On September 22, Appeared An Edict Ostensibly
Signed By Kwangsu Announcing That He Had Requested The Empress-Dowager To
Resume Authority Over The Affairs Of State.
It has been since reported
that he has been killed.
The immediate effect of the _coup d'etat_ was to
place all power at Pekin in the hands of Manchus least friendly to the
adoption of European ideas, and more willing to lean upon Russia than
upon any other foreign power. The early restoration to high office of Li
Hung Chang, who has, for some time, been a useful tool of the St.
Petersburg government, and who is a favorite of the empress-dowager, may
be looked upon as probable.
THE FUTURE OF CHINA
It is obvious that arterial communication is the first organic need of all
civilized States, and pre-eminently of a country so vast and various in
its terrestrial conditions as is China. This need has been recognized by
the ablest of its rulers, who, from time to time, have made serious
efforts to connect the most distant parts of the empire by both land and
water routes. The Grand Canal, or Yunho ("River of Transports"), is
pronounced as memorable a monument of human industry in its way as is the
Great Wall. It is not, however, a canal in the Western sense of the word,
but merely, as Richthofen has explained, "a series of abandoned river
beds, lakes and marshes, connected one with another by cuttings of no
importance, fed by the Wanho in Shantung, which divides into two currents
at its summit, and by other streams and rivers along its course.
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