origin. The morphine was actually the popular high grade 999 brand processed from Chinese opium in chemical factories in the peoples communes of Yunnan, moved through the Shan state of N.E. Burma, and smuggled across the Thai border. In July 1971, 53 kilograms of Chinese heroin was seized in S. Vietnam. The drug had been shipped from Thailand in a fishing boat.
The amounts of opium narcotics, in the form of morphine and heroin, seized in Burma, Thailand, Macao and Hong Kong were already causing grave concern to the U.N. Commission in 1961. In 1962, at the 17th Session of the Commission, U.S. authorities reported detailed information on the origin of opium passing through the Shan State of Burma. This opium originated in the border areas of the Yunnan province of China, where it was estimated some 1000 tons were produced in a year. At the 31st General Assembly of Interpol held at Madrid in 1962, a committee was appointed to study the problem of illicit narcotics originating in Yunnan.
During the early 1960's Communist China found a spokesman and defendant in the United Nations Commission in the person of the Soviet delegate. At the Geneva Meeting of the Commission, in May 1963, the Soviet Union took the line that it was inadvisable to discuss questions concerning China in the absence of a representative in the U.N. Any reference in the report of the Commission to drugs originating in the Chinese Peoples Republic would be violating the terms of the Commission's resolution 6(x). At the same time, the Soviet Union drew attention to an order of the C.P.R. enacted in 1950 which expressly prohibited growth, import, sale, use and processing of opium drugs.
Against a background of rapidly declining Sino Soviet relations following the Cuban missile crisis and the Chinese invasion of India, a significant report appeared in Pravda on September 13th, 1964. Written by a Soviet correspondent in Tokyo, based on first-hand observations in Peking and supported by statements of the Japanese National Narcotics Committee, the article charged Communist China with being the biggest opium, morphine and heroin producer in the world. Total proceeds from the illicit narcotics traffic were alleged to yield some 500 million dollars annual revenue for the Chinese Communist Party. Independent reports from other agencies in Tokyo, W. Berlin and London confirm the magnitude of this illicit export traffic to the free world, which exploits a vast consumer market for Chinese narcotics at out prices.
After a long history of opium-smoking dating back to the early years of the East India Company, China became deeply involved with the opium trade as a victim of the Opium Wars in the early XIXth century. The second opium war ended with the Convention of Peking which ratified a treaty signed in Tientsin in 1858, legalising the importation of opium into China. During the confused period of internal politics which intervened until the election of Sun Yat-sen as President of the Chinese Republic in 1911, opium addiction in China grew rapidly. The Chinese Imperial Government actively encouraged the private growing of opium, and extensive areas in the provinces of southern China were given over to cultivation of the opium poppy.
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