565
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.] 0.
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[July 4.
SECTION 1PFGE AUG 12
[24605]
No. 1.
Memorandum communicated to Mr. Lew-Yuk-Lin.
HIS Majesty's Minister at Peking has been forced to make repeated representations to the Wai-chiao Pu with regard to the deliberate violation for months past by various Chinese provincial authorities of the Opium Agreement of the 8th May, 1911, and the illegal restrictions imposed on the Indian opium trade in the provinces of Chekiang and Fukien, whose example has now been followed by Canton.
As Sir J. Jordan has pointed out, while the treaty obligations were carried out under the Empire, a retrograde movement has set in under the republic which threatens to stultify all engagements. Opium is now being widely cultivated everywhere, and provinces such as Szechuan, Shansi, Yunnan, and Chokiang which were declared free a year ago are now in many districts under full cultivation, while Fukien, for instance, where opium fields are to be seen close to the treaty port of Amoy has, as Sir J. Jordan has rightly said, the effrontery and hypocrisy to claim the right to prohibit foreign opium on the ground that the native cultivation has been stopped.
The following instances suffice to show the manner in which the agreement of 1911 has been violated.
In Chekiang for months past the local authorities have obstructed and virtually extinguished the trade in Indian opium, on the pretext that the cultivation and use of opium had been completely prohibited in the province. After repeated remonstrances had been made by His Majesty's Minister to the Wai-chiao Pu, the Tutu of Chekiang, finding the position he had taken up untenable, undertook to safeguard by proclamation the treaty rights of traders in Indian opiuro. But the proclamation issued by him has had precisely the opposite effect. It enjoined the strictest observance of measures, as announced by him in a proclamation dated the 17th February, for the total suppression of opium, and made a brief and vague reference only to treaty stipulations governing the wholesale Indian opium trade which remain for the present in force as before,'
As the Cheklang thus ignoring the point that they had been systematically broken. province, in consequence of the continued cultivation of opium in it, has not qualified under the agreement of 1911 to exclude Indian opium, the latter is a legitimate article of import, and any attempt to exclude it or to interfere with its transit under treaty transit certificate, is a breach of the 1911 agreement and of treaty stipulations. Local passes or permits are now being enforced on foreign opium with a view to its removal and exclusion from the province, and the holders of nine chests of Indian opium illegally seized at Chiang-t'ou and detained for months were not allowed to forward the drug to destination, but were compelled to carry it back to Shangbai.
Such acts constitute a deliberate restriction on a trade the conduct of which is carefully defined in the additional article to the Chefoo agreement, a restriction which, among others, the Chinese Government solemnly pledged themselves in the Opium Agreement of 1911 to withdraw and never to reimpose.
The above-mentioned proclamation further stated that the wholesale Indian opium trade was governed by treaty stipulations which for the present remained in force as hitherto; yet the compulsory closing of prepared opium shops whose proprietors are the wholesale dealers bas put a stop to the wholesale trade which the proclamation professed might continue as hitherto, while the authorities are doing everything in their power to obstruct that trade by enforcing the system of
referred to allowing export but forbidding import.
passes
In addition to this, further proclamatious were issued by the military governor of Shao-hsing Fu on the 13th February, and by the superintendent of public affairs for the prefecture of Hangchow on the 3rd April enjoining the destruction by burning of opium stocks.
Similar irregular practices have now occurred at Canton, where a proposal has been made to close all the prepared opium shops at the end of this year, which of course strikes directly at the wholesale trade in raw opium.
[2649 d-1]