for many years press China at one spot or another, and how to checkmate
this pressure is one of Britain’s hardest problems, in which America is
involved because of the Hay doctrine of the “non-partition of China,”
which is the Monroe doctrine of the Far East.
Early in 1911 Russia disturbed the diplomats by sending a note to the
powers that she intended to make a military demonstration against
Sungaria and reoccupy, as from 1871 to 1881, trade routes and frontier
cities like Kuldja and Kobdo. Gullible China was induced to include in
the treaty with Russia at that time permission for Russian caravaners
to cross Western China under Russian arms; to trade without paying
duty, and to establish Russian “_imperium in imperio_” settlements.
The _Novi Krai_ of Harbin admitted that these extraterritorial
demonstrations in Far Western China aimed not so much at aggression
in Turkestan as cajoling further privileges in Manchuria, such as
navigation on the Sungari, Russian settlements, mining and railway
rights, etc. On another occasion, Russia is party to the rejection of
America’s proposal of the internationalization of Manchurian railways;
or again Russia cites some secret coerced treaty and compels China to
refuse a franchise for an American railway from Chin-Wang to Aigun,
or Chin-Wang to Kailar. Yet at the same time Russia is arranging with
China to drop a railway on Peking down from Irkutsk, and a railway from
Semipalatinsk down on Jungaria and the headwaters of the great Tarim
River. The Russian advance is not an extinct volcano; one never knows
when it will be recrudescent somewhere. The party of Admiral Alexeyev,
General Spiridovitch, State Secretary Bezobrazov and Count Bobrinsky,
is not dead at St. Petersburg. Russia is to-day moving 100,000
colonists a year into Siberia. She is double-tracking the Siberian
railway eastward to Lake Baikal.
The following memorial to the throne, written by Viceroy Liu Ming
Chuan, and approved by Li Hung Chang in 1893, reveals China’s knowledge
of Russia’s deep designs: “We feel Russia’s grip on our throat, and her
fist upon our back, and our contact with her is a source of perpetual
uneasiness to our minds. When a quarrel occurs, we have to yield to her
demands.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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