THE CHINESE PARADOX 

 By Harvkv Maitla.nd Wat is 



With the envoys at Pekiii relieved, the first shock of suri)rise over, 

 the worhl naturally inquires as to what infatuate madness led the 

 Manchu conspirators to invite the attack of the great Powers. To the 

 Caucasian mind, familiar with the evervda}' fact of the })uissanceand 

 resources of the civilized world when acting as a unit, such an out- 

 break as that wliich has concentrated the attention of both hemis]»heres 

 on China for three months seems an impossibility. To the Chinese 

 mind, however, the attack was the most natural thing in the world, 

 since it was made inevitable, if not actually invited, by the strange 

 paradox of China's di[)lomatic relations with the outside world. 



Explanations of the anti-foreign uprising there are in plenty. Every 

 promoter who has taken tiffin with a taotai, every worldling who has 

 golfed it or pla3'ed polo at Shanghai, every ex-diplomat who has found 

 his somnolence destroyed by the importunities of the religious en- 

 thusiasts, cries out against the missionaries. Not to be outdone, the 

 missionary and the humanitarian publicists the world over declare 

 the material greed of the Powers themselves is the determining cause, 

 and each nation in turn is accused of being the evil genius which 

 added the final straw that was too much for the Chinese camel's back. 

 All these things were factors, it is true, in irritating the Peacock 

 throne, but the cunning determination to kick over the traces, to cast 

 aside all international responsibilities, was due wholly to the fact that 

 b}' reason of diplomatic errors and oversights in the ])ast China was 

 never brought to realize its true status before the world. To the 

 Chinese mind, the Powers were not the invincible entities which we 

 deem them, but weaklings who had only to he terrorized once and for 

 all, when they Avould trouble the " Middle Kingdom " no more. 



This attitude was the real cause of the ui)rising, and the Manchu 

 conspirators were able to take this position ))y reason of the striking 

 fact, the potent paradox of China's relations with the outer world, 

 that while l)y grudgingl}' granted treaty China occupied the j)Osition 

 of a third-class state whose sovereign rights were limited by the extra- 

 territorial rights of foreigners on its own soil, l)y imperial etiquette, 

 by official procedure at Pekin, by use of all the artifice of an oriental 



