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[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.91
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
RE?
[March 1.78 || MAR 10,
SECTION 1.
[6430]
No. 1.
Question asked in the House of Commons, March 1, 1910.
Sir Mark Stewart,-To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether an official reply has been received from His Majesty's Minister at Peking in regard to the incident at Kucheng in the matter of opium suppression, referred to in his letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the 15th December, 1909; and whether he can now hold out hopes that the proclamation of the Kucheng magistrates ordering the opium shops to be closed shall be sustained and enforced?
Answer.
A report has been received from His Majesty's Minister at Peking from which it appears that the statements made in regard to the action of His Majesty's consul at Foochow respecting the closing of opium shops in the district of Kucheng are in many respects inaccurate.
After further consideration of the circumstances the consul, with the concurrence of His Majesty's Minister, decided to take no further action in the matter, and it appears ou recent inquiry that as far as can be ascertained all shops dealing in either foreign or native opium in Kucheng are now closed.
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