Another Change in China
THE Red flags are coming down in China in places where only a few days ago they seemed to be the only safe flags to live under. China is, indeed, being almost more than true to type in the quickness of her changes. The Cantonese cause has been checked, if it has • not actually suffered a serious rebuff ; and the wisdom of the British Government in " going slow ". until they were convinced that the Kuomintang would be able to speak for all China is now manifest.
' We do not record this transformation with any satisfaction. If what seemed likely a few months ago had come to pass, the situation would be much simpler than it is now. It then seemed probable that the Cantonese armies would overrun the greater part of China ; that they would set up a Government at Nanking, even if they did not reach Peking itself, and that the Kuomintang would be so much the most powerful body in China that it would be possible to deal with it for all practical purposes as the Chinese Government. Such a simplification was not, however, to be. The truth is that the inherent, though partly hidden, weakness of the Cantonese system is threatening to wreck it sooner than any sober onlooker could have foreseen. That weakness has so often been indicated here that we need not enlarge upon it again. In brief, the Cantonese were content to use the propagandist resourcefulness of the Russian Bolshevists although they held no point of political faith in common with them. There could not, indeed, have been common ground, for the Chinese by disposition and tradition, so far from being Communists, are intense individualists. One sees their turn of mind displayed as much in their business life as in their religion ; in business they rely upon personal reputation and much personal direction, and in their religion they are respecters of authority and worshippers of the past just because it is the past.
Now that the split has come, the new outlook is partly good and partly disquieting. It is good in so far as there is some severance from the inhuman and destructive policy of Bolshevism, but it is disquieting in so far as it suggests a further indefinite delay before it will be possible to deal with China as a whole. If the North, having saved itself from being conquered by the South, revives sufficiently to balance the South, there will be two rival powers in China in a stalemate, and it will be extremely difficult for the Powers to know how to deal with them. To deal with one alone would be called by the other " taking sides." If the stalemate lasted a long time, it might be necessary in the end to recognize both Governments and to make treaties with them independently. That, no doubt, would be incon- venient. The best hope would be that the Chinese themselves should become sufficiently sensible of the inconvenience to achieve a kind of unity.
We must not, however, look too far ahead. In China it is always true that sufficient for the day arc the facts thereof. The facts at the . moment are that General. Chiang Kai-shek has definitely broken with Communism, has authorized the suppression of the Communists at Canton, Shanghai and many other places, and has set up a Nationalist and anti-Communist Government at Nanking. He has been communicating through inter- mediaries with his recent enemy Chang Tso-lin (the Manchurian War Lord and the present ruler of Peking) and the ebb and flow of military movements in the neighbourhood of PI:kow, where North faces South, seem to be better explained by • these negotiations than by any military success by either side. Meanwhile Nanking declares war on Hankow, and Hankow declares war on Nanking. Chiang Kai-shek has been dismissed from the Commandership-in-Chief of the Cantonese armies and Feng Yu-hsiang, the Christian general, takes his place.
If Chang Tso-lin should really join forces with Chiang Kai-shek, Mr. Chen's importance would begin to wane. Although Mr. Chen is still Red, and although there is an intensification of Red violence in the territory where his writ runs, he seems to be rather more conscious than before that Bolshevism is a dangerous ally. Probably he has known all the time in secret that victories which are won by propaganda and by the mob law of Labour unions have no solid foundation, and, moreover, inflict such acute suffering on the commercial classes that their glamour must quickly wear off. He is therefore beginning to explain to Moscow that a Chinese revolutionary success must necessarily be a success of the bourgeoisie and not of the proletariat. Moscow has solemnly been given to understand that the Dictatorship of the Democracy will have to be substituted for the Dictatorship of the Prole. tariat.
Whatever may be the position of Mr. Chen a few weeks hence, he is still the Cantonese Minister for Foreign Affairs, and it is necessary to regard his reply to the Identic Note of the five Powers on the Nanking outrages as a document of official importance. His reply makes acceptance of the demands depend upon a great " if." He will submit if inquiry shall prove that the accusations are true. Critics of the Government here arc arguing that it is only right to consent to an impartial inquiry. Does not the meanest criminal, they ask, receive a fair trial based on the assumption that he is innocent till he is proved guilty ? This sounds extremely reasonable, and nobody could agree with it in principle more sincerely than we do. Nevertheless, when a man is tried for murder, he does not sit upon the bench. Mr. Chen apparently proposes that the court of inquiry should be partly composed of the murderers, or at least of the inspirers of the murderers.
If Mr. Chen had shown in his past negotiations with Great Britain that he desired to arrive at the truth and nothing but the truth, there would be something to be said for an inquiry, however unpromisingly conducted. But, to put it bluntly, Mr. Chen's arguments have always been designed either to throw dust or to evade. Such mental processes are common in clever men of Eastern birth who have had a Western education and have learned to be at home among the niceties of legal and political language. In the present Reply to the Powers, for instance, Mr. Chen says that it has " always 1 been the policy of Kuomintang to protect foreigners. Let us give Mr. Chen the credit for believing that. On our side, we can only look at the experiences of foreigners at Hankow, Kiukiang, Shanghai, Nanking and mauY. other places in China. Facts must be our guide. It may be noted that Mr. Chen has promptly apologized to Moscow for the relatively trivial offence (committed by Chang Tso-lin) of raiding the Soviet Embassy, but that he .withholds an apology and suggests- interniiiP able inquiry in regard to the horrible offences at Nanking. The reason why the Powers must insist upon satisfaction —though it may well become more practical to deal with . some one other than Mr. Chen—is that the safety of all their nationals in dangerous parts of the world will depend for many years to come upon the proof they give now has happened in any way lessens our desire that the good that they really care for the lives and welfare of their in Chinese Nationalism should be encouraged, and that own people. Insistence upon this point does not in the desired time may not be far away when it will be any way detract from our sympathy with Chinese possible for foreigners to live in China without the Nationalism. We can honestly say that nothing that protection of unequal treaties.
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