Evening star., 1896-07-18
TELEGRAPHY OF THE CHINESE.


Nu"cFuhb FIUome0 Ovef wire ana
Translated by q Code.
From the San Francisco Chronicle.
According to the Statesmans Year Book.
all the principal cities of China are now
connected with one another and with
Peking. the capital, by telegraph. Recent
visitors to China say, however. that tele-
graphing there is a laborious and an ex-
pensive process, and that the lines are a
charge upon the state treasury instead OF a
source of revenue.
The dispatches are, of course, sent in
Chinese. for not one in many thousands of
the natives knows any language except his
own. But the Chinese have no alphabet.
Their literary characters. partly ideo-
graphic. partly phonetic. number many
thousands. 1t is simply impossible to in
vent telegraphic signals that would cover
the written language Here was an OBJ
stacle In the way of using the telegraph at
all
The difficulty was obviated by inventing
q Geographic signal for each of the cardinal
rsmbers. and 30 numbers or figures might
be telegraphed to any extent. Then a code
dictionary was prepared in which each
number from 1 up to several thousands
stood for a particular Chinese letter or
telegraph. 1t Is. in fact, a cipher system.
The sender of the message need not bother
hlmseit about It's meaning. He may teie-
graph all day without the slightest idea of
the Information he is sending, for he trans
mits only numerals.
1t is very different with his friend, the
receiver. He has the code dictionary at his
elbow, and after each message Is received
he must translate 1t, writing each literary
character la place of the numeral that
stands for 1t. Only about an eighth of the
words In the written language appear in
the code, but there are enough Of them for
all practical purposes.
But the Chinese system has its great dis
advantages. Men of ordinary education
have not sufficient acquaintance with the
written language to be competent telegraph
receivers, and the literati are not seeking
employment in telegraph offices any more
than our college professors are. So the
much difficulty. Besides. the patrons of
the telegraph are comparatively few in
number. There are almost no Chinese who
have business relations all over the coun-
try. as Is the case with many thousands Of
our business men. The public is not in
v.ted to buy stock In the Chinese telegraph
lines. and il 1t was. nobody at present
would buy with view to dividends. The
receipts do not equal the expenses and the
government makes up the deficit.
There Is another 81 eat disadvantage o..
the Chinese telegraph system All over the
world the movement of railroad trains is
regulated by telegraph. The orders re-
ceived by the station agent are filed In plain
view OF the employees, ard II need be, the
switchman may take temporary charge
and carry out the Instructions from the
central ofhce. Railroads have been intro
dUced into China to a very small extent
ard there Is talk of greatly extending the
service. But how about running the trains? ?
A writer In LIE Movement Colonial CT
Paris says that IL railroads are introduced
to any extent in China, the personnel must
be exclusively European and American, or
recruited from the literary class. He says
the Chinese government will not take for
elsners into its service. and that the edu-
Gated men of China who alone among the
people have sufficient knowledge of the
written language to be intrusted with the
actusl running Of trains, would refuse m os;
emphatically to be either train hands or
station agents.
This is one of the many small stumbling
blocks in the way Of China's progress, but
1t is quite effective in its way.