Why China Sees Red

VJHY CHINA. SEES PREFACE This monograph on the peculiar trials faced in China in 1925 has been written at Shanhai kwan under the shadow of the Great Wall, where it runs into the sea after coiling its way across the mountains like a giant serpent more powerful than the teeming millions who con structed it. Napoleon declared to his soldiers as they stood under the Pyramids of Egypt that forty centuries looked down upon them. While the antiquity of the great barrier of brick and stone that runs 1500 miles into Asia until it is lost in desert Cathay is less remote, for 2000 years it has been a magnet for the am bitions of neighbouring peoples and command ers and typified the Chinese struggle for power. Its approaches are crowned by defence works and signal towers which are the only mon uments still standing to the memory of for gotten dynasties while in the vicinity of the gate-way near the sea, which is so grandil oquently named the First Gate in the World, vi PREFACE the earth is still scarred by the modern trench system dug by the contending hosts of Wu Pei fu and Chang Tso-lin in 1924. It is in its vicinity that Chinese history can fitly be written. Shanhaikwan September, 1925. TABLE OF CONTENTS OHAPTBB PAGB I. THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE PROBLEM . . 1 II. THE WAR-LORDS AND THE COUP DETAT OF OCTOBER, 1924 37 III. BOLSHEVISM 71 IV. THE STUDENTS AND THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE 96 V. THE MIRROR OF THE CHINESE PRESS . .118 VI. THE JAPANESE AS POLITICAL SEERS . . 146 VII. THE UNEQUAL TREATIES 172 VIII, THE AMERICAN PLAN 202 IX THE MEN WHO UNDERSTAND THEY MUST NOT UNDERSTAND 231 X. THE FINAL RECKONING 261 APPENDIX A. OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE BE TWEEN CHINA AND THE POWERS ON THE SHANGHAI SHOOTING OFMAY 80, TO GETHER WITH CHINAS THIRTEEN DE MANDS - 289 APPENDIX B. DIGEST OF THE KILLING AND WOUNDING OF CHINESE IN PRE-TREATY DAYS .823 APPBNTWX C. RELATIVE POSITION OF THE POWERS IN THE TRADE AND SHIPPING OF CHINA 835 vii ILLUSTRATIONS The great city which has arisen in Hongkong as a result of the unparalleled development which has come in the past eighty-three years since its cession to the British crown Frontispiece 3TACING PAGE The Louza Police Station at Shanghai at the entrance of which the firing of May 30th took place, which started the political agitation throughout China 18 The crowd on the opposite side of the street at Shanghai watching the developments which took place subse quent to the firing 18 Shanghai volunteers on guard after the declaration of a state of emergency 19 The Great Wall at Shankaikwan against which Marshal Chang Tso-lins army was vainly hurled in frontal attacks 50 The defeated war-lord, Wu Pei-fu, photographed in his retreat on the Yangtze 61 Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, called the Christian General . . 61 The Soviet Ambassador Karakhan, photographed immedi ately prior to his sudden departure from Peking in September, 1925 82 Marshal Chang Tso-lin, of Manchuria 8 Bringing up a field gun Shanhaikwan front . ... 83 Men students marching with banners in the Peking student demonstration of June, 1925 98 ix x ILLUSTRATIONS VAOIHG PAGE The Peking demonstrations. Thousands of girl students are in the marching columns 98 The admission of the British police inspector in the Shang hai Mixed Court that the standing order in extreme necessity was shoot to kill brought out these posters in countless thousands 99 Crude cartoons posted on the gates of the capital showingarmed British, and Chinese corpses lying in pools of blood 130 of posters in English which plastered Peking im mediately after the shooting in Shanghai .... 131 Posters of this type were to be seen everywhere ., ...