Li Hung Chang to Frederick Seymour Turner, May 24, 1881

Li Hung Chang to Mr. F. S. Turner, secretary of the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.

Sir: It gave me great pleasure to receive your letter dated February 25, with its several inclosures, sent in behalf of the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.

Your society has been long known to me and many of my countrymen, and I am sure that all—save victims to the opium habit and those who have not a spark of right feeling—would unite with me in expressing a sense of gratitude for the philanthropic motives and efforts of the society in behalf of China. To know that so many of your countrymen have united to continually protest against the evils of the opium traffic, and thus second the efforts China has long been making to free herself from this curse, is a source of great satisfaction to my Government, to whom I have communicated a copy of your letter. The sense of injury which China has so long borne with reference to opium, finds some relief in the sympathy which a society like yours existing in England bespeaks.

Opium is a subject in the discussion of which England and China can never meet on common ground. China views the whole question from a moral standpoint; England from a fiscal. England would sustain a source of revenue in India, while China contends for the lives and prosperity of her people. The ruling motive with China is to repress opium by heavy taxation everywhere, whereas with England the manifest object is to make opium cheaper, and thus increase and stimulate the demand in China.

With motives and principles so radically opposite, it is not surprising that the discussion commenced at Chefoo in 1876 has up to the present time been fruitless of good results. The whole record of this discussion shows that inducement and persuasion have been used in behalf of England to prevent any additional taxation of opium in China, and objections made to China exercising her undoubted right to regulate her own taxes, at least with regard to opium.

I may take the opportunity to assert here, once for all, that the single aim of my Government in taxing opium will be in the future, as it has always been in the past, to repress the traffic—never the desire to gain revenue from such a source. Having failed to kill a serpent, who would be so rash as to nurse it in his bosom? If it be thought that China countenances the import for the revenue it brings, it should be known that my Government will gladly cut off all such revenue in order to stop the import of opium. My sovereign has never desired his Empire to thrive upon the lives or infirmities of his subjects.

In discussing opium taxation a strange concern, approaching to alarm, has been shown in behalf of China lest she should sacrifice her revenue; and yet objection and protest are made against rates which could be fixed for collection at the ports and in the interior. The Indian Government is in the background at every official discussion of the opium traffic, and every proposed arrangement must be forced into a shape acceptable to that Government and harmless to its resources. This is not as it should be. Each Government should be left free to deal with opium according to its own lights. If China, out of compassion for her people, wishes to impose heavy taxes to discountenance and repress the use of opium, the Indian Government should be equally free, if it see fit to preserve its revenue by increasing the price of its opium as the demand for it diminishes in China.

The poppy is certainly surreptitiously grown in some parts of China, notwithstanding the laws and frequent imperial edicts prohibiting its cultivation. Yet this unlawful cultivation no more shows that the Government approves of it than other crimes committed in the Empire by lawless subjects indicate approval by the Government of such crimes. In like manner the present import duty on opium was established not from choice, but because China submitted to the adverse decision of arms. The war must be considered as China’s standing protest against legalizing such a revenue.

My Government is impressed with the necessity of making strenuous efforts to control this flood of opium before it overwhelms the whole country. The new treaty with the United States containing the prohibitory clause against opium, encourages the belief that the broad principles of justice and feelings of humanity will prevail in future relations between China and western nations. My Government will take effective measures to enforce the laws against the cultivation of the poppy in China, and otherwise check the use of opium; and I earnestly hope that your society and all right-minded men of your country will support the efforts China is now making to escape from the thralldom of opium.

I am, &c.,