Opium & Politics

Ships regularly smuggling opium into China are chiefly British, Japanese and Norwegian--the British being credited in one dispatch with 76 vessels, and the Japanese padding their sea smuggling with much running of opium overland from Manchukuo. In 1936 on April Fool's Day, dealing in opium was established as a Chinese Government monopoly, and about $3,500.000 per month in opium license taxes go to the Chief of the Military Affairs Commission of the Nanking Government. Last week famed Chiang Kaishek, Dictator of China, resigned as Chief of the Military Affairs Commission, also resigned his numerous other Government offices, including that of Premier. Heaping blame of all sorts upon himself, the Dictator carried on until Chinese began to wonder if he really did mean not to be Premier any more. They had supposed he was only going through motions of Chinese politeness, resigning his offices and accepting "blame" because he had been kidnapped by one of his subordinates (TIME, Jan. 4 et ante}. In return politeness the rest of the Nanking Government besought Chiang Kaishek to take back his resignations, but stories were getting about that he had sprained the base of his spine, or anyhow one of his legs, while kidnapped, that he had to take a long rest, that his brother-in-law T. V. Soong* was going to be Premier of China.

After further fiddling around, Mr. Soong announced that he was not going to be Premier, and apparently Premier Chiang slipped back into all his offices, including that which brings in $3,500,000 per month from opium. All China was meanwhile being violently jolted out of thinking about the recent kidnapping and into thinking about the drug evil. In one of the most lurid scare-campaigns in Asiatic history, coffins were hastily knocked together and balanced on top of Chinese city walls, while local authorities shouted that anybody caught selling, buying or smoking opium was going to be executed beginning New Year's Day. In Peiping alone 100,000 executions were promised, and 5,000 bloodthirsty persons went to the public execution ground outside the old city walls to see heads topple. "The world may condemn us for what may be a wholesale execution of drug addicts," began a high Peiping official's terrifying speech, but he ended by saying that the Nanking Government had only been trying to throw a salutary scare into as many people as possible last week. The blood-thirsty 5,000, in visible disgust, drifted away, having seen no execution at Peiping. Elsewhere in China the peculiar orders of the Dictator were similarly obeyed.

This did not have any bearing on the regular "narcotic abolition" program instituted by Dictator Chiang some years ago and pursued with varying vigor. In the main and in principle, Chinese police pick up obvious addicts, throw them into "hospitals" which resemble jails. There they are given shots of drugs in gradually decreasing doses and when these have tapered off to zero the patient is forcibly tattooed with a mark saying he has been "cured." If a Chinese thus tattooed is again picked up for drug indulgence by the police, they have the privilege of executing him without further ado. In many Chinese cities these executions take place from time to time in small or large batches, depending on the success of relatives of the backsliders in persuading (with cash) the police not to shoot them.

Meanwhile, last week in Nanking the recently kidnapped Dictator and his erstwhile kidnapper, Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, held in great privacy under heavy military guard a long conference about what were described as "their private interests." That the Kidnapper and Kidnappee should have private interests was enough to prime everyone's curiosity and it was soon at bursting point. In Government circles it was said that the Young Marshal was going to be tried before the Dictator by some Chinese judges and jurors and that their verdict would be ten years in jail, followed by commutation of this sentence to zero days in jail.

With much ostentation, the Young Marshal was taken to court by a military escort which behaved as though guarding his life rather than attempting to prevent his escape, and in the screwiest trial yet staged outside Soviet Russia he loudly took entire blame for everything and asked heaviest punishment. These court proceedings took about 90 minutes, but the judges and jurymen deliberated for several hours, sending out word to friends from time to time that ten years was going to be the verdict. They then sentenced the Young Marshal to ten years in jail plus loss of civil rights for five years --and he drove with his clattering escort to the handsome villa of Finance Minister Dr. H. H. Kung to await, in luxurious surroundings, commutation of his sentence.

A delay was occasioned by the death of an obscure 63-year-old brother of the Dictator, who "had to attend the funeral." Suspecting that something even screwier than what had been arranged was now afoot, friends of the Young Marshal went about swearing that he was ''not being treated fairly," and in Nanking several quarreling schools of thought about the kidnapping grew.

In orthodox Government circles much credit was taken for the bombing and almost total destruction of a city called Weinan, 45 miles from Sian, scene of the kidnapping. It was contended that the frightful destruction of Chinese lives and property in Weinan had intimidated the kidnappers in Sian. Exactly the opposite was the claim of Australian "Adviser" William H. Donald, who had advised both the Kidnapper and the Kidnappee in Sian and holds a most ambiguous position. He claimed that the Government bombers, but for heavy fog and snow over Sian during an entire week, would have dropped bombs with indiscriminate abandon all over the place and might have killed the Kidnappee instead of forcing the Kidnapper to disgorge him.

A Sian official for Texas Co., one George Fitch, contributed to the dispute by arriving in Nanking to say that, so far as he knew, the persons principally concerned (Dictator Chiang, Mme Chiang, Brother Soong, Adviser Donald and the Young Marshal) got out of Sian only by a ruse in which they tricked General Yang Fu-cheng, whose troops had high-jacked the kidnapping. Oilman Fitch confirmed that the city of Weinan, which had absolutely nothing to do with the case, had been wiped out and said he thought 400 Chinese in Sian, also bystanders, had been "exe-cuted in and around Sian during the purge which followed the coup." A further and persistent report was that the Dictator, while technically the prisoner of kidnappers, had held long and earnest parleys in Sian with the celebrated Chinese Communist, General Cho Wen-lai, "Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Armies."

The original aspects of the kidnapping (TIME, Dec. 21) were thus merely reappearing last week in fresh forms. The central reality behind all was merely that China has approached a point at which her leaders are considering open war with Japan, and they know that no Chinese leader can make even a partial success of such a war without Communist support from two sources:1) Chinese Communists and 2) the Soviet Union.

There was every reason this week to continue to suspect that the events at Sian, clouded by side issues of kidnapping, ransom and highjacking, were basically an exploration and feeling out of each other by the Chinese Communists and Dictator Chiang. Young Marshal Chang, after waiting around in Finance Minister Kung's house for four days, received from the Chinese Government full pardon and restoration of his civil rights, walked out scot free as the kidnapping profession's outstanding Boy Who Made Good.

In Shanghai rumor was to the effect that the Government was going to be reshuffled in a Communist direction, with increasingly radical Chinese statesmen being given more and more influential posts. Although Japanese were extremely nervous, watching Chinese developments catlike, their Embassy spokesman in Shanghai said: "I do not think the situation will immediately take a serious turn. Remember that Chiang Kai-shek only got where he is today by pursuing a strong anti-Communist program, and we do not believe he will become sincerely proCommunist. Nor do we think the Soviets will give him much aid, because his anti-Communist record of so many years is against him in Moscow. We forecast that Dr. Kung will soon become Premier of China to relieve Generalissimo Chiang of some of his responsibilities and leave him in full command of the Army."

Same day 130 Chinese were executed in a village half way between Peiping and Tientsin and officials began quarreling over why they were executed. Some said the 130 had been narcotic addicts, others that they had "offended the local authorities by thieving and in various ways," but anyhow they were shot down by a Chinese firing squad.

*It is the pride of modern-style, foreign-educated Chinese to be "just like Americans" in using initials. Mr. Soong (Harvard, 1915), if he wrote his name the old-fashioned Chinese way, would be Soong Tse-wen, but he chooses to be T. V. Soong, and never in any circumstances Tse-wen Soong. This last would give any Chinese the jitters and is not only incorrect but "impossible"--like speaking of Roosevelt Frank-lin Delano. Mr. Soong's brother-in-law, Dr. H. H. Kung, was originally Kung Hsiang-hsi, therefore took the initials "H. H."

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