16
Extracted from the Dictionary of
PAPAVER
somniferum.
Controlling factor in Indian Exports.
HISTORY
Chinese.
Cultivation in
China.
Indian
Opium
a
Luxury.
Magnitude
of
Native Opium
Production.
Growth
of
Chinese
Production.
Cultivation
prohibited
in
China.
immediate effect, provided (and this is the keynote to the whole question) the
Chinese Government refrained from imposing a correspondingly increased
import duty. The limits of possibility in Indian production are not the con-
trolling factors in the exports to China. The Indian duty is such as to
make our opium the luxury of the rich, and a reduction in the export duties
from India would but transfer a larger share in the profits of the traffic
from India to China without either lowering the price to the Chinese-
smoker or restricting the amount consumed. That the Chinese Govern-
ment are fully alive to their own interest and do not now and never have
desired to lose their opium revenue is a fact that no student of the question
can be ignorant of. " It appears thus to be certain that, while the Court
at Peking was endeavouring to suppress the foreign trade in opium from
1796 to 1840, it did not or could not put a stop to home cultivation of the
drug, since a Chinese Censor in 1830 represented to the throne that the
poppy was grown over one half of the province of Chekeang, and in 1836
another (Cho Tsun) stated that the annual production of opium in Yunnan
could not be less than several thousand piculs " ( Encycl. Brit. ) .
But on tracing out the expansion of Chinese cultivation to more recent
times it is seen to have attained, as might have been expected, alarming
proportions. The following brief passages exhibit this fact: —" Mr. Donald
Spence, British Consul at Ch'ung-ch'ing-fu, in Szechwan, in the year
1881, made enquiries into the amount of opium produced at that time in
the four south-western provinces. He states that in Szechwan the con-
sumption of Native opium within the province amounts to 54,000 piculs,
while 123,000 piculs are sent to other provinces; of these 70,000 piculs
are exported in an easterly direction, 40,000 piculs paying duty, and 30,000
piculs being smuggled. Yunnan produces annually 35,000 piculs, and
Kweichow 10,000 piculs, while Hupeh supplies to the market not more
than 2,000 piculs. In all, the production of Native opium amounts to
224,000. Mr. Spence's Report on the Native production of Opium was
forwarded to the Foreign Office of the British Government, and subse-
quently presented to Parliament and printed. If a comparison be made
of the amount of opium produced in the four above-mentioned pro-
vinces, viz., 224,000 piculs, with the quantity of Foreign opium imported
in 1882, viz., 66,000 piculs, it will be seen that the opium of Native pro-
duction is more than three times as much in quantity as that introduced
from India and elsewhere."
On the subject of the growth of the Chinese production and import-
ation of Indian opium, there appeared in the Gazette of the Government of
India for February 23rd, 1871, a long and instructive historic sketch of the
trade. In that very able and detailed statement the progress made in the
cultivation of the drug in China and its effect on the Indian market was
fully dealt with, from 1848 to the year of publication. For early inform-
ation on this subject, therefore, the reader should consult the Gazette in ques-
tion, as also the report issued in 1869 on the Trade of the Treaty Ports of
China, to which is appended a special report drawn up by a native of Hu-
peh regarding the cultivation in Szechwan. In the Consular Reports of
China will also be found the figures, year by year, of the continued ex-
pansion of poppy cultivation.
The cultivation and production of opium was at first prohibited in
China by equally severe edicts to those published regarding the importation
of the drug. But the one series of laws were as futile as the other. The de-
mand for opium which from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century had steadi-
ly increased was not to be repressed by law. A large community could not
do, or did not care to do, without the drug. The foreign supply obtained from
India, Arabia, Egypt, and Persia was not sufficient. It naturally followed
that just as the difficulties of importation were overcome by the corruption
of the officials, the same loophole allowed the cultivators in the most rural