Despatches from Sir A. Hosie forwarding reports respecting the opium question in China.

  • Alexander Hosie
Date:
[1911]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Despatches from Sir A. Hosie forwarding reports respecting the opium question in China. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/52 (page 8)
    Shansi. What has happened in the past year in Shansi goes far to prove how entirely the final suppression of opium depends on the earnestness and activity of the Viceroys, governors, and other high provincial officials. For years past this province has been known as one of those most cursed by the opium evil. In Tai-Yuan Fu, the capital, it was said that half the adult population, female as well as male, smoked, and in many of the country districts the proportion was placed even higher. In spite of the great local consumption, opium wras grown for export to Chihli and other neighbouring provinces, in fact practically every well-watered district throughout the province was ablaze with poppy-blossoms during the early summer. No effective steps had been taken in Shansi before this year with a view to restricting cultivation, and Sir A. Ilosie stated that the slight reductions reported from a few districts were outweighed by increased cultivation in others. He also mentioned that the governor of Shansi had memorialised the Throne, proposing the entire and immediate prohibition of the growth of opium throughout the province, but expressed some doubt as to his Excellency having sufficient energy to enforce such a stringent measure. Gradually, however, reports began to reach His Majesty’s Legation of stringent proclamations issued by the local authorities throughout Shansi prohibiting the cultivation of poppy after 1908, under a penalty of very heavy fines and confiscation of the land, and of the effective steps taken to carry these proclamations into effect. One missionary wrote in March, “ There is now no opium sown over vast areas that last year were devoted to the plant, and thousands of acres of the best irrigable land are set free for the cultivation of other crops. The price of opium is rising rapidly, and will soon be double what it was a year ago. Needless to say that the retail opium is adulterated more than ever, so that the poorer smokers are breaking off perforce.” In April His Majesty’s Minister in Peking received through a missionary at Tai-Yuan Fu a message from the provincial treasurer, Ting Pao-chuan, to the effect that the growth of the poppy and the cultivation of opium had been entirely suppressed in the province of Shansi. It being a matter of some interest to ascertain how far the Shansi authorities had been successful in suppressing ihe cultivation of the poppy in so short a space of time, His Majesty’s Minister instructed Mr. Brenan, of His Majesty’s consular service in China, to undertake an extensive tour in the province, and furnish him with a first¬ hand account of wTiat had actually been done. Mr. Brenan started in the end of May, and made a journey of 460 miles through a section of the province which was practically all devoted to poppy cultivation a year ago. His clear and concise state¬ ment of what he saw and heard is too long to be embodied in this report, but I consider it of such interest and of such good augury as furnishing a notable illustra¬ tion of what can be effected in a short space of time by an active and well-intentioned Chinese administrator, that I have reproduced Mr. Brenan’s account of his journey as an annexe to my report.* Mr. Brenan was unable to travel over the whole of Shansi, hut his conclusions in regard to the southern half of the province are fully corro¬ borated in regard to the remaining districts by reports received from missionaries. It may safely be said that not a stalk of poppy was to he seen this spring over large areas which in former years were covered with the plant; the price of the drug has gone up enormously; and were Shansi a self-contained State, instead of being a unit in a large Empire, opium smoking would soon be a thing of the past. It is indeed a great pity that the Central Government do not enforce greater uniformity of procedure in this matter, as otherwise it seems clear that success in suppression of cultivation in one province is only too likely to stimulate the production in the neighbouring provinces, in the present case in the provinces of Shensi and Honan. Mr. Brenan’s conclusions have been corroborated in a letter which I have received from Lieutenant Pudsey, Ii.A., who travelled over a large area of central Shansi in June and July. He writes that during his journey he made frequent enquiries from inn-keepers, farmers, missionaries, &c., all of whom said that no opium was now being grown in the province, and this was borne out by his own observations, for he did not see a single poppy. The officer dispatched by the Board of Finance to enquire into the progress of the suppression movement in certain provinces was able to report that in the south of Shansi opium cultivation had ceased altogether, while in the north only an insignificant amount had been found to have been grown in a few out- of-the-way places. The Viceroy, in a memorial dated the ] 4th April, proposed that if the increased ( * Inclosure 2, p. 29.