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Chapter 7 Purifying the People and Defending the State The Six Year Plan to Eliminate Opium In the years between 1929 and 1935, the central government made considerable progress in controlling opium trade as a practical matter but almost no progress was made in justifying state involvement. This was a problem for several reasons: It made it difficult for Nanjing to justify its policy internationally. It made it difficult to expand its control much beyond the level reached in 1934. Opium was an issue that could still potentially blow-up in the government ’s face. Finally, popular opinion in favor of opium suppression was a missed opportunity.There was a great deal of public enthusiasm for opium suppression , but there was no opium suppression campaign for it to be attached to. The solution to all these problems was the Six-Year Plan to Eliminate Opium. At its core was an expansion of the Hankou system to the entire country. THE SIX-YEAR PLAN In April 1935, the Nationalist government announced the Six-Year Plan to Eliminate Opium and Drugs. This would be the Nationalists most important and, if judged by its own standards, most successful, anti-opium campaign. In his speech announcing the plan, Chiang Kai-shek declared that the new plan would not merely be paper suppression, as had been so common in the past, but it would be a scientific program, based on closer control of the growing, shipping, sale, and smoking of opium. Every aspect of the trade was to be regulated .“The number of addicts and the amount [they consume], the number of opium shops and amount of poppy production will all be placed under tight 177 statistical control.” The success of the plan was assured because it was based on the successful work of the Anti-Communist Headquarters and the Liang Hu teshui chu.1 Perhaps the most stunning thing about this new campaign was how public it was. Chiang not only announced the plan himself, he made himself the head of the new Jinyan zonghui (Central Anti-Opium Commission) that would administer the plan. Chiang also admitted that what they would be selling was yan du (opium) not jie yan yao (anti-opium medicine) or any of the other euphemisms that had been used in the past. The Anti-Opium Commission , which had been publicly waving the flag of opium suppression while the Inspectorate took control of the trade, was abolished, and the goals of control and suppression were conflated in Chiang himself. Although the public nature of the plan was a departure, many aspects of it built on previous work. Efforts to take control of the wholesale trade were expanded and extended; the same personnel were kept on, and opium continued to be a source of revenue.The most important changes in the plan were that the state took on the problems of poppy growing and opium smoking, two goals that had only been paid lip service in the past. What makes the plan interesting, and what made it successful, was how it managed to marry the goals and techniques of control and suppression. The plan seems to have grown out of the natural expansion of the Inspectorate. Opium suppression for the ten provinces had already been put under Chiang’s control in July of 1934.2 This was done partially because of the recommendations of H. H. Kung.3 Like his brother-in-law T. V. Soong, for Kung him unifying opium taxation was no different from any other tax reform.4 To some extent, these actions were part of their jobs, moral considerations were the province of their boss, Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang was apparently sincere in his desire to see China freed of opium, but like all other rulers in China he was unwilling to make the leap from opium control to opium suppression. Given the Six-Year Plan’s melding of these to approaches the distinction between the two no longer had to be made, and in fact was best not made. In February of 1936, Chiang Kai-shek gave a speech outlining the benefits of the new plan. Chiang refused to blame the problem on foreigners, locating the heart of the problem in the Chinese people themselves. The people lacked jue xin (determination) because they had lost faith in the government’s ability to deal with the problem. Now that the government had found a method of controlling opium the enthusiasm of the people could be re-awakened...

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