Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 9th October 1909 — No.16
Facts and Opinions
The Progress of China
A recent article in the Amrita Bazar Patrika gives a picture of the enormous educational progress made by China in a few years.
In the short time since the Boxer troubles China has revolutionised her educational system, established a network of modern schools of all ranks, provided for a thorough modern education for her princes and nobles, and added to the intellectual education a thorough grounding in military knowledge and the habits of the soldier, so that, when the process is complete, the whole Chinese people will be a nation trained in arms whom the greatest combination of powers will not care to touch.
On 
another side of national development, a railway has just been opened which has been entirely constructed and will be run by Chinese.
When the process of education is well forward, it is intended by the Chinese Government to transform itself into a constitutional and Parliamentary government, and in its programme this great automatic revolution has been fixed to come off in another eight years.
No other race but the Chinese, trained by the Confucian system to habits of minute method, perfect organisation and steady seriousness in all things great and small, could thus calmly map out a stupendous political, social and educational change, as if it were the programme of a ceremonial function, and carry it out with thoroughness and efficiency.
Once the Chinese have made up their minds to this revolution, they are likely to carry it out with the greatest possible completeness, businesslike method, effective organisation, and the least possible waste and friction.
In the history of China, no less than the history of Japan, we are likely to see the enormous value of national will-power using the moral outcome of a great and ancient discipline, even while breaking the temporary mould in which that discipline had cast society, thought and government.
We in India have an ancient discipline much more powerful than the Chinese or Japanese; but where is the centre of sovereignty in India which will direct the national will-power to the right use of that discipline?
Where even is the centre of national endeavour which will make up for the absence of such a Government?
We have a Government manned by aliens, out of touch with and contemptuous of the sources of national strength and culture; we have an education empty of them which seeks to replace our ancient discipline by a foreign strength, instead of recovering and invigorating our own culture and turning it to modern uses; we have leaders trained in the foreign discipline who do not know or believe in the force that would, if made use of, revolutionise India more swiftly and mightily than Japan was or China is being revolutionised.
It is this and not internal division or the drag of old and unsuitable conditions that makes the work in India more difficult than in any other Asiatic country.