The Chinese Mind
I
IN defending his government’s position in the matter of its ‘Hands off China’ declaration, the Japanese Ambassador at Washington stated that ‘Western nations know nothing about Chinese mentality.’ The statement is characteristically sweeping; nevertheless, if Geneva and Washington accurately represent the sum of Western knowledge of China, there is a good deal to be said for it. Mr. G. F. Hudson, in his Europe and China, expresses much the same opinion when he asserts that the ordinary educated European public was better informed about China in the eighteenth century than in the nineteenth. Be this as it may, there is no denying that the attitude and proceedings of the League of Nations in regard to Far Eastern affairs during the past five years have reflected an amazing ignorance of Chinese mentality, and a curious predilection for misleading information — a state of mind, in fact, quite sufficient to justify the Japanese indictment. It is, moreover, unquestionably true that for the last thirty or forty years public opinion in Western countries as a whole, on most Far Eastern subjects, has not been based upon direct knowledge or experience of China, but chiefly upon impressions derived from contacts with the semi-Westernized Chinese, — officials, diplomats, propagandists, and students, — a class which, by its education and vocations, is bound to profess its belief in Western institutions and a determination to remodel the sorry scheme of things Chinese in accordance with Western ideas, as formulated at Geneva.
Hence that atmosphere of unreality, of highly intellectual artificiality, which has distinguished all the proceedings of the League; hence the element of elaborate and pontifical make-believe which has characterized and stultified the councils of the nations, in regard to China, since the Washington Conference. Hence the chief cause and origin of the vision constantly proclaimed by professors and liberalthinking politicians, by ‘the F. O. School of Thought’ and the Institute of Pacific Relations — the delusive vision of a New China, steadily progressing toward unity and stability of government by the light of European ideas and institutions. And hence, in the natural sequence of events, the dramatically sudden emergence of Tokyo’s ‘official spokesman,’ to announce that, because ‘foreign nations have not the remotest idea as to how to deal with the Chinese,’ Japan must call a halt to policies which merely prolong a ‘ chaotic situation ’ and are therefore ‘a direct menace to Japan.’
Notwithstanding its humiliating experiences in the matter of Manchuria, the unrepentant League clings firmly to its idea of ‘modernizing China’ with the help and advice of Dr. Ludwig Rajchmann, and other technical ‘experts.’ So steadfast is its faith that there is even talk of ‘a project for international financial assistance to China,’ although Japan has drawn attention to the fact that the proceeds of Mr. Soong’s latest borrowings in the United States were squandered by the Nanking Government on munitions of civil war. Dr. Rajchmann, whom the Japanese denounced as an agent provocateur at the time of the Manchurian trouble, has now compiled his official report to the League; it gives the usual fantastically optimistic picture of the reorganized and prosperous Republic which is to emerge from technical contacts between Young China’s publicspirited ‘ specialists ’ and the ‘ unique material’ available in the Secretariat of the League and the International Labor Office.
Not long ago the Times correspondent in China — an observer of ripe experience — stated, in a detailed review of the situation, that the pathetic condition of the internal economy of the country is chiefly due ‘to the ineflicacy of the administration and the absence of practical control of trade, industry, and transportation.’ While recognizing ‘the high aspirations which animate officials at headquarters ’ and the ‘evidence of whole-hearted efforts at betterment on modern lines,’ and observing that the Nanking Government has had a great deal of ‘money to play with,’he denied that any progress had been made in the direction indicated by Dr. Rajchmann and his colleagues. As to the prospects of success for the ambitious national schemes of the ‘Soong dynasty,’ ‘ how can any of them prosper,’ he asked, ‘when so much of the country is against the government, when the law of the land does not prevail, when most of the provinces are dominated by war lords, for which reasons the economic conditions nearly everywhere have fallen to zero?’ This summary of the actual situation, published by the Times in February, undoubtedly represents the truth of the matter; but, if one may judge by the reception accorded to Dr. Rajchmann’s latest report, it is a truth which the idealists of Geneva and Chatham House are determined to ignore as completely as they did two years ago.
When the Japanese Ambassador at Washington asserts that the Western nations have no understanding of the Chinese mentality, his denunciation is no doubt based chiefly on his country’s experience of the collective ignorance of things Chinese displayed since 1929 by the leading spirits of the League. It gives a somewhat blunt expression to the fact that, in the Westernized type of Chinese with which Geneva makes its contacts, the dominant characteristics of Chinese mentality are usually obscured, by reason of its ready adaptability to environment; that, under a brilliant veneer of Westernism, the true grain of the solid Chinese timber is usually hidden from the susceptible European. As an Oriental and a neighbor, the Japanese speaks with knowledge of the Chinese mentality, of its enduring vitality, its deep-rooted atavism, and implicit belief in the moral superiority of the Celestial type of civilization. Mr. Saito and his countrymen are aware (as Geneva is not) that, no matter how lavish the Western veneer, its effect upon the Chinese mind is invariably transient; sooner or later the graduate of Harvard or Cambridge reverts, mentally and socially, to the ancestral type.
What, then, is the peculiar quality of the Chinese mind, of its outlook on life, which chiefly differentiates it from that of other races? Such differences are not easily defined, but the dominant characteristic of the Chinese type of mind lies, I think, in its nearness to nature, in its instinctive reverence for the absolute and the universal. The elemental difference between East and West, which (pace Geneva) neither time nor tide can bridge, may be ascribed to the hold which the patriarchal family system of morals and politics has acquired over the race mind of the East, and to the peculiar virtues and defects produced in the masses by that system. Or, to put it in another way, it may be ascribed to the fact that, throughout its timetested existence, China’s civilization has remained essentially agricultural, faithful ever to the good earth, a rustic or ‘vegetable’ civilization. The men who rise to the top, be they fierce war lords or mild intellectuals, are all alike in that their mental origins are deeply rooted in the soil, that their minds, top-dress them as you will, remain forever responsive to the patriarchal or husbandman conception of life.
Not the least attractive quality of the Chinese mind lies in the philosophic serenity which it derives from this closeness to nature, a quality which we of the West have been taught to admire (but not to imitate) in the Biblical worthies of the Old Testament. To our sophisticated modernity, the social system and political institutions produced by the Chinese philosophy seem naively archaic; nevertheless they have outlived all others, and they are, I believe, essentially superior to our own, because they arc more consistently based upon the realities of human nature. Every Chinese, in his heart, is firmly convinced of that superiority, and therefore disdainful of the material civilization of the West. There would be a better prospect of a solution of the China problem if Geneva and Washington could be led to appreciate this fact, and, in particular, to realize that Young China’s professed acceptance of Western ideas has no more real significance than, shall we say, Sun Yat-sen’s ‘conversion’ to Christianity, or Chiang Kai-shek’s short-lived belief in Bolshevism. The League of Nations, unfortunately, clings to the faith proclaimed by its own cultural crusaders, firmly convinced that Nanking’s ‘devoted band of statesmen’ have definitely parted from the ancestral ways, and are determined to put on the whole armor of Geneva’s light — in which delusion lies the cause of the bitter words spoken from Tokyo, and of the Japanese Government’s objection to a continuance of the misguided activities of Dr. Rajchmann and his colleagues.
II
Some interesting chapters of a book on modern China might be written around and about the men who have risen to power or fame since the Revolution of 1911, showing how their characters and careers invariably reflect the unchanging spirit of the world’s oldest civilization, the atavistic influences of countless myriads of peasant lives, closely attuned to the ancestral soil. The list of such men would properly begin with that Marquis Tseng (China’s Minister to Great Britain from 1879 to 1886) who, in an article published in 1887, was the first of the many who have announced the ‘awakening of China’; it might fittingly conclude with the present Dictator of the Kuomintang’s Central Executive Committee at Nanking, General Chiang Kai-shek. Between these two worthies, fifty years apart, a long list of names might be given to illustrate Young China’s invariable tendency to revert to type and to the fundamental ideas of China’s social system, a tendency peculiarly noticeable in the careers of the most conspicuously ‘Westernized’ officials, politicians, and diplomats. In this connection, the names of public characters such as Sun Yat-sen, Tang Shao-yi, Wu Ting-fang, Wen Tsungyao, and Alfred Sze will occur at once to anyone familiar with Chinese affairs. The list might be prolonged indefinitely by citing those public men whose daily lives and processes of thought in their native environment bear no relation whatsoever to the schemes and sentiments which, in their official capacity, they have propounded, for foreign consumption, in regard to the impending Westernization of China. Reflecting on this aspect of the case, we may reasonably assume that the purpose of the ballon d’essai launched by the Japanese in April was to impress upon the Western world the fact that the mentality of the astute intellectuals who represent China at International Conferences is an article d’occasion, ingeniously constructed and highly polished, but of no permanent significance in the scheme of things Celestial.
In several recent works dealing with present-day China (notably that written by Mr. Lionel Curtis) much praise has been bestowed upon Chiang Kaishek, the present Dictator at Nanking, and upon his brother-in-law, the late Minister of Finance, Mr. T. V. Soong. In the English and American press it has been customary for some time past to assume that the ‘Soong dynasty’ (as Chiang and his immediate entourage are known) are the best rulers available, that they have made appreciable progress toward unity and stability of government, and that their collective mentality is enlightened, progressive, and constructive, with a definitely patriotic purpose behind it. This opinion, and the support which it receives from many prominent centres of political and cultural activity connected with the Far East (for instance, the Institute of Pacific Relations), have now been definitely challenged by Japan’s ‘unofficial spokesman.’ In plain English, the Japanese declare that Geneva’s failure to understand the mentality of Chiang Kai-shek and his colleagues is the true cause of the ‘chaotic situation’ of China, and therefore a menace to the peace of the Far East.
Let us briefly examine this question by casting a retrospective and impartial eye over the career of General Chiang Kai-shek. Judging by his record, let us consider whether the mentality of the most successful of China’s present-day rulers is indicative of the traditional Chinese conception of politics, or whether it represents a genuine intention to reconstruct China’s administrative and political machinery on Western lines. Does it stand for the Western principle of government by law, or the Oriental preference for government by human volition?
I select the career of General Chiang for several reasons. First, because his is the mind which, almost continuously since 1927, has represented the dominant political element in China in its relations with the Western world. Secondly, because he comes from typical peasant-farmer stock; although part of his military education was acquired at an academy in Japan, and although his entourage, domestic, personal, and political, is conspicuously ‘Western’ in its outlook, he himself knows no foreign language and, in his methods of government, conforms to the classical Chinese tradition. Thirdly, because his career, like that ol Sun Yat-sen, Feng Yu-hsiang, Chang Tso-lin, and other masterful aspirants to power, gives continual evidence of his readiness to promote his personal ambitions by the profession of any and every kind of political opinion or moral conviction.
Space does not permit of a detailed survey of his political and domestic affiliations; the reader may find them fairly set forth in Mr. George E. Sokolsky’s Tinder Box of Asia. It will suffice for our present purpose to refer to certain characteristics of the man and phases of his career, which afford a much better guide to the mentality of the present-day rulers of China than the polished sophistries with which Mr. Quo Tai Chi and Mr. Wellington Koo have habitually beguiled the Western world.
III
Chiang is now in his forty-ninth year. The foundation of his career may be said to have been laid in 1913, when, after two years of service with the revolutionary army, he became one of Sun Yat-sen’s secretaries and a close follower of his fortunes. When Sun turned to Russia in 1923, seeking assistance in furtherance of his ambition to govern all China, he sent Chiang Kai-shek as his representative to Moscow, where Chiang acquired useful connections and a general working knowledge of Bolshevik methods, military and political. On his return to Canton, Sun appointed him President of the Whampoa Military Academy, in which capacity he speedily dominated the Cantonese Kuomintang and organized the most efficient military unit in Southern China, At the time of Sun’s death in 1925, he was in command of the revolutionary army which, with the advice and material aid of Comrades Borodin and Blucher, he organized on Red lines. With it he swept his way, cheerfully proclaiming the Bolshevik faith, to the Yangtze. But when, after the establishment of the Canton party’s government at Hankow and the surrender to Chinese mobs of the British Concessions at that port and Kiukiang, Comrade Borodin began to assume dictatorial powers, Chiang gave a remarkable display of the qualities which account for his rise to power and ability to retain it — that is, a capacity for swift decisions, firm action, and complete indifference to any obligations which might obstruct the path of his ambition. Borodin and his Bolshevik colleagues were promptly ejected from China, after which Chiang’s attitude became ruthlessly anti-Communist, and his new government at Nanking, once possessed of the Shanghai Customs revenues, proceeded to establish good relations with the mercantile community and bankers of Shanghai.
During his subsequent career, checkered but on the whole successful, as military leader and controller of the Executive Council of the Kuomintang at Nanking, from 1928 till the present day, the proclaimed objects of his policy have been the unification and pacification of China, together with a far-reaching programme of economic, financial, and administrative reconstruction — objects, in fact, in every way admirable and calculated to gain for him the support of the friendly Powers, and lacking only in genuine efforts to achieve them. Like his famous predecessor, Yuan Shih-kai, Chiang has surrounded himself with the most brilliant of the Westerneducated intellectuals of Young China and engaged the services of a number of distinguished foreigners, as technical experts, to advise on his various schemes of reconstruction; but, beneath and behind all his programmes and fair promises of reorganization and reform, his methods of government and their results have remained essentially Oriental, and in no case has any foreign expert’s advice resulted in any serious modification of these methods. Especially is this the case in the all-important matter of the nation’s vast and useless expenditure on military forces and armaments, in regard to which Chiang’s frequently proclaimed and most laudable resolutions have never concealed the real nature of his personal ambitions. These remain precisely what they were in 1925, the only difference being that, whereas formerly he kept himself in power with the help of Russia, he now uses Geneva, and through Geneva the good will of the Western nations, for the same purpose. His enemies — notably the Cantonese party — have no hesitation in declaring that this is so; they now go further, indeed, and charge him with negotiating secretly to secure an amicable arrangement with Japan which will enable him to get the better of his rivals in the neverending struggle for power. From the Chinese political point of view there would be nothing remarkable in such an arrangement; broadly speaking, every political faction since the Revolution, including Sun Yat-sen’s Cantonese government, has repeatedly displayed its readiness to invoke the assistance of Japan against its rivals, on terms detrimental to China. Finally, the Cantonese faction asserts that Chiang’s ‘New Life Movement’ is merely a political stunt, an adroit manoeuvre, intended to impress public opinion in America, and especially to regain the sympathy of the religious and philanthropic bodies in the United States, which has been somewhat alienated by the course of events since 1928, and by the anti-Christian attitude of the Kuomintang.
It is not only in the field of foreign affairs that Chiang has preserved the unbroken continuity of Chinese tradition in the methods by which he has consolidated and improved his position as chief ruler and controller of the public funds; his statecraft in dealing with domestic foes and hostile factions has also been, in all essentials, purely Oriental. While continually exhorting his war-lord opponents in the best classical manner to forsake the evil ways of militarism and to sacrifice their personal ambitions to the sacred cause of nationalism; while solemnly admonishing them against maladministration, peculation, and ill-gotten wealth, he has continually plundered the revenues for the maintenance of the largest army in the land, maintained solely for the protection of his personal position, and has incidentally acquired a private fortune which, by common report, exceeds that of any of his contemporaries or predecessors.
IV
At a meeting of the nucleus of the Russian Communist Party and Cantonese group, held in April 1926, just after Chiang had expelled his Russian advisers, a colleague of Borodin, one Comrade Stepanoff, emphasized the importance of Chiang Kai-shek’s personality as a factor to be reckoned with.
To me and to our Chinese comrades [he said], Chiang appears as a brilliant figure with clearly expressed features. His prominent attributes are ambition and lust of power. He longs to become a hero in the eyes of all China. He calls himself a revolutionary, not only in the national sense, but a revolutionary as regards the whole world. . . .
But the question is, what does he understand by revolution? He wants, for his purposes, power and money. I emphasize, as having observed it myself, that he wants money not to enrich himself, but to effect some grand liberal gesture. He is exceedingly lavish as regards rewards and pecuniary recompenses. He is inclined to bribe newspapers and the like, but does it in order to be heralded and made known, to be supported in his plans, etc.
Besides, he is rather clever. He understands pretty well political questions, not only of a local Chinese but of a world-wide nature. But in this, too, he is egoistic and conforms himself to the circumstances about him; without relying on the masses, he wants their support and partly knows how to use them, in order to reach the aims of his ambition. In pursuing the same purpose, he uses us and the Chinese Communists, but only as long as we assist him and are useful to him.
That was written eight years ago. Since then the Dictator’s mentality, and the political technique which expresses it, have been occasionally modified by a factor of extreme importance to present-day China — namely, his marriage to Mei Ling, the youngest of the famous Soong sisters. In an article recently contributed to the People’s Tribune (‘What Religion Means to Me’), this very gifted and modern-minded lady explains how and why she has come to regard it as her duty to guide her husband spiritually, to exercise (as her mother did) the kind of influence which has led Chiang ‘to become a Christian.’
It would be extremely interesting, did space permit, to trace the visible results of this influence upon the Dictator’s policies and proceedings since he ‘put away’ his liberally endowed first wife and took the fascinating Mei Ling to spouse, in December 1917. In the light of recent history, it is reasonable to suppose that his breach with the Russians and his ‘clean-up’ of Communists earlier in that year were conditions preliminary to that marriage, imposed by the ‘Soong dynasty.’ In any case, his political activities and tendencies, during the past five years, bear the unmistakable stamp of his wife’s influence, of a mentality which combines in a very remarkable manner the Chinese primordial, philosophic outlook on life with the mental equipment of an American graduate. There can be no doubt, for instance, that the Nanking Government’s activities in and around the League of Nations since 1930; its abandonment of further attempts to subjugate the northern and southern factions by force of arms; the declaration of its new policy, that war lords should ‘live and let live’; and, lastly, its inauguration of the ‘New Life Movement,’ whereby the nation is to be uplifted to an ideal state of brotherly love, charity, and personal cleanliness as the result of official example and exhortation — all these are evidence of a new element influencing the mind of China’s chief war lord, leaving its purposes unchanged, but modifying its methods.