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Szechuan or move against the Thibetans according to the development of events. This officer is therefore not only guilty of deliberately attempting to stir up trouble between Great Britain and China over Thibet to forward his private political ends (see my previous despatches), but is likewise guilty of deliberately infringing the Anglo-Chinese Opium Treaty of 1911 for his own enrichment,
I have had considerable experience of opium suppression in the distant interior of China, and I well know that the responsibility for any recrudescence of cultivation in formerly clean regions lies at the door of the local officials (who can maintain the suppression with the greatest ease if they desire to do so) acting under the orders of the Governor of their province, or the military chief controlling their area; exception being made in the case of semi-independent tribal country and of regions controlled by brigands or rebels. Luting, however, is a peaceful and purely Chinese district, as easily governed as the Chengtu Plain or the country round Peking, and is actually under the control, not of the southern "rebel," but of a Peking appointed official.
Consular officers may perambulate provinces and certify them as clean; but such certification provides no guarantee whatsoever that cultivation will not be vigorously resumed in the following season if the local authorities desire to raise money from this unique revenue-producing source (as is the case in the present instance). It is always the officials and not the people who should be punished; but, unfortunately, the reverse is usually the case.
I am fully aware of the wonderful progress that has been made in China as a whole, especially in the eastern provinces, in regard to opium supprison (in spite of the widespread recrudescence reported in disturbed and brigand infested regions), and of the relatively small importance, to the whole question, of remote parts in Western Szechuan being under poppy cultivation; unmistakable evidence of the real progress made in suppression being everywhere provided by the high price of the native drug compared to ten years ago (though this high price is, of course, partly due to the heavy taxation imposed). But I am impelled to report this instance of open recrn- descence under official auspices and encouragement, in order that you, sir, and perhaps the Chinese Government, may be informed of the nature of the official to whom Thibetan affairs continue to be entrusted.
Perhaps the Chinese Government are under the impression that they cannot remove General Ch'en Hsia-ling from his post owing to Szechuan being independent. Such, however, is not the case, It is only the moral support afforded by his having the mandate of Peking to act as Frontier Commissioner that enables him to maintam his present position, Were that support withdrawn by an open mandate cashiering him he would disappear from the scene almost at once.
I have not mentioned the matter of this poppy cultivation to General Ch'en Hsia-ling, since I did not like to do so without your instructions, and also because I did not consider it desirable to do anything to impair the outwardly friendly relations which I have maintained with him in the interests of the peace of the frontier at the time of my departure.
The Chien-chang valley (the narrow strip of Chinese inhabited territory running south towards Yunnan between Lolo and tribal country) is said to be also full of opium, definite information in regard to which has probably been supplied by Mr. Eastes. That region, which was until last summer also controlled by General Ch'en Hsia-ling, appears now to be a sort of no-man's-land, the possession of which is in dispute between the latter, the Szechuanese, and the Yünnanese.
Szechuan was, I believe, passed as clean without an official inspection at the time the 1911 agreement was made. There was a limited amount of recrudescence after the revolution and during the subsequent troubles, and the poppy has always continued to flourish in the remote and semi-independent tribal country behind Kuan Hsieu. But I have never heard of anything like the open and legalised cultivation now being carried on in Luting district and neighbourhood.
Copy of this despatch has not been forwarded to the Foreign Department of the Government of India, as it is not directly concerned with Thibetan affairs.
I have, &c.
ERIC TEICHMAN.
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Enclosure 2 in No. 1.
Memorandum.
NOT carrying with me any paraphernalia for official correspondence on my journey hither from the Burmah frontier, I incorporated in a letter despatched en route to His Majesty's Minister at Peking my observations on the vast quantities of opium being grown, not only in the Chien-ch'ang valley, but also throughout the whole region traversed by me during twelve and a-half days' travel in south-western Szechuan.
During the whole length of my journey across the western circuit of Yunnan, from the extreme south-west to the extreme north-east, I saw only five fields of opium poppy. and these were passed on the last half-day's journey in Yunnan, within 10 miles of the Szechuan boundary.
Once, however, I had crossed the River Yang-tsze and entered Szechuan, matters were entirely different, and poppy fields abounded on all sides, without the smallest attempt at concealment,
For the first two and a-half days to Hui-li the country was in the hands of Yunnan troops, and the percentage of opium crops was not very great; from Hui-li onwards for the next ten stages poppy fields were passed everywhere, in enormous quantities, and the percentage of these pernicious crops rose certainly to 50 per cent.
The valley of the Anuing River, which is the Chien-ch'ang (formerly Ning- yuan Fu) valley proper, is reached shortly before the end of the second stage northwards from Hui-li; three stages more, through absolutely countless poppy crops, brought me to the very large walled city of Chien-ch'ang (formerly Ning- yian Fu), the headquarters of the Chien-ch'ang Taoyin, which lies just out of the Anning River valley, on its east side, in a broad plain which when I traversed it on the 17th March was a brilliant mass of poppy crops. During these three stages I travelled in company with a recently retired district magistrate of Hui-li, and in the course of conversation with him I commented freely on this flagraut breach of the Opium Agreement with Great Britain. His defence for his own scandalous inactivity in the matter, that he had no troops to carry out the work of suppression was wholly specious. for throughout our journey in company we constantly passed large numbers of ill- disciplined local militiamen, whose sole occupation seemed to be loafing and gambling outside the gates of the many walled towns in which they were quartered; while day after day my efforts to find a temple to spend the night were frustrated because the temples-which abound all over Szechuan-were already occupied by these ruffians. Throughout the whole course of my journey in Szechuan I saw not a single proclamation against the cultivation of opium poppy hearing a date later than 1917.
I agree entirely with Mr. Teichman's comment that it is always the officials and not the people who should be punished; my ex-magistrate travelling companion should undoubtedly have received a very severe sentence for his criminal, and doubtless highly lucrative, apathy. I was told by friendly natives encountered on my travels that each field of the illicit crop was worth 6 dollars to the authorities conniving at its
existence.
Two stages above Chien-ch'ang the road quits the Anning River valley and becomes more mountainous as far as I could julge the fact that opium cultivation for the next few stages is distinctly less universal is due solely to the less congenial character of the soil. But not until my sixteenth day's journey in Szechuan, four days north of the large district town of Yich-hsi, did I cease to see poppy crops altogether, and I attribute that cessation solely to the fact that the idle militia gave place, in the neighbourhood of the large towns of Ta-shu-p'u and Fu-lin, and thence onwards to Chengtu, to regular troops, under the command presumably of officers owning more than a nominal allegiance to the present military governor, Hsiung K'o-wu.
Mr. Teichmau refers to the continued fourishing of poppy cultivation in the remote and semi-independent tribal country behind Kuan-hsien (about 40 miles north- west of Chengtu); this state of affairs is corroborated by local missionaries, who tell me, moreover, that opium growing on a small scale has begun again in several other hilly or mountainous areas on the fringe of the great Chengtu Plain,
On the 25th April a small paragraph in the local native press announced that General Tan Mou-hsin, the commander of the 1st division of Szechuan regulars, one of
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