Identifier: russianroadtochi00bateuoft (find matches)
Title: The Russian road to China
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Bates, Lindon Wallace, 1883-1915
Subjects: Trans-Siberian railroad Siberia (Russia) -- Description and travel China -- Description and travel
Publisher: Boston Houghton Mifflin company
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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nation griev-ing at the atrocities the others had seen fit to per-petrate. But periodic local and temporary disturbanceshad been going on from time immemorial. Did notthe Chinese realize, we reasoned, that their old cor-rupt government had been given another unde-served chance to try and march with the rest of therace; that this world is not the place for graft-ridden relics from the fifth century B.C. ? The leastwe felt was that, thanks to the bearer of the Flow-ery Banner, the Chinese had been given a lastopportunity. A self-denying Occident had guaran-teed the nations existence and had presumablyearned its everlasting gratitude. ** Let China get upand do something — let it redeem itself. A very small circle of Chinese shared this Westernview, and realized at their true value the mightsif not the rights. There existed among the literatiat Peking and in the coast cities the rudiments ofa foreign liberal party. Recognizing that Westernmethods must come, they had been in favor of ac-
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I CHINA 369 cepting foreign improvements even at the cost ofrailway concessions and the violated dwellings ofwind and water spirits. When this party won overthe young Emperor, there began the period offoreign concessions. Reforms, too, covering everysubject, from queue-cutting to postage-stamps, wereinaugurated. The summer of 1898 saw the important edictwhich ordered the abolition of the Wen-chang essaysand the penmanship posts, with the Emperorspersonal comment that the examinations shouldtest a knowledge of ancient and modern history,and information in regard to the present state ofaffairs, with special reference to the governmentsand institutions of the countries of the five greatcontinents, and their arts and sciences. A Bureauof Mines was established, a patent-office, schools,a scheme of army reform. The climaxing decree was the one abolishingsinecures. For the Emperors unreconstructedentourage this last was too much. Foreign aggres-sion had embittered to the point of unreason ma

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