Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1900-08-06
PARTIES IN CHINA.
and Described by the
Leader of One of Them.

The following extracts from a memo
randum prepared last autumn for an
English friend by the Chinese re
former, Kang Yu Wei, will be read
with interest at the present juncture:-
I'm order properly to comprehend
the inner affairs of the Chinese empire,
the first thing needful is rightly to dis
tinguish the different parties in China.
The empress dowager holds on to the
old ways; her party is known as the
empress party The emperor and his
friends who desire reform are known
as the 'emperor's party Then there
is a third party known as the middle
] party which is chiefly concerned with
it's own interests and dares not inter
fere in politics. Nine-tenths of the
people and officials are comprised in
this party.
''The empress dowager, notwith-
standing that she is the head of the
ruling party, possesses few or no
friends outside of official circles and
the Yamens Otherwise her influence
is small. Her iEtimates are all Man
chus. Yung Lu, appointed by her COM
mander-in-chief; Kangwei, special
commissioner for the collection of adj
ditional revenues from the provinces;
Prince Tuan, Yum Yu, Bwai-ta-pu, etc.
The only clever man among them is
Yung Lu; the rest are densely ignorant
and care for nothing but wealth and
official rank. Of the high military
officials, Tung-Fu-Siang belongs to the
empress's party and Yuan-Shi-Kai to
the emperor's. All the remainder may
be said to belong to the middle party
Thus I am right in saying that the
empress's party are few in number,
although at the moment their power is
great.
''The middle party, on the other
hand, is spread throughout the whole
empire The majority are in their
heart of hearts devoted to the emperor,
admiring his intelligence and rectitude,
and these are alarmed and angry at the
empress's usurpation. They know
how ignorant she is and what dis
solute life she had led for the last 80
years, and that the weakness of China
is largely due to her misdeeds. But
the high officials are too old; they sit
blinking in the twilight, not daring to
act, but leaving success or ruin to
come, as the emperor or the empress
gains the upper hand.
Ruined as the emperor's party is,
yet they are the real reformers; both
officials and people, they long for re-
form and new methods. but while the
empress's party hold the power they
are in dread of severe punishment At
the time Of the coup d'etat the empress
falsely asserted that the emperor's
party was planning revolt. She pro-
hibited newspapers, killed and drove
out hundreds of reformers and exiled
numbers of high officials to the
frontiers. Six of the reformers ex-
ecuted were high metropolitan officials,
one. a member of the grand council and
one whom the emperor had nominated
to be prime minister; all were the en-
peror's personal friends; they were be-
headed without trial, while hundreds
Of smaller officials and thousands Of
the common people were prescribed.
These measures were carried out in
order to clip the emperor's wings.
Why were all these leading men will
ing to associate themselves with the
reform party? The answer is that
they were loyal subjects, anxious to
save their country and deserve the
emperor's benevolence. You have
only to read the Chinese newspapers,
Ko-wen-pao, published in Tien-tsin;
Su-pao, published in Shanghai; Chi
hsin-pao, published at Macao; Ching
ni-pao, published at Yokohama; Tien-
nan-pao, published at Singapore-these
are all published under foreign pro-
lection and so are able to speak the
truth; they one and all sympathize
with the party of reform. The
Japanese newspapers all take the same
view; their criticism is Independent.
The empress dowager is a licenti0us
old woman. She is not the emperor's
in deposing him so as to retain her
power. But she was wrong in taking
Yung LUIS advice to depose the en-
peror and place the power in his (Yung
Lus) hands. AS soon as he got con-
troll of the northern troops Yung LII
threw off the mask and did what he
willed, and the empress lives in con-
slant dread of treachery on the part
of her eunuchs. London Times