CHINA'S GREAT PROBLEM 457 



CHINA'S GEEAT PEOBLEM 



By Professor THOMAS T. READ 



SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 



""VTEITHEE the institution of republican forms of government, nor 

 -*- ^ the creation of a spirit of natural unity, not even the incul- 

 cation of republican ideals constitutes China's great and imminent 

 problem. It is not inappropriate that a nation whose people are best 

 known for their skill and probity in business affairs, at the close of 

 revolution engendered in large part by financial considerations and 

 brought to a speedy termination by that modern arbiter of warring 

 factions and nations, the international money lender, should find her 

 most imminent and pressing problem a plain one of business. The 

 average man finds it necessary to give constant consideration to the 

 relation between his income and expenditures and to possible sources of 

 increase of the one and diminution of the other. Nations are no more 

 fortunate and China is unusual only in that her monetary affairs, 

 through her international loans, have become matters of cosmopolitan 

 importance. 



At the beginning of last year China had a total foreign indebtedness, 

 secured by Imperial revenue, of approximately $700,000,000/ corre- 

 sponding to an annual interest charge of approximately $35,000,000. 

 During the year a budget was prepared, the first in the history of the 

 nation, which showed that the estimated annual income of the empire 

 was some $180,000,000. The budget made evident to all what many 

 had long known, that China was unable to make both ends meet, and 

 like a spendthrift was using her capital to pay her debts. The funda- 

 mental causes of the revolution of 1911 have been much obscured by the 

 natural human desire to weave adventure and romance into war, but it 

 is true, nevertheless, that just as the "embattled farmers" were irri- 

 tated beyond bearing by a tax on tea, so were the "sons of Han" 

 roused to arms by burdening them with a foreign loan of which they 

 did not approve. 



It will be remembered that after the American financiers who had 

 acquired a concession to build a railway from Hankow to Canton per- 

 fidiously sold it to the Belgian interests, whom the Chinese especially 

 wished not to secure it, the concession was bought back by China and 

 the people of the provinces through which the road passed attempted to 



1 Only approximate figures can be given, for the varying rates of exchange 

 and diverse rates of interest make exact figures impossible. 



