By Jonathan Spence
Little, Brown & Company, Boston 1969, 334 pp, US$7.95
Reviewed by Charles C. Clayton
For more than three centuries Americans and Europeans have been, as the author suggests, trying to change China. Some have been missionaries, some educators, some technical advisers; a few were adventurers and soldiers of fortune. Nearly all of them failed miserably, largely became they were convinced of the superiority of Western civilization and were determined to remake the Chinese in their own image. The cycle is now complete. Today Chinese advisers from Taiwan are competing with those from other countries in many areas and offering Chinese exipertise to the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Prof. Spence, who teaches Chinese history at Yale University, does not underscore the moral of this book, although it is fairly obvious. Instead he lets the China advisers speak for themselves. From the hundreds who labored in China he has selected 16 and he notes that "their cumulative lives have a curious continuity". In his foreword he writes: "They experienced similar excitement and danger, entertained similar hopes, learnt to bear with similar frustrations, and operated with a combination of integrity and deviousness. They bared their own souls and mirrored their own societies in their actions, yet in doing so they highlighted fundamental Chinese values."
He begins with two Jesuit scientists of the 17th century, Adam Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest, who went to China as missionaries and became astronomers to the Manchus. Another of the missionaries was the American Protestant doctor, Peter Parker, who set up a hospital in Canton and established the Medical Missionary Society. In the author's opinion, the greatest China hand of all was an Irishman, Robert Hart, who served as Inspector General of Chinese Customs from 1864 until 1908. Hart, he notes, "had been the most powerful Westerner in China for decades, and yet the Service he built up and controlled had barely affected ,the basic structure of the Chinese economy". His predecessor was Horatio Nelson Lay, an Englishman who served from 1859 to 1864. The author credits him with creating the Chinese Imperial Customs Service.
It is not surprising that a number of
Not many educators are included in this study, although it is in this area that Westerners have probably been most successful. Walter Williams. for example, who Launched the first journalism school at Yenching University, and Carl Ackerman of Columbia University, who helped lay .the foundation for journalism education in China, deserve mention. The success of the Fulbright program in Taiwan offers another illustration of successful cooperation. Unfortunately, the book largely ignores the U.S. aid program in Taiwan, which is recognized as one of the best examples of American assistance overseas.
Of special interest to the Republic of China are the chapters which deal with Claire Lee Chennault and Generals Joseph Stilwell and Albert Wedemeyer. The full story of the World War II years and the relations of the American military men with Chiang Kai-shek has not been told. The author's appraisal of that period is obviously slanted in favor of the American military position. More than two decades later, it is apparent that the history of China might have been different had some American blunders been avoided during and immediately after World War II.
Professor Spence does present a sympathetic picture of General Chen-nault and his Flying Tigers. Chen-nault's involvement with China, he writes, "was intense and personal" and his fliers in their battered P-40s fought well against great odds. But he says Chennault was not suited for the advent of the B-29 bombers and the saturation attacks which helped destroy Japanese cities. Chennault's greatest contribution, the author believes, was in the period from 1937 to 1941 when he helped indoctrinate the new Chinese Air Force "in an American mold".
In evaluating the efforts of those who sought to change China, the author is concerned more with the mainland than with Taiwan. This error is all too common among today's China watchers. They ignore the fact that the mainstream of Chinese progress today is in Taiwan and not on the mainland. Those who over three centuries sought to change China, he writes, did not achieve their hopes. China is not "dotted with the steeples of Christian churches, no Chinese senators extol the virtues of the democratic way of life, in her schools students do not note the gems of Western humanism".
The Western advisers, he adds, did leave their imprint on Chinese society by compelling some form of confontation with the most advanced levels of Western technique. Their efforts do reflect a measure of credit on the West, "the tenacity of Fryer and Martin; the energy of Schall, Lay and Todd; the sensitivity of Hume and Borodin; the shrewdness of Gordon and Stilwell; the organizational ability of Hart and Wedemeyer; the personal courage of Ward and Chennault; and the dedication of Bethune. Each gave a signilicant part of his life to China".
As to why they failed, Professor Spence 'believes the answer lies in the question -By what right did they go? "They were sure", he writes, "that their own civilization, whatever its shortcomings, had given them something valid to offer ... For the Chinese to protest made no sense, since it was self-evident." It was their arrogant superiority, he suggests, that turned the Chinese against them.
Perhaps the answer is not that pat. The author ignores almost entirely the story of Taiwan in the last two decades, and that affects the question he raises. The principal value of this study is the historical background it provides on Western influence in China over three centuries. It is entertainly written and contains a number of fascinating illustrations.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS' HISTORY OF THE CHINESE IN SINGAPORE
By Song Ong Siang
University of Malaya Press, Singapore 1969, 564 pp., US$7.50
Reviewed by Geraldine Fitch
When Singapore (founded in 1819) was nearing its hundredth anniversary, the government decided to compile a history. It was thought the book would include two or three chapters about the Chinese. The British .put it this way: " ... those interesting settlers, contemporary with the British, who had brought with them their own characteristics and culture ... to which they steadfastly adhered, while readily absorbing ,the spirit of Western law and Western commerce, which were the foundayions of the future prosperity and greatness of the place."
It soon became apparent that a Chinese history should be written separately and by a Chinese; also that it would be a task of some magnitude. The result is this volume of 564 pages. Song Ong Siang consented to undertake the project. He was a man "of great ability and industry" whose family had lived in Singapore for five generations.
The author found it to be a work of greater scope than he had anticipated. Since records were scanty, he saw that a historical review with an interplay of events was out of the question. He therefore called his work a compilation in chronological form of "the lives, doings, pursuits, and fortunes of the Chinese community", each chapter representing a decade from February 6, 1819, when Sir Stamford Raffles founded the city, to its centenary in February, 1919. The present edition is a reprint 50 years later by Craftsman Press Ltd. of Singapore, done by photo-offset with the permission of John Murray publishers of London. It is a joint enterprise of the University of Malaya and the University of Singapore.
Under the circumstances, the work could hardly be a literary production of style and interpretation. Chronological continuity is the format. On the same page may be found a biographical sketch of a distinguished Chinese, the violence of a Chinese secret society and a disastrous fire.
In this reviewer's opinion, the greatest interest lies in the sketches of Chinese personalities of ability, integrity and generosity together with the high tributes .paid to such Chinese by their British colleagues. One of these will provide on illustration.
Hoo Ah Kay was born in Whampoa near Canton and went to Singapore in 1830 to assist his father, already well established in the firm of Whampoa & Co., provisioners and ship-chandlers for Her Majesty's Navy. The son became so well known he was called Mr. Whampoa, even in the press. As time passed, Ah Kay was made treasurer of the Committee of Management of the Tan Tack Zeng Hospital. When the Ladies' Committee of a girls' school asked him to provision their school, he did so at a cost of only $4 per month for each student. Mr. Whampoa invested in a plantation and bought a neglected garden 2 1/2 miles outside the city. There he built a bungalow and brought gardeners from Canton to make a beautiful garden with prize-winning flowers, artificial ponds of water lilies and lotus, and miniature rockeries, and then permitted crowds of Chinese of all classes to mingle at Chinese New Year's. Admiral Keppel, a British naval officer, was sometimes a guest at the bungalow and had this to say of his host: "Whampoa was a fine specimen of his country, and had for many years been ,contractor for fresh beef and naval stores. His generosity and honesty had long made him a favorite ... Dear old Whampoa's eldest son was sent to England for education, and while there became a Presbyterian. When I was in Singapore years after, the young man returned, reappeared before his father, fresh and well, but minus his (pig) tail, and consequently was banished to Canton until it regrew and he consented to worship the gods of his fathers."
In 1869, in recognition of his many services to the government, Whampoa was made a member of the Legislative Council and a few years later a member extraordinary of the Executive Council - a position which had not previously been held by a Chinese. In 1876 he was decorated on behalf of the Queen by the Governor with the covered C.M.G. At that time the Governor said: 'These settlements may well be proud of the many naturalized Chinese gentlemen living in them, and of the unhesitating loyalty with which they support and assist the Government and their fellow colonists."
Mr. Whampoa also held simultaneously the position of Consul for Russia, China and Japan. He was described as "an upright, kindhearted, modest and simple man, a friend to everyone".
During Singapore's first 100 years, the Chinese played an important part in the agricultural, industrial, commercial, educational, religious and political life of the Settlement. On the other hand, the Secret Societies (i.e., the Triad), which started with noble mottoes such as "Obey Heaven and work righteousness", degenerated into powerful cliques that stooped to extortion, murder and other crimes, and even inspired disastrous riots.
When the British flag first went up over the colony, there were about 150 fishermen and pirates living in miserable huts, about 30 of them Chinese and the rest Malays. The first census of Singapore was taken in 1824. The population was 10,663, of whom about a third were Chinese. In 1911, the population was 303,321 and the Chinese numbered 219,577 or about 72% of the whole, including Europeans, Americans, Arabs and Malays. The writer of the Foreword said: "The Straits-born Chinese have always been noted for the strength of their family ties and their love for the country they have adopted. Numerically they are more than the British, and their influence upon the Colony has always been great."
The book, with its many sketches of fine Chinese, such as Seah Eu Chin, Song Hoot Kiam (who with two others were educated in England ,and had an audience with Queen Victoria and Albert), Tan Kim Seng, Lin Boon Keng and on to Dr. Wu Lien Teh, the great expert on bubonic plague (whom this reviewer knew), servers to remind us of how sons of an Old Empire, retaining their centuries-old characteristics, could yet be receptive to new ideas, capable of utilizing their abilities in the formation of a New Empire, a Colony, a Settlement-and in time an independent country.
Sir James Brookes, later known as the White Rajah of Sarawak, describes the humble Chinese who came as laborers as "greatly exceeding the natives of all other countries", though he was not unaware of the "glaring defects and vices" of a minority of them. Most of them were prudent, industrious, patient and cheerful.
One reads of the first Presbyterian Church in Singapore, the first Christian Chinese home-that of Song Hoot Kiam with his nine daughters and five sons. When a British governor speaks of British law as "giving equal protection to the meanest Chinese, Malay or Indian as to the best of us", he is quite unconscious of any overtone of superiority. But today I think no governor or judge would speak-in the United States, at least, "of equality under the law for the meanest Negro, Mexican or Puerto Rican-as, the best of us!"
For dipping into, for research and for Chinese history, this book is valuable.