Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China is a 1933 non-fiction book by Ralph Townsend which presents Townsend's observations on the state of then-contemporary China. The book is considered an anti-Chinese polemic by scholars.[1]
A harsh critique of Chinese society and culture, Ways That Are Dark was written at a time when China was in the grip of considerable civil strife. Townsend claimed that the source of China's problems lay in fundamental defects in the ethnic characteristics of the Chinese people. Although the book was a bestseller in the United States, it met with highly polarized reactions from its supporters and detractors. Though praised by some periodicals, it was denounced by missionaries and sinologists, including Owen Lattimore who condemned it as "a general indictment of a whole race". It was banned by the government of China.
After World War II, the book fell into obscurity. It was reprinted in 1997 by the white nationalist publisher Barnes Review and subsequently gained renewed popularity in Japan in 2004 when a Japanese translation was published.
Background
Ways That Are Dark is based on its author's experience of living in China for more than one year. Townsend had worked as a journalist and educator in New York before joining the United States Foreign Service on 16 December 1930.[2][3] He served as a vice-consul in Shanghai between 10 December 1931 and 9 January 1932 and then in Fuzhou until 1 March 1933.[3][4] The book was released on 10 November 1933 by G. P. Putnam's Sons.[5]
Summary of contents
In his introduction, Townsend describes the book as "an honest attempt to present the facts as they are, however unpleasant" and a counterbalance to the "maudlin sentiment" and "misinformation" of other writers on China who have made "fatuous attempts to sprinkle bright hopes over dark facts."[6] He notes that while China's virtues will speak for themselves, "in appraising a stranger with whom we are to deal, it is important to know his shortcomings".[6]
A 1928 photograph of the Bund of Shanghai where Townsend starts his story
In the first two chapters he describes the atrocious conditions he witnessed in China. Shanghai is depicted as a squalid, noisy, and polluted den of crime, poverty, and disease, and yet still comparatively wealthy compared to the rest of the country.[7] The interior of the country is difficult to access due to lack of infrastructure, is mostly unsafe for travel, and is wracked constantly by famine and starvation.[8]
Townsend had asserted in chapter one that the cause of China's present misery lies in the fundamental defects that exist in the ethnic characteristics of the Chinese people[9] and in chapters three and four he explains what he believes these defects are. Townsend states that dishonesty is "the most prominent characteristic in the Chinese mentality as opposed to our own".[10] Townsend gives many examples of him being lied to by Chinese employees, coolies, shopkeepers, and government officials, and notes that many other consuls were driven out of the service by this relentless and "aimless lying, with each lie merely a pretext for another".[11] The other highly salient trait of the Chinese is their "indifference to fellow suffering".[12] Through a large number of personal and second-hand anecdotes, Townsend argues that the Chinese may be the only people in the world who are completely unable to comprehend the basic human impulses of sympathy or gratitude toward other people. Because the Chinese feel no empathy toward others, they behave in an unbelievably sadistic and cruel fashion toward one another, and they view altruistic foreigners as targets to be mercilessly taken advantage of.[13] Other traits Townsend identifies as being typically Chinese are cowardice, lust for money, lack of a sense of personal hygiene, lack of critical thinking skills, insincerity, and obsession with hollow rites.[14] Townsend believes that these traits are as notable among China's leaders and educated strata as much as they are in the poor masses, and his analysis of historical documents leads him to believe that they are not a recent product of the present chaos, but rather are deeply ingrained traits of China's national character.[15] He concludes that the "outstanding characteristics" of the Chinese people "neither enable other peoples to deal satisfactorily with them, nor enable the Chinese to deal satisfactorily with themselves."[16]
In chapters five and six Townsend discusses US-funded charitable organizations in China, especially missions. He points out that although the United States had given at least $160 million in philanthropy to China,[17] these charities in China, even secular hospitals and schools, are generally preyed upon by the very Chinese people who the charitable workers seek to help.[18] These charities are subject to rampant looting, arson, and murderous mob violence by Chinese people who their government refuses to prosecute.[19] Much of this violence is incited by the anti-foreigner propaganda of the KMT, a party described as being "worse than the Ku Klux Klan at its most degenerate stage", and through US aid to China Townsend suggests that America is actually bankrolling propaganda against itself.[20] Though the missionaries are sincere and hard-working, Townsend finds that they suffer from extreme delusion over the ultimate futility of their goal of reforming the Chinese.[21] The missionaries, he states, have willfully ignored overwhelming evidence that no degree of care or education can uproot the intrinsic sickness of Chinese culture.[22] He calls for an end to all missionary and charitable work in China.[23]
Opium field photographed in 1932 not far from Townsend's home in Fuzhou
In chapter seven Townsend details the sheer horror of China's ongoing civil war. Among the factions competing for power in China, Townsend believes that none of them, neither the leaders nor their men, have any fixed loyalties or higher motivations apart from desire for loot.[24] With every man only out for himself and "China's microscopically few good men... too weak to be felt",[25] Townsend predicts no end to the chaos.[26] Much of the violence, Townsend explains in chapter eight, is fuelled by opium, the addiction of one out of every eight Chinese.[27] Peasants are often compelled to plant opium by local administrators and warlords to pay for their armies, to such an extent that many districts are more heavily planted with opium than food, and all the while KMT officials lie incessantly to the international community about their efforts to suppress the trade.[28] In contrast to the depredations of the KMT and other warlords, in chapter nine Townsend praises the positive influence of the Japanese in China. The Japanese themselves are considered by him to be a loyal, brave, reliable, honest, and cleanly people, and thus the polar opposites of the Chinese.[29] Townsend provides his own firsthand account of the Shanghai Incident of 1932, which he claims was probably provoked by Chinese aggression,[30] and similarly sees the Japanese decision to invade Manchuria as a fitting response to the "foredoomed contest of covert violence against the Japanese" waged by Chang Hsueh-liang (Zhang Xueliang).[31] Townsend also lavishes praise on the puppet state of Manchukuo as "a blessing to the thirty million or so Chinese living there" which has achieved "stability and well-being for millions".[32] Townsend concludes that informed observers are grateful for Japan's role in dealing with an unruly China.[33]
Finally, in chapter ten Townsend affirms that the "backward Chinese" are America's "only legitimate problem in Asia"[34] and asks what can be done to deal with a nation that spends aid money corruptly, does not respect its loans, mistreats and attacks foreigners, ignores international drug laws, will not protect foreign investment, and does not engage in productive diplomacy with other nations.[35] He warns Americans that the Chinese see kindness only as weakness and thus can never respond to any type of positive reinforcement. "For every Chinese, from highest to lowest," he argues, "all the acts of life are concentrated upon extracting, from those who mean nothing to him, what he can for the benefit of himself and his clan."[36] By contrast, he believes that the Chinese do understand force and respect strength. Therefore, he advocates that the United States forgo naive "sentimentalist" thinking and adopt a policy of "stern insistence upon our rights without cruel abuse of our strength",[37] including withholding further loans without strict conditions and holding on to foreign concessions and extraterritoriality.[38]
Reception
Ways That Are Dark hit the bestsellers list in the United States,[39][40] and The Robesonian noted that the book "was given lavish praise and bitter abuse by some of the leading newspapers in America".[41] It was advertised as doing "for China what Katherine Mayo did for Mother India",[5] and Foreign Affairs magazine described it as "a sensationally unorthodox and unvarnished picture of the Chinese".[42]
Praise
Owen Lattimore denounced the book as "a general indictment of a whole race"
E. Francis Brown, writing for Current History, approved of the book's comprehensive and frank discussion of conditions within China. Though the book takes a strongly negative stance towards China, Brown argued that "this very unfriendliness makes the book a welcome antidote to much that has been written in recent years and some of its conclusions might be well pondered by those who shape America's Far Eastern Policy."[43]Willis J. Abbot of the Christian Science Monitor especially praised Townsend's study of the social life and customs of the Chinese and claimed that "Any capable observer with a few weeks at his disposal in China will corroborate much that appears in this volume."[44] His praise was echoed by Douglas Jerrold of The English Review who found the work "brilliant and outspoken".[45]
Negative criticism
By contrast, Lewis S. Gannett of The Nation criticized Townsend for writing an "apology for Japan" and painting the Chinese as "all alike, all generically different from Japanese and Westerners".[46] A similarly negative assessment published in The China Weekly Review observed that "A Chinese might easily write a similar book and by emphasizing the activities of the Capones and Dillingers, the bootleggers, kidnappers and racketeers, prove to his own satisfaction at least that the Americans constituted a degenerate branch of the white race."[47][48]The Republican concluded its review of the book with "Throughout the presentation of his observations runs a thread of ill-considered bias which taints his words. We must look to other... more discerning writers for the truth about China."[49]
Prominent sinologists were also critical of the work. In the pages of The New York Times, Owen Lattimore condemned Ways That Are Dark as "a general indictment of a whole race" which lacks insight, contains factual errors, and relies on second-hand accounts. He stated that the book would "only convince people who are convinced already."[50]Nathaniel Peffer likewise denounced the book as "a rehash of all the old patter of the outport hotel lobbies, with all its half-truths, inaccuracies, provincialism, ignorance and sometimes crassness... [Townsend] has not managed to observe accurately the most simple and superficial things."[51]JOP Bland, though deeming Townsend's conclusions "as a whole... unconvincing", at least found the chapter on opium "particularly instructive."[52]
Also among the book's detractors were missionaries, whom Townsend had criticized. They reviewed the book negatively in a variety of periodicals, including The Chinese Recorder, which accused Townsend of having "gathered a lot of stories and put them together in a clever, cynical and unusually warped way".[53] Other negative reviews appeared in The Missionary Review of the World,[54]The China Christian Year Book,[55] and The Missionary Herald at Home and Abroad.[56]
Ways That Are Dark continues to be noted for its Sinophobic viewpoint. In 1985 the historian Frank P. Mintz called it "a classic in the literature of Sinophobia."[57] In 2000 the scholar Yong Chen referred to Townsend's attitude towards the ethnic characteristics of the Chinese people as being derivative of "the anti-Chinese prejudice that nineteenth-century writers had propagated."[1] In 2004 the writer Gregory Clark described it as "a viciously anti-China book" that "contrasts an allegedly dirty, devious Chinese nation with the trustworthy, hardworking Japanese".[58]
Though the book was originally to be called "Chinese Merry-Go-Round",[59] the title under which it was ultimately published is a quote from Bret Harte's poem "The Heathen Chinee".[60] Though "The Heathen Chinee" had been used a rallying cry by opponents of Chinese immigration to the United States, Harte had intended it as a parody of the anti-Chinese bigotry prevalent in the United States of the nineteenth century.[61]
Political responses
The Japanese Army and Navy strongly approved of the book and several thousand copies of it were bought by the War Ministry and Naval Ministry who by the beginning of 1934 were distributing the books for free to foreign journalists and officials.[47] By contrast, the Nationalist Government of China responded by banning Townsend's book throughout China from 1935.[40][62] Even so, the journalist George Moorad reported that in 1946 Chinese communists distributed contraband copies of the book to American China Marines in the hopes of disillusioning them about conditions in China.[63]
The Barnes Review edition was subsequently translated into Japanese in 2004 by a pair of Japanese translators, Hideo Tanaka and Kenkichi Sakita, and became an instant success, selling out 10 successive re-printings before 2007 when it was reissued as a mass market paperback.[66] Gregory Clark noted that the Japanese edition of Ways That Are Dark, which was entitled Ankoku Tairiku Chūgoku no Shinjitsu ("The Truth About the Dark Continent China"),[67] had garnered widespread popularity among members of the Japanese right-wing.[58]
Tanaka, one of the translators of the book, praised Townsend in Shokun! magazine for his "penetrating insight" in reporting "starkly and vividly on the true nature of the Chinese that he had witnessed firsthand".[68] Sakita, the other translator, likewise lauded the book in an article written for Nobukatsu Fujioka's Association for Advancement of Unbiased View of History. Sakita called the book "essential reading to understand what China really is" and argued that Townsend's ideas continue to offer important lessons in conducting Sino-Japanese relations today.[69] The book was also reviewed positively by the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun.[67]
The Second Sino-Japanese War, also known as the Second China–Japan War and the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from 1937 to 1945, as part of World War II. This total war between China and the Empire of Japan is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia, although some scholars consider the European War and the Pacific War to be entirely separate, albeit concurrent. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century and has been described as "the Asian Holocaust", in reference to the scale of Imperial Japan's war crimes against Chinese civilians. After the Japanese attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts which are generally categorized under the China Burma India Theater of World War II by the Western allies.
Treaty ports were the port cities in China and Japan that were opened to foreign trade mainly by the unequal treaties forced upon them by Western powers, as well as cities in Korea opened up similarly by the Qing dynasty of China and the Empire of Japan.
Owen Lattimore was an American Orientalist and writer. He was an influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and then taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1938 to 1963. He was director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations there from 1939 to 1953. During World War II, he was an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and the American government and contributed extensively to the public debate on American policy in Asia. From 1963 to 1970, Lattimore was the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds in England.
Israel Epstein was a Polish-born Chinese journalist and author. He was one of the few foreign-born Chinese citizens of non-Chinese origin to become a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
History of foreign relations of China covers diplomatic, military, political and economic relations in History of China from 1800 to the modern era. For the earlier period see Foreign relations of imperial China, and for the current foreign relations of China see Foreign relations of China.
The Treaty of Wanghia was the first of the unequal treaties imposed by the United States on the Qing dynasty. By the terms of the diplomatic agreement, the United States received the same privileges with China that Great Britain had achieved under the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The United States received additional privileges as well, including the right to cabotage on preferential terms and the expansion of extraterritoriality. Imperial China's Qing dynasty signed the treaty with the United States on July 3, 1844, in the Kun Iam Temple. The treaty was subsequently passed by the U.S. Congress and ratified by President John Tyler on January 17, 1845. The Treaty of Wanghia was formally in effect until the signing of the 1943 Sino-American Treaty for the Relinquishment of Extraterritorial Rights in China.
Sino-Soviet relations, or China–Soviet Union relations, refers to the diplomatic relationship between China and the various forms of Soviet Power which emerged from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Carl Crow (1884–1945) was a Highland, Missouri-born newspaperman, businessman, and writer who managed several newspapers and then opened the first Western advertising agency in Shanghai, China. He ran the agency for 19 years, creating calendar advertisements. He was also the founding editor of the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury.
In the early 19th century, Western colonial expansion occurred at the same time as an evangelical revival – the Second Great Awakening – throughout the English-speaking world, leading to more overseas missionary activity. The nineteenth century became known as the Great Century of modern religious missions.
The Great Road, also known as The Big Road and The Highway, is a 1934 Chinese silent film directed by Sun Yu, produced in 1934 and released on January 1, 1935. The film stars Jin Yan and Li Lili, and was produced by Sun Yu specifically for Li Lili to capitalize on her image and rising popularity. The Great Road is a silent film that was designed with a soundtrack, with music and sound effects added post-production. This film is another masterpiece written by Sun Yu after Wild Rose (1931) and Little Toys (1933) as part of the National Defense Cinema with anti-Japanese elements. While it was critically dubbed as a "hard film", Sun Yu made no explicit references that “the enemy nation” in the film was Japan, and the film contained no direct confrontation with “the enemy” on a battlefield, under the Kuomintang government's censorship policy designed to prevent provoking the Japanese. Instead, he used the building of a road to defeat "the enemy" invaders to express the spirit of the Anti-Japanese War in an "elegant and romantic" way. Sun Yu called The Great Road his "representative work".
The Kuomintang (KMT) is a Chinese political party that ruled mainland China from 1927 to 1949 prior to its relocation to Taiwan as a result of the Chinese Civil War. The name of the party translates as "China's National People's Party" and was historically referred to as the Chinese Nationalists. The Party was initially founded on 23 August 1912, by Sun Yat-sen but dissolved in November 1913. It reformed on October 10, 1919, again led by Sun Yat-sen, and became the ruling party in China. After Sun's death, the party was dominated from 1927 to 1975 by Chiang Kai-shek. After the KMT lost the civil war with the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the party retreated to Taiwan and remains a major political party of the Republic of China based in Taiwan.
"Century of humiliation" or "hundred years of national humiliation" is a term used in China to describe the period of intervention and subjugation of the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China by Western powers and Japan from the First Opium War (1839–1842) to the People's Republic winning the Civil War in 1949.
Ralph Townsend was an American writer, consul and political activist noted for his opposition to the entry of the United States into World War II. He served in the foreign service as a consul stationed in Canada and China from 1931 to 1933. Shortly after returning to the United States he came to prominence through his book Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China, a harsh critique of Chinese culture which became a widely controversial bestseller. Townsend became a prominent advocate of non-interventionism, and in the 1930s and 1940s was well known for his vocal opposition to the Roosevelt administration's foreign policy from a pro-Japanese and pro-neutrality point of view.
Rev. John Liggins was an English-born Episcopalian missionary to China and Japan. The first Protestant missionary and ordained representative of Anglican Communion to reach Japan, together with his seminary classmate Channing Moore Williams, he helped found the Nippon Sei Ko Kai.
The Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, or Haiguo Tuzhi, is a 19th-century Chinese gazetteer compiled by scholar-official Wei Yuan and others, based on initial translations ordered by Special Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu. The Treatise is regarded as the first significant Chinese work on the West and one of China's initial responses to the Anglo-Chinese First Opium War (1839–1842). Eventually stretching to one hundred juan, or scrolls, the treatise contains numerous maps and much geographical detail covering both the western and eastern hemispheres. The main principles advocated in the Treatise were later absorbed by the Self-Strengthening Movement, and the book also garnered significant interest in Japan and helped mould the country's foreign policy with respect to the West.
The 1967 Opium War took place in northwestern Laos between February and August 1967; actual fighting took place from 29 July to 1 August 1967. A mule train, led by Burmese militia, carrying 16 tons of opium crossed into Laos to Ban Khwan, where they were attacked by rival drug smugglers from the Chinese Nationalists' Third and Fifth Armies. The intended recipient of the shipment, Royal Lao Army General Ouane Rattikone, bombed both sides while moving in troops to sweep the battlefield. With both Burmese militia and Nationalist Chinese defeated and expelled from Laos, the Lao general confiscated the opium for himself.
Fang Chih or Fang Zhi, courtesy name: Xikong (希孔), was a politician, provincial governor, diplomat, author and a high-ranking Kuomintang official of the Republic of China.
East Asia–United States relations covers American relations with the region as a whole, as well as summaries of relations with China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and smaller places. It includes diplomatic, military, economic, social and cultural ties. The emphasis is on historical developments.
The history of China–United States relations covers the relations of the United States with the Qing and Republic eras. For history after the 1949 founding of the People's Republic of China, see China–United States relations.
The Sino-Japanese Joint Defence Agreement was a series of secret military pacts between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan, signed in May 1918. Drawn up following China's entry into the First World War on the part of the Allied Powers, the agreements, which were concluded in secrecy, granted Japan numerous military privileges within Chinese territory along the Sino-Russian border. The content of agreements were leaked to the press at an early stage, sparking a widespread protest movement by Chinese students in Japan and across China. The agreements were officially terminated in January 1921, their continuance made untenable by Chinese public opinion.
References
1 2 Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000), 240.
↑ Edward Martell et al., Who Was Who Among English and European Authors, 1931-1949 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1978), 1411.
1 2 The Department of State, Foreign Service List 1932 (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1932), 62, 79.
↑ "Consulates Will Close," New York Times, 5 February 1933, N1.
↑ "Book Notes," New York Times, 4 September 1933, BR10.
↑ Nattie Vest, "Books," Jefferson Herald, 2 July 1936, 2.
↑ Gary Scharnhorst, "'Ways That Are Dark': Appropriations of Bret Harte's 'Plain Language from Truthful James'," Nineteenth-Century Literature, December 1996, 377–399.
↑ Post Office Department, United States Official Postal Guide: Part II International Postal Service (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1940), 118.
↑ George Moorad, Lost Peace in China (New York: EP Dutton, 1949), 193.
↑ Limin Chu, "China and Sino-US Relations, 1900-1930: The Overland Monthly," Sino-American Relations: An International Quarterly, Summer 2001, 88.
↑ "Writer Guilty As Jap Agent," The Washington Post, 28 March 1942, 13.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
