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We Americans, if we believe all the advertisements we read, have to take a vitamin pill or two every day to get through that little letdown we are said to have in the middle of the afternoon, and most of us are pretty well supplied with vitamins in our regular diet. But the Chinese haven't had enough vitamins for years and years, and they are more jittery and irritable and restless than ordinarily, and they are tired. They are anemic, they are full of parasites and malaria and tuberculosis and dysentery. They have got to have adequate food and medical care.
Economic Deterioration. Then there is economic deterioration. China was able to keep her economy in surprisingly good balance until a complete blockade was slapped upon her in 1942, and that was not her fault. We and the British controlled the seas, but we could not keep the sea lanes open to China and the British could not hold Burma and so China was completely cut off. The blockade had the same effect on her as it had on our South in the War between the States. The South was not industrialized, as China is not industrialized. The South had to get supplies and equipment and machinery and munitions from abroad, just as China did. The South had to sell its cotton and other products abroad in order to get foreign exchange to keep its currency stable, just as China did. When the blockade shut off trade the South had to resort to the printing press and inflation resulted. It was this economic breakdown and lack of supplies as a result of the blockade which led to the weakening and defeat of the South more than any other single factor.
Then there is moral deterioration—graft, corruption, profiteering, black market. These things develop in any country in war, and especially in defeat. But there are several things to say about the graft in China. First, while it is bad, it is not nearly as bad as I expected to find, considering the circumstances. Second, there has always been in China the "squeeze" system, which we consider graft, but they do not. Any Chinese who handles a transaction for you takes 10%. If he takes 20%, he is dishonest; but, if he does not take 10%, he is not considered honest, he is just dumb. The Chinese say that dishonesty consists in leaving somebody with the wrong impression. So it is not graft from the Chinese point of view, because everybody knows perfectly well it is being done. It is "old custom," has always been done, and everybody understands it.
When Chinese come to this country and do business with us, they have to do it on our terms. And, when we do business with them in their country, we have got to do it on their terms, that is, if we want to get much accomplished.
Political Deterioration. Then there is political deterioration. In any country the "outs" want to get in, and, when the "ins" have almost nothing but defeats to show, the outs inevitably increase their opposition. The surprising thing is not that there has been and is opposition in China to Chiang Kaishek. The miracle is that after seven years of almost unending defeats he still has the confidence of an overwhelming majority of the Chinese people, that he is still in the ring—a little wobbly, to be sure, but