Opium and the Politics of Gangsterism
in Nationalist China, 1927-1945 By Jonathan Marshall
Introduction No political system can be adequately analyzed without
reference to the sources of power which supply the motor
force for political action. Traditional accounts of Republican
Chinese politics, in terms of shifting, competing personalist
cliques within the state bureaucracy, too often emphasize the
form and not the tools of conflict. Without a further
understanding of the sources of power which these cliques
sought to tap, the significance of much of the history of
Republican Chinese politics will be lost. Opium was a key well-spring of power in the Republican
period. When properly tapped, the opium traffic — so large that
it supplied perhaps 5% of the Chinese population—provided a
vast pool of liquid profits with which to wage war or buy
organization and influence. By manipulating the traffic,
leaders could both penalize enemies (who also depended on its
profits) and extend their own political and economic
influence. Greater centralization of the traffic inevitably
meant greater centralization of national political power. Opium impinged upon the whole fabric of China's
political economy, including peasant agriculture, provincial
warlordism, "bandit suppression," and intra-Guomindang
(KMT) political and military struggles. The national and local
bureaucracy was so dependent on profits from the traffic that
opium could not be eridicated without a near social
revolution. Chiang Kai-shek, who relished neither the traffic nor the
disunity it brought China, came to power under such
conditions. Refusing to break with the past or to challenge the
pattern of dependence on foreign capital and the traditional
class structure, Chiang pragmatically forged alliances with
provincial bosses and urban gangsters who demanded
protection for their stake in the opium traffic. Chiang himself
soon learned the political potential of the traffic and used it to
finance his wars against the Japanese, Communists, and rival
warlords. By moving to centralize the traffic under his
personal control, under the guise of "suppression," he sought
to extend his regime's control. As a result, corruption and
gangsterism, part of Chiang's unhappy inheritance, thrived as
never before. This study, then, is an investigation of the way in which
rightist politicians and criminals collaborated in exploiting the
traffic as a lever to entrench their own position at the expense
of social reform. Unraveling the politics of opium in Republican China is thus not only important to understanding
modern Chinese history, but also suggests ways of interpreting
the management of political economy in other pre-revolution-
ary societies.
Opium:. From Anarchy to Monopoly Few friends of China ever realized the important role the evil
of narcotic drugs played in ruining this great nation. The
constructive efforts made by her good elements in the past
decades to [build up] this country were nullified by the
destructive influence exerted by opium and its allied drugs
serving as a check to bold China back from developing into a
modern state. In fact, opium has been the source of official
corruption, civil strife, famine, banditry, poverty, military
tyranny, and other kindred social and economic vices which
handicap Cbina's progress. The lack of morality, the
weakening of the race and the rapid increase of various social
evils can in the last analysis be traced back to their source in
opium.1 —Garfield Huang, Secretary General
National Anti-Opium Association of China
21 October 1935 Opium poppies grew even in ancient China, but the
country faced a serious narcotics problem only in the late 18th
century when British merchants began flooding China with
Indian opium. Following the Opium War, Westerners took
advantage of their supremacy to expand the enormously
profitable market for opium in China. By 1880, China
consumed 13 million pounds of foreign opium every year.
Over time, however, local Chinese production, which reached
45 million pounds in 1900, vastly outdistanced foreign
imports. Soon the Chinese product began entering world
markets. As China reversed the tide, Britain, the United States,
and other Western powers proposed the suppression of the
opium traffic in China. In 1906 the Chinese Government
launched a major campaign to cut consumption of opium,
which more than a third of the population smoked
occasionally. Britain agreed in 1908 to phase out the -19- | 
