An Optimist Looks at China

Abstract

During these years of national humiliation and economic depression, it is very difficult for any thinking Chinese to maintain a sane optimism regarding the future of his country and people. He is disheartened by the armed aggression of a powerful neighbor against which all measures of defense have appeared hopelessly inadequate; and he is dissatisfied with the internal progress which seems so pitifully slow and infinitesimal in the face of the immense needs of the nation. He is naturally led to question himself: “Are we Chinese, as a nation, fit to survive and thrive in this new world of hard struggles? Is there a way out? Have we been wrong in giving up so much of our own ways of life and in taking over so much from the Western World?”

Chapter Note: Asia. Mar., 1935. Vol. 35. No. 3. pp. 139–142.