CO129-384 - Public Offices - 1911 — Page 241

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This Document is the Property of His Britannic Mest Government.}

OPIUM.

CONFIDENTIAL,

A

[25427]

No. 1.

24845

238

REC (Rag: 29 JUL II

[June 30.]

SECTION 2.

(No. 3.) Sir,

Consul General Sir A. Hosie to Sir Edward Grcy.-(Received June 30.)

On the Yian River, Province of Hunan, May 31, 1911.

I HAVE the honour to transmit to you herewith, in duplicate, my report on the cultivation of the poppy and the production of opium in the province of Kueichow.

I have, &c.

Enclosure in No. 1.

ALEX. HOSIE.

•

Report by Consul-General Sir A, Hosic on the Cultivation of the Poppy and the production of Opium in the Province of Kueichow,

KUEICHOW, which lies to the south of Szechuan and the east of Yunnan, has long been known to be a producer of opium on a large scale, but its opium of inferior quality and less valuable than the product of the other two provinces. It is a province of mountains, hills, and narrow valleys, and it was in these valleys and on terraced hill sides that the poppy was cultivated and the opium harvested. Cultivation was general throughout the province, but the western half bordering on Yunnan was the chief centre of production and had the reputation of yielding a superior drug. It is impossible to state with any degree of accuracy the amount of opium annually produced prior to the movement for the suppression of opium inaugurated by the Imperial Decree of the 20th September, 1906, but during the journey through the province which I have just completed I made every endeavour to arrive at an approximation, and the result of my enquiries addressed to those engaged in the trade and to those in any way conversant with it is that there used to be placed on the various markets of Kueichow opium to the value of about 9,000,000 taels, which at the then average wholesale price of 216 taels per picul would represent 41,666 picnls. This quantity does not, of course, include what was consumed on the spot and did not reach a wholesale market. The Chinese memorandum presented to the Shanghai Opium Commission in February 1909 gives the production of the province in 1906 as 48,000 piculs, and it may, I think, be assumed that the total annual production of Kueichow previous to the suppression movement was between 40,000, and 50,000 piculs,

If, then, the above was the quantity produced in 1906, it may be asked, what was the quantity produced in 1908, and what reduction has taken place since that year? The Imperial decree of the 20th September, 1906, and the regulations which that decree commanded to be formulated were issued too late to affect the crop of 1906-7, and the first season during which any diminution of cultivation could be looked for was the season of 1907-8. The Chinese delegates to the Shanghai Opium Commission claimed that the crop of 1908 had been reduced from 48,000 in 1906 to 32,000 pieculs, that is, 30 per cent.; but that claim was based on the assumption that a reduction of 50 per cent had been effected in the province of Yunnan through the energy of his Excellency Hsi Liang, and that, as Kueichow is under the same Viceroyalty, some diminution, if not so great, must have been curied out in that province; but it is known that the Viceroy took no active steps in regard to Kueichow, leaving, as is usually the case, that province to be dealt with by its own authorities. As a matter of fact, no steps were taken beyond the issue of proclamations, and these were not taken seriously by the growers. There was no diminution in the crop of 1908 nor in that of 1909, and it was not till the autumn of the latter year that cultivators took fright at the insistence and increasing stringency of the proclamations. Some were deterred from sowing, and the crop of 1910 was smaller than that of 1909; but some of these who had refrained from sowing, finding that there was no interference with the crops of others and that no punishment was inflicted, recommenced sowing in the autumn of 1910, even, asked to believe, on a larger scale. This, however, was not universal, for during my

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