. It was not a slavish relationship thus commanded but a healthful obligation to respect the ruler so long as he respected the "mandate of Heaven". With the downfall of monarchy the classics no longer applied. They contained no parenthetical alternatives to which a President or a Parliament might point. Henceforth the ties with the Central Government, which, it has been pointed out, were at best largely formal and ceremonial, might be disregarded.

Only second in importance to the Emperor had been the Mandarinate. This unspecialized but highly educated bureaucracy was a cement well adapted to the strain of holding together the huge elements of the imperial structure. It had fallen before the attack of Western ideas a few years before the Republic was proclaimed. With it went the ocular evidence of a supposedly unitary state, as well as the assurance that magistrates and governors, if often corrupt, would be men of learning and ability. Where in China were men of the calibre of Li Hung-chang, Chang Chih-tung and Tseng Kuo-fang to come from if not via the old route of the ancient philosophy, history and literature? It was bound to be a long wait for men of equal capacity to be developed by the new educational process. The new mandarin would require a double measure of tact to secure himself acceptability. Meanwhile the bars were down to the place-hunters who would do the bidding of any man powerful enough to patronize them. With the coming of a Republic the Provinces were left temporarily to their own resources in the selection of officials. During the revolution a number of Provinces had gone so far as to declare themselves independent republics. Particularly among the southern Provinces there was bruited the idea of federation. Kiangsu and Chekiang adopted provisional constitutions as a step in that direction. In the first session of the National As

sembly the Kuomintang, Dr. Sun Yat-sen's party, ardently supported the project to write the federal system into the draft of the "permanent" constitution. These men were moved by political and economic considerations. They wanted the power and wealth that official position would give, some of them were at that time sincerely anxious for reform along democratic lines, and they desired to direct railway and industrial development projects into provincial hands, mainly for two reasons: they objected to having the central officials pile up illegitimate riches at their expense, and they were opposed to the supervisory terms which foreign banks were insisting upon in return for loans.

Of a somewhat different type and attitude from the Kuomintang politicians, but tending in individual instances to shade into them, were the tutuh or military Governors that appeared upon the scene in a number of Provinces when the old Viceroys and civil Governors fled. These men were self-constituted as a rule, whether or not the form of election by some representative body was gone through. Their military character has been somewhat over-emphasized, as Mr. Bland has pointed out. He says very truly: "The real article is . . . generally a sleek Confucianist scholar up to date, a slim and subtle intelligence, coldly calculating and quite ruthless, who uses men and money with consummate ability." Possibly Mr. Bland has over-stated the case on the other side, since some tutuh have been generals in fact as well as by adoption of the appropriate title and uniform, and some of them have been very ignorant men. Their methods of political action have in all cases, however, been those of intrigue and bribery wherever possible in preference to fighting. It is upon these men that the principal responsibility for the present divided China rests. Three times their titles have been changed, first to chiangchun, later to tuchun and again to tupan. The latter title has not come into common usage, and today they are generally known as tuchun. Under any title their actions have been determined by opportunism rather than principle. They have built up their own armies, denied the regularly apportioned share of provincial revenues to Peking, seized railway and salt funds, and entered into alliances with other tuchun. In their own Provinces they have used the revenues to intimidate the people with nondescript