Fifteen Years After—the Chinese State

Extract

If the shade of a Ch'ing mandarin who had been alive in October 1864—just after the collapse of the T'ai'ping rebellion—had attended the celebrations this year of the fifteenth anniversary of the foundation of the Chinese People's Republic, he would have found much that was strange to him, but also a great deal that was familiar and many things of which he could approve. He would learn that, as in his own time, the empire had been reunited after a period of civil war, and he would further note with satisfaction that the vigorous new dynasty which now held the Mandate of Heaven had established the authority of the central government to a degree which in his time he had never known. He would find that with the exception of those tiresome people, the Khalkha Mongols, who had apparently succeeded in breaking away from the empire with the aid of the Tsar of Russia, almost all the territory which in his recollection had been held by the Ch'ing was now subject to an unprecedently firm administration from Peking. He would also observe that the position of the imperial government in relation to foreign states had greatly improved. His own memory would go back to the capture of Peking by the British and French armies in 1860, the hurried departure of the Court of Jehol to escape from the invasion of the barbarians, and the humiliating treaties which had to be concluded with them because of their irresistible weapons.