Playing with Fire: The Nationalist Government and Popular Anti-Opium Agitation in 1927-1928

Playing with Fire: The Nationalist Government and Popular Anti-Opium Agitation in 1927-1928 by Alan Baumler The Guomindang government at Nanjing established its power on the basis of its promise to create a New China. The early part of the Nanjing decade was profoundly disappointing both for the regime and its supporters. Nanjing was unable to establish the level of control it felt necessary to carry out its nationalist tasks, and its supporters were disappointed with the reality of the new China for which they had sacrificed. Although the intellectuals and urbanites who saw their opinions as the expression of national public opinion were not often able to influence the government's policies, Nanjing was not able entirely to ignore their claims that the government was deviating from the principles of Sun Vat-sen. The issue which had the most potential for conflict between the two, and the most potential to cause a disastrous loss of legitimacy for the regime, was opium. For some inthe government, most notably T.V. Soong (Song Ziwen), opium was a useful ifundesirable source of revenue. If it could provide revenue needed in the short run, and revenue was desperately needed in 1927, then it should be used, although like the likin tax it should not be a permanent part of the new system. This was a clear violation of the principles of the revolution, and led to criticism that Nanjing was only able partially to defuse. In 1927 Nanjing began to develop methods of controlling the opium trade and opium use that would hopefully make it possible to profit from the sale of the drug while limiting the damage drug use caused to the nation and the damage that condoning opium caused to the government's own legitimacy. Chinese nationalists rarely questioned the position that opium use was one of the main causes of the decline of China and the opium trade one of the main tools of foreign economic domination of China. In the late Qing opium suppression had been a centerpiece of the reform effort that was to create a new dynasty, and it was part of the provisional government's 1 January 1912 declaration of its plans to create a new China.1 Long before the Northern Expedition, opium REPUBLICAN CHINA 21.1 (Nov. 1995): 43-91. 44 REPUBLICAN CHINA suppression had become one of the tasks that any would-be savior of China would have to accomplish, and Sun Vat-sen had declared that the opium trade was incompatible with a government based on the will of the people. His Canton government, therefore, was also opposed to opium, and to government involvement in the opium trade, even as a temporary expedient.2 Government and popular attitudes towards opium were more complex than Sun's rhetoric would allow. As in most countries perceiving a problem with drugs, there were several different interpretations of the problem~3 Were opium addicts degenerate criminals, unworthy to be considered human, as a criminal interpretation would have it? Or victims of dark forces beyond their control, as a disease theory would have it? Was any cure possible? Could China modernize , or even survive, with opium use still prevalent? Was opium even a problem? How these questions were answered would of course affect plans for suppression and cure, but none of these models ever gained dominance. As a result, Nanjing' s opium policy was often as conceptually cloudy as it was ineffective. The most vocal interpreters of the opium problem were the pre-1924 International Anti-Opium Association and the post-1924 Chinese Anti-Opium Association. (see below) Both were heavily Christian, and both were heirs to the Western temperance and reform movements. Like their Western counterparts, they saw the opium problem as a moral one. It was moral weakness that led people to opium, and the drug further degraded their moral character. As befitted their Christian background, the anti-opium crusaders felt that salvation was always possible. Salvation would come from selfrealization , so education and propaganda were the keys to their approach. At the same time, the anti-opiumists also favored a disease view of drugs. Opium was a bacillus, seeking out and infecting innocent...