CHINA AND THE FUTURE. [To THE EDITOR OF THB "
SPECTATOR."f
SIR,—In your most interesting article under the above beading in your issue of October 10th, just to hand, the writer appears to have committed one oversight. In speaking of the presents lavished upon Grand Councillor Yuan Shill- kai on his fiftieth birthday by the late Empress-Dowager Tz'e Hsi, the writer says : "No one else was ever thus honoured by the Empress." In point of fact, the same kind of honour was poured out on the late Li Hung-chang on his seventieth birthday in 1892. The list of presents which he then received from the Empress-Dowager is given in Mrs. Archibald Little's Life of Li Hung-chang as follows :- One manuscript tablet (i.e., engraved with characters written
by the Empress herself).
One pair of scrolls written by herself.
One scroll with the character fa, (happiness).
One scroll with the character shou (long life). One scroll with the two characters show designed by herself.
(I may add by way of comment on this record of Mrs. Little's that the Empress wrote an exquisite hand, much admired in China, and was also proud of her skill in painting.) One drawing, also executed by her Majesty. One Buddha.
One robe composed of the throat skins of sables. (This robe is worn only by the Emperor, and cannot be possessed by any one else unless presented with such a robe by the Sovereign.) One ju-i inlaid with jade. One dragon robe.
• Twelve pieces Chiang satin.
The Emperor Kuang Hail's presents on this occasion were similar but less costly, as he did not dare to surpass his formidable aunt in lavishness.
The career of Li Hung-cliang and that of Yuan Shih-kai in their relationship to the late Empress-Dowager are curiously parallel, both officials being Chinese, and thus racially antago- nistic to the Empress-Dowager, with whose ideas of government their own policy by no means wholly agreed, yet both of them standing by her at the two great crises of her life. Without the forced march made by Li Hung-chang to Peking with four thousand well-armed troops on the night in January, 1875, when the Empress-Dowager took the late Kuang Hsii from his bed to proclaim him Emperor, she would possibly never have carried through her coup d'etat. Similarly in 1898 her ability to overthrow the Emperor and resume the reins of power was, to a great extent, due to the fact that Yuan Shih-kai, who had been occupied for the past year in re- organising the metropolitan troops at Hsiaocbau, near Tientsin, threw in his lot with hers.
That Tz'e Hsi never forgot the debt she owed to Li Hung- °hang is proved by the fact that he survived the catastrophe of the Japanese War,—for which be was obviously responsible, as, hexing held the supreme power in China, be had not made the Empire safe. Any official less favoured by the Empress. Dowager must have suffered decapitation; and his escape is evidence of the good quality of gratitude at least in the Empress-Dowager's character.
This also was presumably the secret of the favour in which Yuan Shih-kai was held. It is true that in the recent months before Tz'e Hsi's death that favour seemed to be suffering an eclipse. A year ago the name of Yuan Shih-kai was in every edict, suggested as the one man for every responsible piece of work in the Empire. Of late months he has evidently been keeping himself as far as possible in the background, his one hope of doing good being to do it by stealth, though himself the object of ceaseless denunciations. But there is no reason to believe that his Imperial mistress's smiles were more than temporarily withdrawn ; and had she lived there is no doubt but that she would have found the need of him again.
At the moment of writing it is quite impossible to tell what will become of this able Grand Councillor. The Regent, Prince Ch'un, is described by those who know him as a man of dignity and strength of character, as well as the most virtuous of the Imperial Princes ; and although he is not popular among Peking officials, he has gained their respect. Whether these considerations will make for definite progress (in which case Yuan Shih-kai would presumably come to the fore again), or merely for a continuance of the reactionary dawdling, shot with flashes of meaningless and panic-stricken yieldings to reform which characterised the closing years of the late Empress-Dowager's reign, is a very open question.—Apolo- gising for the extent to which I have trespassed on your
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