OPIUM PERIL IN CHINA

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8362, 24 February 1913, Page 8

OPIUM PERIL IN CHINA

AUTHORITATIVE OPINION ON PRESENT PROBLEM. Interesting aspects of the opium problem in China were discussed with a London “Daily News and Leader” representative last month by Mr Marshall Broomhall, hon. secretary of the Anti-Opium League, who had returned from a fourteen months’ tomin China. The conversation had particular reference to the statements which had been made that the Chinese Government is unable or unwilling to enforce the Anglo-Chineso Agreement renewed in 1911. As a result of extensive travel, Mr Broomhall is convinced that the cultivation of opium has enormously decreased. “In Shan-si,” lie said, “I travelled last July 400 miles on horseback through a country where the poppy used to be extensively grown. In 1910 Sir A. Hosie reported that none was grown at Shan-si. It is true that there has been some recrudescence, but the quantity cultivated last year was less than one-tenth of what was formerly grown. EXECUTING REBELLIOUS FARMERS. “In one district of the Shan-si I saw the crop being actually destroyed by the authorities, and when the farmers rebelled against this treatment soldiers were sent and some of the ringleaders were executed.” Air Broomhall then referred to the burning by the Chinese of 20,000 taels worth of opium at An-King, recently reported in the press, and said there could be no doubt that both the Central and the Provincial Governments were determined to end the traffic. He agreed with the opinion recently •xpressed in “The Daily News and Leader” by Air Archibald Little, that there was at present nothing which so tended to blacken the British name in China as a policy of practically forcing opium on the Chinese market. With regard to the position of the Shanghai merchants, he was inclined to think the value of their stocks in Chinese ports was rather less than £lO,000,000. The position was undoubtedly rendered more difficult by the fact that the banks had lent large sums of money, reckoned .at between four and five million sterling, on the security of the opium stocks, and that any loss on the opium might therefore fall not exclusively on the opium merchants, but on the commercial community generally* FORCING UP PRICES. The contention of the merchants, that if the trade was stopped the loss ought to be made good to them, had some justice. On the other hand, the opium trade was undoubtedly a speculative business, and during the fire years’ currency of the agreement the opium ring had forced up prices to an enormous extent. Asked what remedy there was for the present deadlock, Mr Broomhall replied that the leading financial authority in Shanghai had said that it was “a question without an answer.” But. it is certain that both the Government of India and the merchants concerned have made enormous profits during the fast five years on account of the enhanced prices.