following chapter.
75. Chen Guoping, pp 281-313 76 Jiang Hao, pp59-66.
62
77. Chen Guoping, pp293-297, 284; Hong Weiqing, "Zhang Renkui yu Ren She (Zhang Renkui and the Benevolence Society)", in Jiu Shanghai de Banq h u i , ppl08-114; Wang Yalu, "Qingbang 'Da' zibei Zhang Renkui he Zhao Chenglou (Zhang Renkui and Zhao Chenglou, members of the 'Da' generational status group of the Green Gang)", in Shanghai Shi Wenshi Guan (Shanghai Municipal Cultural Centre), ed. , Jiu Shanghai de Yan Du Chang (Opium, Gambling and Prostitution in Old Shanghai), Shanghai: Baijia, 1988, pp238-239; Atsushi Watanabe, pp811-812; Shi Yi, Du Yuesheng Waizhuan (An Unofficial Biography of
Du Yuesheng), Hong Kong: Daye, 1962, p.202; Daily
Intelligence Report (Shanghai Municipal Police), 23 October 1925; "Xing Wu Liu Da Zipai Zhang Gong Yixiang (A portrait of the recently deceased Mister Zhang who belonged to the Da generational status group of the Xing Wu Liu Branch)", in Geng Yuying, np.
78. Xue Gengxin, "Wo jiechu guode Shanghai banghui renwu (My past contacts with leading Shanghai gangsters)", in Jiu Shanghai de B a n q h u i , p.95; Wang Delin, "Gu Zhuxian zai Zhabei faji he kaishe Tianshan Wutai (Gu Zhuxian's rise to power in Zhabei and the establishment of the Moon Theatre)", in Jiu Shanghai de B a n q h u i , pp357-359; Wang Yangqing, p.64; "Chang Ching Mou" (Report by S u p t . Pan
Shao Liang, 30 December 1930), Shanghai Municipal
Police, Special Branch, Personnel File CS 178;
"Translation of handbills thrown from roof of Wing On Building, Nanking Road" (Louza Station, 26 October
1935), Shanghai Municipal Police, Special Branch,
Investigation File D7057; "Inauguration in Chapei of a Citizen's Maintenance Association" (Report by Supt. Tan Shao-liang, 8 April 1932), Shanghai Municipal Police, Special Branch, Investigation File D3445.
79. Rewi Alley, Yo B a n f a !, Auckland: The New Zealand-China Society, 1976, p.26.
80. Xiang Bo, "Huang Jinrong shilue (A biographical sketch of Huang Jinrong)", in Jiu Shanghai de B a n q h u i . ppl31- 132; Shanghai Shehui Kexue Yuan Zhengzhi Falu Yanjiusuo Shehui Wenti Zu (The Social Issues Section of the Political and Legal Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences), ed., Da Liumanq Du Yuesheng (Big Gangster Du Yuesheng), Beijing: .Q.unxhong, 1965, pp5-6. 81. Zhang Jungu, V.l, pp84-85; Qian Shengke, Oinqhonq Bang
zhi Heimu (The Inside Story of the Green and Red Gangs), Shanghai: Qian Shengke Heimu Faxing Suo, 1919, pp37-48.
82. Zhu Menghua, "Jiu Shanghai de sige feipin dawang (The four refuse potentates of old Shanghai)", in Shanghai Shi Wenshi Guan (The Shanghai Cultural Centre), Shanghai Difang Shi Ziliao (Materials on the Local History of Shanghai), Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui Kexue Yuan, 1984,
pp162-163.
83.
Da Liumana Du Yueshenq. ppl-4, 6-7; "Memorandum on Mr.
Tu Yueh-sung alias Tu Yuin" (8 July 1939), Shanghai
Municipal Police, Special Branch, Sect.2, Investigation
File D9319; Shi Yi, ppl87-192, 48; Jiang Shaozhen, "Du
Yuesheng", in Li Xin and Sun Sipai, eds, Minquo Renwu
Zhuan (Biographies of Leading Figures of the Republic),
4 vols, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1978, V.l, p.314.
84.
Peters, p.223.
85.
Zhu Jianliang and Wu Weizhi, "Zhang Xiaolin", in Minquo
Renwu Zhuan. V.4, ppl60-161; Xu Zhucheng, p.17; Zhang
Jungu, V.l, ppl39-140; Da Liumanq Du Yueshenq. p.ll.
64 CHAPTER 2
THE RISE OF THE FRENCH CONCESSION GREEN GANG, 1919-1926. PART Is THE ROLE OF OPIUM
The most important development in the history of the Green Gang system in the 1920s and 1930s was the ascendancy achieved within that system by the Green Gang bosses in the French Concession: Huang Jinrong, Du Yuesheng and Zhang
Xiaolin. This ascendancy rested on control of the illicit
opium traffic in Shanghai, and on a tacit accommodation between the gangster bosses and the French Concession
authorities. Control of the contraband opium provided the
necessary financial resources which enabled the French Concession Green Gang bosses to develop a vast network of organised crime which touched most aspects of the social and economic worlds of Shanghai. In addition, the structure of this contraband trade served to define the relationship between the gangsters and the local warlords and provided the context within which the leading gangsters sought to exercise
political influence. The basic contours of the pattern of
interaction between local gangsters and militarists-cum- politicians in the Jiangnan region were established by 1925; and this relationship provided a model on which to base the later co-operation between the Green Gang and the Guomindang
Government after 1927. The accommodation between the French
authorities and the Green Gang bosses, for its part,
reflected both the concerns held by the French for the security of the Concession and the contributions of the local
Green Gang towards meeting these concerns, and the involvement of elements in the French administration in the contraband opium traffic itself.
Although control of the opium traffic and the understanding with the French authorities were inseparable aspects of the French Concession Green Gang's original power base, for the purposes of exposition they are discussed in two separate chapters: the present chapter deals with the issue of opium, and the following chapter discusses the origins of the Green Gang bosses' relations with the French authorities.
(1) Shanghai and Opium
Throughout the late nineteenth century opium was inseparable
from the prosperity of Shanghai. In this period Shanghai was
the principal distribution centre for the legal trade in both imported and domestic opium, and the opium trade was an integral part of the city's commercial life. Most of the local foreign and Chinese merchants derived at least part of their wealth from trading in the drug. The North-China Herald thus noted in 1914:
Practically every foreign bank is involved, and
practically every big Chinese piece-goods, yarn or metal dealer is involved and thus the whole trade of the Settlement is interconnected in this business.1
66
Rhoads Murphey has suggested that the concentration of the legal trade in opium at Shanghai played a significant role in the process of capital accumulation in Shanghai which gave this city an important advantage in its acquisition of commercial and, after 1895, of industrial dominance. In fact he believes that opium played as great a part in Shanghai's commercial development in the nineteenth century as did tea and silk, and that it continued to stimulate the growth and concentration of capital and commercial activity well after tea and silk had lost their predominant positions.2
With its legalisation as a result of the Treaty Settlement of 1858-1860 which ended the Arrow War of 1856-1860, the opium trade developed rapidly in the 1860s and 1870s, and by the end of the latter decade 83,000 piculs of foreign opium were
3
imported into China annually. Although the amount of
imported opium had begun to decline by the end of the 1880s, because of the growth in native opium, it nevertheless remained an important item in China's foreign trade. In the 1890s, for example, imported opium represented over 20 per cent, or over one-fifth, of China's total imports, and in the years immediately preceding the Qing Government's prohibition on the cultivation and consumption of opium in November 1906, imports of the drug through Shanghai averaged 22,500 piculs valued at Ch$40 million per year.4
The conduct of this legal trade in opium was a flourishing Sino-foreign enterprise. By the turn of the century opium
imports were largely in the hands of four foreign merchant houses: those of David Sassoon and Co., E.D. Sassoon, S.J.
David, and Edward Ezra.5 The wholesaling and retailing
aspects of the trade were handled by Guangdong merchants, of whom the most important were those from Chaozhou who formed the so-called Chaozhou Clique, and who, as noted in the
previous chapter, were members of the Red Gang.6 This
Chaozhou Clique operated the three major opium businesses in the International Settlement, that is, the Zhengxia Ji, the Guoyu Ji and the Liwei Ji.7 Of these three concerns the most famous and most successful in the first decade of the
twentieth century was the Zhengxia Ji. Both the foreign and
Chinese opium merchants carefully regulated the trade and the latter were exempt from interference by Chinese officials.
With the demise of the legal trade in opium in 1919, Shanghai re-emerged as the centre of a vast trafficking network in
illicit opium from domestic and overseas sources. The
domestic system involved the trans-shipment of Sichuan and some Yunnan opium by Yangtze River steamers via the ports of Yichang, Hankou and Nanjing to Shanghai, and the shipment of the bulk of Yunnan opium by rail to Haiphong and other ports in French Indo-China and hence by steamer to Shanghai. The overseas trafficking, for its part, involved the smuggling into Shanghai of Persian, Turkish and Indian opium either by ocean liner from ports such as Bushire in the Persian Gulf and Constantinople, or through the medium of the parcel
3
68
the creation of de facto opium monopolies by various warlord units in certain key places such as Shashi, Yichang and
Hankou. These military monopolies, in co-operation with the
local Chinese merchants and gangsters, taxed the passage of Sichuan and Yunnan opium and guaranteed its 'protection' from
one sphere of influence to another.9 For its part, the
contraband trade in foreign opium was assisted by the existence of a number of foreign colonies, each with its own opium monopoly, in the vicinity of China, which acted as trans-shipment points for smuggling opium and its derivatives into China. In the 1920s the most important of these opium monopolies from the point of view of their role in the contraband trade were those in French Indo-China, Macao, Hong
Kong, Formosa and Vladivostock. The activities of these
official monopolies in the contraband traffic was
supplemented by the foreign-controlled areas in China proper, such as Guangzhouwan (Guangdong), Qingdao, Dalian and, of course, Shanghai.10
Although no detailed figures of the value of the contraband opium trade exist, a number of educated guesses have been made by knowledgeable observers which serve to give some indication, however imprecise they may be, of the scale of the traffic. In the late 1920s D'Auxion De Ruffe, a French lawyer in Shanghai, concluded that the consumption of opium in China totalled $700 million per year, and Tang Shaoyi,
then Chairman of the National Anti-Opium Association,
illicit opium, of which $800 million was spent on Chinese-
produced opium and $200 million on imported opium.11 The
amount of this revenue which was generated by the opium traffic through Shanghai has been variously put at over $40 million or about $78 million to upwards of $100 million per
year.12 Whatever the exact figure it is clear that these
revenues played an important, if undisclosed, role in the
Shanghai economy. This was recognised by the Shanghai
Commissioner for Customs, E. Gordon Lowder, in his report of 1924 where he noted that contraband opium was "undoubtedly of sufficient magnitude to affect the balance of trade in
Shanghai".13 Moreover, the profits to be earned from
illicit opium ensured that Shanghai remained one of the most sought after prizes in the politics of the warlord era.
(2) The transition from legal trade to contraband traffic
Following the implementation of the Qing Government's decree
of 21 November 1906, which provided for the gradual
prohibition of opium cultivation and consumption over a ten year period, the British Government concluded two agreements with the Chinese authorities in December 1907 and May 1911 by which the importation of Indian opium into China would be reduced to zero in ten annual instalments beginning in 1908. At the same time action was taken at the international level, largely on the initiative of the United States Government, to control the flow of opium into China. An International Opium Commission was established by the major foreign powers with
70
interests in the Far East, which convened a conference in Shanghai in February 1909 and passed a number of resolutions designed to support the Qing Government's suppression policy and to restrict the importation of opium and its derivatives
into China. These resolutions provided the basis for the
convening of the First Hague Opium Conference, December 1911-
January 1912, which concluded with the signing of an
International Opium Convention on 23 January 1912. This
Convention bound its signatories to undertake effective measures to prevent drug smuggling into China and the use of foreign post offices in China for the shipment of opium, and to close all opium retail shops and opium dens in the
foreign-controlled areas.14 Thus the foreign and Chinese
opium merchants were faced with the prospects of the
termination of all aspects of the legal trade in foreign opium, together with that in domestic opium, by the end of
1917 .
The foreign opium merchants responded to this threat to their position by developing a three-pronged strategy which was designed to extract for themselves the maximum financial
advantage from the process of phased abolition. In the first
place the opium merchants attempted to corner the available supply of Indian opium in order to keep its price high. At the same time they sought to control the importation and
distribution of foreign opium in Shanghai by forming
themselves into the Shanghai Opium M e r c h a n t s ' Combine in 1913, and by signing an agreement with the Chaozhou opium