OPIUM TRADE WITH CHINA.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1123, 10 May 1911, Page 5

OPIUM TRADE WITH CHINA.

AGREEMENT EXTENDED. INDIAN EXPORT TO CEASE IN SEVEN YEARS. SOME NEW PROVISIONS. liy Telccrapli—Press Association-CojiyriEhl (Rec. May 9, 0.15 p.m.) Peking, May 9. Great Britain and China hare agreed U the prolongation of the opium agreement for a term of seven years. Great Britain is to stop the export of opium from India to China at an earlier date it' it is shown that China does not produco native opium, and opium is not to he conveyed into any Chinese province which does not cultivate or import native opium. Tho ports of Canton and Shanghai art exempted from this provision. 1 Great Britain agrees to accept the in< crease of the opium duty which some oi the Chinese provincial authorities have imposed regardless of treaties, and undertakes that beyond the prescribed annual reduction of the export from India by. one-tenth, to reduce them further by one third of tho uncertificated Indian opium held in bond in Cliina on a given date. An agreement was reached in 1907 twocn the Wai-wn-pu and the British Minister that 51,000 chests of opium should be warded as ithe standard nmount 'annually imported at that tjmo from India, and should be decreased yearly from 190S by MOO chests. The annual decrease was to continue for three ycarsj the Indian Government undertaking ithat, "if at the end of that time it was found 1 that China had similarly reduced her own ' production of opium, the progressive d« crease of the Indian production would 1 b< continued with a view to the total eesttw lion of tho traffic at tho end of teff years."