Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. IV.pdf/12



LI-HUNG-CHANG stands foremost among the viceroys of the eighteen provinces of China as the man who exerts, probably, the greatest influence on the progress and destinies of the Empire. Foreigners generally know him best as the associate of Tseng-quo-fan, and Colonel Gordon, in dealing to the Taiping rebels their final blow; but more recently he has established the Nanking Arsenal, the first of the kind in China, and has, besides this, been familiarizing the Chinese soldiery with foreign discipline and drill. To his influence also, direct as well as indirect, the country owes the comparative security which, for the present, she enjoys; and the other indications to be found of growing progress in the unremitting labours of her various arsenals and training schools, as well as in her fleet of steam gun-boats and iron-clads, which, built by native skill, and launched from native dockyards, manned, and officered, too, by native crews, are lending security to trade both on the rivers and along the coast.

These home-built vessels have been armed with modern weapons of the finest make, and are ready at all times to defend the interests of their flag in the China Sea.

On land, advance in the same direction is no less apparent, troops trained in vast numbers in the modern arts of war, and armed with the best-known weapons, have already done good work in suppressing rebellion, and in extending the influence of the central government. According to the latest accounts they have cleared Chinese territory of the Mahometan insurgents, who, until recently, held some important strongholds in the Empire.

It is commonly, and let me add erroneously, supposed in England that little or no progress is being made in China. All eyes are turned towards Japan. There it has become the fashion to discover the pet example of Eastern advancement. Out of the darkness of semi-barbarism, Japan has shot up, planet-like, in search of a wider orbit and a brighter sun. While China, seemingly only faithful to the gravitating influences of ancient tradition, is, too, undergoing a gradual process of transition and development. Yet she esteems the philosophy of her sages as highly as in former days, and maintains her belief in the old institutions which have supported her in proud isolation and independence for so many centuries. For all that, and notwithstanding the obstacles to progress presented by her Feng-shui, or Geomancy, from sheer necessity, and the instinct of self-preservation, she is drifting slowly towards our Western ways, adopting our sciences, educating her sons at our universities, remodelling important branches of her administration, and making concessions to meet the friendly requirements of closer foreign intercourse. Nor is this all. Her merchants can now boast of their Steam Navigation Companies, and, a fact perhaps less gratifying to us, they are so thoroughly masters of what they have undertaken in this direction, as to be competing successfully with foreign companies in the carrying trade on the coast and rivers of their country. In process of time the same remark will apply to every branch of their trade and industry. China will then be able to supply not only the staple material grown on her own soil, but skilled labour and machinery to produce the fabrics which she is now obliged to import, and upon which our own trade mainly depends. Her plains are teeming with millions of poor, patient labourers, ready to turn their hands to any industry that will furnish them with the simple necessaries of life, men capable of being trained to engage in the highest branches of skilled labour. Her mountains abound in metals and minerals, and her vast coal-fields are stored up to kindle the fires of a coming age of steam and iron. Western nations have woke the old dragon from her sleep of ages, and now she stands at bay, armed with iron claws and fangs of foreign steel.

It may be a long time yet before she will take her place among the powerful nations of the earth, but the civilizing agencies which now operate on the Central Flowery Land all tend to further the accomplishment of an end which, in the Chinese interest, is so much to be desired. The tide of civilization, too, which now annually carries labourers by their tens of thousands towards other shores, is not without its influence on the parent country. For abroad the Chinaman is quick to learn, so quick and so successful, indeed, as to make him a formidable rival to the artizans and operatives of the West, and he invariably returns to his native town taking home with him the knowledge as well as the capital which he has acquired abroad.