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by the arrival of opium _sinokers coming from the southern provinces of
China. A fresh solution for the problem had,. therefore, to be found each
year. The campaign against' opium in Indo-China, therefore, very closely
depended on the results of the campaign in China itself". The same point
is made later on about Hongkong .. Would you say that the situation in
Malaya resembled the sjtuation in Indo-China and. Hongkong . in that
respect ?-I think I have already given an answer which shows that I do
think so.
258. Sir JOHN JORDAN urged-"that the Chinese Authorities should
be asked to arrange that ·only non-opium smokers should leave China for
the eastern Colonies". Would that result in an undue check upon labour
and would it be practicable ?-It would be a check upon the labour force,
and, in my opinion, it would not be practicable.
259 Mr. Lim Nee Soon.-Only 13 per cent of the China-born coolies
are opium smokers. Does that refer to sinkhehs. or lauHe/r.s ?-That
applies to sinkhehs. That is taken, of course, merely from 7 ships which
have come in during the last 15 days, and those figures were obtained in the
following manner. As each deck passenger passed before the doctor, he was
asked whether he was a new arrival or a man returning from a visit to China,
and then he was asked whether he was an opium smoker or not. In addition,
the Medical Officer tested each of the passengers to see whether he gave
clinical signs of having been an opium smoker. Consequently we got, I
think, a fairly accurate set of figures, smokers and non-smokers, both for
the new arrival and for the man who was returning to the Peninsula from a
visit to China.
This concluded Mr. BEATIY'S evidence.