Correspondence respecting the opium question in China.

Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Correspondence respecting the opium question in China. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/58 (page 2)
    by the views he heard expressed on the subject during his recent visit to India. From conversations which he had with Mr. Baker, the Financial Secretary, and other Members of the Government of India, his Excellency came to the conclusion that India was prepared to dispense with the opium revenue, and on his return to China he informed his own Government that it was the Chinese craving for the drug, and not England’s desire to force it upon China, which was now responsible for the continuance of the traffic. This view of the question received confirmation from Mr. Morley’s recent speech in the House of Commons which the Chinese construed as an invitation to them to prove the sincerity of their desire for the cessation of the Indian import of opium. Mr. Tong, from whom I received this account of the genesis of the present movement, could supply me with little information as to the steps which are to be taken to enforce the Edict, but the method of procedure, so far as it has been formulated at present, seems roughly to contemplate a gradual reduction of the area of cultivation of native opium, pari passu, with a corresponding decrease in the import of the foreign article. Smokers of the drug, if officials, are to be given a term of about -six months in which to break off the habit, and the ordinary people are to be dealt with ona time scale graduated according to the degree in which they have become addicted to the habit. It is true that the Chinese Government have in recent years effected some far-reaching changes, of which the abolition of the old examination system is perhaps the most striking instance, but to swéep away in a decade habits which have been the growth of at least a century and which have gained a firm hold upon 8,000,000 of the adult population of the Empire is a task which has, I imagine, been rarely attempted with success in the course of history; and the attempt, it must be remembered, is to be made at a time when the Central Government has largely lost the power to impose its will upon the provinces. The authors of the movement are, however, confident of success, and China will deserve and doubtless receive much sympathy in any serious effort she may make to stamp out the evil. . Apart from the difficulty of reforming people by legislative enactment, the fiscal side of the question is a very important factor in the situation, and one which will appeal to the Chinese quite as. much as it would to any Western Government. The foreign import, which has been a gradually dwindling quantity during the last twenty years, stood in 1905 at 51,890 piculs,* of which 50,200 piculs were Indian, producing a revenue of 5,711,711 taels (859,136l.). It is calculated that the total production of native opium is about ten times as great as that of the foreign import, and that the revenue derived from it amounts to about 45,000,000 taels (6,768,7500.). The policy during the last few years has been to centralize this revenue, and either make it available for Imperial needs or ear-mark it for such definite purposes as conservancy work at Shanghae or the payment of loans contracted by provincial authorities. The dislocation of the finances which the enforcement of the Decree would entail is a far more serious question in the present state of the national exchequer than the similar problem with which the Indian Government will have to deal in sacrificing the opium revenue, and added to this is the immense difficulty of stopping the growth of the poppy in at least four large and distant provinces—Shansi, Shensi, Szechuan, and Yiinnan—in most of which it is now the staple crop. ; I have, &c. | (Signed) J. N. JORDAN... Inclosure in No. 3. Extract from the ‘ Peking Gazette” of September 20, 1906. Imperial Decree. (Translation.) : ; : SINCE the restrictions against the use of opium were removed, the poison of this drug has practically permeated the whole of China. -The opium smoker wastes time and neglects work, ruins his health, and impoverishes his family, and the poverty and weakness which for the past few decades have been daily increasing amongst us are undoubtedly attributable to this cause. ‘I'o speak of this arouses our indignation, and, at, a moment when we are striving to strengthen the Empire, it behoves us to admonish the people, that all may realize the necessity of freeing themselves from these coils, and thus pass from sickness into health. Puree It is hereby commanded that within a period of ten years the evils: arising from * 1 picul = 1333 lbs.