dway, but success
came, and it was followed by various imitators, some published at
Shanghai, some at other treaty ports and at Hong-Kong. In 1910 there
were over 200 daily, weekly or monthly journals in China. The effect
of this mass of literature on the public mind of China is of
first-rate importance.

The attitude of the central government towards the native press is
somewhat undefined. Official registration of a newspaper is required
before postal facilities are given. There are no press laws, but as
every official is a law unto himself in these matters, there is
nothing to prevent him from summarily suppressing an obnoxious
newspaper and putting the editor in prison. The emperor, among other
reform edicts which provoked the _coup d'etat_ of 1898, declared that
newspapers were a boon to the public and appointed one of them a
government organ. The empress-dowager revoked this decree, and
declared that the public discussion of affairs of state in the
newspapers was an impertinence, and ought to be suppressed.
Nevertheless the newspapers continued to flourish, and their outspoken
criticism had a salutary effect on the public and on the government.
The official classes seem to have become alarmed at the independent
attitude of the newspapers, but instead of a campaign of suppression
the method was adopted, about 1908, of bringing the vernacular press
under official control. This was accomplished chiefly by the purchase
of the newspapers by the mandarins, with the result that at the
beginning of 1910 there was said to be hardly an independent native
daily newspaper left in China. The use of government funds to
subsidize or to purchase newspapers and thus to stifle or mislead
public opinion provoked strong protests from members of the Nanking
provincial council at its first sitting in the autumn of 1909. The
appropriation by the Shanghai Taot'ai of moneys belonging to the
Huangpu conservancy fund for subsidizing papers led to his impeachment
by a censor and to the return of the moneys.[17] (X.)

III. ECONOMICS

_Agriculture and Industry._

China is pre-eminently an agricultural country. The great majority of
its inhabitants are cultivators of the soil. The holdings are in general
very small, and the methods of farming primitive. Water is abundant and
irrigation common over large areas. Stock-raising, except in Sze-ch'uen
and Kwang-tung, is only prac