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appears to me that this export will cease of itself without any interference on the part of the Chinese Government. The average export of native opium from China for the five years, 1903-1907, was 348,811 lbs., but in 1907 it was only 84,737 lbs., though it rose again in 1908 to 297,500 lbs. With a continued diminution of production in China, and the consequent enhancement of price, this export should in time cease to be profitable and die a natural death, and the same may be said of the illicit export of raw opium from China to the Straits, Saigon, Bangkok, America, and other places, to which Sir Frederick Lugard refers.
In the last paragraph on page 4, Sir Frederick Lugard raises the question: How is India at the end of the trial period of three years to ascertain whether China has fulfilled her part of the contract, and made a corresponding reduction in the internal production so as to justify the Indian Government in continuing their policy of Sir annually reducing the export of opium from India to China by one-tenth? Frederick Lugard has here hit upon an admittedly weak point. As he justly observes, there is no proper survey in the various provinces, and no accurate record of the area under poppy cultivation, which would make it possible to give reliable statistics as to the proportionate reduction in the amount of opium grown in China each year. The Imperial decree of the 26th June, 1907, and the Imperial regulations of the 23rd May, 1908, called for returns from the provincial and local authorities as to the area of land under poppy, and as to the number of smokers. Sir Alexander Hosie in his general acreage under Report on the opium question wrote, perhaps a little previously: "The poppy cultivation is in process of compilation by the local authorities throughout the various provinces, but nothing has yet been made public." As a matter of fact, nothing practical has really been effected in this respect even now, and the truth is that it is impossible for the Chinese Government with the means at their disposal to furnish official reliablc returns of the production of opium in China.
All the estimates that have been made of the production of opium in the various provinces of China have been based largely, if not entirely, on conjecture. The unreliability of the estimates made by the Board of Revenue for 1906, of the customs returns for 1906 and of the customis returns for 1908 was sufficiently exposed by Sir Alexander Hosie in the speech which he made at the sixth session of the Shanghae Opium Commission. Sir Alexander Hosie who had recently prepared his report based on information received from consuls, missionaries, and other sources scattered all over the Empire, was nevertheless of opinion that fair progress had been made in several provinces towards the accomplishment of the task which China had set before her.
Nobody has felt this absence of reliable statistics more than the various members of this legation who have been responsible for the compilation of the various general reports on the opium movement. Their labour and their responsibility would have been much lightened if they could have confined themselves to reproducing reliable statistics instead of trying to draw some more or less definite conclusion from the mass of contradictory reports received from the various provinces. It is evident that the Chinese authorities have themselves come to the conclusion that elaborate regulations for the registration of poppy lands and a proportionate annual reduction in their area are, under the administrative conditions at present existing in China, unworkable.
In many provinces the high authorities have, after the experience of more gradual methods, come to see that there is only one way of measuring the progress made towards the ultimate extinction of the poppy cultivation, and that is by issuing orders for its total prohibition after a certain date, and taking energetic measures to sce that the orders are enforced. The issue of such orders in two of the greatest opium-producing provinces, Shansi and Yünnan, has, as can be seen from the reports enclosed in my despatches No. 231 of June 30th and No. 273 of the 30th July, been attended by the most excellent results. Similar orders of total prohibition have now been promulgated for Szechuan and several other provinces. This must greatly facilitate the task of estimating at the end of the three years how far China has fulfilled her share of the bargain with the Indian Government, and will, I venture to state, enable His Majesty's Government to form a fairly correct judgment on this But it will probably be point, even in the absence of detailed and reliable statistics. advisable to ascertain the facts by personal inspection, and for this purpose I would suggest that one or two consular officers, with a knowledge of the language and some previous experience of the question, should be instructed to make extensive tours in the principal opium-producing provinces at the proper season in the course of the year 1910.
The remarks made by Sir Frederick Lugard as to the use of morphia in anti-opium pills and of hypodermic injections of morphia, and his statement that many Chinese
have ceased to be opium smokers only to become eaters or opium injectors is, I am afraid, only too true of certain provinces. These two vices, if once they become generally prevalent, will be even more difficult to eradicate than that of opium smoking. The Chinese Government and provincial authorities appear to be fully alive to this danger. Elaborate instructions have been drawn up to prevent the import of morphia except for medicinal purposes, but to entirely check the smuggling of such an article is beyond the power of the Chinese Customs officials. Stringent regulations have been issued against the illegal sale of morphia, and any Chinese caught selling morphia or instruments for its use is to be banished to a “pestilential frontier of the Empire."
As to the first of Sir Frederick Lugard's general conclusions on p. 16 of the memorandum, that the opium question must be dealt with gradually and not by precipitate methods, that is doubtless true in Hong Kong; but our experience during the last three years in this country of the unexpected tends rather to show that, in China at all events, the contrary is the case, and that peremptory orders of total prohibition of cultivation have achieved better results than the earlier orders for its gradual reduction.
I have, &c.
J. N. JORDAN.
Ture