so
long as she is occupied in Western Asia as she is at present, she could
never dare to cross the path of China, and enter upon a war which would
rage from Vladivostock and the Amoor to Kuldja and Kashgar. Therefore
the settlement of the Kuldja question is not such an easy matter as
might be supposed; nor does it find Russia so strong or China so weak as
might have been expected. But after all, as we have just said, the
Kuldja question is not the only one suggested by the appearance of the
Chinese in Eastern Turkestan. There is the far wider one raised by the
appearance of the Chinese as a factor in the great Central Asian
question. The three great Asiatic Powers have now converged upon a
point; what is to be the result?

The only way to be in a position to venture upon a surmise as to the
future, is to realize in its full significance the lessons of the past.
What have been the mutual relations between England, Russia, and China?
We have assumed throughout this volume, and we shall assume here, the
irreconcilable hostility of England and Russia, in Asia at all events,
veneered over as it is by a lacquer of politeness and civilization. We
have only to consider the relations between England and China, and
between Russia and China. To take the latter first, they have always
been united by ties of friendship and reciprocity in commercial and
political rights. Their intercourse has been on the whole singularly
harmonious, and while we have been compelled to wage three wars to
obtain a standing for our merchants in the seaports, Russia, without
being compelled to resort to anything like the same extreme measures,
has been able to secure all she, or her merchants, wanted in Middle and
Western China. She has made the Amoor a Russian river; she dominates the
Yellow and Japanese seas from Vladivostock; and she has acquired in her
position among the Khalkas, and in Kuldja, two portals to various weak
points in the Chinese Empire. Yet all the time she has been on terms of
the closest amity with China. She has several commercial treaties of the
most favourable character, and she has always been on the footing of
"the most favoured nation." But she has been more than that; she has
been the most favoured nation. But the Chinese have not failed to
observe that this good understanding with Russia has, so far as
advantages arising from it go, been a very one-sided affair. For all
Russia's protestations of friendship and good-will, what