CO129-417 - Public Offices - 1914 — Page 23

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These questions cannot be disposed of until the Lieutenant-Governor is in full possession of all the information available on the subject and of the advice of the local officers. I am to remind the Government of India that the present method of administering the Shan States does not lend itself to carrying out stringent measures of prohibition requiring constant supervision on the part of the superior officers.

Enclosure 3 in No. 1.

Government of Burma to Government of India.

December 27, 1913.

am directed to IN continuation of my letter of the 20th August, 1913, submit further report on the subject of the alleged cultivation of opium on the Burma Yünnan frontier, and on the smuggling of the drug from Burma to Yunnan. This frontier, I am to explain, forms the eastern boundary of the Kachin hill tracts of the Myitkyina and Bhamo districts, which are under direct administration, and the northern and north-eastern boundaries of the Northern and Southern Shan States, which are administered by the Sawbwas or native chiefs, or, as in the case of the Wa States, are beyond the pale of administration. I am to say that Sir Harvey Adamson is not disposed to endorse the opinion of the Acting Lieutenant-Governor, Sir George Shaw, expressed in the fourth paragraph of my letter above quoted, that the charges brought against this Government by the Wai-chiao Pu are true. Reports have now been received from the deputy commissioners of the two districts, and from the superin- tendents, Northern and Southern Shan States, and the following remarks are based on the information contained therein.

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2. In their despatch of the 14th January, 1913, to His Majesty's Minister at Peking the Wai-chiao Pu cites a statement of the Yünnan Tutu "that preventive measures have been carried on in Yünnan with the greatest strictness, the cultivation, smoking, and traffic in the drug are all being successfully suppressed; the interior is being gradually cleared, and there is every prospect of the final suppression of the drug. In the district of the tribal chiefs, which lie to the south and west along the boundaries of Burma and Tonkin, no paine have been spared on the Chinese side in rooting up the poppy again and again.' Sir John Jordan disputes this statement in his reply of the 22nd January, 1913. He reminds the Wai-chiao Pu of a memorandum sent to them on the 18th July, 1912, embodying the contents of a despatch from His Majesty's consul-general at Yünnan-fu, stating that the latest opium crop in the province of Yunnan averaged about 80 per cent. of that obtained before the cultivation of the drug was prohibited, and that large stretches of poppy cultivation were visible during the season from the walls of Yunnan-fu itself; he cites a report of the 6th December, 1912, from a missionary, to the effect that more land had been given over to the drug than had been the case for many years past, and he concludes by characterising the statement of the Tutu as a very gross misrepresentation of the opium conditions of Yunnan. Sir John Jordan's scepticism is justified by the latest reports of the superintendents of the Northern and Southern Shan States. The latter officer writes: "So far as is known the Chinese authorities have prohibited the cultivation of the poppy in Mong Mong, in North and South Mong Ngim, and in the neighbourhood of Ho-lwe in the extreme north of Mong Lem. In the rest of Mong Lem State and throughout the Hsip Haawang Panna (that is, all along the Kengtung border) the poppy is grown freely"; and he adds that the marked rates for the drug prevailing in these States are too low to attract imports from the adjoining Shan State of Kengting. The superin- tendent, Northern Shan States, writes: "Up to quite recently large quantities of opium were sent to Lashio from China. Even now, in spite of the protestations of Chinese officials, it is well known that there has been very little interference on the part of the Chinese authorities with the opium grown in Chengkang, Kengma, and Mong Ting Opium belonging to Chinamen in Chefang has been destroyed with villages which grew it, but cultivation by Kachins in that State has not been touched, and fields were during the open season as clearly visible on the one side of the frontier as on the other. Large quantities of the opium grown in Chengkang and the neighbouring Chinese States are brought into Kokang to the middlemen, who deal with Lungling in China on the one side and the Chinese opium merchants of Lashio on the other." These statements are confirmed by the latest report on opium in Yünnan received from His Majesty's consul-general, Yünnan-fu, a copy of which was submitted to the Foreign

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Department of the Government of India with Mr. Rice's letter dated the 12th December, 1913. Appended to the consul-general's report is a translation of draft instructions prepared by the late Military Governor and the late Civil Administrator of the province of Yunnan, but not issued up to to the date of the report. In these instructions it is claimed that in many districts of Yunnan the poppy has completely disappeared, but it is admitted that in a great number no attention has been paid to the orders, which have remained a dead letter. This admission appears to the Lieutenant-Governor to render superfluous any further disproof of the state- ments of the Yunnan Tutu, cited by the Wai-chiao Pu, regarding the success of the preventive measures.

3. "Once across the border," writes the Yunnan Tutu, "the country is ablaze with poppy, for the Burma and Tonkin Governments have never made an attempt to check it; in consequence, the people flock across the frontier and carry on the culti- vation of opium there." In forwarding a copy of this correspondence to His Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir John Jordan surmised that "it is not unlikely that under the system known as 'trans-frontier cultivation' Chinese subjects living on the Yünuan side of the frontier own and cultivate fields of poppy within the territory of Burma," and he expressed the hope that the Government of India would be moved to take effectual measures for the suppression of the cultivation. It is perhaps unnecessary to remind the Government of India that the cultivation of the poppy in Burma proper has long been prohibited, and that cultivation in the hill tracts bordering on the Chinese frontier has hitherto been permitted only because of the difficulty of regulating it while cultivation continued unrestricted on the Chinese side of the border. The deputy commissioner, Myitkyina, considers that there has been a slight increase in the area cultivated in the Sadon hill tract of his district. He reports that in this tract a few tribesmen have hitherto been in the habit of crossing the frontier from China to grow the crop in British territory, not because of the restrictions imposed on poppy cultivation in their own country, but because the soil of the area cultivated is better than the soil near their own villages. He has, however, already issued orders to stop this practice. In the Bhamo district, the deputy commissioner considers that poppy cultivation has increased owing to the rise in the price of opium, and reports that many of the cultivators are Chinamen from over the border. In both districts the deputy commissioners consider that complete suppression of the cultivation could be enforced without any great difficulty. In the Southern Shan States the superintendent reports that, as the prohibition of opium has not been enforced in the States subject to China along the Kengtüng border, there has been no emigration on that account from Chinese territory. He adds that in Kengtüng there has been an increase of cultivation in recent years, but that elsewhere the cultivation is either declining or stationary. In the Northern Shan States all lands worked under the system of "trans-frontier cultivation " are said to be irrigated rice lands unsuited for opium cultivation. In 1911-12 some forty Chinese subjects of Chefang crossed the frontier and worked opium fields in the frontier circles of Wanting in defiance of cus- tomary law, but their crops were destroyed by the assistant superintendent, Kutkai, before they obtained any profit from them, and the attempt has not been repeated. The superintendent remarks that the high price now obtainable for opium has resulted in a considerable extension of the area under the crop. The general conclusion to be drawn from the various reports is that, except in the Kachin tracts of the Bhamo district, the cultivation of opium is not carried on in British territory by Chinese subjects living over the border, and the vivid picture which the Tutu draws of his people flocking over the border to cultiuate the poppy is no more justified by facts than his description of the success which has attended the enforcement of preventive measures in his own territories. It is true that the cultivation of the poppy is permitted on the British side of the frontier, but this is merely a continuation of the state of affairs in force before the commencement of the anti-opium agitation in China.

4. The Yunnan Tutu remarks that bad characters take the opportunity to smuggle, and owing to the intricacy of the paths it is impossible to stop the practice": and he adds that there is no prospect of a successful issue unless joint measures are taken by the authorities on both sides of the border for the suppression of this trade." As explained in paragraph 3 of my letter of the 20th August, 1913, this Government has hitherto acted on the principle that "it is not incumbent on it to prevent the smuggling of opium into China," and the Tutu himself admits that

owing to the intricacy of the paths it is impossible to stop the practice." In the past the stream of opium smuggling has flown westwards from China into Burma, and except, possibly, in

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