Opium) in the CCP’s Northwestern Shanxi Base Area during the War of Resistance against Japan (晋西北抗日根据地的特货贸易

Abstract

Opium cultivation and trading in the CCP-controlled base areas during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945) has been a subject of historical research in recent years, thanks to the availability of a large amount of original documents from Shanxi Provincial Archives, published compilations of source material, the memoirs of relevant individuals, and other documents, which reveal the facts about the “special commodity” or opium in the Northwestern Shanxi (or Shanxi-Suiyuan) base area. This article argues that the organized and planned opium cultivation and trading, as the last resort to solving its fiscal crisis in a particular circumstance, was subject to the base area government’s strict policies of the separation of cultivation from smoking prohibition, unified procurement and sales, and severe penalty on opium smuggling. These policies worked to safeguard the solvency of the base area’s entire fiscal and financial system while protecting the people of the base area from the harm caused by opium.近些年来抗日根据地及解放区特货（又称“鸦片”）种植与贸易问题受到学界关注，而山西省档案馆所藏大量原始档案资料及先前出版的某些资料汇编、个人回忆文本等历史文献，均证明了晋西北（晋绥）抗日根据地特货存在的基本事实。不过，这种有组织有计划的种植与贸易是特定生存环境下的无奈选择，边区政府在此过程中严格执行“种禁”（即种植与禁止吸食）分离、统购统销、重惩走私的政策，既保障了整个财政金融体系得以运行又使根据地境内百姓免遭烟毒之害。 (This article is in Chinese.)