With the growing lack of control, owing to the in creasing effeminacy of Manchu rulers and the absorp tion of their followers into the common stock, China has been left more and more between two sets of forces : forces from the land, the like of which she has known before, and forces from the ocean, which bring new controls into Chinese history. The forces of European origin coming by sea must approach from the south; hence there arises a new condition of things. Up to this time the strategic centre of China has been in the northern plain. Chinese capitals have usually been at one of the three corners of the triangle, as at Pekin to guard against approach from the north round the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, or as at Sian to guard against approach from the west down the valley of the Wei ; or the capital has been placed still on the edge of the plain, but as at Nankin in touch with the southern river system. With the advent of ocean power coming from the south, the southern ports of China have taken on a new importance. The Treaty ports opened in 1842 are all ports of the hilly south, two in Fokien and one just beyond its southern frontier. The entry to China is by Canton or Shanghai, not Pekin or Sian.
And yet entries to China remain by Sian and Pekin. The Manchus have disappeared off the face of the earth. The Mongols, tamed by Buddhism, have lost their ancient daring, but there still remain the possibilities of the plain beyond. The forces coming from the plain reached Manchuria by the shortest way across the plateau, and Russia was within an ace of entering China by the old gate round the Gulf of Pe-chi-li. That has been closed for the present, if not permanently, but there still remains the old way by way of Sian through the Zungarian gate, between the Altai and the Thian-Shan, under the curtain of the mountains, and there exists a well-frequented way across the grassland from Baikal directed on Pekin through easy defiles in the mountains to the north. The political position is in
tensely interesting; the history of China is not finished; what will be the outcome time alone will show.
Whatever happens, we are safe in saying, on the one hand, that the Chinese people are not worn out what ever their Manchu rulers may have been, and, on the other, that the history will be controlled by geography and by some of the great forces coming from land and sea; specially the interplay of these forces will have a growing tendency to unify China and make her more homogeneous than ever. The railway and the steam ship, these characteristic modern forces of land and sea, each supplementing the other, are on the eve of bringing this about. China will have but one main railway line ; this is what no other country has. It will run, and it is half made, from Pekin through Hankow to Canton, from the capital of the north to the capital of the south. It will be fed from the sea at either end, and by the magnificent Yangtse navigation in the centre also. Nor is the Sian entry of less im portance, for across the plateau, via Zungaria and Sian, will surely come a great railway of the future to strike the Chinese main line at right angles and feed it from the land. These and all the other subsidiary lines, which must be built to supplement the great water system of communication, cannot fail to make and keep China one. This unity makes for stability, so that men may obtain control of energy, to save it or to use it to the best advantage.