Some of China's Problems

PRESIDENT STAPELLS: When the whole civilized world is seething with so much industrial and political unrest it is refreshing for us to have the privilege of having a message from that haven of rest, China. (Laughter.) Our papers are teeming with indications of those upheavals to which I just referred, but we do not find anything about the Chinaman striking for higher and still higher wages, and then howling his head off about the high cost of living. We don't hear anything about the Chinaman urging his government to put certain great reforms on the statute books, and then promptly voting that government out of power. Nor do we find him building up a strong platform of religious doctrines, and then meeting in his assemblies and conferences and synods and jumping at his brother delegate's throat in an effort to break down that platform. So I say it is refreshing to have a message today from the country where such things are not taking place. We are fortunate in the medium through which this message is coming to us. If he were an insider looking out, so to speak, a Chinaman, we might feel that he was more or less prejudiced, and painting his picture accordingly; but as he is an outsider looking in, a Britisher, a Canadian who has been seventeen years in that country, knows it from top to bottom, and in and out and around, we will hear a real historic account, I am

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Doctor Service is a graduate of the University of Toronto in Arts and Medicine. He went to China seventeen years ago and since that time has been engaged in medical work in the Province of Sze Chwan, the largest and most populous Province in all China.

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sure. As to the medium, Dr. Service is quiet and modest, but a very able man, who is so anxious to keep abreast of the times in his profession that early in the year he came to Johns Hopkins University to take a post-graduate course in their surgical department, and I am perfectly convinced that if he wanted to stay there they would have made his stay a permanent one.

DR. SERVICE: With all the remarks of the chairman I do not know that I am in perfectly hearty accord. Perhaps you may not think the chairman was altogether right in some things he said, before I have finished. When asked what I might speak to you about this afternoon, I thought perhaps the most interesting line I could follow would be something about some problems of China.

Chinese problems are very numerous. If we were to talk about all the problems of China I am afraid you would be here till tomorrow or next day, or perhaps the next week. Among all those problems I shall merely mention three or four, and I may enlarge upon them a little more in detail. Being a medical missionary, I suppose I am allowed to quote a verse of Scripture. There is a verse of Scripture which says that "No man liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself." That may be applied to nations, and I think you will see the application of that text of Scripture this afternoon as I proceed. We are going to talk about China, and I think you will agree with me that China cannot live to herself, nor can she even die to herself. We are living in a great bundle of nationhood nowadays, and what is the concern of one is the concern of all.

The first problem I will merely mention; that is the problem of approach. The east is the east, and the west is the west. One of the first things we have to learn when we go to China is to get the Chinese point of view; not only learn the difficult Chinese language, but see things the way the Chinese see them, because the Chinese thought-channels are almost the antithesis of those of western minds. Therefore we have to become accustomed to the Chinese points of view.

The second problem is that of language and literature. I cannot discuss this, but simply want to say that the Chinese language is one of the most difficult of languages, and it is a great barrier for the Chinese people themselves. I say it is a great barrier, not because the Chinese people are unable to acquire their own language, that is, in the way of speaking it, but because it is a very difficult language for the average Chinese to learn to read. But it is a great problem to the world, because now that China is developing and her economics are unfolding and her educational system seems to be extending, and many other conditions are changing in China, her language forms one of the greatest barriers in the way of Chinese progress. The result is that during recent years, especially the last fourteen or fifteen years, arrangements have been made, mainly on the part of foreigners resident in China, to contribute largely toward the unfolding or the evolution of the Chinese language, so that now we have thousands of books that have been translated into the Chinese language, and foreigners are assisting, especially in the development of the scientific nomenclature of China. The Chinese mind is not a scientific mind; it never has been; they have never had any scientific terms in their language. The result is that the moment one begins to teach or talk about anything scientific-medical, dental, nursing terms, physical terms, chemical terms, biological terms, theological terms, or business terms, are all perfectly new; and the result is that foreigners have had to assist the Chinese to add tens of thousands of new terms to the Chinese language. The Chinese also, with the help of the foreigners, are now undertaking to develop and to propagate throughout the country what is known as the new system of script, really a Chinese system of shorthand, which will do very much towards the increase of the Chinese literature. That is another one of the problems.

The third one is the problem of industry and commerce. This is a huge problem which one cannot develop in detail, but I simply want to say that after a residence of seventeen years in China, I have come to the conclusion that potentially, at least, the Chinese people and the Chinese country are capable of immeasureable expansion. The Chinese people are innately a great commercial and industrious people. I do not believe there is a more highly developed people in the world, with a commercial sense and with commercial aptitude, than the Chinese people. Then from the point of view of Chinese resources it is impossible to exaggerate those conditions. I can merely refer to two or three outstanding features of Chinese industry and commerce. First of all, take the coal. There are immeasurable quantities of coal in China, so much that experts who have investigated conditions there have claimed that there is sufficient coal in China to supply the whole world at the present rate of consumption for the next thousand years. Then take, for instance, one of the latest developments. In the central part of China, the province of Yunnan, which has until the last fifteen years been the most anti-foreign province in the whole country, in fact many foreigners, especially missionaries, have been rioted out of this country, especially out of its capital city of Tong Chau. During the last two years especially it has been found that the province of Hunan is one of the most resourceful of all the provinces, especially in the line of antimony; it is said that eighty per cent. of the world's output of antimony is now found in that one province, in addition to tin, zinc and other metals in this great city of Changsha, which has time and again rioted foreigners out and destroyed their buildings. That city is being completely reconstructed; the old city wall of that famous old Chinese provincial capital has been completely demolished, and where it formerly stood is now being made into a great boulevard. In addition to that, wonderful highways are being constructed in and around the city, and this is a new feature of Chinese development. In addition to that, a great railroad has been built from Changsha hundreds of miles into the cities of Hankow and Canton. To those who know the conditions of Chinese mind and attitude, it is wonderful to think of that province coming forward in industries and commerce. I wish I had time to allude to the possibilities of the milling of flour and the production of oils. Up to very recently the world has known scarcely anything about the enormous productivity of the Chinese in the way of oils, vegetable oils especially. You have all heard of the soya bean, which is now being exported to foreign countries to the extent of thirty millions of dollars worth a year, and in the United States its oil has formed a large percentage of the soap that is being manufactured. Then there is another oil called wood oil, manufactured from. the tona tree, and this has been exported from China in recent years to the extent of millions of dollars, and is the basis of the best perfumes that are now being made in this and other countries. These are merely extras; I have not time to refer to the great cotton industry. China is perhaps the greatest manufacturer of cotton goods, cotton yarns, and cotton manufactured goods in any part of the world, and the demands the Chinese have now for all sorts of cotton textile goods are simply amazing. Textile mills are being developed at Shanghai and other large cities, and millions of money are being invested along those lines. I cannot follow this line any further, but I simply want to urge this, that in the development of Chinese commerce and industry, the foreign governments and foreign peoples must assist the Chinese in the solution of these great problems.

China has a wonderfully fertile people and a wonderfully fertile soil, so there is an illimitable amount of human labor: Her natural resources are so great that there is, potentially at least, an enormous amount of capital yet undeveloped; but meanwhile foreigners have to go into China and help her develop those great natural resources and utilize what is there to be found in the way of human material and natural intelligence, frugality, and many others of those splendid qualities of the Chinese, utilize those in developing for China her own industry and her own commerce. Before many decades have passed I am quite sure you will find that the Pacific Ocean has become one of the great theatres of commerce in this world. We know that in the course of history civilization has gradually passed from the ancient Nile and the Euphrates across the Mediterranean, and later across the Atlantic, and finally across the great American continent, and it is now beginning to cross the Pacific, and you will find that in the not distant future the Pacific Ocean is to be one of the great regions for the development of commerce.

As to transportation and communication in China I have only a word to say. One of the greatest needs in order to develop the industry and commerce of China is greater facilities for transportation. Now, China is very fortunate in having some very splendid waterways. If you study the map of China you will see what splendid waterways she has. Here is the Yellow River in the north. This river is one of the most devastating rivers in the world, because annually it carries off hundreds and thousands of people. It needs attention given to it. A few million dollars, with splendid engineering skill applied, would make that river one of the greatest rivers in the world. Here is the great Yangtse, navigable for a thousand miles, and the upper Yangtse, one of the most difficult rivers to navigate. I have been up and down this river six times. The first thousand -miles are splendidly navigable, and they have fine steamers all the way through, right into the heart of Szechwan. The upper Yangtse is navigable by Chinese boats, but not till late years have they had anything but light draught steamers, and those have not been a success. An expert says that with the expenditure of only $500,000 the upper Yangtse could be put in much better condition for navigation. This province in which I live, called Szechwan, has four streams, because three or four splendid tributaries of that river in that one province fall south into the river. Those splendid highways gather to their common centre. In the northern part of China there are very few of those great waterways; most of them are down in the south.

The misery is that six-sevenths of the total population of China is to be found in one-third of the area of China, that is, down here in the south and along the east. That is perfectly natural. Now, there are millions and tens and hundreds of millions in the interior of China. Up here in the province of Szechwan, my home, the largest province of China, the most resourceful of all the provinces of China, we find the largest population of any province of China. There are approximately seventy millions of people in this province, and yet they are not closely packed. We can travel for miles and miles in the upper country, the mountainous districts, and never see Chinese. With the development of railways this interior part of the country will open out.

At present China has only 6,500 miles of railroad. Before the war there was also 2,400 miles of railroad under construction, but the war prevented the construction of even that 2,400 miles. Before the war there were concessions granted to foreign companies and syndicates for the construction of 14,000 miles of railway; but what are they among so many? I understand the United States has somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 miles of railroad. This is a larger country than the United States with Alaska thrown in, and obviously this country needs 200,000 miles of railway. You can understand the difficulty under which the Chinese are laboring, and will labor in the years to come, in the way of developing their industry and their commerce.

A word as to the financial situation of China. This is one of the greatest of all the problems that China has to face. China is practically bankrupt. That is true notwithstanding the fact that China is perhaps the most resourceful country of all the countries of the world. I make that statement without reservation, but her resources are undeveloped. She is potentially the richest country in all the world, and yet she is bankrupt. Her treasuries have been ruined since the war broke out, through the condition of turmoil, fighting going on all over the country, especially in the southern part, and there has been little peace. By nature the Chinese are a peaceful people, but the ferment for fighting seems to have gotten in among them, and they have had rather an unquiet time during recent years. All these conditions and the European war, which has completely demoralized exchange, and which has robbed the country of a very large supply of her original stock of silver, together with the general brigandage throughout the whole country-because there have been hundreds of thousands of brigands let loose in that part of the country, so that the Chinese themselves have been unable to do any business, much less the foreigners-have demoralized Chinese finances. The result is that in order to carry on the internecine warfare that has been going on in China for years, the so-called Northern Government-as a matter of fact there is no government at the present time-has been borrowing money by the tens of millions from Japan. On what guarantees? Of course Japan, being a very astute nation, has demanded satisfactory guarantees from China. The result is that Japan at the present time has practically control of a great many mining concessions, a good share of the small amount of railway mileage of the country, and many other things that are in China.

That is a very serious situation. China is practically under the financial thumb, at least, of Japan at the present time, and this problem of China can only be solved by the co-operative help and the sympathetic help of all the nations, I mean of the larger nations. But former methods of finance in China have not been very satisfactory, and it is realized now, on the part of financiers and governments, that there must be a complete revolution in the attitude of foreign powers financially towards the Chinese people in order that the Chinese may rehabilitate itself. The foreign governments must take hold of this financial problem and assist the Chinese in settling their affairs, and not leave it solely to Japan.

Then a word as to the political situation in China. It is certainly a very sad one. China has been seething with nationalistic movements. We have heard of them in India and Japan, and that same movement has been stirring China during the recent years. A very wise man wrote two books known as "China in Convulsions." That term strictly applies to China and has applied to China during recent years. There is no such thing as a settled government in China today. The only government there is, the only attempted control, is military authority. The army is composed of men who are noted for beating, for looting, and for robbing, and the great majority of the soldiers under their control are nothing but brigands and ruffians, and they have robbed the whole country and kept the country in a state of ferment. In my own work in this capital city of Chengtu, in my own hospital, we have had many hundreds of wounded, and in our own city we have had thousands of killed right within the city walls on account of the fighting within those areas. China has retrograded politically in recent years; she has lost Formosa, she has lost the suzerainty of Korea, she has practically lost the southern portion .of Manchuria, south of the capital city of Mukden. I say she has retrograded politically. You have all heard of foreign concessions. There are many of those foreign concessions throughout the country. There is what is known as extra territoriality in China. That is an ignominious thing. The Chinese judicial system, Chinese customs and the Chinese salt monopoly are all under the control of foreign governments who depute men to organize and control; and by the way, it has been a. mercy to the Chinese nation that that system has existed during recent years, because the salt monopoly and the Chinese customs have brought in millions of money to the so-called Chinese government in the north that the Chinese government would not have otherwise had, and the saving of the situation so far as politics and finance in China has been from the presence of foreigners in that part of the country.

I cannot stop to discuss the relation between China and Japan, but I want to say a few words about the diplomatic situation in China. The Chinese are not a people to be feared; they are a peaceful people; but I want to say that the world cannot be made safe for democracy until China herself is made safe for her own peaceful people and for all law-abiding foreigners who live in the country.--I think that is an axiom of law. Now, there are several things which make any portion of the earth a diplomatic danger-spot. Some of those features are these: There is the vast area; China, with her enormous population, has not extensive markets; defencelessness; and a corrupt government. You find these things inside everything in China, and these make China a diplomatic danger-spot at present. The dangers are in two directions-first, in isolation, and second, in exploitation. You cannot leave China alone; China will develop, and if we attempt to leave China alone she will develop along her own lines, therefore there is one line of danger which we must avoid. In the next place, we must not allow China to be exploited by any sinister power or powers. The line of procedure is therefore to protect China against all external aggression and against all internal exploitation. Speaking of China's external aggression, it is -the government and governmental authorities that must handle that sort of thing to secure China. Speaking as a missionary I say that the missionary propaganda comes into China to secure the proper and satisfactory development of .the human material in China, and that obviously must be done.

I just want to refer in this connection to how this can be done. I want to say a word about the medical problem in China. It is a huge one, and there is not time for discussion of it, but I want to say that you cannot rear a strong nation on the basis of weaklings. Now, the Chinese are a strong race physically, but after I have said a few words you will understand the terrific ravages of disease amongst those people. In order to make China a safe place for her own people and a safe place for the world I want to emphasize a few features about the medical situation in China. In the first place, look at China from the point of view of public health. There is no such thing there as a public health bureau. There is what you might call a latent sanitary conscience, but it is exceedingly latent; but what we foreigners have to do is to draw out from the Chinese and build up that latent sanitary conscience. Look at China just for a moment. 400,000,000 people, constituting one quarter of the world's population, resident on a continent which contains more than one half of the total population of the whole world, living under the physical conditions in which the Chinese live. I say this is a menace to the world, and as foreigners we cannot afford, quite apart from any humanitarian or missionary considerations, to neglect China from the physical point of view. No one knows the birth-rate; no one knows the death-rate. A mere guess would say the death rate is forty per thousand; that is at least double the rate of our own country. We estimate that 2,000,000 Chinese die annually from tuberculosis alone; that anywhere from seventy percent to eighty percent die under one year of age; that probably thirty percent to thirty-five percent, some doctors say even more, babies die within the first month of infancy of lockjaw alone, and we know of the ravages of plagues and zymotics of various kinds; we know that 67,000 people die under seven years in the northern part of the country as the result of Manchurian plague, or, as we know it, the bubonic plague, with 100 percent of mortality. Why do not more die? Simply because the eight or ten or twelve missionary doctors in northern China fling themselves into the breach against that terrific plague. Now, had it not been for those foreign doctors tackling the Chinese government and forcing them to take action, that plague would have spread not only over northern China, but down the coast as it did last year when there was a recrudescence of the plague condition at Nanking, the old capital, and carried off two thousand Chinese there, and was again stamped out by the foreign doctors. You can imagine what would happen if a plague like that got loose without any attempt at quarantine, with the increase of commerce, with the hundreds of steamers. We are always lined up at the foreign steamer, and our teeth and hair and skin are examined. Why? They are afraid of us clean foreigners bringing in some disease. How much more must we be careful when we have to face the problem of Chinese and Japanese and Hindus coming into our country. We have to be careful. So from the point of view of selfishness alone we have to consider China that way.

There is only one way to solve this physical problem of China, and that is by means of medical education. We have tried hospitals, and we have tried many other things in China on a small scale, and as one doctor has said, in China we are getting nowhere. One old doctor friend of mine who has been in China twenty odd years said to me, just before I came home, "Service, I have been working away here for over twenty years, curing itch and other things, and there is just as much itch today as there ever was in China. I am going to quit curing itch, and I am going to teach the Chinese how to cure it." That is just an illustration of what we will have to do. It is an impossible task for the Christian church in western lands to import 400,000 nurses, 200,000 doctors, and 70,000 dentists into China in order to meet the needs of China. That is a physical and a financial impossibility. You cannot secure the men, you cannot secure the money, you cannot provide the equipment necessary for them; it is impossible; therefore the only way to tackle the problem is through the medical education of these Chinese. The medical association has undertaken to do the work with the great Rockefeller foundation, who are going into Pekin in the north and Shanghai in the south, and the great centres in China in which medical education will be done. There are other centres, including Chengtu, in which I live, in which a great effort is being made to outfit dental, medical and nursing institutions. Here is a great problem which we shall have to face, and the new opportunity is opening up before the Christian world not only along industrial, commercial, financial and other lines in China, but especially along the lines of reconstructing China socially, morally and physically. From that point of view a new opportunity, nation-wide in scope and world-wide in its possible influences is unfolding before the Christian world, and we must be ready to meet the situation.

Just a word about the educational situation. Here is another problem, and the Chinese are not able to tackle it. They have tried it, but have- not been able to succeed at it because of their troubles in the war. There is ninety per cent. of illiteracy in China, and the foreigners will have to solve that problem. Missionary education has been responsible for the new educational system governing in China. During my day alone there has been a complete turnover of the educational system. When I went to China I saw the old educational regime, with all its outstanding features, including those "stalls," and I saw them right there in my own city of Chengtu, but those have disappeared, and in its place is a new city government institution. The Chinese governmental educational system is based upon that of the missionary schools in China, and I want, to say that that educational system in China has been largely developed by men of the type of our own Mr. Wallace, son of Professor Wallace of Victoria University, who has organized the finest educational system in all of China, and we are the model in west China where that has been organized.

I want to say a word about the moral problem, the social problem of China. I will just merely refer to it. We have a great question of housing and cleaning up the homes of China so that they may build new houses and live healthfully in their new homes. We have the great problem of the manhood of China and the children of China who live under the most indescribable conditions morally, physically and intellectually. They live in a constant moral miasma. We have that social problem of life, and the Chinese are helpless, they know nothing about it at all, and we simply have to impart our great social ideas and outlooks and features into that country. That is why we are there as foreigners. I work no eight-hour day out there. I would far rather be there than here, but we need thousands more of the best young men and women we have in our lands, and import them bodily into China, with tens of millions of money, together with proper plans to work with, and we will go along way towards cleaning up China.

Just a word about the moral problem of China. This is a big subject, and I am not going to speak too strongly about it, but I want to say that the Chinese have had a fight on, a great political fight. They have overturned their form of government. They have become a sort of quasi-republic; it is such in name only, but they have made the attempt, and they are going to have a greater

trouble to clean up China morally. We have the problem of opium, the problem of alcohol, and of the social evil with its result and venereal diseases; and again, I say, they are helpless, and it is a great problem that the foreigners must help China to solve. Just think of it; the Chinese have demonstrated their fine moral fibre, their strength of character, in what way? Well, you know a little about onslaughts the Chinese people themselves made on the opium evil, and how they practically eradicated the opium evil in China. They went at it in a more masterly way and realized better results than we have in this country in attacking the alcohol evil. I know what I speak of, because when I went to China I saw the fruits of the opium traffic; for hundreds and hundreds of miles along the river I saw the opium growing-a beautiful sight to the eye but during the last twelve years I have not seen a stalk of opium; they have demolished the whole business until, during the war, when there was so much internal trouble, you would expect a certain amount of recrudescence. But unfortunately China is up against aggression at the present time, and Japan is the aggressor, and last year she introduced eighteen tons of morphine. Now, if you know that morphine is given in a small dosage of a sixth and a quarter of a grain, eighteen tons of opium, with all the implements of injection, landed from Japan into China is a menace. Not only that, but Japan smuggled into China last year over two thousand chests of opium. What does that mean? You have all heard

of the opium burning undertaken by the Chinese last year. I want to mention that here, because it reveals the Chinese strength of character. There was a residuum of opium yet in China to the extent of 1,207 chests, and the Chinese government, with all its panic and bankruptcy, actually spent thirteen millions of dollars in buying out that residuum of opium, not to make medicine, but to burn; and they spent three weeks in China in burning thirteen millions of dollars' worth of opium. Where does this opium come from, that Japan is importing into China? She does not produce it herself. Unfortunately it comes from India, and here is where we will have to get at the problem. We will have to stop the importation of opium from India into Japan, because it is simply a method for getting it into China.

A final word about the religious problem in China. Sometimes we hear an evangelistic missionary talk about China, and the question is put, "What place do you find out there, anyway? I could see room for a doctor, and for a nurse, and for a teacher, but what are you out there for as a preacher?" Well, I am not a preacher, I am a doctor, but I practise a good deal, (Laughter.) and I just want to say that the evangelistic work in China stands for three things: Firstly, it stands for new standards of morality and spiritual experience. Secondly, the evangelistic work in China brings to the Chinese a new tonic; and in the third place, it emancipates Chinese from the great spiritual captivity which breaks the spirit of the people. I have lived in China for seventeen years, and I know how the Chinese live under the spell of idolatry, and I know that the air in China and the earth in China and the water in China, everywhere above you and below you and around you, is peopled with devils and demons and ghosts, and the whole mass of the people are living in that dread atmosphere of fear, of despair all the days of their lives, day and night. Now, how can you attempt to construct democracy on a basis of that kind, with people living in horror and dread and fear as a result of that belie,? Are those things for which the Christian religion stands needed in China? Well, I have spoken about the physical conditions in China, public health, etc. and I want to say that perhaps the most stupendous failure in China is the moral failure; and it is that which the Christian religion, through the medium of its missionaries, and its great boards, and the millions of money it is pouring into China, has to face. There is that great universal corruption for which China is known; how are you going to stem that tide of universal corruption? How can you develop a strong, healthy nation from a nation living in such conditions? We have to introduce a new business morality into China. An undeveloped state of common belief is a menace to the whole world; and while we may leave it to railroad constructionists and diplomats and politicians and many other residents of China who must all contribute their share in the reconstruction of China-and a large share, a very large share must those men contribute toward the reconstruction of China-I want to say that we missionaries, whether doctors or nurses or ministers or teachers or translators, or whatever we are, we missionaries have something to take to China which is quite as essential to the Chinese people, and perhaps in some senses more fundamental, and that is why we are there. (Loud applause.)

PRESIDENT STAPELLS : You indicate by your applause that you will agree with me when I say that that was a perfectly marvellous address. The doctor had an address which ordinarily would have taken an hour and a half, and he put it into thirty minutes. I want you to accept our thanks, Dr. Service, for this wonderfully interesting and inspiring address.