Book: The Fight For The Republic in China

B >> Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale >> The Fight For The Republic in China




The first acts of President Li Yuan-hung rapidly restored confidence and
advertised to the keen-eyed that the end of the long drawn-out
Revolution had come. Calling before him all the generals in the capital,
he told them with sincerity and simplicity that their country's fortunes
rested in their hands; and he asked them to take such steps as would be
in the nature of a permanent insurance against foreign interference in
the affairs of the Republic. He was at once given fervent support. A
mass meeting of the military was followed by the whole body of
commissioned men volunteering to hold themselves personally responsible
for the maintenance of peace and order in the capital. The dreadful
disorders which had ushered in the Yuan Shih-kai regime were thus made
impossible; and almost at once men went about their business as usual.

The financial wreckage left by the mad monarchy adventure was, however,
appalling. Not only was there no money in the capital but hardly any
food as well; for since the suspension of specie payments country
supplies had ceased entering the city as farmers refused to accept
inconvertible paper in payment for their produce. It became necessary
for the government to sell at a nominal price the enormous quantities of
grain which had been accumulated for the army and the punitive
expedition against the South; and for many days a familiar sight was the
endless blue-coated queues waiting patiently to receive as in war-time
their stipulated pittance.

Meanwhile, although the troops remained loyal to the new regime, not so
the monarchist politicians. Seeing that their hour of obliteration had
come, they spared no effort to sow secret dissensions and prevent the
provinces from uniting again with Peking. It would be wearisome to give
in full detail the innumerable schemes which were now hourly formulated,
to secure that the control of the country should not be exercised in a
lawful way. Finding that it was impossible to conquer the general
detestation felt for them, the monarchists, led by Liang Shih-yi,
changed their tactics and exhausted themselves in attempting to secure
the issue of a general amnesty decree. But in spite of every argument
President Li Yuan-hung remained unmoved and refused absolutely to
consider their pardon. A just and merciful man, it was his intention to
allow the nation to speak its mind before issuing orders on the subject;
but to show that he was no advocate of the terrorist methods practised
by his predecessor, he now issued a Mandate summarily abolishing the
infamous _Chih Fa Chu_, or Military Court, which Yuan Shih-kai had
turned into an engine of judicial assassination, and within whose gloomy
precincts many thousands of unfortunate men had perished practically
untried in the period 1911-1916.

Meanwhile the general situation throughout the country only slowly
ameliorated. The Northern Military party, determined to prevent
political power from passing solely into the hands of the Southern
Radicals, bitterly opposed the revival of the Nanking Provisional
Constitution, and denounced the re-convocation of the old Parliament of
1913, which had already assembled in Shanghai, preparatory to coming up
to the capital. It needed a sharp manoeuvre to bring them to their
senses. The Chinese Navy, assembled in the waters near Shanghai, took
action; and in an ultimatum communicated to Peking by their Admiral,
declared that so long as the government in the hands of General Tuan
Chi-jui refused to conform to popular wishes by reviving the Nanking
Provisional Constitution and resummoning the old Parliament, so long
would the Navy refuse to recognize the authority of the Central
Government. With the fleet in the hands of the Southern Confederacy,
which had not yet been formally dissolved, the Peking Government was
powerless in the whole region of the Yangtsze; consequently, after many
vain manoeuvres to avoid this reasonable and proper solution, it was at
last agreed that things should be brought back precisely where they had
been before the _coup d'etat_ of the 4th November, 1913--the Peking
Government being reconstituted by means of a coalition cabinet in which
there would be both nominees of the North and South--the premiership
remaining in the hands of General Tuan Chi-jui.

On the 28th June a long funeral procession wended its way from the
Presidential Palace to the railway Station; it was the remains of the
great dictator being taken to their last resting-place in Honan.
Conspicuous in this cortege was the magnificent stage-coach which had
been designed to bear the founder of the new dynasty to his throne but
which only accompanied him to his grave. The detached attitude of the
crowds and the studied simplicity of the procession, which was designed
to be republican, proved more clearly than reams of arguments that
China--despite herself perhaps--had become somewhat modernized, the
oldest country in the world being now the youngest republic and timidly
trying to learn the lessons of youth.

Once Yuan Shih-kai had been buried, a Mandate ordering the summary
arrest of all the chief monarchist plotters was issued; but the gang of
corrupt men had already sought safety in ignominious flight; and it was
understood that so long as they remained on soil under foreign
jurisdiction, no attempt would be made even to confiscate their goods
and chattels as would certainly have been done under former governments.
The days of treachery and double-dealing and cowardly revenge were
indeed passing away and the new regime was committed to decency and
fairplay. The task of the new President was no mean one, and in all the
circumstances if he managed to steer a safe middle course and avoid both
Caesarism and complete effacement, that is a tribute to his training.
Born in 1864 in Hupeh, one of the most important mid-Yangtsze provinces,
President Li Yuan-hung was now fifty-two years old, and in the prime of
life; but although he had been accustomed to a military atmosphere from
his earliest youth his policy had never been militaristic. His father
having been in command of a force in North China for many years, rising
from the ranks to the post of _Tsan Chiang_ (Lieutenant-Colonel), had
been constrained to give him the advantage of a thoroughly modern
training. At the age of 20 he had entered the Naval School at Tientsin;
whence six years later he had graduated, seeing service in the navy as
an engineer officer during the Chino-Japanese war of 1894. After that
campaign he had been invited by Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, then one of the
most distinguished of the older viceroys, to join his staff at Nanking,
and had been entrusted with the supervision of the construction of the
modern forts at the old Southern capital, which played such a notable
part in the Revolution. When Chang Chih-tung was transferred to the
Wuchang viceroyalty, General Li Yuan-hung had accompanied him, actively
participating in the training of the new Hupeh army, and being assisted
in that work by German instructors. In 1897 he had gone to Japan to
study educational, military and administrative methods, returning to
China after a short stay, but again proceeding to Tokio in 1897 as an
officer attached to the Imperial Guards. In the autumn of the following
year he had returned to Wuchang and been appointed Commander of the
Cavalry. Yet another visit was paid by him to Japan in 1902 to attend
the grand military manoeuvres, these journeys giving him a good working
knowledge of Japanese, in addition to the English which had been an
important item in the curriculum of the Naval School, and which he
understands moderately well. In 1903 he was promoted Brigadier-General,
being subsequently gazetted as the Commander of the 2nd Division of
Regulars (_Chang Pei Chun_) of Hupeh. He also constantly held various
subsidiary posts, in addition to his substantive appointment, connected
with educational and administrative work of various kinds, and has
therefore a sound grasp of provincial government. He was
Commander-in-Chief of the 8th Division during the famous military
manoeuvres of 1906 at Changtehfu in Honan province, which are said to
have given birth to the idea of a universal revolt against the Manchus
by using the army as the chief instrument.

On the memorable day of October 11, 1911, when the standard of revolt
was raised at Wuchang, somewhat against his will as he was a loyal
officer, he was elected military Governor, thus becoming the first real
leader of the Republic. Within the space of ten days his leadership had
secured the adhesion of fourteen provinces to the Republican cause; and
though confronted by grave difficulties owing to insufficiency of
equipment and military supplies, he fought the Northern soldiery for two
months around Wuchang with varying success. He it was, when the Republic
had been formally established and the Manchu regime made a thing of the
past, who worked earnestly to bring about better relations between the
armies of North and South China which had been arrayed against one
another during many bitter weeks. It was he, also, who was the first to
advocate the complete separation of the civil and military
administration--the administrative powers in the early days of the
Republic being entirely in the hands of the military governors of the
provinces who recruited soldiery in total disregard to the wishes of the
Central Government. Although this reform has even to-day only been
partially successful, there is no reason to doubt that before the
Republic is many years older the idea of the military dictating the
policy and administration of the country will pass away. The so-called
Second Revolution of 1913 awakened no sympathy in General Li Yuan-hung,
because he was opposed to internal strife and held that all Chinese
should work for unity and concerted reform rather than indulge in
fruitless dissensions. His disapproval of the monarchy movement had been
equally emphatic in the face of an ugly outlook. He was repeatedly
approached by the highest personages to give in his adhesion to Yuan
Shih-kai becoming emperor, but he persistently refused although grave
fears were publicly expressed that he would be assassinated. Upon the
formal acceptance of the Throne by Yuan Shih-kai, he had had conferred
on him a princedom which he steadfastly refused to accept; and when the
allowances of a prince were brought to him from the Palace he returned
them with the statement that as he had not accepted the title the money
was not his. Every effort to break his will proved unavailing, his
patience and calmness contributing very materially to the vast moral
opposition which finally destroyed Yuan Shih-kai.

Such was the man who was called upon to preside over the new government
and parliament which was now assembling in Peking; and certainly it may
be counted as an evidence of China's traditional luck which brought him
to the helm. General Li Yuan-hung knew well that the cool and singular
plan which had been pursued to forge a national mandate for a revival of
of the empire would take years completely to obliterate, and that the
octopus-hold of the Military Party--the army being the one effective
organization which had survived the Revolution--could not be loosened
in a day,--in fact would have to be tolerated until the nation asserted
itself and showed that it could and would be master. In the
circumstances his authority could not but be very limited, disclosing
itself in passive rather than in active ways. Wishing to be above all a
constitutional President, he quickly saw that an interregnum must be
philosophically accepted during which the Permanent Constitution would
be worked out and the various parties forced to a general agreement; and
thanks to this decision the year which has now elapsed since Yuan
Shih-kai's death has been almost entirely eventless, with the exception
of the crisis which arose over the war-issue, a matter which is fully
discussed elsewhere.

Meanwhile, in the closing months of 1916, the position was not a little
singular. Two great political parties had arisen through the
Revolution--the Kuo Ming Tang or Nationalists, who included all the
Radical elements, and the Chinputang or Progressives, whose adherents
were mainly men of the older official classes, and therefore
conservative. The Yunnan movement, which had led to the overthrow of
Yuan Shih-kai, had been inspired and very largely directed by the
scholar Liang Ch'i-chao, a leader of the Chinputang. To this party,
then, though numerically inferior to the Kuo Ming Tang, was due the
honour and credit of re-establishing the Republic, the Kuo Ming Tang
being under a cloud owing to the failure of the Second Revolution of
1913 which it had engineered. Nevertheless, owing to the Kuo Ming Tang
being more genuinely republican, since it was mainly composed of younger
and more modern minds, it was from its ranks that the greatest check to
militarism sprang; and therefore although its work was necessarily
confined to the Council-chamber, its moral influence was very great and
constantly representative of the civilian element as opposed to the
militarist. By staking everything on the necessity of adhering to the
Nanking Provisional Constitution until a permanent instrument was drawn
up, the Kuo Ming Tang rapidly established an ascendancy; for although
the Nanking Constitution had admittedly failed to bring representative
government because of the difficulty of defining powers in such a way as
to make a practical autocracy impossible, it had at least established as
a basic principle that China could no longer be ruled as a family
possession, which in itself marked a great advance on all previous
conceptions. President Li Yuan-hung's policy, in the circumstances, was
to play the part of a moderator and to seek to bring harmony to a mass
of heterogeneous elements that had to carry out the practical work of
government over four hundred millions of people.

His success was at the outset hampered by the appeal the military were
quick in making to a new method--to offset the power of Parliament in
Peking. We have already dealt with the evils of the circular telegram in
China--surely one of the most unexpected results of adapting foreign
inventions to native life. By means of these telegraphic campaigns a
rapid exchange of views is made possible among the provincial governors;
and consequently in the autumn of 1916, inspired by the Military Party,
a wholly illegal Conference of generals was organized by the redoubtable
old General Chang Hsun on the Pukow railway for the purpose of overawing
parliament, and securing that the Military Party retained a controlling
hand behind the scenes. It is perhaps unnecessary to-day to do more than
note the fact that the peace of the country was badly strained by this
procedure; but thanks to moderate counsels and the wisdom of the
President no open breach occurred and there is reason to believe that
this experiment will not be repeated,--at least not in the same way.[21]

The difficulty to be solved is of an unique nature. It is not that the
generals and the Military Party are necessarily reactionary: it is that,
not belonging to the intellectual-literary portion of the ruling
elements, they are less advanced and less accustomed to foreign ways,
and therefore more in touch with the older China which lingers on in the
vast agricultural districts, and in all those myriad of townships which
are dotted far and wide across the provinces to the confines of Central
Asia. Naturally it is hard for a class of men who hold the balance of
power and carry on much of the actual work of governing to submit to the
paper decrees of an institution they do not accept as being responsible
and representative: but many indications are available that when a
Permanent Constitution has been promulgated, and made an article of
faith in all the schools, a change for the better will come and the old
antagonisms gradually disappear.

It is on this Constitution that Parliament has been at work ever since
it re-assembled in August, 1916, and which is now practically completed.
Sitting together three times a week as a National Convention, the two
Houses have subjected the Draft Constitution (which was prepared by a
Special Parliamentary Drafting Committee) to a very exhaustive
examination and discussion. Many violent scenes have naturally marked
the progress of this important work, the two great parties, the Kuo Ming
Tang and the Chinputang, coming to loggerheads again and again. But in
the main the debates and the decisions arrived at have been satisfactory
and important, because they have tended to express in a concrete and
indisputable form the present state of the Chinese mind and its immense
underlying commonsense. Remarkable discussions and fierce enmities, for
instance, marked the final decision not to make the Confucian cult the
State Religion; but there is not the slightest doubt that in formally
registering this veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of
Chinese political thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the
ground left clear for the development of individualism and personal
responsibility in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae
of the greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which
must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even more
formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles of
decentralization and the advocates of centralization refusing for many
months to agree on the so-called Provincial system, and then fighting a
battle _a outrance_ on the question of whether this body of law should
form a chapter in the Constitution or be simply an annexure to the main
instrument. The agreement which was finally arrived at--to make it part
and parcel of the Constitution--was masterly in that it has secured that
the sovereignty of the people will not tend to be expressed in the
provincial dietines which have now been re-erected (after having been
summarily destroyed by Yuan Shih-kai), the Central Parliament being left
the absolute master. This for a number of years will no doubt be more of
a theory than a practice; but there is every indication that
parliamentary government will within a limited period be more successful
in China than in some European countries; and that the Chinese with
their love of well-established procedure and cautious action, will
select open debate as the best method of sifting the grain from the
chaff and deciding every important matter by the vote of the majority.
Already in the period of 1916-1917 Parliament has more than justified
its re-convocation by becoming a National Watch Committee.
Interpellations on every conceivable subject have been constant and
frequent; fierce verbal assaults are delivered on Cabinet Ministers; and
slowly but inexorably a real sense of Ministerial responsibility is
being created, the fear of having to run the gauntlet of Parliament
abating, if it has not yet entirely destroyed, many malpractices. In the
opinion of the writer in less than ten years Parliament will have
succeeded in coalescing the country into an organic whole, and will have
placed the Cabinet in such close daily relations with it that something
very similar to the Anglo-Saxon theory of government will be impregnably
entrenched in Peking. That such a miracle should be possible in extreme
Eastern Asia is one more proof that there are no victories beyond the
capacity of the human mind.

[Illustration: General Tsao-ao, the Hero of the Yunnan Rebellion of
1915-16, who died from the effects of the campaign.]

[Illustration: Liang Shih-yi, who was the Power behind Yuan Shih-kai,
now proscribed and living in exile at Hong-Kong.]

Meanwhile, for the time being, in China as in countries ten thousand
miles away, ministerial irresponsibility is the enemy; that is to say
that so-called Cabinet-rule, with the effacement of the Chief Executive,
has tended to make Cabinet Ministers removed from effective daily
control. All sorts of things are done which should not be done and men
are still in charge of portfolios who should be summarily expelled from
the capital for malpractices.[22] But although Chinese are slow to take
action and prefer to delay all decisions until they have about them the
inexorable quality which is associated with Fate, there is not the
slightest doubt that in the long run the dishonest suffer, and an
increasingly efficient body of men take their place. From every point of
view then there is reason for congratulation in the present position,
and every hope that the future will unroll peacefully.

A visit to Parliament under the new regime is a revelation to most men:
the candid come away with an impression which is never effaced from
their minds. There is a peculiar suggestiveness even in the location of
the Houses of the National Assembly. They are tucked away in the distant
Western city immediately under the shadow of the vast Tartar Wall as if
it had been fully expected when they were called into being that they
would never justify their existence, and that the crushing weight of the
great bastion of brick and stone surrounding the capital would soon
prove to them how futile it was for such palpable intruders to aspire to
national control. Under Yuan Shih-kai, as under the Manchus, they were
an exercise in the arm of government, something which was never to be
allowed to harden into a settled practice. They were first cousins to
railways, to electrical power, to metalled roadways and all those other
modern instances beginning to modify an ancient civilization entirely
based on agriculture; and because they were so distantly related to the
real China of the farm-yard it was thought that they would always stand
outside the national life.

That was what the fools believed. Yet in a copy of the rules of
procedure of the old Imperial Senate (Tzuchengyuan) the writer finds
this note written in 1910: "The Debates of this body have been
remarkable during the very first session. They make it seem clear that
the first National Parliament of 1913 will seize control of China and
nullify the power of the Throne. Result, revolution--" Though the dating
is a little confused, the prophecy is worthy of record.

The watchfulness of the special police surrounding the Parliament of
1916-1917 and the great number of these men also tells a story as
eloquent as the location of the building. It is not so much that any
contemplated violence sets these guardians here as the necessity to
advertise that there has been unconstitutional violence in the past
which, if possible, will be rigidly defeated in the future. Probably no
National Assembly in the world has been held up to greater contempt than
the Parliament of Peking and probably no body deserves it less. An
afternoon spent in the House of Representatives would certainly surprise
most open-minded men who have been content to believe that the Chinese
experiment was what some critics have alleged it to be. The Chinese as a
people, being used to guild-house proceedings, debates, in which the
welfare of the majority is decided after an examination of the
principles at stake, are a very old and well-established custom; and
though at present there are awkwardnesses and gaucheries to be noted,
when practice has become better fixed, the common sense of the race will
abundantly disclose itself and make a lasting mark on contemporary
history. There can be no doubt about this at all.

Take your seat in the gallery and see for yourself. The first question
which rises to the lips is--where are the young men, those crude and
callow youths masquerading as legislators which the vernacular press has
so excessively lampooned? The majority of the members, so far from being
young, are men of thirty or forty, or even fifty, with intelligent and
tired faces that have lost the Spring of youth. Here and there you will
even see venerable greybeards suffering from rheumy coughs who ought to
be at home; and though occasionally there is a lithe youngster in
European clothes with the veneer he acquired abroad not yet completely
rubbed off, the total impression is that of oldish men who have reached
years of maturity and who are as representative of the country and as
good as the country is in a position to-day to provide. No one who knows
the real China can deny that.

The Continental arrangement of the Members' desks and the raised tribune
of the Speaker, with its rows of clerks and recorders, make an
impression of orderliness, tinged nevertheless with a faint
revolutionary flavour. Perhaps it is the straight black Chinese hair and
the rich silk clothing, set on a very plain and unadorned background,
which recall the pictures of the French Revolution. It is somehow
natural in such circumstances that there should occasionally be dramatic
outbursts with the blood of offenders bitterly demanded as though we
were not living in the Twentieth Century when blood alone is admittedly
no satisfaction. The presence of armed House police at every door, and
in the front rows of the strangers' gallery as well, contributes to this
impression which has certain qualities of the theatre about it and is
oddly stimulating. China at work legislating has already created her
first traditions: she is proceeding deliberately armed--with the
lessons of the immediate past fully noted.

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