Exaggeration is easy. Privation is one thing, poverty to the point of wretchedness—‘la misére’—another. A sturdy self-reliant stock may grow in a stony soil. But, when due allowance has been made for the inevitable misconceptions, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that a large proportion of Chinese peasants are constantly on the brink of actual destitution. They are, so to say, a propertied proletariat, which is saved—when it is saved—partly by its own admirable ingenuity and fortitude, partly by the communism of the Chinese family, partly by reducing its consumption of necessaries and thus using up its physical capital. . .
A population which has no reserves is helpless against calamity. Calamity is more frequent in China than in the West, even when allowance is made for the different forms which it assumes in the latter. . . Over a large area of China, the rural population suffers horribly through the insecurity of life and property. It is taxed by one ruffian who calls himself a general, by another, by a third, and, when it has bought them off, still owes taxes to the Government in some places actually more than 20 years taxation has been paid in advance. It is squeezed by dishonest officials. It must cut its crops at the point of a bayonet, and hand them over without payment to the local garrison, though it will starve without them. It is forced to grow opium in defiance of the law, because its military tyrants can squeeze heavier taxation from opium than from rice or wheat, and make money, in addition, out of the dens where it is smoked. It pays blackmail to the professional bandits in its neighbourhood; or it resists, and, a year later, when the bandits have assumed uniform, sees its villages burned to the ground.
The indirect effects of the chaos are as disastrous as the direct. Expenditure on war absorbs resources which should be spent on elementary improvements, such as roads and primary education. Trade is paralysed, and such communications as exist are turned by the soldiers who seize them from a blessing into a curse. Capital flies from rural districts, where it is urgently needed, to be buried in the Concessions. Population flies with it; here and there whole villages are on the move, like animals breaking from cover as the beaters advance. When human enemies are absent, the farmer must still reckon with a remorseless nature. ‘What drove you to settle here, so far from home?’ a peasant was asked in the presence of the writer. The reply was ‘Bandits, soldiers, and famine.’