Opium (28 page)

During the Second World War, Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese who, at first, imported opium into the colony with the intention of demoralising the Chinese: they had no need to for disease, starvation and Japanese cruelty were sufficient not only to demoralise and kill large numbers but to cause many hundreds of thousands to flee into China. As the war progressed, and Japan came under increasing pressure from Allied forces, supply lines were disrupted, with first opium imports and then stockpiles being depleted. In the occupied territory, many thousands of addicts died from withdrawal, insane or broken, but a good number survived through to non-addiction.

When the Japanese surrendered Hong Kong in September 1945, the colonial government, most members of which had been incarcerated in a prisoner-of-war camp on Hong Kong island, did not immediately take over the running of the colony. An interim administration was set up under the British Commander-in-Chief. He issued a proclamation which abolished the opium monopoly thereby preventing any possible revenue being derived from it. Quite possibly, had there been a civilian administration in place, they might have argued against or even prevented this move. The police were made responsible for the closing of all opium dens and suppressing any opium dealing whatsoever. Needless to say, an illegal trade quickly appeared and began to thrive.

Yet, for the first time since Hong Kong was ceded to the British, opium was illegal there and was, at last, banned by every facet of British government, at home and abroad. The pernicious legitimate trade was finally over.

9

Coolies and Conferences

With the Far East and especially China steeped in foreign opium for the better part of two centuries, it was perhaps inevitable, in due course, the tables would start to turn. When this revenge began there was a certain ironic justice about it for it involved, once more, an exploitation of the Chinese.

From around the middle of the nineteenth century, large numbers of Chinese – particularly men – started to emigrate. There were two main reasons for this migration. First, conditions in China were intolerable for the average peasant. Landlords were grasping, the Ch'ing emperors imposed crippling taxes which were ruthlessly collected, starvation was rife due to a combination of poor administration and natural causes and the nation was torn apart by the Taiping Rebellion. Second, there was simultaneously a massive international demand for labour. Across the world, roads and railways were under construction, mining was booming and vast areas of previously untouched continents were coming under the plough. From time to time, gold rushes added an extra incentive to migrants throughout the world.

Millions of Chinese peasant labourers – coolies – emigrated with the dream of striking it rich overseas, sending money home to support their extended families or, having made good, bringing their families to their new home.

The first immigrants headed into South-east Asia, to the tin mines and rubber plantations of the Malay peninsula. An indication of this migration can be seen in population figures: by 1910, the first reliable census, there were recorded 60,000 Chinese living in Rangoon, 120,000 in Saigon and 200,000 in Bangkok. In Singapore, they were the racial majority. Such large immigrant numbers brought about a high demand for opium: in Singapore in 1881, a third of the adult Chinese population was addicted – this was a higher addiction than in China. To try and regulate supply and use it as a source of tax revenue, every South-east Asian country and colony had a state opium monopoly in place by 1900, state-licensed opium dens being commonplace: opium taxes substantially increased government incomes and significantly encouraged economic development.

Most coolies came from the southern, coastal provinces of China, especially Fukien, Kwangtung and the area around Canton which had long been associated with the opium trade. Just as in the 1820s, when coolies were exported to the tea plantations of Assam, large numbers of men were shipped out through Hong Kong, Macau and other ports such as Amoy. They were, from the very start, exploited by Chinese coolie shipping agents and ships' captains – over a third of whom were Americans – then abused and treated atrociously by their employers. The trade in these unfortunate souls was known colloquially as the ‘Pig Trade': the ‘Poison Trade' was slang for the opium business. Crowded into corrals like slaves they were, as the British Consul in Canton observed in 1852, frequently painted with letters such as P, C or S meaning Peru, California or the Sandwich Islands.

Whilst some were convicts on release or kidnap victims (we still use the contemporary expression, ‘shanghaied'), over 95 per cent were indentured workers who, having had $50 paid for their sea passage on their behalf by would-be employers who regarded it as a loan against future income, were offered a wage they never saw for their loan and deductions for living expenses exceeded their earnings. Their travelling conditions were grim but because money had changed hands they were not legally slaves so no action could be taken against their shippers. Many died
en route:
one British-owned vessel, the
John Calvin,
lost 50 per cent of its passengers whilst American ships were often known to have 40 per cent mortality rates. Some attempt was made by Britain to regulate this human trade with the Chinese Passengers Act (1855) but this resulted in the trade merely shifting away from Hong Kong.

Women were sometimes part of ‘Pig Trade' cargoes. Under Chinese law females could not emigrate but coolie employers overseas wanted women: the aim was to make their indentured coolies settle in their new countries, thus alleviating the need to import more. The women were mostly either kidnapped or purchased under a Chinese system, known as
mui tsai,
which allowed for the sale of young girls as servants or concubines-in-training. This aspect of the trade was invidious: in 1855, the British vessel,
Inglewood,
hove to off Amoy with a cargo of female children all under the age of eight. The crew, disgusted at what comprised their cargo, reported it to the British consul who arranged for the children to be returned home.

Once abroad, many of the Chinese lived oppressed, miserable lives with only one familiar means of release – opium smoking. Not only did opium relieve the physical pain of labouring, it suppressed sexual desire in predominantly male immigrant work environments and the mental pain of homesickness: opium has the ability to make anywhere seem familiar so, for the coolie in a strange land, his nostalgia for China could be dulled by a pipe.

Many coolies, of course, were not addicted or even frequent users: indeed, a good number only took to smoking once they arrived at their destinations. In some instances, opium was even cited as an incentive to emigrate because it was legal in many places outside China whilst employers were reluctant to stamp out opium smoking for they feared without it they might suffer a labour shortage. This was certainly true in the Malay peninsula, where workers were housed in primitive conditions, suffered terrible physical labour and were exposed to a variety of tropical diseases: opium kept the work-force going. It must be said, however, the Chinese migrants did not introduce opium to South-east Asia for it was already used by Indians and Malays along with cannabis: it was just that the Chinese greatly enlarged the propensity towards it.

The main initial thrust of international emigration outside Southeast Asia was to Australia, the USA (particularly California) and Canada and later, further afield to South America with, later still, South Africa. With the coolies came Chinese traders who serviced the expatriate communities with everything from rice and joss-sticks to prostitutes and opium. It was not long before opium smoking spread to sections of the non-Chinese population wherever they settled.

By 1870, there were 50,000 Chinese working as miners and general labourers in Australia, with predominantly male Chinese communities established in the Lower George Street area of Sydney and the Little Bourke Street precinct of Melbourne. Opium smoking and dens were common. The lack of females encouraged poor white women to move into the Chinese milieu where they worked as servants, prostitutes and even married Chinese men which set white society against the Orientals and their fallen women who were deemed to be corrupted by opium. Anti-Chinese racial attitudes were the norm and when, in 1888, a ship called the
Afghan
arrived in Port Melbourne with 250 Chinese immigrants aboard, a mass picket of the docks prevented them disembarking.

Opium imports into Australia indicate the size of the smoking habit: in 1890, 17,684 pounds were landed of which only 400 pounds were for medicinal use. Fines for smoking or operating a den were lenient. The problem was to enter the political agenda in April 1890, when it was discovered there were 700 European smokers in Victoria alone. A concerted anti-opium – which meant racially inspired anti-Chinese – movement sprang up. A passage from the story ‘Mr & Mrs Sin Fat', published in 1888 by the Australian writer Edward Dyson, sums up the prevalent attitude:

The curious European on a voyage of discovery saw in [Mr Sin Fat's] room, through the clouds of choking evil smelling, opium fumes, debilitated Chinamen, with faces like animals floating to hell in the midst of visions of heaven … and worst of all, European girls … of sixteen, decoyed in at the front door by the sheen of silk and the jingle of gold, and then left to percolate through that terrible den, to be finally cast out amongst the slime and rottenness of the lanes …

It was artful racist writing – both ‘Sin' and ‘Fat' are Chinese names, but have different connotations in English – which appealed to the indignant and self-righteous masses but did nothing to rid Australia of the Chinese. They had arrived to stay and, despite racially motivated opium legislation, imports rose far higher before the tide was turned. By 1991, just under 5 per cent of the Australian population was of Chinese ethnic origin.

Such was the dream the Chinese had of the USA it was colloquially known in China as the Golden Mountain: 30,000 Chinese left Hong Kong for San Francisco in 1852 alone. Tens of thousands flocked to the western seaboard to work predominantly as labourers on the railroads and in mines. Many headed for the gold-fields. Mostly indentured, they were racially abused, cheated of their earnings and considered of little importance. The Celestials, as they were called, were considered below even native American Indians. When the gold-mines closed or failed, when the railroads were completed, most of the Chinese were simply cast adrift. They had no money to repatriate themselves. It was then the ubiquitous Chinese laundry came into being: the Chinese, ever entrepreneurial, set up in business running chop houses, acting as cooks on ranches or cattle drives, owning laundries, bakeries and tailors' shops and, inevitably, opium dens.

Through the coolie trade opium diffused across the world. Typical of this expansion was the way opium arrived in Peru, outlined in
All About Opium
by Hartmann Henry Sultzberger and published in 1884. An Anglicised German opium merchant, Sultzberger had an acquaintance who became involved in the trade through his employer, a coolie importer bringing Chinese labour from Macau. To see if there was a means of maximising profits, the importer brought in a few cases of opium as a trial. It proved so profitable a regular trade was established in both coolies and opium.

At first, opium entering Peru was duty-free. Then the Peruvian authorities seized their chance and heavily taxed it with the prompt result 80 per cent of the country's opium was smuggled. Concerned about lost tax revenues, the levy was considerably cut and companies operated by Chinese merchants in Lima imported substantial quantities from China via San Francisco. The situation was summed up by Sultzberger, who wrote:

To my knowledge there never was any attempt made in Peru to ‘prohibit' the importation of the drug, which most likely may be accounted for by the entire absence out there of those well-meaning missionaries who think that John Chinaman cannot take care of himself … On the other hand we see that those most directly interested in getting all the work they can out of John Chinaman, i.e. his employers, actually ‘facilitate' the sale of this so-called deadly poison to him.

In other words, opium and coolies were seen as inseparable business opportunities.

The spread of opium, allied to an awareness of its effects, led to the birth of international drug control. Until 1900, international attention had been directed at and against the opium trade between India and China but, by the time the agreement between Britain and China was reached in 1906, the situation in the remainder of the world was out of control, despite occasional treaties between individual governments. It was realised that the trade could not be policed by individual countries and that the main thrust of action lay in the prevention of distribution. This was seen to be all the more relevant with the discovery of morphine and the other derivatives which not only exacerbated the problem but, being concentrates, could be easily transported licitly or illicitly across international borders.

One of the first moves against opium on an international front was made by America. As a result of the Spanish-American War, the United States annexed the Philippine Islands in 1898, inheriting a substantial opium problem for the Chinese minority of the Philippines was heavily addicted, their supplies coming from Persia, Turkey, Indo-China and China. Just after the turn of the century, there were 190 opium dens in the Philippines catering only for the Chinese, 5 per cent of the total population of Manila being habituated.

The Spanish had allowed opium trading under a monopoly system: dealers bid for their franchise and the exchequer benefited. At an annual revenue loss of $500,000, the Americans closed down the system and banned opium dens. Despite this, addiction rates rose so a commission was appointed in 1903 to address the problem and study the Far Eastern opium trade. The report of the Philippines Opium Commission led to the prohibition of importation into the Philippines except for medicinal purposes, the legislation coming into effect in 1908. Spurred by this success, America set about establishing a global narcotics policy involving both consumer and producer countries.