Ch 17 - A Clash of Cultures

The Governor General

While Beijing debated the issue of legalizing opium in China, Canton's governor-general, Deng Tingchen, initiated a forceful opium interdiction program. Opium smuggling became even more widespread as the drug trade moved along China's south coast.

Second Superintendent John Francis Davis succeeded John Napier as Chief Superintendent of Trade at a time when two separate schools of thought were developing over British trade policy. One merchant group led by Whiteman, Dent, and Brightman, felt it best to simply keep out of trouble and quietly pursue the profits of free trade. Lord Napier's misadventures had convinced a number of Canton's leading merchants, including Jardine and Matheson, that China had to be pushed toward modern trade relations with the West. Any thought of forcing China into a trade treaty was complicated by the sizable presence of opium smuggling.

Britain's position in China represented a paradox. English goods had always had a reputation for excellent materials and quality workmanship and British merchants were known for their cautious and honest approach to business, yet England's world role was unsuited for an operation in which literally half its capital was sunk in opium smuggling. The opium smuggling firms were making huge fortunes. Well-organized companies like Jardine and Matheson could carry legal trade or opium with equal efficiency, but they were not content to let things remain as they were. One of the underlying reasons behind the merchant's resolve to push the British Crown to use military force to impose a commercial treaty on China was the simple fact they wanted the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves. A treaty that opened all of China to commerce would be much safer and far more profitable.

Davis, a long-time employee of the British East India Company and the last president of its Select Committee in Canton, was no bystander in this debate. He was unsympathetic with the plight of the free trade supporters in China, men who wasted little time in attacking him. Almost immediately after Napier's death, some eighty-five merchants led by Jardine and Matheson petitioned His Majesty King William IV to remove Davis, send a plenipotentiary of rank, capital warships and troops to China to demand reparations for the insult to Lord Napier and force the opening of more Chinese ports. Under pressure from the Canton merchants, Davis resigned his post within a hundred days and was succeeded in January 1835, by Sir George B. Robinson, a man not known for either his shrewdness or intelligence. Sir Robinson followed a policy that is best described as "don't rock the boat." Robinson's approach pleased the Canton authorities and trade was regular, prosperous and, most importantly, undisturbed. Robinson's relative inactivity however, did not please the British traders, who consequently brought pressure to bear for his removal as well. The logical choice for a replacement was Captain Charles Elliot, who had been Master Attendant under Lord Napier and Second Superintendent under John Davis.

Charles Elliot believed that the way to gain Chinese confidence was to take a middle-of-the-road approach that combined strength and confidence with caution and conciliation, a position calculated to convince the Chinese that Britain meant no trouble for China and had no desire to acquire territory. His views on the Canton trade situation so impressed the British Foreign Office that in June 1836 they appointed him Chief Superintendent of Trade in Canton. His first task after assuming the new role in Macao was to apply to the Viceroy for permission to travel to Canton. Without concurrence from the British Government, Elliot framed his request as a petition from an inferior to a superior, thereby abandoning any pretense of equality, a chief objection to the Napier mission. The Chinese viewed Elliot's action as a reversion to the previous state of affairs;  now they could regard him as little more than the taipan, or head of the British merchants, a person who had to deal with the hong. By scrupulously following Chinese law regarding travel between Macao and Canton and communications with the Viceroy, Charles Elliot successfully gained a foothold in Canton.

A hodgepodge of private traders and smugglers replaced the once strong British trade monopoly in the years immediately following the East India Company's departure from Canton. Not once during this time did the British government make an adequate statement of policy regarding China;  there was no clear cut principle on which Charles Elliot could act. Under orders from Lord Palmerston, who was apparently groping his way through the problem, Elliot was instructed to behave as his predecessors and keep his eyes shut regarding the opium problem. Caught on the horns of a dilemma, Elliot tried to ignore the principle elements of a situation that was becoming increasingly more explosive. In the end, he followed a vacillating policy, a move that pleased no one as the Canton trade system fell apart in an atmosphere of increased trade volume and lawlessness.

The Chinese imperial government in Beijing did little to forcefully attack the twin problems of opium addiction and drug smuggling until the 1830s. The issue that finally prompted Beijing to act was not the drug problem, but an economic problem, one that had been growing right along with the increased activity in the opium trade. Before 1820, China's foreign trade with Japan, Manila, India, England, and the United States had left it a net recipient of silver, which at times accounted for as much as 90 percent of the East India Company's shipments to China, the remaining 10 percent being trade goods. This balance of trade settled into an equilibrium during the 1820s, but from then on the trade imbalance ran against China, gathering momentum as time passed.

China's economy operated on a bimetallic currency system that used both silver and copper coins. Sometime after 1821, long before the balance of payments actually shifted, Chinese observers noted that a vast amount of silver was going out in payment for opium, but very little silver was coming in as payment for tea exports. The increased outflow of silver effectively debased the value of copper while increasing the desirability of holding silver. The internal exchange rate became quite distorted and led to financial hardships at all levels of Chinese society. After a Chinese censor connected the outflow of silver directly with the inflow of opium in 1825, the Chinese quickly jumped to a simplified conclusion. It shortly became a generally accepted "fact" in China that the fiscal crisis caused by the distorted copper-silver exchange rate was a direct result of the silver drain caused by the opium trade.

The dramatic failure of China's prohibition policy agaisnt opium and the disastrous consequences arising from efforts to enforce it attracted the attention of academics at Yuehua Academy in Canton, who turned their attention to the problem. Because the idea of totally exterminating the opium trade seemed too formidable a task, some realists counseled a compromise policy that would legalize opium and impose a tariff on its importation. A number of academy teachers began discussing the possibility of legalizing opium imports, subject to a duty. Xu Naiji, a vice-president of the Department of the Imperial Court in Beijing, had seen the effects of China's prohibition policy for himself and was strongly influenced by arguments in favor of legalizing the drug. In May 1836, he addressed a memorial to Emperor Xuanzong that laid out a case for legalizing opium.

Xu Naiji's memorial never disputed the drug's addictiveness or that "so vile a practice," and the evils it generated, should be stopped if possible, but it did argue that interdiction methods were the root of the problem. The more severe they became, the greater the incentive to criminals to employ violence, or corruption, or both. Xu Naiji clearly explained why the severity of the penal code, far from helping in the effort to eradicate opium, actually made it easier for drug importers. Since the importer was not himself at risk, the penalties really didn't matter all that much to him. At worst, all he had to worry about was coming up with the money to pay out more in bribes. Even that had its advantages however, since the higher the bribe offered, the easier it became to find willing, cooperative officials. Furthermore, because foreign opium clippers could reach any suitable entry point along China's coast, it would be impossible to completely cut off the drug trade. Even "though the commerce of Canton should be cut off, yet it will not be possible to prevent the clandestine introduction of merchandise."

Xu Naiji's based his argument to the emperor largely on the fact that prohibition had not only failed to halt the evils associated with drug trafficking, but had actually created far more evil. The harsher and more severe the interdiction efforts, it seemed, "the more widely do the evils arising therefrom spread." When the Chinese first discovered that prohibition was not working, they introduced floggings and caning as punishments, which quickly escalated to exile, imprisonment and even death. Still, "the smokers of the drug have increased in number, and the practice has spread almost through the whole empire." Commoners apparently had little fear of the law and their desire for profit incited many of them to "all manner of crafty devices" which, in the end, rendered the laws against opium wholly ineffective.

Xu Naiji also commented on the disastrous silver problem, noting that,

"... foreign merchants have clandestinely sold opium for money, which has rendered it unnecessary for them to import foreign silver. Thus foreign money [i.e. silver] has been going out of the country, while none comes into it. ... thus the price of silver rises ... In the salt agency, the price of salt is paid in cash [i.e. copper coins], while the duties are paid in silver, now the salt merchants have all become involved, and the existing state of the salt trade in every province is abject in the extreme.

He concluded that since closing all Chinese ports to foreigners was impractical and since the laws against opium were largely ineffective, the only answer was to revert to the former system;  permit foreign merchants to bring opium into China, have them pay a duty on it as a medicine, require that it be delivered to local merchants only in exchange for merchandise, and forbid anyone from paying for it with money. He believed that once the foreign merchants learned that import duties would cost them far less than what they currently spent in bribes, they would all be in favor of the new system and gladly comply. Expressing his concern for the dignity of the Qing Imperial Government, Xu felt that little thought should be given to the purchase and use of opium by the common people, so long as government officials, the scholars and the military were prohibited from using it.

Most senior officials at Canton supported Xu Naiji's memorial. Governor-General Deng Tingchen, an early convert to the concept of legalizing the opium trade, had already submitted recommendations that closely followed those spelled out by Xu. Xu's memorial so impressed the emperor that in June 1836, he referred it to Governor Deng for comment. It need hardly be said that the representatives of the British Crown at Canton enthusiastically supported the idea and eagerly awaited a favorable decision by the emperor. Other senior officials in Beijing expressed horror at the proposal.

On September 19, 1836, Emperor Xuanzong ordered Canton's governor-general to eradicate opium and devise a long range plan of control. Deng Tingchen was a hard-working and incorruptible official who took to his task with a dogged determination. He gave nine foreign traders - Jardine, Innes, Dent, and others - four months to leave Canton or face arrest. By the end of 1837, he had succeeded in destroying virtually the entire fleet of "scrambling dragons," the small drug shuttle boats that supplied the large receiving ships and all the native smuggling networks around Canton. The stagnation of the Canton drug trade had a disastrous financial impact on foreign traders. Many foreign traders, eagerly anticipating the legalization of opium, significantly increased their imports. That year, the American opium clipper Rose arrived with 300 chests of Turkish opium valued at $300,000. By February 1838, the sudden overstock dropped the price of Patna opium to $450 Mexican silver dollars per chest. Benares and Malwa opium dropped to $400 per chest.

Within a month after Governor Deng began his drug interdiction effort in Canton, Chancelor Zhu Cun of the Grand Secretariat submitted a memorial to Emperor Xuanzong that acknowledged the failures of prohibition to halt the opium trade. He argued that it was not the failure of the laws or the severity of punishments that was the cause of the trouble, but a failure to enforce those laws. Zhu stated that if the authorities, by example to their subordinates, made a determined effort to search for the drug, seize it when found, arrest the drug dealers and inflict severe punishment on the guilty, then people, "however perverse and obstinate they may be," would once again fear and obey the law. "But none, surely, would contend that the law, because in such instances rendered ineffectual, should therefore be abrogated!"

"The laws that forbid the people to do wrong may be likened to the dykes which prevent the overflowing of water. If anyone, then, urging that the dykes are very old, and therefore useless, should have them thrown down, what words could express the consequences of the impetuous rush and all-destroying overflow!"

Zhu Cun dismissed arguments that compared opium with tobacco by noting that tobacco does not destroy the human constitution. Tobacco could be planted and cultivated on barren ground, while the opium poppy needed rich and fertile soil. If all the rich and fertile ground was used for planting poppies, Zhu argued, and if people madly engaged in its cultivation with the expectation of large profits, then "where will flax and the mulberry tree [for silkworm cultivation] be cultivated, or wheat and rye be planted?"  Furthermore, the profits from tobacco were small in comparison to opium.

Zhu Cun felt the consequences of legalizing opium would be disastrous and if the Chinese people were not aroused to a sense of danger, China would soon find itself on the "last step towards ruin." He also took aim at Xu Naiji's memorial by asking, "if the people be at liberty to smoke opium, how shall the officers, the scholars, and the military be prevented?" He noted that since the majority of military recruits are generally men of little character or respectability, if they were drug users and addicts in civilian life, how could the law ever restrain them once they became soldiers?  How could the authorities ever hope to discover or prevent opium use within the government or the military if they chose to smoke the drug in the privacy of their own homes. Allowing the people to deal in opium and smoke it while prohibiting its use among the officers, the scholars and the military would be impossibly difficult.

Zhu Cun felt the damage might have already been done, simply by the knowledge that the imperial court was even considering the legalization of opium.

"... the instant effect has been, that crafty thieves and villains have on all sides begun to raise their heads and open their eyes, gazing about and pointing the finger, under the notion that when once these prohibitions are repealed, thenceforth, and forever, they may regard themselves as free from every restraint."

He urged the emperor to require the governors of every province to direct local authorities to redouble their efforts to enforce existing laws and to impress on everyone, in the simplest and strictest terms, that existing addicts give up their habit and that if they continue to use opium, they would be subject to the full and merciless penalty of the law. Anyone found guilty of holding or selling 10 chests (approximately 1,300 pounds) of opium or more would face the most severe punishment.

Another memorialist added the one recommendation that may have proved decisive. Opium sellers, he pointed out, were already living in Canton, including the leading opium merchant William Jardine. The question was then asked, why not arrest them for violating imperial law? Why not send all their ships back and refuse to resume trade of any kind until all opium smuggling activities had ceased? This was the policy Emperor Xuanzong elected to follow. Xu Naiji was removed from his post for having raised the hopes of addicts that the drug might be legalized. Within six months the emperor rejected the legalization of opium and the issue was laid to rest.

Over the next two years Canton authorities engaged in a harsh suppression of the opium trade. Addicts were executed daily and by December 1838, in the aftermath of Governor-General Deng's vigorous persecution of the drug traffic, some two thousand Chinese opium dealers, brokers, and smokers had been jailed. A spokesman from Jardine, Matheson and Company reported that the governor-general had "been seizing, trying, and strangling the poor devils without mercy ...We have never seen so serious a persecution, or one so general."

The British government took a hands-off position, refusing to either assist or interfere with the pursuit of drug smugglers. Instead, it would leave suppression entirely up to the Qing Government. The harsh and brutal crackdown achieved the desired results. Governor-General Deng destroyed opium dens, executed dealers and brought the drug trade to a virtual standstill during the winter of 1838. Canton was virtually cleared of all opium traffic by the beginning of 1839 and foreign smuggling ships had disappeared. Along the China coast however, opium smuggling increased and imports reached an all time high.