China, Our Chief Far East Problem
By W. W. Willoughby, Ph.D.
Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
WE all know that the Conference at Washington[1] was called primarily to reduce the building of armaments, but that our President thought it also necessary, in that connection, to bring about, if possible, an adjustment of the political conditions in the Far East which, if not corrected, might lead to war in the future. Therefore he invited not simply the first five powers that were to participate in the Arms Conference, but the four additional powers, that had political or economic interests in the Pacific and Far East.
I wish to say a word or two as to the political situation in the Far East. The political equation there is one of three terms: First, there is China with its vast stretches of territory, and its great population, numbering a quarter of the human race; second, there is Japan with its eager, aggressive, ambitious and increasing people; and third, there are the interests of the Western powers.
China under Foreign Contact
First, of China. The Chinese people, as has often been said, have an authentic history of four thousand years. They are one of the greatest peoples that have lived on the globe. They have created for themselves a civilization that has been the admiration of all those who have studied it. They built up for themselves a culture, an art, a social life and a polity that was admirably adapted to their dominant agricultural needs, and which harmonized with their social life, a system of government which proved defective only when brought into contact with the Western industrial life. Thus it has been said that China maintained herself unaided for four thousand years, but began to fall when she began to get aid from the Western World. There is much truth in this for, from the time she was brought into contact with the West and forced to accept Western ideas and to meet the military competition of the Western nations, her own system of political rule proved weak and defective. That system relied more on reason than on force. It had not the appliances of Western mechanical life. Thus the Western nations were able, one after another, to tie bonds about China until she became almost helpless. Thus it has come about that nearly all the foreigners in China live under their own laws and are responsible to their own officials.
In many of the so-called treaty ports foreigners have municipal areas termed concessions or settlements where they have their own local governments, practically free from Chinese administrative control. What is perhaps most serious of all, the nations have deprived China of the control of her own customs revenues. They have made it impossible for China to levy more than a five per cent tax on any of the commodities imported into or exported from China. She must get the unanimous consent of the treaty-powers before she can increase her tariff. The treaty allows her five per cent, but she has been able to collect, because of undervaluation of commodi-
- ↑ Conference on Limitation of Armament, Washington, November 11, 1921. This paper was written before the Conference had completed its work. — Editor.
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