The Restoration of Law and Order in China
| Author | C. D. Bruce |
| Date | 01 January 1930 |
| Published date | 01 January 1930 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3000300113 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The
Restoration
of
Law
and Order
in China
By
BRIGADIER-GENERAL
C.
D.
BRUCE, C.B.E.
Sometime Chief Commissioner, Shanghai Municipal Police
ONE of the main difficulties in understanding the situation
in China to-day is that of attempting to grasp the mental
attitude of its teeming millions. What we western people from
overseas think of the situation is beside the point.
It
is what
the masses in China think of it that really matters, and if we
can realize that we are at least on the road to understanding
the present situation.
Let us listen to a summary of Chinese mentality.
,
In
these cities (in China) one may meet young men and
women who are living in the Utopia of their own
imaginings-
a socialistic heaven where nothing enters that can defile or
produce unhappiness. Others are living in an up-to-date
England, France, Japan or America, and make all their mental
comparisons between China as it now exists and what it will be
when it adopts the political formulae of their favourite country
Others are living in the times of the American or French
revolutions. Many of the old scholarly class are still living in
the age
of"
the Book of Changes."
This
division of the people
into the strata of Utopia, zoth century, rSth century, Middle
Ages, and the Golden Age makes it difficult to generalize
concerning present-day China.
It
also complicates the problem
of finding a solution for the ills of the country since it is evident
that what would suit the devotees of Utopia or the Golden Age
is not applicable to the revolutionary stage of China's develop-
ment or to its conversion into the type of a modern western
nation.'
The
above brief extract is from the reminiscences of a
very well-known foreigner who has lived for forty years in
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