Opium for the World
I
AT the Eighteenth Session of the League of Nations Advisory Committee on Opium, held in May 1934, the American representative, Mr. Stuart J. Fuller, drew attention to the dangerous situation which has arisen out of the vast increase of opium cultivation, and the consequent manufacture of narcotics, in China. He urged his colleagues of the Advisory Committee to face the facts of this situation, which he described as a menace to the world. He drew particular attention to the Chinese Government’s recent declaration, which alleged that the cultivation of opium had been strictly prohibited, ‘in accordance with the Opium Suppression Act of 1932, except in certain bandit-infested areas and regions under militarist domination, where raw opium was still produced,’ and he declared that the impression thus created, of a comparatively limited production, was directly contrary to the facts. The truth of the matter was that the opium-growing areas now include the greater part of several of the larger provinces—Yünnan, Kweichow, Szechwan, Shensi, Shansi, Kansu, and Jehol; their production, steadily increasing, is at least seven times greater than that of all the rest of the world, a state of affairs which naturally leads to largescale smuggling and export of the drug. As a result, opium smoking in the United States has lately shown a marked increase.
‘The American Narcotics Administration,’ said Mr. Fuller, ‘views this development with alarm ’ and looks to the Chinese Government, which controls the ports concerned in this traffic, to take effective measures to stop it. He pointed out that two years previously China’s representative at the Committee’s Sixteenth Session had reported that his government was investigating the opium traffic and the manufacture of narcotics, with a view to adopting remedial measures; so far, however, nothing had been heard of the results of this investigation, despite the fact that China is by treaty bound to keep the world informed of the situation within her borders. Detailed information was required, he said, with regard to the provincial monopolies, now established in ten provinces, for supplying opium to addicts; also reliable statements concerning the amount of the revenues derived from these monopolies, which in certain instances are known to constitute a very large proportion of the provincial revenues.
In order to understand why it is that China is unable, even if she were willing, to supply the specific information called for by Mr. Fuller, and the reasons which render it most unlikely that either the Advisory Committee or the Permanent Central Opium Board at Geneva will ‘face the facts,’ we must cast a retrospective eye over the history of the Chinese opium question.
The importance which has been attached by the League Council to the regulations promulgated in December 1932 by the Chinese Government, with regard to opium and narcotic drugs, would seem to imply a general indifference to this history. People forget that, as far back as 1838, a determined attempt was made by the Emperor and a few high-minded officials to put an end to the traffic, but that, as Morse observes, it failed, like others which had gone before, because its success was ’rendered impossible through the active connivance of every Chinese official who came into touch with the traffic.’ Prohibition failed then, as it fails to-day, because, as Pearl Buck says, ‘ public opinion in China approves that each family is expected to care for its own. As yet it would be considered a serious lapse on the part of an individual if he let his family suffer in order to serve the State more honestly.’
II
The anti-opium movement which led to the issue of the famous Edict of November 1906 was instigated by Tang Shao-yi, a progressive Westerneducated Cantonese then holding high office at Peking and now one of the Elder Statesmen of the Republic. It was one of several manifestations of Young China’s newly awakened sense of inferiority, inspired by Japan’s victory over Russia. The Edict provided for a complete cessation of all poppy cultivation within ten years, for drastic restrictions on opium smoking under license, and for a gradual reduction in the import of foreign opium, to be completely stopped in ten years. Dr. Morrison, the famous Times correspondent at Peking, described the Regulations imposed by this Edict as ‘the most masterly State document issued in China for many years, leaving no loophole for evasion.’ Public opinion in England and the United States, led by the missionary societies, was warmly sympathetic and generally hopeful of good results. By the Anglo-Chinese Opium Convention of 1907, Great Britain agreed to the gradual abolition of the Indian trade, pari passu with the cessation of poppy growing in China, the first three years to be experimental and a test of the Chinese Government’s good faith and effective authority. By 1910, the reduction effected in cultivation was generally estimated at 25 per cent, thus demonstrating once again the readiness of the Chinese people to submit to constituted authority, firmly administered and morally justifiable. The abolition movement appealed to the instinctive morality of the masses and its initial success reflected the people’s belief in the sincerity of the government’s intentions.
With a view to controlling and limiting the importation of foreign opium, the first international Conference was held at Shanghai in February 1909, the American Bishop Brent presiding. The Conference, recording its belief in ‘the unswerving sincerity of the government of China in their efforts to eradicate the production and consumption of opium throughout the Empire,’ urged the adoption of international regulations calculated to assist China in her declared purpose. In May 1911, the British Government concluded another agreement with China, in which continued coöperation towards the complete cessation of the opium traffic was assured, and it was agreed, inter alia, that Indian opium should not be conveyed into any province of China in which native opium had been completely suppressed. A second international Conference was held at The Hague in January 1912, twelve nations being represented; the powers concerned there pledged themselves to coöperate in regulating the production and distribution of opium and the trade in narcotic drugs and in preventing the smuggling thereof into China.
What the ultimate results of the antiopium movement might have been, had the Manchu Government not been overthrown by the Revolution of 1911, is matter for surmise. After the Revolution, Young China, greatly stimulated by the declaration of the Republic, took to themselves all the credit for the great improvement which had been recorded in 1909-1910, and Sun Yatsen was profuse with promises of drastic measures for the complete abolition of poppy cultivation; but these promises were accompanied by a violent agitation for an immediate and complete cessation of the Indian trade, which by treaty was a matter dependent solely upon China’s own remedial measures and good faith. It was not long before the attitude of the Republican leaders, and the fact that several provinces were openly resuming the cultivation of opium, justified serious doubts as to their sincerity of purpose and, as a writer in the Times observed, foreshadowed ‘ the establishment of a monopoly in the hands of a class which, in all our national experience, has been wont to put money before righteousness and expediency before good faith.’ By the end of 1911, it was manifest that the chief motive underlying the agitation against the Indian trade lay in the desire of the new rëgime to establish a lucrative monopoly in the handling of the native drug.
The Peking Government itself had created grave misgivings as to its sincerity, by offering to pledge the opium revenues of Hupeh and Szechwan as security for a loan intended to run for forty years. The output of opium by the seven great producing provinces in 1912 was larger than in any year since 1907; in Yünnan, the authorities had organized a company for the cultivation of opium, not only for internal consumption, but for export to Tongking. In Chekiang and Hunan, cultivation had been openly resumed with the connivance, if not with the protection, of the Provincial Assemblies. All these things were known to the Republican leaders, but their only concern was to put a stop to Indian imports of the drug; with this end in view, Sun Yat-sen addressed a moving appeal, based on high moral principles, to the British nation. By the close of 1912, belief in China’s ‘unswerving sincerity’ was no longer possible. The predictions of the ‘pessimists’ had been abundantly fulfilled, and under the mandarins of the new dispensation history repeated itself, their bad faith being covered, as it had been fifty years before, ‘ under the shielding mask of their impotence.’
When, after the Great War, the world’s attention was again drawn to China, the anti-opium movement, in so far as poppy cultivation was concerned, had become a dead letter. Visiting Peking in 1920, I found that the traffic in opium had been diverted into new ways, but it was quite unconcealed, and vastly profitable to the authorities concerned. The old opium shops had been suppressed, and the fact loudly proclaimed abroad, but business in the drug was still briskly conducted (as it is to-day) by the agents and myrmidons of military and civil officials. As a moral crusade, the opium movement was dead, but as a political instrument it continued to have its uses. Just as formerly Young China, encouraged by the anti-opium and missionary societies, used to declare that China could and would abolish opium completely if only the Indian trade were stopped, so, after the war, they declared that the chief obstacle to this reform lay in the limitation of China’s right to tariff autonomy. When this had been successfully negotiated, they endeavored, by a widely conducted campaign of propaganda in America and England, to convince a sympathetic world that China could not be expected to suppress the opium and morphia trades until the ‘Unequal Treaties ’and the foreigners ’ extraterritorial privileges had been abolished. To those who know China, the idea that the abolition of extraterritoriality would put an end to opium cultivation is grimly humorous.
III
So much for the past. But the present situation is far more serious, for the reason that to the enormous increase of opium production by China must be added the large-scale manufacture in that country of morphia and heroin, and a rapidly increasing traffic in these drugs, not only in China but for purposes of export, especially to America. In other words, China’s opium trade has become an international problem. Since the establishment of the Nationalist Government at Nanking, under Chiang Kai-shek, seven years ago, the world has been continually assured by China’s diplomatic agents abroad, most notably at Geneva, of the sincerity of their government’s efforts to abolish opium cultivation and smoking; but the fact remains, incontestable, that the opium traffic has become a major source of officialdom’s revenues, encouraged and protected in practically every province. The China Year Book for 1931 contains a summary, compiled from the reports of resident missionaries, which shows conclusively that the assurances to the League of Nations by the Chinese Government’s representatives, its pious resolutions and exhaustive regulations, are worthless. The plain truth of the matter is that China is now responsible for nine tenths of the world’s opium production, and that the poppy is grown not only with the connivance of the officials, but often by their orders.
On the eve of the meeting of the Advisory Committee on Opium at Geneva in January 1931, the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs announced at Nanking that his government had issued new regulations for the inspection of poppy-growing areas by district magistrates, and for the imposition of fines. It has since been repeatedly shown, however, that these ‘fines’ are regularly levied by the authorities on cultivation which is frequently compulsory. A report from one province alone (Kweichow), published by the North China Herald in May 1932, showed that 70 to 80 per cent of the districts visited by the writer were openly growing opium under this system of fines.
The accumulating evidence of the cynical insincerity of the Chinese Government is continually accompanied, as in the past, by complaints that its earnest efforts at reform are being frustrated by the action of foreign powers. At a meeting of the Advisory Committee at Geneva in February 1931, the Chinese delegate (Dr. C. T. Wang) professed to deplore the fact that foreigners in China were engaged in the illicit drug traffic, and endeavored to concentrate attention on this admittedly deplorable result of the lawless condition of the country. He then proceeded to appeal to those foreign governments which have colonies in the Far East to desist from raising revenue therein from monopolies for opium smoking. In all seriousness, he asked the Committee to believe that his government was unable ‘ to bring relief to the thousands of opium smokers in these colonies’ so long as these monopolies continued to exist. He therefore urged the powers concerned ‘to make a real sacrifice and to cooperate with China in the fullest measure.’
It was, in fact, the old policy of evasion in a new form; the same type of argument as that which ascribes China’s failure to reform her administration of justice to the ’Unequal Treaties.’ Its insincerity was made manifest by the Chinese Government’s subsequent refusal to send a delegate to the International Conference on Opium Smoking, convened by the League of Nations and held at Bangkok in November 1931.
Until quite recently the attitude of Geneva towards China in this matter of opium has been one of credulous complaisance, an attitude imposed, no doubt, by the League’s unwillingness to face the fact that so long as wholesale cultivation continues, and so long as China declines to sanction any international inquiries, its own activities must continue to be purely face-saving and futile. But at the Eighteenth Session of the Advisory Committee the American delegate introduced a new note into the proceedings by submitting the critical survey of the situation in China and Manchuria to which I referred at the beginning of this article. Space does not permit of more than a few brief extracts from this survey, but the whole document (published in the League’s official report of the Eighteenth Session) deserves serious attention.
IV
According to the information submitted by Mr. Fuller, the official estimate of China’s total production of opium in 1930 was 12,000 tons, as against a total of 1770 tons for all the rest of the world; since that date the output has greatly increased. Mr. Fuller described this state of affairs as ‘a menace to the world which should no longer be tolerated.’ He reminded the Committee that one of the principal conclusions at which it had arrived was that ‘the accumulation anywhere of large quantities of opium, or of opium derivatives, inevitably leads to an increase of addiction, not only in the country where such accumulation is found, but also in other countries to which the drugs can be smuggled.’ Speaking for America alone, he declared that the traffic in opium from China to the United States is materially increasing, together with a marked recrudescence of opium smoking.
On behalf of the American people, he voiced a plea that China should resolutely take the matter in hand. ‘The situation is too serious,’ he said, ‘to await a long investigation and the drafting and adoption of new laws. The existing laws provide the necessary powers; why not enforce them, before the situation is completely out of control? It is not long-drawn-out investigation or new legislation that the situation calls for; it is action, and the world now looks to China for such action.’ He ended by expressing the hope that ‘the Chinese Government would come to the aid of the friends of China by undertaking at once such police measures as are necessary to stop this flood of opium and the growing production of morphine and heroin.’
The Chinese delegate, Dr. Hoo Chitsai, while admitting the seriousness of the situation, regretted that he was not in a position to announce any improvement with regard to narcotics; he then proceeded to create the usual diversion by ascribing China’s inability to cope with the evil to causes of foreign origin, beyond her control. ‘So long as the heavy clouds on the political horizon of the Far East have not been dispelled,’ he said, ‘it is impossible for the Chinese Government to devote to the question of narcotics all the attention which its solution requires. The problem of opium will only cease to exist when the political situation has been cleared up.’ He drew another red herring across the line of inquiry by asking the Committee to adopt a resolution requesting those governments which possess extraterritorial rights in China to deport all their nationals who have there taken part in the illicit manufacture of drugs, and to withdraw their protection from all coasting or river trading vessels in Chinese waters which are employed continuously in the illicit drug traffic, imposing heavy fines on such vessels.
The Chinese delegate, it will be observed, was wholly unconcerned with the only important facts of the situation: namely (1) that China’s enormous output of raw opium is produced, and marketed, under the protection and often by the orders of the provincial and military authorities; and (2) that it is this opium which, either under license or by smuggling, supplies the drug consumed by the Chinese communities in the foreign colonies of the Far East, and provides the raw material for the native morphine factories.
Mr. Lyall, Chairman of the Permanent Opium Board at Geneva (always a keen apologist for the Chinese Government), stated, in reply to Mr. Fuller, that the provinces which grew the most opium, Yünnan and Szechwan, had also the greatest number of illicit factories, and that ‘ the situation in these provinces was not under the control of the Nanking Government.’ He supplemented this remarkable admission (which stultifies China’s claim to be a united, organized state) by observing that the most practical suggestion which had been made for bringing these two provinces under the Central Government’s authority, and thus enabling it to deal with the problem of morphine and heroin, was ‘that the League should assist the Chinese Government in restoring prosperity in agriculture, in building roads, in introducing health measures, and in education.’ In other words, he proposed that a situation which the American delegate has rightly described as a menace to the whole world should be allowed to continue, undisturbed, pending the leisurely introduction of social and economic reforms throughout a lawless and inaccessible region as large as France and Germany put together. It would be difficult to cite a more typical instance of the smoke-screen tactics employed by and on behalf of the Chinese Government at Geneva, or to convey a better idea of the atmosphere of insincerity which has hitherto confused and concealed the facts, which the American delegate now implores the Committee to face.
In regard to the Chinese delegate’s specific proposal that heavy fines should be levied upon foreign vessels carrying opium, the following extracts from an article published by the Shanghai Evening Post on June 2, 1934, will enable the reader to form an idea of the spirit in which that proposal was made. The article is from the pen of Mr. H. G. W. Woodhead, editor of Oriental Affairs.
It seems time that the hypocrisy with which discussion of the opium problem in China is always enshrouded was dispelled.
Let us take but a single instance: the proposed levying of vindictive fines on foreign vessels carrying the drug. Is the Chinese delegate at Geneva unaware that on the river steamers from Shanghai to Chungking it is as much as a foreign officer’s life is worth to interfere with opium smugglers and that the Chinese authorities have been forced to the conclusion that a similar discretion is desirable unless they court violent deaths? Does he not know that armed fights have been staged, even in Shanghai, between government troops and police, for the possession of cargoes of opium and the control of a morphine factory? Is he ignorant of the fact that less than a year ago a whole shipload of Persian opium was imported direct from Bushire on a steamer flying the Chinese flag, and that the cargo was landed in launches escorted by officers of the Bureau of Public Safety? Does he not know that as soon as the French Concession authorities made a cleanup of the opium dens and sales shops they were removed to Nantsao, and thenceforth sold their wares in packages bearing a uniform (monopoly) stamp?
V
How rapid has been the recent growth of this world menace the reader may gather from another important statement made by Mr. Fuller before the Advisory Committee in regard to China’s increasing importations of acid acetic anhydride, a substance whose only use in China consists in the manufacture of heroin. Mr. Fuller stated that for the last two years it had been imported in quantities which afford ground for serious apprehension. Whereas the supply of heroin required for the whole world’s medical purposes is estimated at one and a half tons per annum, present indications point to the manufacture every month in China, from the importations of acid acetic anhydride passing through Shanghai alone, of an amount equal to the whole world’s medical needs for a year. At the same time, the customs returns show that the importations of caffeine have increased from an average of sixty kilos to sixty tons per annum. Small wonder, then, that the number of addicts are to be counted in millions, and that those who know the facts regard this new peril as something far more serious than civil wars, banditry, or foreign invasions, inasmuch as it threatens the very existence of the Chinese people. It certainly constitutes a danger more formidable than the cultivation and smoking of opium, for a man may smoke his pipe unto a ripe old age and be little or none the worse, but he who becomes addicted to morphine or heroin is doomed.
The American delegate at Geneva deserves the thanks of the civilized world if only because he has shattered the delusion, hitherto prevalent at Geneva, that in the matter of opium and the drug traffic China is more sinned against than sinning. It remains to be seen whether the collective intelligence and benevolent activities represented by the League of Nations, discarding sentimental irresponsibility, will bring such moral pressure to bear upon the Chinese Government, ever anxious to save its political ‘face,’ that it may be persuaded to take resolute steps to put an end to the manufacture and traffic of narcotic drugs.