State and Smuggling in Modern China: The Case of Guangzhouwan/Zhanjiang

ABSTRACT

The Leizhou Peninsula in western Guangdong (concurrent with the present-day municipality of Zhanjiang) has at several points in history been an important site of exchange, both licit and illicit in the eyes of central authorities. The French gained control of the area from the weakened Qing government in 1898–1899 and established their "leased territory" of Guangzhouwan. Administered as part of French Indochina, Guangzhouwan became a fiefdom of smugglers, pimps, and pirates, never developing into the rival to Hong Kong that the French hoped it would become. After a brief Japanese occupation, the French returned the leased territory to the government of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) after World War II, but their colonial presence left a legacy of trafficking, violence, and anti-imperialism that emboldened Communist guerrillas in the area. Once the Communists came into power in 1949, they subjected Zhanjiang and other liminal spaces along the Chinese coast to vigorous anti-smuggling and anti-drug campaigns. But a return to smuggling in the Reform Era (1978–present) suggests that the successful repression of smuggling in the Mao era may have been a temporary exception to the historical rule in this region.

INTRODUCTION

The prefecture-level municipality of Zhanjiang 湛江市 (figure 1), encompassing the Leizhou Peninsula 雷州半島 in the western part of China's Guangdong Province, is a product of post–World War II administrative reforms put in place by the Nationalist government and carried over in the People's Republic after 1949. Zhanjiang is an amalgamation of several counties and cities, including ports with long histories as centers for distant trade, and the region was a prominent part of the Maritime Silk Road. The Leizhou Peninsula's coasts lie in the middle of a maritime zone stretching from the Pearl River Delta to Haiphong in the Red River Delta, while, on land, the peninsula has served as a gateway leading from Guangdong to Guangxi, Yunnan, and Tonkin. A central event in the history of the Leizhou Peninsula was the creation of the French-leased territory of Guangzhouwan in 1899 and the subsequent arrival of French military forces and colonial officials. The creation of this zone beyond the control of the Qing government offered tremendous opportunities for traders—particularly opium traders—as well as an administrative nightmare for Chinese officials. These frustrations carried over into and through the Republican period, despite earnest government efforts to rein in smuggling operations. The trafficking of goods, narcotics, and people outside of official channels diminished only after intense political campaigns under the Communists in the course of the 1950s. Indeed, smuggling and unauthorized migration were only partially suppressed in the Maoist period (1949–1976) of the People's Republic, and they have returned as a perennial source of aggravation for government officials since 1978, as China's economy has expanded.

It would be easy to interpret the twentieth-century history of Guangzhouwan in terms of imperialist expansion and anti-imperialist reaction, or through a framework of laissez-faire versus socialist economic systems. But it makes more sense to assess the history of the Leizhou Peninsula at several temporal and geographical scales, revealing instead the mostly unsuccessful state efforts to control the movement of goods and people. Across the course of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, we can see the expanding capacities of the state to govern the traffic of goods and people according to its own preferences. Just as obvious, however, is the stubborn adherence of people to their instincts for survival and profit, as well as an unending capacity for creativity in circumventing state barriers and restrictions, including the enlistment of state agents at the local level to undermine higher-level imperatives.

Figure 1.

Map showing the location of modern Zhanjiang and the Leizhou Peninsula relative to nearby major cities. Source: Google Earth.

FRENCH INTERESTS AND IMPERIALISM IN THE LATE QING PERIOD

The impetus for trade in the Leizhou region persisted for centuries, outlasting numerous dynasties and imperial powers. The region was already an important location for trade in the Han dynasty, becoming a key stop on the sea lanes of the Maritime Silk Road as well as a host for piracy.¹ Unsurprisingly, piracy was particularly acute in periods when centralized political power was weak, such as the late Qianlong and Jiaqing periods, when it was driven by the same pressures that provoked a number of rebellions throughout the Qing realm (Wang 2014, 81–82). Pirates grew from occasional raiders to full-time, large-scale organizations operating along the coasts of northern Vietnam, Guangxi, and Guangdong, using the Leizhou Peninsula as a base and later affiliating with the Tayson Rebellion in Vietnam (Antony 2003, 38–39, 43). Later advocates of French imperialism seeking to justify the need for French control of the region could point to "rampant" opium smuggling and "intense" piracy that "spread terror all along the coast, from Ha-Long Bay to Macao" (Bonningue 1931, 38; Matot 2013, 57), including attacks on Western trading vessels transiting to or from Canton (Antony 2003, 45).

At the same time that Qing officials were trying to rein in piracy, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh (enthroned as Gia Long) marched north in 1802 with the help of a French Catholic missionary, defeated enemy Tayson forces, and united Vietnam under a single dynasty (Ricklefs et al. 2010, 145–146). Nevertheless, his successors took a more aggressive stance toward French missionaries and their sizable population of converts, just as France was seeking to expand its imperial activities in East Asia following the ascension of Napoleon III. First in 1858, and then in 1867, French naval expeditions were sent to Vietnam, ostensibly to protect missionaries but in reality to establish a definitive French presence at the mouth of the Mekong River, using it as a springboard for further influence in the region—namely, access to the markets of southern China (Ricklefs et al. 2010, 181). France had already secured substantial rights in China following the First and Second Opium Wars, but the French presence in the treaty ports remained minor and French influence in China was channeled mainly through the Catholic missions, impelling hopes that greater economic influence in China could be gained through Tonkin (Lee 1989, 3–4). But imperial adventurism in northern Vietnam brought France into direct conflict with the Qing, leading ultimately to France declaring a protectorate in Tonkin and the Sino-French War of 1884–1885. Control over Tonkin was gained, but the war against the Qing was an unpopular stalemate and led to the fall of the pro-colonial Ferry government, impairing the prospects of a more robust French influence in China's southern provinces (Cady 1954, 293–294).

BUILDING GUANGZHOUWAN

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Leizhou region began a political, social, and economic transformation that would define it for the next fifty years and beyond. Centered on the towns of Chikan 赤坎 and Xiying 西營, a French-leased territory was established that would become known, in short order, as a failed imperial project (see figures 2 and 3). Like the

Figure 2.

Map showing approximate boundaries of the Guangzhouwan leased territory. Source: Google Earth, amended by author.

Figure 3.

Map showing the approximate boundaries of and places within the French Leased Territory. Source: Google Earth, amended by the author.

French concessions in major Chinese ports, there was ultimately little that was French about the newly leased territory of Guangzhouwan. The French population of Guangzhouwan never exceeded three hundred, and the territory remained essentially Chinese; even the French administration was primarily composed of Chinese and Vietnamese functionaries (Bonningue 1931, 2).² However, a failed imperial project can be "successful" in some respects. Guangzhouwan was born at the height of the contest of empires and, like most colonial possessions in East Asia, died as a result of World War II. Despite its brief tenure as a French outpost, yet essentially a Chinese territory, Guangzhouwan is representative of the longue durée of the history of China's southern coast. At the level of moyenne durée and l' histoire événementielle, Guangzhouwan was important as a conduit for people, goods, money, and ideas, and it also played an outsized role in the redemptive nationalist projects of both the Guomindang (GMD, also known as the Nationalists) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Seeking a French Hong Kong, the architects of French Indochina, including Paul Doumer, governor-general of Indochina from 1897 to 1902, scrutinized the southern Chinese coast for an appropriate location. Due to Chinese and British opposition, Hainan Island was not an option, nor were established ports like Beihai; an alternative had to be found. French commercial ships had first arrived in the region at the turn of the eighteenth century. In 1701, the second of these voyages to China was caught in a typhoon and ran aground off Nansan in Wuchuan County 吳川縣 and stayed for six months before leaving. Nearly two centuries later, ambitious supporters of French colonization would point to the temporarily marooned ship, as well as notes made by its crew, to justify their focus on the region as the possible site of a leased territory in China (Matot 2013, 26).³ In March 1898, the French government formally presented to the Qing a proposal for leasing territory in southern China; by the end of the month, a 20 square-kilometer area was carved out of Nansan for a naval station and a coaling station (Bonningue 1931, 9). In late April, the first contingent of about two hundred French marines arrived and established themselves in a derelict Qing coastal fort, which they renamed Fort Bayard, with the expectation that it would serve as "one of the principal entrepôts in the Far East" (Matot 2013, 51).⁴

The French marines quickly moved inland into Suixi and Wuchuan from the former Qing fort and immediately engaged in fighting with locals. As was the case in other parts of China at the turn of the century, secret societies opposed to both foreign imperialism and Qing rule were active in Leizhou. Local gentry began organizing armed opposition against French troops, setting off a struggle that lasted more than a year and resulted in the deaths of dozens of Chinese fighters and civilians, including the wholesale destruction and slaughter of the village of Vong-Luock (Huanglüe 黃略) by French troops (Matot 2013, 28–29, 32, 35–39; Long and Jing 2013, 33; Su 2004, 222; Zeng 1999, 25–26). Buttressed by reinforcements and feeling confident in their position at Guangzhouwan, the French sought to press their advantage and use the armed opposition as a pretext for demanding greater concessions. After months of wrangling, on November 16, 1899, the French and Qing signed the "Guangzhouwan Leased Territory Treaty" (廣州灣租 界條約), resulting in a ninety-nine-year lease on a greatly expanded territory (518 square kilometers of land and 2,130 square kilometers of sea) containing nearly 1,000 villages populated by 175,000 residents (see figure 2). Across from the old Qing fort at the inlet of the bay's estuary (also known as the Maxie River 麻斜河), Vietnamese workers were brought in to build administrative structures and villas for French officials and military officers. The colonial structures on either side of the estuary would form the administrative basis of the territory until its dissolution in 1946; this political "capital" straddling the estuary at Xiying and Potou stood in contrast to the more heavily populated "commercial capital" of Chikan farther north. The leased territory was placed within the administrative structure and economic sphere of Indochine, with its administrators appointed by and responsible to Hanoi.

CONTESTATION AND CONTROL

Open rebellion against the French presence had been defeated, but residual opposition remained just below the surface. Two days after the treaty was signed, a local official in Chikan who had acceded to the treaty's terms was assassinated (Ministère des Affaires Étrangères 1900, 1–2; Ruan 1982, 72–79; Matot 2013, 44). For several years, French visitors to the new leased territory noted with alarm the animosity of the Chinese population. Political violence was so severe that mandarins suspected of collaborating with the French were almost entirely killed off by assassins by 1905. In early October 1904, more than a thousand bandits raided the town of Taiping, just within the leased territory's southern boundary, and nearly destroyed it. In retaliation, the French summarily executed those in Taiping accused of colluding with the bandits and forced the town's entire population to relocate ("Trouble" 1904). When the violence led to a near-complete stop in the lucrative opium trade in 1904, the administrator-assistant of Guangzhouwan, Henri Liégeot, launched a punitive expedition, killing six local notables suspected of involvement in the assassinations. The following summer, there were arson attacks on the European villas in Chikan, and nine children were abducted and held for ransom. Soon afterward, the gérant de l'intendance militaire and his wife were attacked and killed in a botched robbery of their villa. In reaction, Liégeot arrested three hundred locals, personally interrogating and torturing them; the prisoners were soon dying from malnourishment and violence. When his actions were uncovered by a French journalist, Liégeot was relieved from his post and replaced by a more level-headed and experienced colonial administrator (Ruan 1982, 72–75).

Despite political control emanating from Hanoi, and contrary to its raison d'être as a French rival to Hong Kong, Guangzhouwan became far more closely connected with markets in Hong Kong and Macao than those in Haiphong and Hanoi. In fact, Doumer's replacement as governor-general, Paul Beau, actively sought out Chinese capitalists in Hong Kong who would be interested in incorporating Guangzhouwan into their networks. By the 1920s, the connection was so complete that, in most years, 95 percent or more of Guangzhouwan's imports were from Hong Kong or Canton, and 98 percent or more of its exports were to Canton and Hong Kong. This connection with the Pearl River Delta was exacerbated by the fact that, while taxes and fees were collected in Indochinese piasters, the common currencies of exchange in Guangzhouwan were Chinese or Hong Kong silver dollars. Commercial exchange with the leased territory also was taxed as if it were a foreign territory, as opposed to a member of the Indochinese Union, so that it was often cheaper to import products from China than from Indochine (Vannière 2004, 395). The centrality of Hong Kong to Guangzhouwan's economy only increased as the two territories became solitary outposts that were partially insulated from the Sino-Japanese conflict raging around them in the late 1930s. Between 1938 and 1939, Guangzhouwan's exports to Hong Kong (by value) nearly tripled, and imports from Hong Kong more than doubled.⁵

A common feature of the territory's connections to both Indochina and the Pearl River Delta was opium trafficking. The French colonial regime promoted and participated in opium production, which came to constitute as much as 30 percent of Indochine's revenues from the 1860s through the 1880s. Opium production and trafficking was handled by rival Cantonese and Hokkienese gongsi 公司 (social organizations of compatriots from the same region, often with lineage ties) who employed migrant Chinese laborers, and gongsi control of the market continued even after the French colonial authorities tried to establish a state monopoly in the 1880s (Trocki 2007, 94–95). The opium that arrived in the leased territory was meant to be subject to a system of customs and rules (Douanes et Régies); in reality, though, these were difficult to enforce, and once registered opium entered the boundaries of the leased territory, it quickly intermingled with unregistered product (often being transformed from raw opium into chandoo, a form that could be smoked, in the process). By the time the opium was exported, the two were indistinguishable. A portion of the opium that arrived at Guangzhouwan was consumed locally (by 1930, opium users constituted roughly 30 percent of Guangzhouwan's population), but most (roughly two-thirds of the registered opium, and probably a higher proportion of smuggled opium) ended up in Hong Kong, and from there was often re-exported to Macao, the Chinese interior, or even the United States.⁶ In the aboveground opium market, raw opium and chandoo coming from Guangzhouwan were in competition with opium from other sources; however, the lax enforcement of customs and the porous borders of the leased territory meant that Guangzhouwan dominated the illicit opium market. In 1935, even after the Chinese government had begun to ring the territory with customs stations, 85 percent of contraband opium seized in Hong Kong came from Guangzhouwan (Vannière 2004, 508).

These activities were encouraged, and even orchestrated, by French officials for the purpose of covering the territory's military and administrative costs (He 2013, 165–166). The French had instituted a "head tax" (impôt de capitation) and property tax (impôt foncier) to raise revenue, but more lucrative were the taxes and fees collected on gambling, prostitution, and opium. The opium trade alone generally provided Guangzhouwan with half or more of its annual revenue. By the mid-1920s, fully one-third of the entire opium market in Indochine belonged to the leased territory (Vannière 2004, 654). But, in spite of these revenues, the money earmarked for the leased territory was minimal; consequently, Guangzhouwan required "extraordinary" annual subventions from Hanoi. Nevertheless, even with these subventions factored in, the leased territory was a significant net gain for the budget of Indochine in most years (Matot 2013, 134).

Despite the overlay of French colonial administration and military control, Guangzhouwan was a Chinese city in virtually every aspect. Even the police, the garde indigène, was composed of ethnic Chinese from Annam and Tonkin. The French also relied heavily on the kong-koc (公局 gongju), councils of local notables who were granted special trading privileges and control over the administration of taxes on gambling and prostitution (Matot 2013, 46). The few successful foreign merchants who did operate in Guangzhouwan were more often Japanese, German, or English than French, and attempts to champion French entrepreneurs failed (Matot 2013, 91). Aside from civil and military officials, France was represented in its leased territory by a branch of the Banque de l'Indochine, the primary purpose of which became the housing of money gained from the opium trade. Most governors-general of Indochine, particularly after the first decade of the twentieth century, were content to leave Guangzhouwan to its own devices so long as it returned budget surpluses (Matot 2013, 139).

The real bosses of Guangzhouwan were, from its inception until its dissolution, the Chinese opium merchants who were connected to wider networks in Hong Kong and Macao, and throughout southern China. These merchants would form the leadership of the kong-koc and a later "indigenous consultative conference," established to manage tax collection and public works. They also directly or indirectly managed most of the brothels, opium dens, gambling houses, and clubs in Chikan, and invested heavily in real estate, further propelling Guangzhouwan toward a highly stratified service and "rentier" economy that lacked industry or significant agricultural output. Among the Chinese elites of Guangzhouwan, unquestionably the most influential and important was Tsang Hoc-Tam (Chen Xuetan 陳學談), who acted as a mercenary, enforcer, and intermediary to the Chinese community, including the secret societies, bandits, and pirates (Matot 2013, 124–125). While his early life and circumstances are somewhat murky, there is consensus that Tsang was able to become the chief of the milice indigène in the market at Haitou 海頭 in 1910–1911 and used this position to enrich himself through the opium trade. He also helped the French in their struggle against bandits and became one of their most trusted intermediaries. Already by 1914–1915, he had amassed a personal fortune of 40,000 piasters and was one of the largest real estate holders in the Chinese community. His career took off in 1914, when the French named Tsang the "chief pacifier and chief of commercial police" and allowed him to develop a private army to police the opium trade and attack his rivals in the process (Vannière 2004, 466). In 1916, he was made the chief of the local kong-koc in Chikan—a post he held until the territory was dissolved at the end of World War II—and, in 1922, the subprefect of Suixi. With other administrative posts held by allies and relatives throughout the Leizhou Peninsula, Tsang was able to control the access points in and out of the leased territory. The French administrators in Guangzhouwan, cognizant of their own limitations and most concerned with preventing social disorder, banditry, and rebellion, developed a close personal relationship with Tsang and allowed him to manage Chikan, and indeed much of the leased territory, as a sort of viceroy (Vannière 2004, 468–469). On the rare occasion when a French official, unaware of the arrangement, raided Tsang's warehouses to seize contraband, the chief administrator and higher authorities in Hanoi stepped in to return the goods, with an apology (Vannière 2004, 470, 509). This was the sort of tactic that the French had employed in their concession in Shanghai—the "pact with the devil" with opium smuggler and mobster Du Yuesheng 杜月笙 (Martin 1996, ch. 5). It also bore resemblance to the deals that the Ming had made with powerful operators on the south China coasts whom they were unable to subdue.

As had been the case before the French arrived, the Leizhou region continued to be plagued by piracy and banditry throughout the period of French rule. Pirates operating in the Gulf of Tonkin and along the shores of Leizhou frequently raided coastal villages and robbed fishing and commercial vessels, charged them a fee for passing through their territory, or kidnapped their crews for ransom. However, piracy was also the principal occupation of many in these same coastal communities, and local pirate chiefs tried to enlist traders as often as they stole from them. Pirates and brigands were also often in league with local secret societies committed to the overthrow of the Qing and expulsion of foreign imperialists. In response, both the Qing and French authorities launched continuous retaliatory raids along the Leizhou coast and nearby islands that housed pirates (Matot 2013, 57–58). An ambitious program of maritime expeditions, raids on opium dens, and organization of local militias helped to reduce piracy in the waters of the leased territory, but the issue continued to vex both French and Chinese administrations into the mid-twentieth century (Matot 2013, 78–79). During a particularly violent period in the early 1920s, By-Xa and By-Poui, rival pirates affiliated with opposing warlords and political factions in Guangdong, fought for primacy in the region. The combat was so relentless that, by 1924, the French estimated that some 90 percent of the villages in Leizhou had been destroyed. In seeking to contain piracy and land-based banditry, the French copied the Chinese state's historical tactic of pitting bandits against each other and granting clemency to whichever side crushed the other. Yet the violence was only mitigated in 1925–1926, when troops of the National Revolutionary Army entered the Leizhou Peninsula (Vannière 2004, 463).

The leased territory also posed an administrative nightmare for the dedicated officials of the Maritime Customs Service, based locally at Beihai. Regarding tariffs and taxes, no framework had been agreed on between the French and the Qing when the leased territory was established (Vannière 2004, 483). In 1903, the Beihai Customs Office indicated that goods entering or leaving the leased territory were not subject to duties, but as the quantities of opium entering China from Guangzhouwan increased, the Qing built customs posts near the leased territory at Gaozhou and Leizhou and tried to control the movement of Chinese vessels in the vicinity. These efforts led to creative measures by smugglers to hide their products, including flying French or Portuguese flags to avoid harassment, disguising opium as kerosene, and developing an intimate knowledge of the Leizhou coast, using difficult-to-navigate inlets and bays as smuggling posts (Tan 1990, 96–98). Customs officials tried to construct additional customs checkpoints on the boundary of Guangzhouwan in the final years of Qing rule, but these were abolished by the Beiyang government in 1914. They made little difference anyhow, given the ease with which the boundary of the territory could be crossed and the financial incentives of the opium trade; thus, smuggling continued unabated (Matot 2013, 89).

THE END OF GUANGZHOUWAN

As the conflicts with anti-foreign secret societies and pirates in the first years of Guangzhouwan's existence showed, the territory was not isolated from wider political developments. The French were concerned not only about pirates and armed gangs, but also about the anti-imperialism of Chinese nationalists (Matot 2013, 97). Both the GMD and CCP had connections in Guangzhouwan by the mid-1920s, including with the Vietnamese population. In May 1926, the tense situation produced a misunderstanding that resulted in French troops firing on and killing dozens of injured Chinese Nationalist troops (Matot 2013, 138–140). The same summer, the first local group of the CCP was established in the leased territory, where it quickly built contacts in the villages among the peasants and fishermen upset by taxes imposed by the French (Zhonggong zhanjiang 1994, 4). In subsequent years, social disorder in the countryside within and around the leased territory worsened as the French administration, primarily interested in maintaining the fiscal buoyancy of Guangzhouwan, raised taxes and licensing fees, thereby further incentivizing illicit trade and upsetting already hard-pressed peasants in the countryside (Vannière 2004, 500).

More ominous, however, was the successful establishment of a new national government at Nanjing in 1927–1928. By 1931, the Nanjing government had already launched an aggressive effort to control trade in and out of Guangzhouwan by setting up the Guangzhouwan Border Affairs Office 廣州灣邊區辦事處, part of a larger push to assert control over China's borders and customs system. With the Chinese state having reestablished autonomy over the setting of customs dues in 1928, yet still constrained in its ability to collect other sources of revenue, tariffs "soon represented the largest and most dependable source of central government income, averaging roughly half of annual revenues throughout the Nanjing decade" (Thai 2016, 81). Both tariff rates and the policing of commerce increased dramatically, leading to a greater intervention of the state into local economies and an increase in prices on imported goods. These measures also unintentionally increased the profitability of smuggling, making it an appealing profession for overtaxed peasants (Thai 2016, 82–83). Nanjing's response to these problems was to push even harder for legal and administrative reforms that increased penalties on smuggling, but these efforts ran into stiff opposition from local communities and officials who had become accustomed to a weak central government (Thai 2016, 86–89).

The Nanjing government's commitment to fight smuggling and assert its sovereignty was tied to a similarly ardent commitment to eliminate extraterritorial privileges in China. The foreign concessions and leased territories on Chinese soil not only were a painful reminder of China's weakness but also severely limited the central government's ability to collect revenue and suppress smuggling (Thai 2016, 91–92). Regarding Guangzhouwan specifically, in lieu of the immediate retrocession of the leased territory to Chinese sovereignty, Nanjing hoped to raise the cost of doing business to a level that the French would find unacceptable. By the mid-1930s, Guangzhouwan was encircled by some twenty customs stations, branch offices, and checkpoints, including a post at Mazhang, less than a mile from Chikan (figure 4).⁷ Some 350 customs agents worked full time to create a cordon of surveillance around the leased territory. The Nanjing government also expanded anti-smuggling naval operations in southern China, stationed four warships to police the waters near Guangzhouwan, and completed detailed maps of the Leizhou coast, including the most commonly used smuggling inlets. While Chinese customs officials and police had limited control over what happened within the borders of the leased territory, greater documentation and surveillance along its boundaries allowed them, for example, to catch discrepancies between ships' manifests and cargo after having docked at Guangzhouwan (Thai 2016, 102). The effects of these measures were felt immediately, with Hong Kong reporting a dramatic drop in illicit opium coming from Guangzhouwan, and together with the effects of the Great Depression severely dampened the territory's economy, with external commerce being halved between 1926 and 1933 (Vannière 2004, 485–486, 488).

Nonetheless, smuggling activity continued as traders devised new means of avoiding Chinese customs (Tan 1990, 100). Aside from opium, daily necessities such as sugar, kerosene, and cotton cloth were also smuggled across the boundaries and in the waters around Guangzhouwan, particularly during the poor economic situation of the 1930s. In the mid-1930s, overburdened customs officials working against the combined forces of smuggling, banditry, piracy, and organized crime were involved in multiple armed confrontations with villagers and criminal outfits operating along the periphery of Guangzhouwan. More routinely, a "spy network" employed by the smugglers used a system of signal lights and firecrackers to warn of the advance of customs officers out on night patrols or raids.⁹ Even when smugglers were apprehended by customs agents, local authorities were often reluctant to deal with them, and the penalties imposed were lenient and inconsistent. Most smugglers who were caught in the act were low-level, irregular, and easily replaceable members in larger networks who were unable to pay the requisite fines for their crime, so that punishing them was a drain on the state's time and resources that did nothing to stem the flow of smuggled goods (Thai 2016, 106–107). Smugglers could also use the jurisdictional complexities created by the leased territory to claim ignorance of the law. For instance, the French had instituted a number of export prohibitions in Indochine; thus, many goods produced in Indochine that were subsequently imported to China via the leased territory were by definition contraband, even if the same goods could be imported legally to China if produced elsewhere.

Figure 4.

Map showing the location of customs stations, branch offices, and checkpoints, c. 1936.⁸ Source: Google Earth, amended by author.

Ultimately, the end of Guangzhouwan and its opium trade came only with the collapse of Western imperialism in East Asia. Starting in July 1937, a full-scale war raged between Japan and China, with the countryside of Guangdong and Guangxi becoming strongholds of Chinese resistance. Meanwhile, the fall of France in 1940 placed Guangzhouwan in an administrative limbo perhaps more complex than that of any other territory in France's empire. Following the establishment of the Vichy government, a new governor-general for Indochine, Admiral Decoux, was appointed with the difficult task of navigating the ongoing Sino-Japanese conflict. Decoux was positively disposed toward the Chongqing government of Chiang Kaishek (Jiang Jieshi), and even conspired to preserve ties with it in the event that Vichy cut them off (Vichy maintained ties with both Chongqing and the Japanese collaborationist government in Nanjing).¹⁰ He therefore was content to allow supplies to continue flowing to Chongqing, prompting the Japanese occupation of Tonkin in September 1940. With nearly all of the ports of southern China already under occupation, Guangzhouwan was suddenly the nexus of the most convenient route for conveying supplies to Chongqing, a situation only exacerbated with the start of the Pacific War and the occupation of Hong Kong in late 1941. Though Guangzhouwan was not officially under Japanese military occupation, a small Japanese military contingent—followed by diplomatic, commercial, and intelligence agents—arrived in the summer of 1940 to "guarantee security," a euphemism for seeking out GMD and CCP supporters among the tide of refugees who had arrived since 1937 (Xie 2016, 345).

The war was a boon to the territory, as the refugee population patronized the local service economy, which was built on temporary pleasures and stupefaction. Between the fall of Canton in October 1938 and January 1942, the population of Chikan increased from 5,000–6,000 inhabitants to 80,000, and the entire leased territory saw a tenfold increase in its population (Xie 2016, 351).¹¹ Guangzhouwan also became a conduit for weapons and currency smuggling, with an estimated 400,000 yuan worth of goods being smuggled into China every day (Xie 2016, 346). The Japanese contingent stationed in the leased territory quickly ran into difficulties trying to prevent the manufacture and transport of arms, which were most often sent to guerillas on Hainan (Vannière 2004, 520). The officials of the Maritime Customs Service, who continued to operate from their posts despite the ubiquitous warfare and guerilla activity in the region, were also frustrated by the near impossibility of managing the flow of goods in and out of the French-leased territory.

In the third week of February 1943, Guangzhouwan was occupied by the Japanese military under the terms of a "mutual defense agreement."¹² It was supposed to be jointly run with French officials, as was the case in Indochine, but the occupation was also immediately presented as a step in returning Guangzhouwan (and other French concessions in China) to Chinese sovereignty, an attempt to bolster the legitimacy of the Japanese-collaborationist Nanjing government of Wang Jingwei, and the leased territory was nominally placed under the administration of Guangdong Province (under Wang's administration) ("Rijun yijiao" 1943). In fact, it was, as always, the opium dealers who managed daily life in Guangzhouwan and used smuggling to provide daily necessities to the populace and weapons to Nationalist troops and guerillas in the countryside. Tsang Hoc-Tam outwardly worked with the new order, greeting the Japanese occupation force alongside the French administrator-in-chief, Pierre-Jean Domec, and serving as the head of a number of Japanese-sponsored organizations to provide relief for the civilian population. Nevertheless, Tsang also seems to have provided material support to the Nationalist war effort, and he had even visited Chongqing to raise funds for warplanes shortly before the Japanese occupation of Guangzhouwan (Xie 2016, 349). For their part, the Japanese must have been aware of Tsang's activities, but, like the French, realized that he was indispensable as an intermediary with the local population and too powerful to depose.

On March 9 and 10, 1945, the Japanese orchestrated a coup in Indochine. Guangzhouwan followed suit, and what remained of the territory's French population was imprisoned, appropriately, in the vault of the Banque de l'Indochine, the historical storehouse of the territory's opium profits. Following the dropping of the atomic bombs in August, only three days after Japanese surrender, a treaty was signed in Chongqing with representatives of Charles de Gaulle's Provisional Republic to return the leased territory to Chinese sovereignty. A tit-for-tat arrangement had been set up: de Gaulle would surrender the outpost of empire, one that few French citizens even knew the existence of, in exchange for what he hoped would be Chiang's assistance in laying the groundwork for reestablishing French control in Tonkin (Matot 2013, 210–212). Chiang's government transformed the former leased territory into the municipality of Zhanjiang, the only enduring remnant of his postwar government's brief rule on Leizhou. Though nominally in control of the entire Leizhou Peninsula for the first time, the Nationalists found it no easier to control than the French or Japanese had before them. Banditry and piracy remained intractable problems, and easily overlapped with Communist guerrilla movements. Most dramatically, in July 1948, hundreds of bandits raided and ransacked the former leased territory, carting off the entire cash holdings of the branches of the Central Bank and Bank of China before government troops arrived ("Raiders" 1948). Naturally, Tsang Hoc-Tam maintained his prominence in local politics despite his apparent collaboration with the Japanese, being appointed the chief of a "liberation unit" to prepare for the arrival of Chinese troops. Afterward, he led an "anti-banditry village protection" 清匪保乡 committee, served as the chief of the police corps of the new Zhanjiang municipality, and was elected as Zhanjiang's representative to the National Assembly. Ever the survivor, Tsang turned over his interests in Zhanjiang to a trusted associate and disappeared before Communist troops closed in, only to reemerge later in Hong Kong, where he would spend the remainder of his life (Matot 2013, 211–212, 221).

The French venture at Guangzhouwan is generally described as a failed imperial project, a comically misguided attempt to match the British in the game of imperialism. Historian Robert Lee characterized it as "an absurdly useless coaling station" not far enough from Haiphong to warrant its existence (1989, 188). Despite warning signs from as early as 1895, the French discovered too late that the strong currents and shallow waters of Guangzhouwan would never permit it to become a rival to Hong Kong, and that France had spent its diplomatic capital on "an acquisition of negligible strategic or commercial significance" (Lee 1989, 303n56). As with its East Asian colonies as a whole, and even more so its concessions in China, a lack of commitment by the French public and government must also be factored into any explanation of the project's failure. But Guangzhouwan was in some ways successful; it did little to spread French culture or enhance French prestige, but it was one of the most fiscally sustainable territories in France's empire. Furthermore, like the French Concession in Shanghai, it provided a space for Chinese entrepreneurs of various stripes to flourish in jurisdictional gray areas. Guangzhouwan was a doubly liminal space: a territory in China that was not under Chinese jurisdiction, as well as a secondary zone within broader regional and global networks of trade.

THE EARLY PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC

Though the Second World War had ended the dream of a French Hong Kong, it did not end the idea that the region could become a hub for trade, an entry point for inland connections to western Guangdong and Guangxi, and potentially the home of major military facilities. The Japanese, Guomindang, and Communists all imagined that the region could move away from its economic reliance on illicit trades and be developed to rival and even supplant the British crown colony. After World War II, the Nationalists envisaged the new municipality of Zhanjiang becoming a key hub on a rail network that would cut across southern China, as well as the home to facilities that could house a deepwater navy capable of enforcing China's territorial claims, two goals that were eventually realized after 1949. The People's Government also oversaw the construction of modern port facilities on the coast of Xiashan (known thereafter as the Port of Zhanjiang 湛江港) between 1956 and June 1958. The increase in trade resulting from these projects benefitted the local economy but strained the ability of customs officials to monitor commercial activity along the porous coastline ("Development" 1947; "Rival Port" 1956; "Xiandaihua" 1956).¹³

Social reform was also at the top of the agenda for the new regime. Zhanjiang participated in a nationwide campaign against opium that later intensified and overlapped with the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and the Three-and Five-Antis Campaigns (Zhou 2000, 385, 388). On December 25, 1949, immediately after Zhanjiang was taken by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the newly created Zhanjiang Municipal Public Security Bureau issued an order banning gambling, and the following month set up an anti-drug, anti-gambling exhibition in Chikan.¹⁴ By the end of 1950, 221 opium dens had been shut down in Zhanjiang and over 1,300 liang of opium seized. Throughout western Guangdong, nearly a thousand suspected drug traffickers were seized, along with opium in various forms, pipes, needles, gold, silver, and thousands of yuan worth of money in various currencies. On August 30, 1952, the local Public Security Bureau (PSB) and a local unit of the PLA launched a coordinated strike, resulting in the arrest of 137 people and the registration of over 700 opium users (a minority were arrested, while most were sent for re-education or allowed to remain in Zhanjiang under surveillance).¹⁵ Likewise, houses of prostitution were shut down, rallies were held for prostitutes to lament their oppression in the old society, and former prostitutes were sent off to receive vocational training and political education.¹⁶

Controls on the movement of people and goods across the frontier went hand in hand with social reform. The communities of the Leizhou Peninsula continued to engage in smuggling after liberation, much as they had before. Throughout Guangdong, historical trading connections with Hong Kong, Macao, and Southeast Asia continued to function into the 1950s, and the Pearl River Delta maintained its historical role as the main avenue for trade into the Chinese interior (Thai 2017, 8). Therefore, the effort to curtail smuggling was tied to the registration and management of people, particularly travelers, traders, and itinerants. In January 1950, the Zhanjiang PSB set out its first guidelines for controlling the household registration system in advance of establishing the hukou system in June of that year.¹⁷ In the summer of 1951, the Ministry of Public Security put in place regulations on travel to and from Hong Kong, and both terrestrial and maritime travelers were required to register with the authorities. In December 1952, Zhanjiang coordinated its participation in a nationwide "Urban Democratic Establishment Movement" with a local campaign to "eliminate unregistered households" (消灭"黑户口").¹⁸ Controlling the waters around Zhanjiang was particularly difficult; well into the 1960s, individual fishermen or small groups were discovered selling fish outside of official channels, exchanging them for consumer goods (watches, radios, etc.) or raw materials and selling them on the black market back in Zhanjiang.¹⁹

Nevertheless, in the course of "national reconstruction," local officials were often willing to tolerate and even facilitate the smuggling of goods not related to currency, weapons, or narcotics in the first years of the People's Republic. Top party officials made a similar calculation during the Korean War, when the People's Republic was under a U.S. embargo. Similar to the Chongqing government's reliance on smuggling during the most desperate years of the war against Japan, top party officials Zhou Enlai and Bo Yibo encouraged smuggling to ensure the supply of essential war materials (Thai 2017, 6). Indeed, the relationship between the command economy and the black market (or "second economy") was symbiotic in the early years of the People's Republic (Thai 2017, 4). But the competing imperative of autarky, as well as the political dangers of permitting—if not encouraging—smuggling, necessitated occasional crackdowns. During the Three-Antis Campaign against corruption, waste, and bureaucratism, a group of high-level officials in the Zhanjiang Ports Bureau 港務局, Construction Bureau 建設局, and PSB were charged in a major corruption scandal ("Zhanjiang zhonggong" 1952). Between 1956 and 1960, a coordinated anti-smuggling campaign uncovered 429 cases of smuggling in Zhanjiang (forty-three of which were classified as "big cases"), hauling in 120,000 yuan worth of goods and 145,000 yuan in evaded taxes and fines.²⁰ At the same time, relaxations on movement to and from Hong Kong and Macao beginning in February 1956 increased cross-border travel to the point that over 4,000 visitors were entering the mainland each day. This increase boosted smuggling (40,000 cases were uncovered in Guangdong Province in 1956, a twenty-five-fold increase over 1955) and illegal currency exchange markets (set up largely for remittances from Hong Kong) that offered a better rate than the official channels ("Xianggang" 1957). Wristwatches, metals, and groceries were carried in visitors' suitcases (easily hidden, if necessary, from the overburdened customs officials at the Kowloon Customs Station), and the goods soon appeared in street corner markets that proliferated in Canton and throughout Guangdong in 1956 and 1957. Of even greater concern were cases of "political smuggling" engaged in by capitalist families and other vaguely defined political groups (the rhetoric of the People's Government was that the economic and political motivations for smuggling were inseparable, but in practice local officials were usually less doctrinaire) (Thai 2017, 17). In response, starting in April 1956, Guangdong Province required applications to be submitted before travel to or from Hong Kong and Macao ("Guangdong fanzousi" 1958). But this did little to stem the tide of smuggled goods and currency, which decreased only after a strict imposition of border controls in November 1957 and a mass political campaign against smuggling from December 1957 until February 1958 ("Guangyu" 1958).

These restrictions on movement and exchange coincided with the first signs of economic difficulties caused by collectivization, a tragic confluence of factors that would lead to a surge of evasion and outright resistance throughout Guangdong in late 1956 and early 1957. Zhanjiang had long been prone to scarcity in the wintertime, but in the mid-1950s, in line with collectivization and "natural disasters" created by failed economic policies and poor resource management, shortages became a year-round problem. In May 1955, nearly half of the land in Zhanjiang was suffering from drought.²¹ A November 1956 internal report for high-level cadres stated flatly that famine was "extremely severe" in and around Zhanjiang; in Maoming and Wuchuan Counties alone, over 200,000 people were completely without food. The food shortages led to pervasive migration as hundreds of thousands of peasants in the worst-hit areas desperately fled their villages, often to seek industrial work in cities. Moreover, massive irrigation projects initiated by the Great Leap Forward resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands by 1961 (Dikötter 2010, 170). As a result, the Zhanjiang PSB had to modify the hukou register to allow for food provision for new urban migrants and refugees.²² Black markets for agricultural goods sprang up as farmers who were producing enough food sought to sell it off before it was consolidated in the state granaries. The result was that the state granaries' intake was only about a quarter of what had been planned, and desertion from the collectives was rampant (Dikötter 2013, 279; "Guangdongsheng" 1956). Akin to similar events across Guangdong (and indeed throughout China), "counterrevolutionary groups" sprang up and, before being suppressed, raided state granaries, cut electrical wires, stole guns, and killed party cadres.²³

Famine conditions continued into 1958 and were bad enough that some starving peasants in Zhanjiang resorted to selling their children (Dikötter 2010, 67). Unfortunately, despite such clear warning signs, the CCP "doubled down" on collectivization and launched the people's communes. Amid the heady enthusiasm for the Great Leap Forward, party officials, including Provincial Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang, insisted in a January 1959 report on Zhanjiang that grain production was sufficient, and that shortages were due to hoarding. Cadres who reported shortages or expressed concern were denounced as being excessively "conservative" or worse. Just as Guangdong was being battered by a furious typhoon, further lowering output, Zhao backed a political typhoon in the form of an anti-hoarding campaign. Cadres were not safe from criticism in this campaign, and roughly half of the "grassroots"-level cadres in Guangdong faced criticism or punishment.²⁴ Such obstinacy in the face of an economic and social crisis largely explains a wider eruption of discord, characterized by evasion, black markets, unrest, and violence, throughout Guangdong during the Great Famine. Grain production in Zhanjiang fell in 1958 from the already low 1957 levels (from 660,600 to 649,700 tons), and fell again drastically in 1959 (to 501,700 tons).²⁵ Peasants in many parts of Guangdong were left with under 10 jin of rice a month, about two-thirds of their already tight rations, and the communal kitchens distributed only the most minimal diet of rice gruel (Yang 2008, 185). By this time, people sought to cope with the difficult conditions by engaging in the "three black winds" of theft, gambling, and smuggling.²⁶ Even after measures to ameliorate the famine were introduced in 1961, Zhanjiang continued to face severe famine into 1962, when food production finally began to recover ("Guangdong gedi" 1962).

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION ERA

Smuggling in Zhanjiang appears to have finally decreased in the late 1960s, in tandem with the Cultural Revolution, though this is just as likely to be a result of poor record keeping and policing due to political upheaval as it is a result of a slowdown in commercial activity. In fact, smuggling may have continued despite the intense political environment. It is known that in areas of Guangdong near Hong Kong, illegal trade and violations of the planned economy occurred at the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1966–1967, and were even guided by local party leaders (Chan, Madsen, and Unger 2009, 135–136).²⁷ In Zhanjiang, the end of the most radical phase of the Cultural Revolution and the slight relaxation of social and economic controls following the death of Lin Biao in 1971 meant a return of smuggling. Fishermen took advantage of the opportunity to fish in the Gulf of Tonkin to exchange with Vietnamese fishermen daily necessities, medicine, or renminbi for scrap metal or watches. In 1972, a customs investigation of coastal communities uncovered smuggling activity in many of the fishing communes in Zhanjiang, and over the next three years an anti-smuggling campaign uncovered nearly three hundred cases, together worth 351,000 yuan.²⁸ In terms of state-sanctioned trade, the port of Zhanjiang was earmarked for a major upgrade in August 1973 as part of a national effort by Zhou Enlai to modernize port facilities.²⁹ This was accompanied by new oil exploration facilities in the Potou District and a trial program of exporting lightbulbs from factories in Zhanjiang to Hong Kong.³⁰ At the same time, however, Zhanjiang was subjected in the final years of Mao's life to a "Party Basic Line Education Movement" launched in 1973 throughout Guangdong as a reaction to concerns about cracks in the commune system, the reappearance of capitalism, and labor migration.³¹

THE REFORM ERA

The comprehensive economic reforms instituted starting in the late 1970s provided new economic opportunities for the region. In early 1984, Zhanjiang and Beihai were included among the first fourteen "National coastal open cities" 沿海开放城市 along with better-known places like Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou. This provided the people of the municipality with improved economic opportunities, particularly vis-à-vis Hong Kong and Macao, but many of the unsavory aspects of the "old society" that were smothered in the 1950s had reappeared by the early 1980s. Despite renewed campaigns against smuggling and "spiritual pollution," the Reform Era brought a drastic increase in the number of smuggling cases, though this may have also been due to a professionalization of customs officials following the Cultural Revolution. Certainly the value of the goods being smuggled increased; instead of raw materials and daily necessities, nylon stockings, VCRs, televisions, and even automobiles were now being smuggled to avoid the high import duties of the People's Government. Customs investigations in Zhanjiang turned up roughly three thousand cases of smuggling in the first decade of "reform and opening up." Into the late 1980s, the annual number of cases and the value of goods seized continued to increase.³²

Zhanjiang also saw the return of both drug use and trafficking. In 1988, the largest smuggling case in the municipality since 1949 was exposed, with 5,662 grams of heroin and 5,220 grams of opium seized. In the 1990s, more than eleven thousand people were investigated for drug-related crimes and seventeen were arrested for trafficking.³³ Local and provincial authorities launched a sustained campaign against the "six evils" 六害 (prostitution, pornography, the sale of women and children, narcotics, gambling, and profiteering from superstition—later expanded to "seven evils," to include secret societies). As in the 1950s, the Reform Era anti-drug campaigns have been replete with dramatic but largely ineffective public theatrics and reminders of the role of opium in China's humiliation at the hands of imperialists. More effectively, in order to cope with the increase in smuggling and other illegal activities, the Zhanjiang authorities greatly expanded the municipality's border defense units. Focusing on anti-smuggling and anti-"illegal migration" efforts, in 1990 the Border Defense Bureau could claim, somewhat implausibly, to have halted unsanctioned migration while cracking fifty-seven cases of smuggling in goods worth more than 2.2 million yuan.³⁴

Whatever successes were achieved, they were undercut by the increasing wealth of the mainland economy, which drove demand for smuggled goods and monetary incentives to engage in smuggling. The amount of money involved opened the door for widespread bribery and corruption. These problems were exposed on September 8, 1998, by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the CCP and provincial authorities, when rampant corruption in the Zhanjiang local party and municipal government was uncovered. According to a People's Daily article on the case, "Some leading cadres and staff of Zhanjiang Customs, Border Defense, and other departments of party and government organs, disregarded party discipline by wantonly taking bribes, protecting smugglers, aiding smugglers, and even engaging in smuggling themselves" ("Zhanjiang teda" 1999). The core group of smugglers included the chief of customs in Zhanjiang, the director of the Zhanjiang Customs Investigation Department, and the chief of the Zhanjiang PSB Border Defense Bureau, all of whom received millions of yuan in cash and property from smugglers as bribes. Even the vice-mayor and secretary of the Zhanjiang Party Committee were implicated. The most active of these officials smuggled more than 3,800 cars, 190,000 tons of steel, 40,000 tons of diesel, and 10,000 tons of raw sugar. All told, roughly 6.2 billion yuan in smuggled goods and evaded taxes were involved in the case, which has been remembered nationally as one of the most egregious of the entire reform era ("Zhanjiang teda" 1999).

CONCLUSION—ZHANJIANG AND THE TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY MARITIME SILK ROAD

Following the 1998 scandal, the focused efforts of municipal, prefectural, and provincial authorities to fight smuggling have been partially successful, though the reporting of such data must always be taken with a grain of salt. The decrease could just as likely be due to better means of hiding smuggling, bribery of local officials, reduced barriers to trade, state-sanctioned smuggling in small quantities, or a combination of these factors. But an increase in cases during China's boom years, such as a 2006 cigarette smuggling case totaling 50 million yuan in evaded taxes and more recent cases involving smuggled airplanes and even an oil barge, suggest that smuggling can only be stifled temporarily with the dedication of a great deal of resources.³⁵

Zhanjiang is set to play a key role in China's maritime future. The port of Zhanjiang is not only a commercial hub but also home to the PLA Navy's South Sea Fleet. The region stands to benefit greatly from increased foreign

Figure 5.

Cases of smuggling annually in Zhanjiang Municipality, 1998–2014. Source: Zhanjiang nianjian 1999–2012; data for 2012–2014 from Zhanjiang Customs.³⁶

trade and Xi Jinping's "21st-Century Maritime Silk Road" initiative, as it did from the premodern Maritime Silk Road ("Xi Jinping" 2014). But it is worth considering this bright future alongside another of Xi Jinping's projects, the intense anti-corruption drive within the CCP. This campaign, which likely accounts for the decrease in smuggling cases since 2012 (see figure 5), has already implicated justices of the municipal-level court and the deputy director of the Municipal People's Congress in Zhanjiang, as well as the deputy chief justice of the district court, the head of the Social Security Bureau, and the party secretary in Potou District in cases involving millions of yuan in bribes.³⁷ Yet it is unlikely that Xi's anti-corruption drive will succeed in fully uprooting corruption, bribery, and smuggling. The long history of initiatives to control trade and migration on the Leizhou Peninsula suggests that, wherever demand for goods is met with tariffs and regulations, smugglers will find a way to evade the state.