Excerpt from Advice and Advisers: Three Essays on the Value of Foreign Advice in the Internal Development of China
The leading article which appeared in these columns last Monday entitled -The Cleansing of the Augean Stables- by Putnam Weale is, as far as it goes, an exceedingly illuminating paper on several points which should occupy the seriotis attention of the Chinese Government and which, at the same time, are calculated to excite some interest among foreigners on matters of which the average casual European bystander does not yet seem to realize the importance. Putnam Weale argues, and the writer thinks argues correctly, that to effect as quickly as possible a full reconstruction of the working of the Provincial Administrations, individually and collectively, is a prime necessity of the Chinese Government.
A Fact To Be Realized.
The fact seems to have been never fully realized that when the Republican movement of 1911 wiped away the Manchu Dynasty, it not only abolished the Court but it annihilated the whole Manchu administrative system, metropolitan and provincial, and thereby at one stroke, so to speak, threw local administration all over China into a state of temporary confusion from which it does not appear to have till now completely recovered. Of course it may be argued that that administration, being the essence of the Manchu Government, of necessity had to go with it; in fact that the well-known rottenness of the whole system called for and justified its immediate supersession at any cost, even at the risk of chaos. Still, as a matter of fact, the Manchu Provincial Governments were Administrations in esse. In them each man by the nature of the appointment and by the traditions of his office knew exactly what he could be expected to do (whether he did it or not), and what were his responsibilities to his superordinates, immediate and remote. Every new occupant coming into office must have felt that he came in with a legitimate right to rule and with a certain prestige attached to his position. Above all, he realized that it was one of his duties to provide the Government at Peking with his quota of certain funds which helped to give it at any rate a backbone of a certain strength. Whether these men did their duty well or badly, whether they abused or misused their privileges and powers were really questions to be treated as secondary so long as they kept things going and avoided trouble.
Provincial Chaos.
The Revolution unsettled all this and replaced it - by what?
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