Chapter XIII: Foreigners in China

Would it not seem strange if certain foreign countries owned and governed parts of New York, Washington, St. Louis, and others of our large cities? Yet that is exactly the condition in China. Not only does England own the island of Hong Kong and a portion of the neighboring mainland, but the best parts of nearly all important Chinese ports belong to Japan, Great Britain, France, Italy, and other European countries. These foreign colonies in China are called “concessions,” because they were conceded by the old Chinese government, sometimes after wars between the foreign countries and China. Most of them were merely leased for a long term of years, rather than given. But they are really foreign colonies within China.

China did not want to open her doors to the West any more than Japan or Korea did. The Chinese thought all other peoples were barbarians; and they still do, to a large extent—just as we still sometimes call them heathen. So the emperors decided that it would be better if their people did not come into contact any more than necessary with the rude traders and seamen from the outside world. To begin with, therefore, the Chinese quite willingly allowed the foreigners to build up ports and cities on certain bits of Chinese territory turned over to the outsiders.

Foreigners Make Many Improvements

Many of the pieces of land leased to the foreign governments were so poor that the Chinese officials must have snickered to themselves when they gave them to the despised “barbarians.” Where the great modern foreign part of Shanghai now is there was little more than a swamp. The pretty little foreign business and residential island of Shameen in Canton was a patch of sand in the river, covered with water at high tide and with garbage or refuse at low tide. So it was with most of what have now become the most modern parts of many Chinese cities. In the beginning the Chinese thought they were holding the “barbarians” back by letting them live only on such pieces of ground. But now, seeing how much better off the foreigners are under their own laws in cities they have built for themselves, many Chinese wish that the concessions belonged to China.

There is at least one very good argument in their favor. If a Chinese politician or general or thief or murderer gets into one of the foreign concessions, the Chinese government cannot do anything to him. If he puts his stolen money into one of the foreign banks in a concession, the Chinese from whom he stole it cannot get it back. We naturally would not like it if France or England or China or any other country protected our criminals in certain parts of our own cities. So we are rather glad the United States has no concessions in China, except that Americans help to govern the part of Shanghai known as the International Settlement.

Foreigners Have Their Own Laws

After the World War Germany and Austria and Russia lost their concessions in China, and also the privilege of trying their own people in China under their own laws. But if an American were to rob or kill a Chinese, or anyone else, in any part of China, he could not be tried by a Chinese judge according to Chinese laws and be shut up in a Chinese prison if he were found guilty. All the Chinese could do to him would be to arrest him and take him to the nearest American consul. If he were charged with only a small crime, the consul himself could try him. If it were something important he would have to be taken before the regular American court in Shanghai presided over by a judge appointed by the President in Washington. He would be tried by American laws, and if he were found guilty he would be sent to an American prison, perhaps in the Philippines.

Strangely enough, the Chinese themselves wanted the foreigners to have this privilege of extraterritoriality (as it is called), just as they wanted them to take the concessions. They did not care for the bother of trying to make the rough seamen and other “barbarians” who came to their ports behave themselves. They preferred that the “barbarians’” own governments should attend to such matters. It was much as if the boys of one school had gone to another school to play football. Naturally the teachers of the “home” school would rather have the visiting teachers look after the conduct of their own pupils.

But in time the Chinese discovered that this privilege of not being subject to the laws and officials of China was an advantage to the foreigners in the country, just as the concessions were. From every country go out bad as well as good men, and some foreigners took advantage of the situation to do things in China which they should not have done. Then consuls and judges have sometimes seemed too lenient in dealing with their countrymen. Besides, the Chinese say that it is not fair to a great nation like theirs to allow other peoples to have such privileges. It makes China “lose face.”

Yet even now the people of fourteen different nationalities, all European except ourselves and the Japanese, have extraterritoriality in China. Russians and Germans and Austrians, however, can be tried in Chinese courts and sent to Chinese prisons. Up in Manchuria I saw more than two hundred Russian prisoners in a Chinese penitentiary, and at least one of them was afterward executed. There were two or three Germans in prison in Peking, and a few in other parts of the country. Now many of the Chinese are demanding that all foreign nations give up legal privileges, as well as concessions. But foreign governments say that it would not be fair to their people living in China to do this until Chinese courts become less corrupt and more independent of local dictators, and until Chinese prisons are improved.

Thousands of Foreigners in China

You would probably be surprised, as we were, to find how many foreigners live in China. There are thousands of Americans, to say nothing of all the other nationalities. Perhaps half of these are business men, many of them living in Shanghai. Some of them are interested in the Chinese people, but too many are interested only in the money they can make out of them. When they leave their offices they go to their own clubs or parks or golf-links, where no Chinese are admitted except as servants. Many of them never learn to speak Chinese, even though they live in China half their lives. In fact some who were born there cannot do so. They talk to their servants and clerks and rickshaw-men in pidgin-English, which is a dreadful “language” made up of Chinese sentences translated into words that are really not English at all. “Master no wantchee catchee sampan chop chop” is the way they would say, “I do not wish to take the boat yet.”

If any of you ever go out to China to represent an American company I hope you will not look down upon the Chinese as some business men do. Parts of China are made as ugly by advertising billboards as many of our own roads and railroads are at home. Some foreign companies even paint their advertisements on temples and city walls. When they receive such treatment, it is no wonder that the Chinese occasionally call us _Yang-gwei-tze_ or _Fang-gwy-lo_, that is, “foreign devils.”

Many Mission Schools

There are at least ten thousand foreign missionaries in China, more of them Americans than of any other one nationality. They learn Chinese, study Chinese history, and take much interest in the people. Chinese temples are everywhere, but there are now many churches also. I do not remember a single large city anywhere in China that has not at least one church and a foreign missionary or two. Some have many more than that. Great establishments, such as schools, hospitals, and universities, have been built by foreigners in Peking and in nearly all the provincial capitals. Hard-working American and British and other men and women go about the country holding services in the villages and curing sick people.

High school girls who are attending an American mission school in
Shantung Province. They are not allowed to have bound feet.
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In the olden days missionaries suffered hardships in China. They lived in miserable Chinese mud-brick houses and ate poor native food. Often they caught dreadful diseases and sometimes they were mobbed and even killed. But now nearly all of them live as comfortably as they could at home. They build good foreign houses, eat their own kind of food, and have more servants than they could possibly have in the United States. Of course some things are not so pleasant as they are at home, but others are more so. Missionaries living far back in the interior still sometimes have to rough it. I spent two days with a French priest who had lived all alone in a miserable little Chinese city for twenty-five years. He had never been back to France and expected to die at his post. Most Protestant missionaries go home for a year every seven years, and they usually have their families with them.

Although foreign missionaries have been working among the Chinese for nearly a hundred years there are by no means as many Chinese Christians as there are Chinese Mohammedans. Yet it must be very interesting work to be a missionary in China. A doctor or a teacher, especially, should get great satisfaction out of helping the Chinese, for in some things they are not yet able to help themselves.

Many Chinese are now objecting to mission schools. They say that every country should control its own schools. They believe the children will lose their patriotism for China and become attached to the countries their missionary teachers come from. They ask us if we would like it if Chinese started schools for American boys and girls in the United States and tried to make them Buddhists or Confucianists. However, China herself has not yet built enough schools for all her children.

There are Chinese Christians who wish to establish a Chinese Church also, and quite a number of missionaries agree with them. They say that they should pay their own way in religious matters as well as in any other. They cannot see any good reason why they should be divided as Methodists, Presbyterians, and so forth just because Christians in America and Europe are so divided. The time may perhaps come when nearly all Chinese Christians will join together to form a true Chinese Church.