Nationalism, Identity, and State-Building: The Antidrug Crusade in the People’s Republic, 1949–1952
Nationalism, Identity, and State-Building: The Antidrug Crusade in the People’s Republic, 1949–1952
This chapter discusses that the negative wartime image of opium as a drug of conquest may have aided in inspiring political resolve and popular support that allowed the Communist Party to mount suppression campaigns in 1950 and 1952. It notes that this would bring the trade to an end within just a few years of the party's assumption of state power. The chapter explains that the scarcity of materials in Chinese Communist campaigns to suppress opium was attributed to the pressured international environment in which they were carried out, at a time when Chinese government did not wish its difficulties with opium to be made known to a hostile United States, with which it was unofficially at war in Korea. It notes that the success of the suppression campaign in the early 1950s was relatively complete, although the campaign has been eroded since the 1980s with the decline of state socialism.
Keywords: wartime, Communist Party, suppression campaigns, opium trade, state power, Chinese government, Chinese communist campaigns, United States, Korea, state socialism
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