CHINESE SUPPRESSION OF OPIUM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 567, 14 May 1913, Page 3

CHINESE SUPPRESSION OF OPIUM.

Sam Weller cites the example of a man who cut off his child's head to cure him of squinting. A like summary, if not reformatory, method is being pursued in China in punishing the 3laves of the poppy. We read in the Shanghai press that an opiumeater was recently condemned to death and shot by the authorities at Wuchang. The Chinese are evidently in earnest, and the comments of the Chinese Republican press on the opium trade have so roused the ire of the dealers that eleven British opium merchants of Shanghai are prosecuting the China Republican (Shanghai), as we read in the National Review (Shanghai), for the determined criticism which that Daper has meted out to the dealers in "the black poison of the East," as it has been called. As is well known, most of the opium consumed in China is raised in India, encouraged by the Imperial Government there. In 1907 India promised to cease exporting opium to China entirely in ten years by gradually les■ening the amount produced if certain conditions were fulfilled by China. The conditions were observed by the Manchu Imperial Edict of the same year suppressing the cultivation of the poppy and the consumption of opium. The Chinese Revolution, however, overturned the validity of Imperial edicts, and China began to cultivate and consume opium. Meanwhile an immense amount of Indian opium had accumulated in the bonded warehouses of Canton and Shanghai, which by an exceptional license had not been included in the prohibition signed by the Imperial Governmant of India in 1907. The Republic of China, has, however, been roused to a sense of the destructiveness of opium, and Dr Sun has sanctioned a law which penalises both its sale and consumption. While the unsold and undistributed product lies rotting in the Chinese treaty ports, the poppy merchants of India are fuming over the failure of their returns and cursing the Indian Government, which have derived and are deriving a rich addition to their credit budget from the tax and import duty imposed on thiß commodity, yet have now allowed China to stop buying it when landed there. The London Times may well talk of "the invidious position, now occupied by the Government of India," and really "reads the riot act" to that Government in the following bold and stirring words: — "Further sales of opium for export to China should be stoppe.l at onie. The remedy is one which appeals to the British genie of fairness and justice, and it ought to be welcomed by the moat vehement opponents of: the opium traffic. No consideration, moral or financial, can warrant the Government of India continuing to unload opium upon a helpless market which it is unable to assist. The wretched traders are compelled to keep on buying, in vain effort to main tain the value of their glutted stocks. The Government of India continue to force sales, because they fear that to stop will throw their budget out of gear. They will not long succeed even in that object; for under present conditions valies must soon be smashed, prices will come down with a run, and the Indian revenue will cease to benefit "

Inasmuch as the Indian Government have the monopoly on opium and the Indian merchants are under contract to purchase the product at an exorbitant price, these merchants are naturally disgusted at being compelled to buy what the middlemen at Canton and Shanghai are forbidden to purchase out of bond. The case of the Calcutta dealers is thus stated by the Times, with bitter reprobation of the British Government:— "The Government of India are in an unpleasant difficulty, but they are not therefore justified in ruining many people who had faith in the ability and willingness of Great Britain to enforce her own agreements. The position of the Indian opium merchants U clear and reasonable. They say: 'We are quite willing to see the opium exports to China stopped now and for ever, but we beg you not to ruin the market by contiinuing to sell opium which Chinese provincial authorities will not allow'to be resold." On December 13th they addressed a furthe" memorial to the Viceroy, in which they asked that the Government of India should take back the opium they had sold and refund the purchase money. Upon that request we express no opinidYi, though it is obvious that even stopping the sales will not dispose of the problem of the accumulations at Shanghai and Canton.' But the demand ttyat the sales should stop is a preliminary step based upon the commonest principles of justice. By continuing to sell opium for export to China and by demanding double export duty thereon, the Government of India are following a procedure which is even more questionable than the traffic itself." As soon as the Republican Government realised that the Manchu decree was not being observed they passed the law whose effects brought ruin on the opium merchant* of Canton and Shanghai as the forced purchase of this drug had brought trouble on the wholesale dealers in Calcutta. The organ of the present Chinese Govern • ment, the Rupublican Advocate (Shanghai), has no pity on Chinese traffickers in the deadly poppy and makes the matter a moral question, speaking in the following lofty terms: "Financial loss in a trade which in volves moral principle can give no legal or moral plea foi sympathy, for the very principle of human law is violated in the prustitution of the moral senße. A financial loss in opium trade can not therefore be re garded as a public calamity, although it may affect others not directly connected. "The opium merchants, moreover, should not feel so much the sting of just the strong criticism which has been levelled against them, for since they dare to persist in a pursuit which they know to be unpopular and contemptible in the eye of the public, it must be taken for granted

that they are ready to sacrifice reputation and honour for the sake of filthy lucre." Let the merchants be satisfied, it says, with their ill-gotten gains. The Chinese have always, been opposed to the British opium trade, which the British Government forced upon China at the point of the bayonet. The Chinese Republic will not be fooled any longer by the dealers in the seductive poison, of whom this paper remarks: — "They have made enough from the past trade, and if they quit ±us ; ness now they would be no losers. Some of them have out of this ill-gotten wealth built large houses and gardens in Shanghai, where they frequently entertain influential Chinese. Do our countrymen know how much it has cost them for the friendship of the opium traders? "The travesty and the irony oE it is that these (British) men should call themselves the 'friends' of the Chinese! And yet our people still allow themselves to be duped by this type of men, and applaud the hospitality of their opium friends. "But let us have less hypocrisy and mor* of real friendship. The Chinese cannot at all times be fooled." .