893.00/6453: Telegram
The Minister in China (MacMurray) to the Secretary of State
[Received 7:40 p.m.]
293. 1. It may be helpful to the Department to receive an analysis of the tentative impressions I have thus far been led to form in regard to the present situation in China which seems to me more critical than any since Boxer year. Among the vicinal elements I have found Chinese feeling, primarily racial, secondarily national, aroused to an emotional fervor which I was scarcely prepared to realize even after a dozen years of observing the growth of national self-consciousness in China. The Shanghai incident seems to have awakened instincts and passions hitherto dormant, and given an element of fanaticism to what were behind the somewhat unsympathetic and desultory aspirations of the small articulate portion of the Chinese people.
2. I am not inclined to believe that an outburst of feeling has resulted solely or even primarily from Bolshevik incitement. The propaganda of the Soviets has no doubt hastened and given direction and impetus to the new development, supplying it with catch words and lending it the encouragement of Soviet moral and material support; but the movement seems to me to be fundamentally an evolution of native Chinese thought and feeling.
3. It is so much a matter of psychological rather than material considerations that I feel that any attempt to evaluate the situation must take account of imponderable emotional elements far more than of any concrete claims or grievances. The basic factor seems to be that the Chinese, in common with other Asiatic peoples, have particularly since the war been growing more favorably self-conscious, less in awe of the western peoples, and more determined to assert themselves and resent the assumed superiority of the white races. Insofar as it was political in character, that tendency has, I believe, been fully appreciated and discounted by the Department, which has foreseen the difficulty if not in fact the impossibility of maintaining special treaty rights in the face of growing nationalism in China.
[Page 800]4. That tendency has recently been vastly complicated however by more subtle elements of feeling latent in the minds of the Chinese and now brought to the surface by an emotional upheaval. Chinese who were heretofore most friendly and congenial with foreigners are now stirred to intolerance and pour out of their memories long stored-up recollections of abuses and indignities on the part of foreigners towards their people—instances of jostling off the sidewalks, of the kicking of rickshaw coolies, and the like. Even though it expresses itself in political terms, the present crisis of feeling, it seems to me, is to be construed as a revulsion against what the individual Chinese feels to be the offense to his personal dignity and self-esteem implicit in the overbearing attitude of the white man towards the Chinese. It is an inferiority complex which under the stress of an almost nation-wide excitement prompts him to a hysterical self-assertion that is subjective rather than objective, and that involves antiforeign feeling only indirectly and as an incident to the assertion of self.
5. This feeling has been further complicated by the fact that thinking Chinese are aware of the failure they are making in the organization of their national life and morbidly conscious of the poor showing that they have made in the eyes of foreign nations. It is especially true of Chinese human nature that it flinches from recognition of its own deficiencies and by an instinctive subconscious process seeks excuses in the action of others. It is natural and easy for the Chinese to gloss over the miserable political conditions which they realize and resent by reference to such catchwords as unequal treaties or foreign imperialism.
6. Under the impulse of this passionate determination no longer to be “looked down upon” there seems to be coming about a further change in the attitude of the Chinese towards their obligations. It is unfortunately true that for several years they have been growing more lax and indifferent towards such standards of honesty and responsibility as used to be traditional in this country. That was a negative attitude however; now there is apparent a tendency towards positive repudiation of obligations. Not only the professional radicals … but even certain sober and conservative elements appear to be drifting into a state of mind that takes it for granted that treaty obligations must be repudiated as incompatible with the sovereignty and dignity of the nation. Even Hsiung Hsi-ling, once Prime Minister under Yuan Shih-kai, has argued to me that China could not take part in the Special Conference or the Commission on Extraterritoriality as such participation would be an acknowledgement of the right of powers to dictate to China in the matters involved. In the course of our conversation he was altogether frank in acknowledging that China would not for instance be capable now [Page 801] or in the proximate future of fulfilling the judicial functions that would devolve upon her if we were to give up extraterritoriality. But despite this admission he insisted that this inequality in the treaties must be adjusted by China without regard to the pretensions of the powers.
7. A less radical view was presented to me by Sun Pao-chi, who was Minister for Foreign Affairs under Yuan and more recently Prime Minister. He came apparently at the instance of the Minister for Foreign Affairs to whom I had taken occasion to say that we stood upon the provisions of the Washington Conference as affording the means to make progress towards the realization of China’s aspirations in the matter of customs and extraterritoriality. Sun urged that the Washington Conference decisions which have been in abeyance for three years and more mean nothing to the radical element whose opinions the Government is not in a position to ignore; and that to strengthen the position of the Government against them the powers in their replies to the Chinese Government’s notes of June 248 should at least hold out hopes of a new conference within a year to reconsider the revision of the whole treaty relationship between China and the powers. He was quite candid in making clear the view that this suggestion was designed merely to save the face of the Government and that he did not urge that the powers really go very far in making actual concessions; he seemed to feel that it was more important that the powers should make some sort of an avowal of respect for China’s dignity as a nation even though he acknowledged himself very little concerned with the material extent of any such concessions as might be made.
8. Such expressions of views dispose me to feel that in the present agitation for treaty changes the dominant motive is not a dissatisfaction with the treaties themselves so much as it is a manifestation of discontent with a sense of inferiority which the Chinese have come to feel is symbolized by the special provisions in the treaties. The more intelligent of the Chinese know that those provisions of the treaties arose out of conditions which have scarcely been appreciably modified since then, and that any radical change in them at the present time would seriously jeopardize foreign trade which is now more than ever necessary to their normal economic development, and would induce disputes and difficulties in China’s relations with the foreign powers. Even some of the more radical Chinese with whom I have talked have shown themselves aghast at the suggestion that tariff autonomy for which they clamor would put enormously increased revenues into the hands of whichever military faction might happen at the time to be in control of Central Government. The [Page 802] great bulk of the agitators doubtless do not know what it is that they are asking for in demanding abolition of unequal treaties. The treaty provisions are obnoxious to them not because of what those provisions actually mean but because they seem to represent a stigma of inferiority or afford a convenient political slogan.
9. I present these observations not with any idea of decrying what is genuine and to be respected in the aspirations of the Chinese people but to bring to the attention of the Department the unrealities of the present situation with respect to the Chinese political demands which must in my opinion be treated on a psychological basis rather than from the standpoint of strict logic or of systematic political concept. It is not easy in such a turmoil of nationalistic feeling to determine what is essential and what is incidental. Yet a substantially correct determination must be made if the concessions we are prepared to make are actually to serve the real needs of this people and of our own.
10. Repeated by mail to Tokyo.