The Chinese in Alien Lands
Ford, Francis X.
46 THE COMMONWEAL November 17, 1926 THE CHINESE IN ALIEN LANDS By FRANCIS X FORD WHEN a Britisher glories in the ability of his nationals to adapt themselves to every clime, he means, in...
...Peru has 75,000 Chinese, while the rest of South America has another 60,000...
...Despite such a beginning, the Chinese later came voluntarily to these islands...
...foreign governments and until the divine right of the West to rule smaller nations be defined as dogma, the story of our dealings with the Orient is better left unsaid...
...There is nothing miraculous in their progress, no gold mines or oil fields or wire-pulling politics, no monopolies or crown grants to make them wealthy overnight...
...as a fanner, he has a steadier mind that resists the allurements of more unequal chances in the cities...
...But the Chinese at home is more than a farmer...
...There is extant a letter from one of the first governor-generals of the Dutch East Indies, with the following suggestions: "A very great number of people is necessary for the inhabiting of Batavia...
...Naturally, the countries nearer home have drawn the greater part, but there are thousands in such distant lands as Central and South America, the West Indies and Africa, while they are numbered in the hundreds of thousands in Russia, Siam, Indo-China, Dutch East Indies, Malaysia, and Borneo...
...Not that they thereby proved themselves poor citizens...
...Wherever competition with the white man enters, the Chinese has no redress against the laws that are framed to restrict his energies for he does not meddle in politics...
...They now own large estates of copra, sugar, rubber, tea and coffee...
...The white settler in the past three centuries became backed by...
...This is but a rapid glance at the main figures of Chinese emigration...
...Tis true they send a constant stream of money home to China and eventually follow it, but while doing so they leave their adopted land far better off than when they came...
...If the history of America is an exception (although the early trappers simply bought their goods) it is because we made the Indian an enemy who fought us and we had to import the negro...
...They came to get a living by hard work...
...all retail trade throughout the Indies is in their hands and now they are rivals of the Europeans in exports...
...Or we might contrast them with the exodus of Spanish settlers in former times The Spaniards not only conquered and governed the lands they took, but they sank their identity by intermarriage with the native...
...For the most part, in the islands of the Pacific, they have been allowed a fair liberty to work and they have wisely satisfied themselves as small traders, leaving large profits in the wholesale exports to the European firms...
...It would be an interesting study to compare them with the spread of Jewry throughout the world One curious fact that stands out in such a comparison is that the Chinese and Jew bear the relation to each other of weasel and rat...
...As a race, the Chinese is agricultural, and thus makes an ideal settler anywhere...
...They stint today that tomorrow their families may abound...
...In such countries as the Philippines, where 90 percent of the retail business of the islands is in Chinese hands, or in Singapore where two-thirds of the population is Chinese, the Chinese submit to the laws of the land without interference...
...A Chinese Robinson Crusoe would soon make a flourishing port of his desert island...
...The Hakkas are the emigrating race of Chinese, and it is they who have supplied Kwangtung with governors...
...In the South Seas, the native need nof work so hard and in the American towns the native will not work as hard as do the Chinese emigrants...
...There is nothing "small" about them—they do not think the meanest work unnobling and they see it in its relation to the whole...
...The Chinese, on the contrary, never conquered or governed or were rarely assimilated by others...
...From childhood he has been taught the value of everything he needs and he knows the cost of raw material and the labor required in perfecting it...
...Wherever there is a Chinese you will not find a Jew...
...It was a surprise to me to read that Chinese emigrants in foreign lands number about eight millions, and that these eight millions come from three or four parts of the two southern provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien...
...They adapt themselves to their conditions and do not kick against the goad...
...No lust of conquest or exploitation drew her venturing settlers...
...The British empire has about one million and a half, not including a half million in Hongkong...
...It was natural, then, when the British and Dutch East India Companies needed laborers for their work, to turn to China for them Some of the means used to get them are interesting...
...They have scattered throughout the world...
...The story in the Philippines has a like result Wherever they are free to plow and buy and sell, they quietly in time become masters of the trade...
...he is as much a tradesman as a fanner...
...A mere enumeration of their present abodes would be too lengthy...
...There is continuity in their efforts which is bound, after generations of work, to bring its reward...
...In Canada and the United States, he has patiently suffered indignities and gradually increasing exclusion taxes, police raids and expulsion without cause, nots and hangings, and even in ordinary times neglect and distrust and petty annoyances, so that he has well earned whatever profit he has made Yet even in America he has gained a footing, precarious though it be, and has contributed his mite to the progress of our country It is a pity that throughout the world the Chinese has not been given a chance to prove his worth...
...France has 23,000 Chinese subjects, while little Holland governs almost one million...
...he raises his crops, of course, but he himself also sells them...
...In Java and Siam, they practically control the sugar industry...
...Like the devil and holy water, they cannot abide together...
...November 17, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 47 133,000 are under the Stars and Stripes...
...He came as a conqueror by force of steel, who should have come as a man of toil, and wherever he could he made the native do his work...
...Again, the history of the white man as a colonizer in colder climates is not entirely glorious...
...they have almost always remained a distinct race as pilgrims in a strange country...
...In the slums of the big cities, they live side by side with other unfortunate poor...
...As a matter of fact, the Chinese emigrants come from the few sections of China that are better governed than are other parts...
...These others have the graces of Christian truths to brace them, the Chinese have but a pagan outlook and yet among the Chinese you will not find the hopeless peevishness and dullness that not rarely increases the burden of the poor...
...The Catholic Church inevitably becomes wealthy if given time and peace, as its members constantly contribute more than they use and the profit each year accumulates So, too, do the Chinese succeed, each works, not as an individual, but as a member of a village...
...It is requisite by this present monsoon to send another fleet to visit the coast of China and take prisoners as many men, women, and children as possible...
...And with all this hard work, long hours, and poor food they stand apart from other classes who are struggling for daily bread...
...No people in the world do us better service than the Chinese...
...In twenty years, 56,000 left from Swatow to work the tobacco fields of Sumatra...
...The Chinese live from hand to mouth, but not in the figurative sense...
...It may be true, of course, that the genius of ruling other peoples is not natural to the Chinese, but it may be nearer the truth that law-abiding, honest workers have no itch to rule their neighbors...
...The white man is a failure as a colonial in a hot climate...
...This is a free suggestion to Henry Ford and Hilaire Belloc and others who fear the domination of the Jew...
...Friendly rivalry would have made his contribution an asset to us, and our respect for his power would have a salutary chastening effect on our business ethics...
...they asked no quarter from nature or from man...
...he dare not bend his back to the plow or bare his head to the sun that never sets on the British empire...
...He is like a polar bear in the zoo with a special diet of cold drinks and shaded ease...
...How different the story of China overseas...
...he is everywhere only in the sense that he is represented at each port, and numerically insignificant otherwise within the tropics...
...Wherever they go, they do not exploit, but create Wherever they go, even in the white man's hunting-ground, they find the native unwilling to bend himself to hard work or tiny profits or cooperative sharing of both...
...46 THE COMMONWEAL November 17, 1926 THE CHINESE IN ALIEN LANDS By FRANCIS X FORD WHEN a Britisher glories in the ability of his nationals to adapt themselves to every clime, he means, in fact, simply that a handful of his fellow-countrymen have made themselves at home in foreign parts...
...And it is a fact that wherever they have had a chance they have succeeded in establishing themselves firmly...
...In the islands of the Pacific, they took advantage of the blazing sun and torrential rains to cultivate their crops...
...The most remarkable feature of Chinese penetration into other lands is that they have not, even when in the majority, attempted political domination...
...In colder dimes, when the white man limited their means of livelihood, they adapted their labors to whatever was allowed them...
...He may spend a shortened lifetime even m the land of typhoons, but never become acclimated...
...There is a reason for this success which we can easily understand...
...no armed junks or double-dealing gave them ingress in foreign lands...
...There is still another saying that one Chinese can out-Jew seven Jews...
...Is it any wonder that China heretofore has been suspicious of our trade concessions and unwilling to extend to foreigners the privilege of engaging extensively in commerce within her territory...
...They never become wealthy in the American sense, I doubt if they could without forsaking venerable traditions, for they believe and act on the principles of small profits for everyone, sharing in common of these profits with their fellow-villagers, honest if very sharp bargaining, and abiding by contracts once made Theirs is a story of patient plodding—though the word "plodding" has a despairing, stupid note in it which is not found in them— they are not a race of "small shopkeepers" in the sneering sense in which the term was first applied elsewhere...
Vol. 5 • November 1926 • No. 2
