OPIUM IN CHINA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 221, 16 March 1912, Page 4

OPIUM IN CHINA.

A Wellington meeting last night passed a resolution condemning the British Government for continuing, "for the sake of money, to cultivate the manufacture and export of the drug to China, and that at tie Hague Conference Britain was the, only nation that refused to agree to the prohibition of opium importation into China and refused to release China from the treaty." On receipt of the resolution the British Government will no doubt tender its resignation. The well-meaning tailors of Tooley street, we mean of Manner's street, Wellington, are hardly fair to the British Government, whose position among the nations might be greatly shaken as a consequence of the dissemination of such reports. The facts are that at the instance of the United States Government a conference was called for 1911 at the Hague to discuss the question of suppressing the opium trade. The British Government could not agree to submit to discussion at the, conference the diplomatic relations between Britain and China. An agreement was reached in 1907 between the Wai-wu-pu and the British Minister that 51,000 ,chests of opium should be regarded as the standard amount annually imported at that time from India, and should be decreased yearly from 1908 by 5100 chests. The annual decrease was to continue for three year? from the beginning of 1908, the Indian Government undertaking that, "if at the end of that time it was found that China had similarly reduced her own production of opium, the progressive decrease of the Indian production wouJd be continued with a view to the total cessation of the traffic at the end of ten years." It was also agreed that no poppy juice should be imported into China from Hong-kong, or. viceversa; that no opium pipes should be sold in foreign settlements, and no opium dens should be permitted to be established. Later in the year all the Powers gave their assent* to the prohibition of the importation of morphia except for medieinal purposes. On the expiration of' the agreement of 1907 a new agreement was signed (May 9, 1911) providing that "the export of opium from India to China shall cease in less than seven years if clear proof is given to the satisfaction of the British Minister at Pekin of ! the complete absence of production of native opium to China." It was agreed that, pending the complete disappearance of poppy cultivation in the Chinese Empire, Indian opium shall not be conveyed into any province (the ports of Canton and Shanghai excepted) which may have ceased to cultivate or import the native product. Great Britain further undertakes .to reduce Indian imports by an amount equal to one-third of the amount of uncertificated Indian opium in bQnd in China on given dates. The import of foreign opium into China in 1907 was 7,263,3331b, valued at £4,656,219. The native opium, which is grown chiefly in Szechuan, Yunnan, Kansu, Shensi and Kueichow, amounted in 1907 to 6,244,964 lb. The import from India has fallen from 51,000 chests in 1907 to 42,122 in 1908, 42,183 in 1905, and 30,654 in 1910. In the meantime the price of opium in China has risen about 250 per cent. The World Missionary Conference, which ' met in Edinburgh in 1910, passed a resolution expressing the hope that "the British Imperial and Indian Governments may be able to meet the financial difficulties created by the cessation of the opium revenue in a way that shall not increase the taxation of the mass of the people' in India nor injure the Feudatory States concerned." These facts speak for themselves.