It is said by Europeans who have business experience in China that the Chinese are not good at managing large joint-stock companies, such as modern industry requires. As everyone knows, they are proverbially honest in business, in spite of the corruption of their politics. But their successful businesses--so one gathers--do not usually extend beyond a single family; and even they are apt to come to grief sooner or later through nepotism. This is what Europeans say; I cannot speak from my own knowledge. But I am convinced that modern education is very quickly changing this state of affairs, which was connected with Confucianism and the family ethic. Many Chinese have been trained in business methods in America; there are Colleges of Commerce at Woosung and other places; and the patriotism of Young China has led men of the highest education to devote themselves to industrial development. The Chinese are no doubt, by temperament and tradition, more suited to commerce than to industry, but contact with the West is rapidly introducing new aptitudes and a new mentality. There is, therefore, every reason to expect, if political conditions are not too adverse, that the industrial development of China will proceed rapidly throughout the next few decades. It is of vital importance that that development should be controlled by the Chinese rather than by foreign nations. But that is part of the larger problem of the recovery of Chinese independence, with which I shall deal in my last chapter. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 99: For the history of Chinese railways, see Tyau, op. cit. pp. 183 ff.] [Footnote 100: _China in_ 1918. Published by the _Peking Leader_, pp. 45-6.] [Footnote 101: Op. cit. chap. xi.] [Footnote 102: _China in_ 1918, p. 26. There is perhaps some mistake in the figures given for iron ore, as the Tayeh mines alone are estimated by some to contain 700,000,000 tons of iron ore. Coleman, op cit. p. 51.] [Footnote 103: Page 63. The 1922 _Year Book_ gives 19,500,000 tons of coal production.] [Footnote 104: _Modern China,_ p, 265.] [Footnote 105: Pages 74-5.] [Footnote 106: Coleman, op. cit. chap. xiv.] [Footnote 107: It seems it would be inaccurate to maintain that there is nothing on the subject in the Gospels. An eminent American divine pointed out in print, as regards the advice against laying up treasure where moth and rust doth corrupt, that "moth and rust do not get at Mr. Rockefeller's oil wells, and thieves do not often break through and steal a railway. What Jesus condemned was hoarding wealth." See Upton Sinclair, _The Profits of Religion_, 1918, p. 175.] [Footnote 108: Page 237.] [Footnote 109: Page 218.] CHAPTER XV THE OUTLOOK FOR CHINA In this chapter I propose to take, as far as I am able, the standpoint of a progressive and public-spirited Chinese, and consider what reforms, in what order, I should advocate in that case.