Every year on June 26 is the United Nations international drug day, since the emergence of drugs in the world, human beings and drugs have never stopped, to this day, the huge profits of drugs still stimulate drug dealers to take risks, creating a scene of human tragedy, anti-drug work is still facing a grim situation. China has long been plagued by the drug problem, and has historically imposed strict anti-drug measures, which all originated in the humiliating war more than 180 years ago. In the course of China's modern history, opium is not only an ordinary drug, but also an important cultural concept that is deeply engraved in the minds of every Chinese.
I. "Strictly Prohibited" and "Forbidden"
Opium into China has a long history, ancient times have its figure, when it was widely used in the field of medicine, but in the actual application process, its addictive harm has gradually emerged, the facts have proved that opium will cause great damage to people's mental and even physiological health.
When people realized this, the harm of opium was already far-reaching, and by the Qing Dynasty, this situation was quite serious. Since the culprit was opium, it seemed to be the best choice to ban smoking, but this was not the case, because long before the Opium War, the imperial court had been divided into two factions on whether to ban smoking, and had been engaged in a two-year-long debate. Those who advocate "forbidden opium" believe that in any case, opium is also banned more and more, and it is simply legalized; on the one hand, it can allow the state to collect more taxes, on the other hand, it can also save the cost of banning opium, and even encourage qualified areas to grow opium themselves, increase peasant incomes, and resist foreign opium imports to avoid the outflow of silver.
This argument seems quite funny today, and in several Western countries that now legalize marijuana, the trend of drug proliferation has not only not been curbed, but has been further strengthened, which proves that the result of drug legalization can only be to create more tragedies, but this argument was still quite marketable at the time, and officials in Guangdong, which were most affected by opium, were the most supportive of this resolution, which is enough to show that they have deeply intertwined with the interests of drug dealers. Fortunately, the Daoguang Emperor was still very sober-minded and more resolute about the smoking ban, which led to the later Lin Zexu Humen selling cigarettes.
Second, the unseverable smuggling of opium
But is the ban on smoking really as simple as the ban on Humen? For the British side, opium has become an indispensable source of financial revenue, according to relevant statistics, from the 19th century, in the British and Indian government revenues, the proportion of opium trade revenues is getting higher and higher, accounting for only 3% in 1800, after 1830 has exceeded 10%, and a considerable part of them are not through formal channels into China, but through smuggling.
How was opium smuggling carried out in the 18th and early 19th centuries? At that time, there were two roads: first, under the protection of local merchants, British merchants carried opium into Huangpu, Guangzhou, and then flowed into the interior. The other is that coastal merchants first buy opium in Macao and then sell it to various shipyards in batches at the open sea or directly to the mainland. This made Macau "the most important storage and transshipment station for opium imported from the West into China."
The second smuggling system was once challenged by a fortuitous case, in the first year of Daoguang (1821), a Macao tun household named Ye Hengshu was arrested selling tobacco and soil in Guangdong, which was originally just an ordinary smuggling case, but the Qing government took advantage of this to make a big fuss, not only cutting off traffic between Macao and Guangzhou Huangpu, but also intensifying the crackdown on opium smuggling. The difficulty of the smuggling business has risen sharply, forcing domestic traders to give up insurance for foreign ships smuggling opium.
However, opium smuggling was not depressed by the government's prohibition, on the contrary, the booming demand for opium stimulated many local gentry, rich people, and even official servants to greedily share this cake, and they would use the more flexible and fast armed merchant ship "fast crab" that was easy to evade the inspection of the government to pick up the goods from the barge of Linglingyang and transport it to the mainland for distribution. In this way, although the transportation cost was increased to a certain extent, because of the protection of local forces, the opium trade developed more stealthily and rapidly underground, and even if the government came to check it, they could learn the news in advance to transfer, and soon a new smuggling network with a tighter structure and a clearer division of labor spread throughout the coast of Guangdong.
Opium had become a "commodity" for Britain to derive its greatest benefit from China, and it was obviously impossible to give up the lucrative profits, and only more dumping could sustain the prosperity of the East India Company.
Some people believe that the British did not regard opium as a drug, after all, opium drugs were not uncommon in Britain at that time, so the opium trade should also be regarded as normal. While this is the case, it does not mean that the existence of opium is justified. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, many British people had easy access to opium as a monopoly drug from pharmacists, paralyzing their spirits in illusory pleasure. Workers brutally squeezed by the big capitalists use opium to alleviate physical and mental exhaustion, the homeless in slums use it to imagine a better future, and even poor mothers use opium-containing "baby tranquilizers" to reduce the burden of childcare.
The abuse of opium is so serious that it has led to a series of serious social problems, with all kinds of violence and suicides not uncommon, the crime rate increasing, and social order chaos. This was naturally condemned by many socialites, and the British' own newspapers referred to the opium trade as "so evil that it is the greatest national sin", and "I am fully convinced that the state is extremely bad at instigating this evil trade, perhaps more vicious than instigating the slave trade." ”
Apparently the British also knew very well that opium was an addictive drug, but for the sake of the wealth of the Far East, they could blindfold God and dump it recklessly, driven by profit. This also included the participation of many high-class aristocratic parliamentarians, which is why they preferred to go to war with the seemingly powerful Qing Empire rather than give up the opium trade.
So since the opium trade is so immoral and despicable, has the Chinese side taken some effective measures to deal with opium smuggling? The answer is not satisfactory. Although the official has always adhered to the intention of cracking down on the opium trade, the merchants who previously underwrote for opium smuggling merchants had an official background, and the various people involved in it since then have not been without the shadow of the government, at least many officials who can benefit from the opium trade are negative about the ban. The rampant spread of opium among the people was enough to show the corruption and weakness of the grass-roots officials of the Qing government.
The most ironic thing is that this opium is actually more and more forbidden, from 1821 to 1827, the average annual import volume is 9708 boxes, from 1828 to 1835, the average annual import volume is 18712 boxes, and from 1836 to 1839, it increased to 35445 boxes, almost doubling every few years, and the interval time is getting shorter and shorter.
At the beginning of the nineteenth year of Daoguang (1839), the Qing government sent Lin Zexu to Guangdong to ban opium, and promulgated the "Regulations on the Prohibition of Opium Smoke", trying to curb the opium trade by cutting off the source and sale of opium. Lin Zexu ordered a severe crackdown on smuggling and smuggling, and forced British and American merchants to hand over more than 20,000 boxes of opium on foreign barges, and finally burned them all at Humen.
This is the famous "Humen tobacco sales" incident in history, although it seems to be exciting, but in fact it did not achieve the expected purpose, And the supply of opium in Guangdong soon returned to the past. Because the Qing government did not realize that its opponent was not a few Yiren who had crossed the ocean, but a huge smuggling network spread throughout the southeast coast, in this case, only a few opium merchants were arrested, and the destruction of a little opium was simply a palliative rather than a cure, and the opium smuggling and distribution system still existed.
Third, the economic system that has been severely impacted
Rampant opium trade and smuggling have fundamentally changed the pattern of Sino-British trade, and China has changed from a supra-country to a super-country in a short period of time. By the seventeenth year of Daoguang (1837), China's trade deficit had even reached 8 million taels of silver. Moreover, more silver was smuggled away by opium traffickers and was not included in official statistics, and the two added up to an estimated annual silver surplus of 10 million taels in China after 1833.
The massive loss of silver has brought about an imbalance in the proportion of silver and money, which in turn has triggered a huge social crisis, and the social economy is on the verge of collapse. Originally, when farmers, small craftsmen, small traders, etc. sold their own products, they generally used copper coins as an exchange intermediary, and when paying taxes to the government, the copper coins were converted into silver according to the silver price, and now the rapid reduction of the amount of silver will obviously lead to an increase in silver prices, and silver is expensive. At the beginning of the 19th century, 1 pair of silver could be exchanged for 1,000 copper coins, and by the 1830s, 1 pair of silver had been able to exchange 1,700 copper coins, and the price of silver had risen by a staggering 7O. After that, it was maintained at the level of 12 exchanges of more than 1800 texts for many years, and the biggest loss was the vast number of ordinary people, which meant that everyone's tax burden rose sharply invisibly, and a large number of civilians could not bear it, falling into poverty, and the "silver famine" became "people's panic".
What choices will ordinary people make in the face of the pressure to survive? Foreign tobacco is expensive, the local opium market has almost no supply, and most farmers cannot afford to smoke it, so they can only choose to produce and sell it themselves. Therefore, a large number of peasants gave up grain production and planted opium poppies instead, creating a vicious circle in which the poisoning of opium became more and more serious.
Native tobacco is not subject to tariffs, and the transportation is convenient, and the price can be half cheaper than imported foreign tobacco, so it has rapidly expanded the market and even won the support of provincial officials. In the face of the high profits of opium, even Lin Zexu later lamented: "It does not hurt to despise the cultivation of poppies in the interior." Those who hate it, the people of the interior love foreign smoke and not local smoke. "The consequence is that a large amount of land is occupied by the poppy, and where the addicts who swallow the clouds and vomit all day long have the ability to work, which in turn aggravates the already serious contradictions between man and land and the food crisis, and the fierce social contradictions are brought together, and the outbreak is inevitable.
Wen Shijun said
As Lin Zexu said, if opium is not banned, there will be "almost no soldiers in the Central Plains who can resist the enemy, and there is no silver that can be fed", obviously smoking has become a necessary policy, but it is such a well-known fact that in the process of real implementation, it has repeatedly encountered difficulties, especially after the First Opium War, the process of smoking has become more and more difficult. Since then, opium has become an important "commodity" exported by Britain to China, and its poison is far-reaching, running through the last 70 years of the late Qing Dynasty and even the Republic of China period. It was not until after the founding of New China that the government launched a thunderous anti-drug operation to eliminate the flow of drugs in a short period of time and restore peace to the people.
bibliography
Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy along the Chinese Coast, Harvard University Press, 1953.
Ma Shi: A History of Foreign Relations of the Chinese Empire, Vol. 1, Shanghai Bookstore, 2006.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Xinran self-satisfied)
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