CHAPTER

      Foreword
   I. Questions
  ii.  China before the nineteenth century
 iii.  China and the western powers
  IV.  Modern China
   V. Japan before the restoration
  VI.  Modern Japan
 vii.  Japan and China before 1914
viii.  Japan and China during the war
  ix.  The Washington conference
   X. Present forces and tendencies in the far east
  xi.  Chinese and western civilization contrasted
 xii.  The Chinese character
xiii.  Higher education in China
 xiv.  Industrialism in China
  XV.  The outlook for China
      appendix
      Index

The Ruler of the Southern Ocean was Shu (Heedless), the Ruler of the Northern Ocean was Hu (Sudden), and the Ruler of the Centre was Chaos.  Shu and Hu were continually meeting in the land of Chaos, who treated them very well.  They consulted together how they might repay his kindness, and said, “Men all have seven orifices for the purpose of seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing, while this poor Ruler alone has not one.  Let us try and make them for him.”  Accordingly they dug one orifice in him every day; and at the end of seven days Chaos died.—­[Chuang Tze, Legge’s translation.]

The Problem of China

CHAPTER I

QUESTIONS

A European lately arrived in China, if he is of a receptive and reflective disposition, finds himself confronted with a number of very puzzling questions, for many of which the problems of Western Europe will not have prepared him.  Russian problems, it is true, have important affinities with those of China, but they have also important differences; moreover they are decidedly less complex.  Chinese problems, even if they affected no one outside China, would be of vast importance, since the Chinese are estimated to constitute about a quarter of the human race.  In fact, however, all the world will be vitally affected by the development of Chinese affairs, which may well prove a decisive factor, for good or evil, during the next two centuries.  This makes it important, to Europe and America almost as much as to Asia, that there should be an intelligent understanding of the questions raised by China, even if, as yet, definite answers are difficult to give.

The questions raised by the present condition of China fall naturally into three groups, economic, political, and cultural.  No one of these groups, however, can be considered in isolation, because each is intimately bound up with the other two.  For my part, I think the cultural questions are the most important, both for China and for mankind; if these could be solved, I would accept, with more or less equanimity, any political or economic system which ministered to that end.  Unfortunately, however, cultural questions have little interest for practical men, who regard