To sum up the Chinese character is not easy.  Much of what strikes the foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have preserved an ancient civilization which is not industrial.  All this is likely to pass away, under the pressure of the Japanese, and of European and American financiers.  Their art is already perishing, and being replaced by crude imitations of second-rate European pictures.  Most of the Chinese who have had a European education are quite incapable of seeing any beauty in native painting, and merely observe contemptuously that it does not obey the laws of perspective.

The obvious charm which the tourist finds in China cannot be preserved; it must perish at the touch of industrialism.  But perhaps something may be preserved, something of the ethical qualities in which China is supreme, and which the modern world most desperately needs.  Among these qualities I place first the pacific temper, which seeks to settle disputes on grounds of justice rather than by force.  It remains to be seen whether the West will allow this temper to persist, or will force it to give place, in self-defence, to a frantic militarism like that to which Japan has been driven.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 96:  This vexes the foreigners, who are attempting to establish a very severe Press censorship in Shanghai.  See “The Shanghai Printed Matter Bye-Law.”  Hollington K. Tong, Review of the Far East, April 16, 1922.]

CHAPTER XIII

HIGHER EDUCATION IN CHINA

China, like Italy and Greece, is frequently misjudged by persons of culture because they regard it as a museum.  The preservation of ancient beauty is very important, but no vigorous forward-looking man is content to be a mere curator.  The result is that the best people in China tend to be Philistines as regards all that is pleasing to the European tourist.  The European in China, quite apart from interested motives, is apt to be ultra-conservative, because he likes everything distinctive and non-European.  But this is the attitude of an outsider, of one who regards China as a country to be looked at rather than lived in, as a country with a past rather than a future.  Patriotic Chinese naturally do not view their country in this way; they wish their country to acquire what is best in the modern world, not merely to remain an interesting survival of a by-gone age, like Oxford or the Yellowstone Park.  As the first step to this end, they do all they can to promote higher education, and to increase the number of Chinese who can use and appreciate Western knowledge without being the slaves of Western follies.  What is being done in this direction is very interesting, and one of the most hopeful things happening in our not very cheerful epoch.