The Republican., 1900-08-23
THE CHINESE EMPIRE.
Attitude of the Parties at War az
Described by Noted Re-
former.

The following extracts from mem
orandum prepared last autumn for an
English friend by the Chinese reform
er, Kang Yu Wei. will be read with
interest at the present juncture, says
the London Times.
In order properly to comprehend
| the inner affairs of the Chinese en-
pire, the first thing needful is rightly
| to distinguish 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 in
| terests and dares not interfere 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
| is small. Her intimates are all Man
chus. Yung Lu, appointed by her
commander in chief; Kangwei, special
commissioner for the collection of ad-
| 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 igno-
MT a1,1 fn, !,
and official rank. OF the high mill
! tary officials, Tung- Fu-S Slang belongs
to the empress party and Yuan-Shi
kai to the emperor's. All the re-
mainder may be said to belong to the
middle party. Thus 1 am right in
saying that the empress party are
few in number, although at the mo-
ment 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 en-
peror, admiring his intelligence and
rectitude, and these are alarmed and
angry at the empress usurpation.
They know how ignorant she is and
what a dissolute life she has led for
the last 80 years, and that the weak
ness of China is largely due to her
misdeeds. But the high officials are
too old; they sit blinking in the twi-
light, not daring to act, but leaving
success or ruin to come, as the en-
peror 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 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 en-
peror's party was planning revolt.
She prohibited 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 Off
cials, one member of the grand
council and one whom the emperor
haG nominated to be prime minister;
all were the emperor's personal
friends; they were beheaded without
trial, while hundreds of smaller of
ficials and thousands of the common
people were prescribed. These meas
ures were carried out in order to clip
the emperor's wings. Why were all
these leading men willing to associ-
ate themselves with the reform par
ty? 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 Tientsin; Su-pao, pub
lished in Shanghai; Chi-hsin-pao, pub
lished in Macao; Ching-ni-pao, pub
lished at Yokohama; Tien-nan-pao,
published at Singapore-these are all
published under foreign protection
and so are able to speak the truth;
they one and all sympathize with the
party of reform. The Japanese news
papers all take the same view; their
criticism is Independent. The en-
press dowager is hcentious old wom-
an. She is not the emperor's real
mother, and she had no hesitation in
deposing him so as to retain her pow
er. But she was wrong in taking
Yung LUIS advice to depose the en-
peror and place the power in his
(Yung Lu's) hands. AS soon as he
got control of the northern troops
Yung Lu threw off the mask and did
what he willed, and the empress lives
in constant dread of treachery on the
part of her enuchs."