Many people may think that the Qing Zf hated opium very much, but I would like to say that the Qing Zf's hatred of opium was very short-lived, and they quickly fell in love with opium. Because after the sale of tobacco in Humen, almost less than 20 years later, the Qing court changed its policy, and in order to increase fiscal revenue, in 1858, it began to tax imported opium. Even if I import opium, I have acquiesced that it is legal, and my court will tax it. In the second year, the imperial court began to liberalize the so-called local medicine in the mainland, which is the local opium, and the ** of the local opium was released, that is, you can buy and sell it legally, and then ** will be taxed on you. Then from 1858 and 1859. These two policies are equivalent to making both indigenous and imported opium legal. Since then, this opium cultivation and opium ** in the late Qing Dynasty began to be rampant.
In 1890, 1 3 of the cultivated area of Yunnan Province had been planted with opium, and then half of the cultivated area of Guizhou was planted with opium. By the 1880s, the market share of this domestically produced opium had far surpassed that of imported opium. So, the British consul in Shanghai, he wrote a report to his own country, saying that Shandong Niuzhuang used to import 3,000 stones a year, Indian opium, but in 1881 only how much? Only less than 300 stone were imported. Then he said that in Sichuan, Yunnan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Guizhou, the imported opium had been completely driven out of the market, and that the opium in these places had been completely self-sufficient from China's native opium. This is one of the cases of the opium epidemic in the late Qing Dynasty. We all know that opium is a bad thing, right, ct is going to legalize opium, and it certainly can't say that we encourage you to grow opium.
What is the rhetoric of the late Qing GC? It is the indigenous opium that resists the import of opium, and we develop the native opium and then drive the imported opium out. That's how it goes. Its motive is not to ban opium, it is to make money, it is to earn revenue. Therefore, when Guo Songtao advocated a ban on smoking in the 1880s, Liu Kunyi, the governor of Liangguang, said that this opium cannot be banned, why can't it be banned? I Guangdong, Liangguang this place has more than 1 million taels every year, and the income is obtained through the tax on imported opium, this more than 1 million taels of this **, to feed many, many people in the Guangzhou system, many, many departments have to rely on this thing, you ban it, how can I eat? The above is a general origin of the opium finance of the late Qing Dynasty.