Excerpt from China in Decay: A Handbook to the Far Eastern Question The object of the present volume is to serve as a handbook to the Far Eastern Question, which has of late come so prominently to the front. It does not aim at competing with the numerous and more comprehensive works which deal with the physical, ethnographical, and political aspects of the Celestial Empire, but has been written with a view to supplying, in narrative form, a complete record of the various causes which have led up to the existing position in the Far East, It has occurred to me that a book explaining the aims of the different Powers interested in China, and detailing sufficient of the history of that country to enable the reader to appreciate the true significance of the tangled diplomatic relations now attracting so much attention, may serve a useful purpose in bringing certain facts, not usually appreciated, within the public ken. The first three chapters, dealing with the country, the people, and the government, are mainly introductory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.