Asia's Narco-Politics

Hole of Justice
By Peter G. Jimenea

The Narco-Politics in Asia

As recorded in the book Warlord of Crimes, the rise and fall of the Western Empires contributed a lot in shaping up the drug addiction in Asia. In 1500, prior to the arrival of first Portuguese warships, opium abuse and narcotics trafficking are virtually unknown to Asian people.

During the “Age of Discovery,” Europe‘s colonial empires sanctioned opium to generate government revenues. But after the colonies got independence, the European administrations were replaced by Western Intelligence Agencies, which directed the narcotics trade.

The Western powers laid the foundation of today’s drug problem without the Asian leaders of long ago getting wind of it. Their first victim among Asian countries is China, with a population ten times that of France and Britain and an area twice the size of the United States.

Less than a decade after Christopher Columbus discovered America, Portuguese explorers have already reached China but their narcotics-trade and then later by the Dutch did not prosper due to Chinese self-sufficiency which limited their success for more than one hundred years.

During the 1800s the European powers financed their colonial ambitions through opium trade. It took the persistency of the British to transform China into a nation of addicts and Britain became the largest organized drug trafficker in history.

The British with most modern weapon by that time, established a government monopoly over the large poppy tracts in Northern India.  After gaining control of the opium supply, they targeted China’s millions of inhabitants as the most profitable market.

As the number of Indian opium shipments increased so did the number of Chinese addicts. The emperor banned opium but the British captains ignored the imperial bans and continued sailing to Chinese ports with bulging opium shipments from200 tons in the 1800 to over 2,000 tons in 1840.

The Chinese resented being exploited because of British colonial ambitions. Although politically weak and riddled with corruption, the Ch’ing dynasty tried to stop the flow of opium into China. The Chinese seized the warship’s cargo and arrested British opium traders.

Worse, opium traders were exiled in the freezing Chinese territory in Central Asia and one of them was even crucified on the Canton docks to warn other traders of the Chinese opposition to opium use. The war started when Cantonese officials dump the thousand kilos of opium into the sea.

Full scale wars erupted between Britain and China until 1856. Chinese junks and rusted cannons were no match for the powerful British fleets. Branded as the “Opium Wars,” it results to total British victory. The opium trade continues and China paid a high cost of war reparations by ceding Hong Kong to Britain.

After the Opium Wars, the British continues opium trafficking with more atrocities. By 1880 some 6,500 tons of opium annually were instrumental in creating 100 million smokers and 15 million addicts. Opium addiction then spread from China to Southeast Asia and then on to Europe and the US.

In 1906, a worldwide anti-opium crusade began. In London, the House of Commons pronounced British involvement immoral. In 1946, the House of Commons’ vote marked the end for Britain’s control of the trade. But it has an absurd legacy as China remained to be a nation of addicts.

The 1911 revolution that had overthrown the imperial government only worsened the problem. Despite the formation of a republic, China ceased to be a unified country. Disintegrated regions were controlled by powerful military warlords. Chinese poppy cultivation and opium exports increased.

While Britain made China a nation of addicts, the French has done the same in Indochina. In Vietnam the royal court opposed opium smoking on moral and economic grounds and outlawed the drug. The French captured South Vietnam in 1858 invasion. Vietnam paid a high cost of war reparations. Next issue, the “Golden Triangle.”