CHINA. 



107 



The commerce of the treaty ports in 1880 

 was as follows (in Haikwau taels) : 



The movement of shipping in the Chinese 

 ports during the years 1879 and 1880 is shown 

 by the following table (entrances and clear- 

 ances being taken together) : 



I8T. 



1880. 



The first attempt to introduce railways was 

 made by the construction of a short line from 

 Shanghai to Woosung, forty miles in length. 

 One half of this line, from Shanghai to Kang- 

 wang, was opened for traffic June 3, 1876, but 

 closed again in 1877, after having been pur- 

 chased by the Chinese authorities. There are 

 four lines of electric telegraph, having an 

 aggregate length of thirty-nine miles. 



Tsze An, known as the Eastern Empress, 

 one of the Empresses - dowager who were 

 jointly clothed with the imperial authority 

 during the minority of the Emperor, died in 

 March. Her co-regent, Tsze Hi, lay danger- 

 ously ill for some time. Had her death fol- 

 lowed, there would have supervened a political 

 crisis, which might have resulted in a dynas- 

 tic revolution. The selection of the present 

 infant Emperor has constantly been held by 

 many in authority to have been contrary to 

 the constitutional precedents and religious 

 principles of the empire. There are also seri- 

 ous irregularities in the present regency, to 

 which the orderly rninds of the Chinese are 

 with difficulty reconciled. The regency should 

 have been resigned by the Empresses-regent to 

 the widow of the late Emperor; and it was 

 imperatively incumbent upon the father of 

 the present Emperor to keep him away from 



court, and entirely remote from public affairs, 

 because the natural authority of a father and 

 the homage of a subject are, according to Chi- 

 nese conceptions, absolutely incompatible. 



The controversy with Russia regarding the 

 restoration to China of the province of Hi, and 

 its capital, Kulja, seemed likely in the summer 

 of 1880 to result in a war, which would have 

 proved most disastrous to China. The influ- 

 ence of the Marquis Tseng and of Colonel Gor- 

 don barely prevented the war party, headed 

 by Prince Ch'un, the father of the Emperor, 

 and by Tso-Tsung-t'ang, Governor-General of 

 Eastern Turkistan, and reputed subjugator of 

 Kashgaria, from plunging their country into 

 the unequal conflict. The moderate progressist 

 party, which exerted its influence in favor of 

 peace, although it was led by the most eminent 

 statesmen of China Ch'un's brother, Prince 

 Kung, and the great Viceroy, Li-Hung-chang 

 and had more moral weight among the man- 

 darins, lacked the power and prestige which 

 the support of the Empresses-regent gave their 

 opponents. The warnings of Gordon and Tseng 

 sustained the peace party, and prevented a col- 

 lision after the rejection of the Treaty of Liva- 

 dia. The Government remitted the sentence 

 of Chung-how, the negotiator of the repudiated 

 treaty, who had been condemned to death, 

 and expressed its willingness to resume nego- 

 tiations. Russia was reluctant to redeem her 

 promise to retire from the occupied province 

 whenever the Chinese Government was in a 

 position to govern it, without some substantial 

 recompense. The contingency of China's re- 

 asserting her sovereignty in Turkistan seemed 

 remote at the time when Russian troops occu- 

 pied Kulja. The Russian Government were 

 apparently desirous that China, without having 

 a cause which would appear reasonable to Eu- 

 rope, should be provoked into commencing 

 hostilities. This would enable the Russians 

 to seize upon a strip of the Corean coast, which 

 would give the Muscovite Empire the coveted 

 maritime foothold on the Pacific. 



The failure of the Marquis Tseng to obtain 

 satisfactory terms, which the folly of his 

 predecessor and the indifference of Russia ren- 

 dered extremely difficult, brought the martial 

 element again to the front in the winter of 

 1880-'81. If Russia had the intention of harry- 

 ing China into a declaration of war, slie defeated 

 her purpose by her own active preparations 

 for the encounter. For it was the dread of her 

 naval power displayed on the sea-coast, and the 

 appreciation of her superior military strength, 

 which enabled peaceful counsels to prevail 

 again at Peking. 



Troops were sent forward toward the fron- 

 tier. The fire-eating Tso, who had the credit 

 of having reconquered the dominion of Ya- 

 koob Beg, although he had actually contributed 

 nothing toward the achievement, and who was 

 one of the loudest denunciators of the Treaty 

 of Livadia, was summoned to Peking to add his 

 support to Prince Ch'un and the war party. 



