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Mr. Teichman furnishes conclusive evidence that this opium cultivation is carried on openly at the direct instigation of the Chinese officials whose duty it is to suppress it.
I have the honour to enclose copy of a letter, which I have addressed to the Wai- chiao Pu, bringing the facts to their notice; but I fear that the Chinese Government, has not the strength, even if it has the will, to adopt the only effective remedy, namely, the removal and punishment of the Military Governors responsible for the present state of affairs.
I have, &c.
Sir.
Enclosure 1 in No. 37.
Mr. Teichman to Sir J. Jordan.
J. N. JORDAN.
Tachieniu, April 27, 1919.
I HAVE the honour to report that on my journey back from Chengtu we found the entire length of the Tung river valley (along which the road runs for two days' march-district of Luting) blazing with countless fields of red and white poppies in full bloom wherever the bays in the gorge permitted of cultivation. In most places fully a quarter of the land under cultivation was producing opium. This poppy cultivation (which I had failed to notice on my way down a month and a half earlier owing to my being very unwell, and to the plant not being in flower) is openly carried on without the least attempt at concealment right along this main route, which is one of the most important and most travelled of the big trunk roads of China; and the poppies were even flourishing in the immediate vicinity and in full view of the magistrate's seat and the big Catholic Mission establishment at Luting Ch'iao itself. The local people told my servants that the neighbourhood was growing poppy for the first time for many years, and that the cultivation was encouraged by the officials, who levied a tax of 28 rupees per Chinese acre of opium-producing land.
My statements about this opium cultivation, and the amazingly open way it is carried on, can be corroborated by Mr. Clements, of the China Inland Mission at Tachienlu, the Catholic missionaries, and by my own Pekinese servants. I shall try and secure some photographs of it on my way down.
No poppy cultivation whatever was to be seen for the first nine days' march out of Chengtu (e., while traversing regions controlled by the southern leader, Governor fisiung Ko-wu); and we only came upon the opium after traversing the Fei Yuch Ling (pass) and entering the district of Luting, which forms part of the Szechuan frontier territory.
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.
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 Hsien. But I have never heard of anything like the open and legalised cultivation now being carried on in Luting district and neighbourhood.
I have, &c.
ERIC TEICHMAN.
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Enclosure 2 in No. 37.
Memorandum.
NOT carrying with me any paraphernalia for official correspondence on my journey hither from the Burma 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 crossed the river Yang-tsze and entered Szechuan, matters were entirely different, and poppy fields abounded on all sides, without the smallest attempt of 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 Anning river, which is the Chien-chang (formerly Ning- yuan Fu) valley proper, is reached shortly before the end of the second stage north- wards 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-yüan 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 flagrant 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 bearing 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 doubt- less 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 judge, 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 Yueh-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. Teichman refers to the continued flourishing of poppy cultivation in the remote and semi-independent tribal country behind Kuan-bsien (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.
A. E. EASTES.
Chengtu, May 5, 1919.
534
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