Читать книгу A Brief Modern Chinese History - Haipeng Zhang - Страница 5

As early as the seventeenth century, Britain began purchasing tea, silk and porcelains from China and later bought Chinese cloth. British products in China, however, did not enjoy the same popularity. Nor did Britain have enough commodities to trade with China. Take tea and cloth, for example. The number of dan (a unit of weight) of tea imported by Britain’s East India Company from China increased from 42,065 (from 1760 to 1764) to 235,840 (1830–1833).4 Essentially, the import increased sixfold in seven decades. Where the cloth trade between Britain and China was concerned, Britain’s imports from China at the beginning of the 1830s were 386,364 taels of silver while China’s imports from Britain were merely 246,189.5 Some indicated that within two years (1837–1839) of beginning trade with China,

Britain purchased 4.27 million pounds of Chinese goods and legally sold 0.91 million pounds of British products to China. Consequently, Britain developed a large trade deficit with China. Britain initially attempted to use its own supplies of silver to pay off the trade deficit which amounted to 3,300,000 pounds.6 However, in the 1770s, British traders began to replace silver with opium, essentially making opium smuggling the lifeline of Britain’s trade with China.

There was a dramatic increase in opium smuggling into China (see table below) in the 1820s.

Years	Amount of Smuggled Opium (chests/p.a.)
1820–1824	(approximately) 8,000
1825–1829	12,576
1835–1838	35,445
1838–1839	(more than) 40,000

Usually, British opium was sold at 600–800 taels of silver per chest and on occasion would reach 1,000 taels of silver. Not only did the enormous profits that resulted from opium smuggling substantially reduce Britain’s trade deficit but also brought more riches to the Empire. Most importantly, the flow of silver between China and Britain was reduced. Customs statistics in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras indicated that in six years (1833–1839) the annual outflow of sliver from China to the British Empire was 4,200,000 taels and on the eve of the Opium War China lost 10,000,000 taels of silver every year.7

The Qing government did make a very early—albeit futile—effort to combat British opium smuggling. However, supported by their own governments, the opium traders from Britain and the United States continued to smuggle opium into China regardless of the Qing government’s ban. Some Chinese officials in charge of the anti-smuggling effort took bribes from the smugglers and turned a blind eye to their wrongdoings. Even some officials in the imperial court were involved. Consequently, the foreign opium traders felt confident in carrying out their activities. Karl Marx commented on this:

The next effect of the moral resistance of the Chinaman was the demoralization, by the Englishman, of the Imperial authorities, custom-house officers and mandarins generally. The corruption that ate into the heart of the Celestial bureaucracy, and destroyed the bulwark of the patriarchal constitution, was, together with the opium chests, smuggled into the Empire from the English storeships anchored at Whampoa [Huangpu].8

British opium smuggling had a serious impact on China. Apart from the ever-increasing outflow of silver, some serious social problems emerged as a consequence. One was the growing number of Chinese who began to smoke opium. In 1835, for example, it was estimated there were 2,000,000 opium smokers in China. Many of these were bureaucrats, landlords and even soldiers. The flood of opium led to a serious threat to the existing order and was of grave concern to Qing’s ruling elites.

There were conflicting ideas regarding the best way to combat the opium trade in China. Some deregulationists suggested the Qing government lift its ban on the trade and cultivation of opium whereas the regulationists demanded that the opium trade be forbidden. Take the example of Lu Kun and Xu Naiji, two leading deregulationists. As early as 1834, Lu, then the Governor General of Guangdong and Guangxi, submitted a memorandum to Emperor Daoguang (r. 1820–1850), advising that it would be impossible to expel all British smugglers from Guangdong. He suggested that Qing should retract the prohibition on the opium trade and cultivation and tax it instead.9 Emperor Daoguang did not comment on Lu’s proposal; however, in the following year the Emperor abolished the annual report discussing the ban on opium. Deregulationists saw this move as an encouragement of their proposal. Thus, Xu, a senior imperial official and the principal exponent of deregulation, rearticulated the deregulationist handling of opium trade in an 1836 memorandum to the throne.10

There were three key points in Xu’s program. First, foreign traders were allowed to trade opium for Chinese goods after paying the medicine tax. Second, imperial officials, candidates for the imperial examination and soldiers who were found to have smoked opium should be dismissed but not subject to criminal punishment. Commoners who smoked opium were also to be exempt from investigation. Third, growing poppies would not be banned in China. The Canton Register, a Guangzhou-based English newspaper managed by opium traffickers, printed the full text of Xu’s memorandum. William Jardine, a notorious opium trafficker, even believed that the publication heralded the legalization of the opium trade in China. Emperor Daoguang asked his ministers to discuss Xu’s memorandum and while some agreed with Xu,11 others harshly rejected Xu’s program.12 Some ministers advocated for a strong anti-smuggling approach and persuaded the Emperor to impose a strict ban on the opium trade. However, no conclusion was reached on the opium trade.

Among the regulationists, Huang Juezi was the most vocal. In 1838, he proposed that the central government take harsh measures to combat opium, including executing dependent users of opium who were unable to give up smoking in one year.13 Huang’s proposal won the support of many local governors and some agreed that opium smokers should be more severely punished while others focused on more effective anti-smuggling measures in coastal areas.14

Lin Zexu’s memorandum is particularly worthy of mention. Not only did Lin analyze how the flood of opium into Chinese society would destroy the social economy but would also how it would make the country economically and militarily incompetent.15 Then, in the summer of 1839, the Qing government promulgated The Anti-Opium Ordinance, resolving to eradicate opium smoking and the opium trade. According to this law, those who traded or smoked opium would be subject to severe punishments including the death penalty. It is generally believed that the Ordinance was based on the ideas proposed by Huang and Xu.

Then Lin Zexu, the Governor General of Hunan and Hubei, was summoned to the Forbidden City, where he was appointed Inspector General leading the fight against opium smoking and the opium trade in Guangdong. As soon as he arrived in Guangzhou, Lin, in collaboration with Deng Tingzhen, the General Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi and Guan Tianpei, the provincial Commander-in-Chief of the Navy in Guangdong, immediately consolidated coastal defenses and began arresting opium traffickers and punishing naval officers who had taken bribes. Lin sternly ordered the smugglers to turn over all their opium in three days and formally guarantee that they would not continue to smuggle anymore. Lin also made a public statement at this time, firmly stating that he would only leave Guangdong when the opium trade was completely eliminated.16 He carried out his work to eliminate opium with vigor. By the early summer of 1839, more than 19,000 chests of opium—that is, approximately 1,180,000 kilograms of opium—were confiscated from the Anglo-American traders. The confiscated opium was destroyed publicly in Hu’men, a beach town not far from Guangzhou, a process which took place over twenty days. The Hu’men Act expressed the Chinese people’s strong will to resist foreign aggression. The towering monument of People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square is a memorial of this heroic act.