Records of the Maritime Customs Service of China 1854 – 1949
Parts Six and Seven: The Sino-Japanese War and its
Aftermath, 1931-49
Professor Robert Bickers, University of Bristol
Parts six and seven of this collection Parts six and seven also contain files on highlight the richness of the files in the the careers of key leadership figures in Second Historical Archives of China this period: the Inspector Generals (IGs) – relating to the period of the Japanese Sir Frederick Maze (1929-43), Lester Knox invasion of China after 1931. Significantly Little (1943-50) and Hirokichi Kishimoto 岸 more than half of the 55,000 files in 本廣吉 (1941-45), as well as the leading Nanjing cover the period of the full-scale departmental secretaries, notably Ding
conflict which developed after 7 July 1937. Guitang丁贵堂 (Ting Kwei Tang), the Others cover the Japanese seizure of leading Chinese employee in the Service. Manchuria in 1931-32, and the tensions To these we have also added files relating caused in north China thereafter, when to the seizure of Manchurian stations in Japanese forces had expanded their 1932, and its aftermath. influence and control. We have selected files covering the outbreak of the conflict and its progress to 1941; the impact of The Customs at war Pearl Harbor on the Service; and Customs After 1937 Sir Frederick Maze worked in functions in unoccupied China (notably its an increasingly difficult situation to new role collecting Wartime Consumption maintain the integrity of the Service, as he Tax, and its planning for, and resumption saw it, and the period between July that of, its functions at the end of the conflict).
Gale Primary Sources gale.com/empire Start at the source. year and Pearl Harbor highlights the semi-official correspondence, confidential continuing oddness of the Customs and its letters and reports, ‘career’ files (the position despite its subordination to closest that the Service got to what we Guomindang control. Maze attempted to might think of as a ‘personnel’ file), as well retain its integrity as an agency of the as documents which demonstrate the Chinese state under the control of the changing nature of the Service. In 1937 for Ministry of Finance via the Guanwushu 关 the first time we have minutes of
务暑 (see Part 4), while at the same time Secretaries’ Meetings – conclaves of the Secretariat heads — and these become continuing to operate offices in Chinese more routine as the war progresses ports under the control of the Japanese. (although their survival is patchy). They He aimed to retain its integrity as the indicate how far the autocratic system agency securing and servicing foreign developed by Hart had changed as the loans, which whilst important for the service became more and more embedded Nationalist state, had often been seen as a in the civil service of the Nationalist state. supra-governmental activity. He also tried, In many ways, as the subject files in the somewhat obsessively, to maintain the Customs series at the Second Historical integrity of the Service as an institution to Archives of China in Nanjing show, there prevent it from being broken up and to was much by way of business as usual. ensure that it continued to run as a Indeed, because of the diplomatic nationwide service. These concerns are pressure that Maze could try and bring to threaded through the extensive bear through his correspondence with correspondence with diplomats and policy British and American diplomats, the makers provided here.1 Customs just about retained a semi- The files also allow us to see the impact privileged position – as a Nationalist state across the Customs establishment of the organ which managed to function behind unfolding conflict, and the process that enemy lines. However as stations fell followed as Japanese pressure to increase under Japanese control, and as its staff the number of Japanese in the Customs, suffered in the face of the Japanese and their seniority, steadily mounted. The advance and aerial bombing, it was also full range of Customs correspondence is included; despatches to and from stations,
1 See, in addition, the Maze papers at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London
Gale Primary Sources gale.com/empire Start at the source. clear that the days of its observer status Service at Pearl Harbor, the majority of were drawing to a close. them having been appointed since July 1937 in response to Japanese diplomatic
pressure on Maze to appoint Japanese On 8 December 1941, as the Pacific War staff to ports in occupied China. But some erupted, the Inspectorate fell into of those running the Service had long been Japanese hands, its archives just about working for it, and were imbued with its intact. Key stations in treaty ports not ethos, and perceptions of its role. previously occupied by the Japanese were
seized: Canton, Tianjin and, of course, Shanghai amongst them. Maze and his As a Kishimoto Customs produced outline entire senior staff, and the bulk of Service history of the Service notes, ‘On account of personnel, were in Japanese hands. Maze special circumstances prevailing at was formally ‘dismissed’ by the present’, some of its stations were collaborationist Wang Jingwei ‘closed’. The key role the Kishimoto government, which had its own Customs found for itself was the collection Guanwushu in the Ministry of Finance, and of interport duties, that is duties on replaced on 11th December by Kishimoto, internal trade around Shanghai and other who had joined the Customs in 1905, and Japanese-occupied ports and cities. As a who since 1935 had been Chief Secretary, result it opened some new stations solely effectively second in command. Kishimoto for the collection of interport duties and to worked thereafter with all semblance of deal with the changed geography enforced legitimacy: he had the archives, he had the by the war.2 The routine business of the
bulk of the staff, including numbers of Shanghai-based ‘Bogus’ (伪) Service is remaining neutral or Italian axis nationals, captured in its Circulars (Part 1), and and he held the greater number of Semi-Official Correspondence from key stations. His service recruited an ports (Part 3). In August 1945 the Services additional 470 Japanese into the Customs of nearly all Japanese were dispensed between December 1941 and July 1944. with. A few technical staff remained in There were at least 500 already in the post, and although Kishimoto himself
2 Interport duties had been introduced in 1931 at loaded or discharged at, or pass through, places the abolition of lijin and other internal transit where there is a Custom House or Maritime dues. Revised in 1937 they were payable on ‘all Customs station’. Postal parcels were exempt, as native goods moved in China, irrespective of the were goods on which other taxes had been levied place of shipment or destination … which are (tobacco, wine, minerals etc). IG Circular No.5585.
Gale Primary Sources gale.com/empire Start at the source. resigned on 23rd August, he was still being in 1916, and who was Chinese Secretary at sent ‘for interrogation in regard to matters the Inspectorate on the eve of the Pacific concerning Customs revenue, property, War. After a brief imprisonment in archives and other unfinished affairs’ in occupied Shanghai, Ding made his way to October. He was not repatriated to Japan Free China in December 1942, taking the until 8th March 1946.3 position of Chief Secretary, and later Deputy Inspector General. Ding’s
connections and energy were vital to the At the outbreak of the Pacific campaign prolongation of the Foreign Inspectorate. and with the seizure of the Shanghai
headquarters of the Service, the Nationalist Ministry of Finance instructed The Service was hit in other ways. Of key the Chongqing Customs Commissioner to importance was the application to the establish a replacement Inspectorate. With Customs of the National Government’s Maze incommunicado, C.H.B. Joly, was 1938 Public Treasury Law from 1st appointed Officiating IG in late December, October 1942. Under this legislation and had to recreate the Service almost Service offices were required to hand over from scratch. Severe practical issues on a daily basis all revenues collected to aside (there was no paper, and no local Public Treasury Offices.4 The typewriters, there were no files and no Ministry of Finance would then set and books), there was also little apparent issue a budget to the Customs to enable it reason for the Maritime Customs to to function. In this way the Customs was continue to exist, and much hostility to it, finally normalised as a Chinese state as an agency still in the British orbit at a agency. It also found a new role for the time of abject British failure in Hong Kong duration of the war, which is charted here. and Southeast Asia. Nevertheless it had From April 1942 onwards interport duties useful friends. One of these was Song in unoccupied China were abolished, and Ziwen 宋子文 – T.V. Soong — Foreign the Service was delegated to collect a new Minister and then President of the ‘Wartime Consumption tax’ on foreign and Executive Yuan. A key internal friend was Chinese goods in transit.5 Ministry of the very well-connected Ding Guitang, a Finance advisor Arthur Young lobbied for native of Liaoning province, who had joined this to be a job for the Customs, partly
4 3 SHAC, 679(6), 634, ‘战后留用日籍雇员问题’, CIS Circular 287. 5 CIS Circ. 131. Despatch to Caizhengbu 3724, 29 Oct 1945.
Gale Primary Sources gale.com/empire Start at the source. because he felt that what looked like a new lucky enough, however, to be one of the form of lijin (likin, local transit taxes, British nationals released in an exchange abolished in 1931 – see Parts 4-5) ought to of internees with the Japanese, and sailed be the responsibility of an institution which to Lourenco Marques in Portuguese East had no vested interest in perpetuating it.6 Africa, arriving on 27th August. He then For the following three years this excise made his way to Chongqing, in the face of function was the primary activity of the Chinese opposition. Ostensibly his ‘Maritime’ Customs, as it was still styled, intention was to report in person on and required the establishment of new developments between 1937 and the stations in the interior, and many new outbreak of the Pacific War, and on checkpoints. The scale of its contributions occurrences in Shanghai after that date. to state finances did not match those of Maze arrived on 3 December. He peacetime, but they were enough to keep it announced on his own authority on 14th in business, and we have extracted here all December that he had resumed command the files relating to this, its most important of the Service. The Minister of Finance was wartime function. We have also provided outraged. Maze’s notification was files of semi-official correspondence from countermanded and he was required to the new wartime stations – at Xian, submit a formal written report accounting Luoyang, and in Xinjiang (all unlikely sites for his actions since 1937. Negotiations of work for the Maritime Customs) as well were obviously undertaken about his as from the other Customs stations of the future, and Maze was permitted to resume Chongqing service. charge on 1st March 1943, but apparently only on the understanding that he
simultaneously submit his resignation. He Back in Shanghai Sir Frederick Maze was left office on the last day of May, handing it arrested on 5th March 1942. He had been over temporarily to Ding Guitang. In living comfortably enough in his French August 1943 Ding then handed over to Concession flat, but he then had four less- former Canton Commissioner, American comfortable weeks with other senior staff L.K. Little, who had also been repatriated in the Bridge House Kempeitai in August 1942. (Gendarmerie) headquarters. Maze was
6 Arthur N. Young, China’s wartime finance and inflation, 1937-1945 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 36.
Gale Primary Sources gale.com/empire Start at the source. The task facing the Customs in 1945 was takeover of each collaborationist huge. It had to retake control of the Secretariat on 12th September show an ‘Bogus’ Service and its staff, reconstruct orderly process.7 Most archives survived its material assets – notably reconstituting intact. Most Japanese staff had gone. its fleet – and repair war damage to the Post-1941 appointees were sacked and lights infrastructure that it managed new staff were recruited to keep offices (much of the lights system had been running. Once the tensions raised by the destroyed). In addition to regaining control reuniting of staff from free China, ‘Bogus’ of the ports lost after 1937, it was tasked Customs staff, and internees had been with resuming control of the Manchurian negotiated, then the Service as a whole ports lost in 1932, and of the ports in resumed work along many of its existing Taiwan, which had been lost in 1895. If this patterns. was not enough of a challenge, given that
other military and civilian agencies were jockeying for scarce resources (and Nationalistic tensions remained a problem formerly-Japanese pickings) at the end of for the Foreign Inspectorate after the war. the conflict, then inflation and the When Little proposed appointing American developing crisis of the Communist- Carl Neprud as Shanghai Commissioner in Nationalist civil war threw up new hurdles. late 1945, there was opposition from those Planning for this process took up much who pointed out that with an American IG, Customs energies, and files from the and an American Coast Inspector (who ran committee creating the Rehabilitation Plan the Marine Department: the lights, river have been included here, telling us much police and preventive fleet) there might be about pre-war practices and processes as adverse political and public reaction. well. Edwin Pritchard, a Briton with 30 years of Service experience, was appointed instead,
and then, after his death in October 1946, a Resumption of administrative control over Chinese Commissioner. Some in the the Bogus Service went smoothly enough. Ministry of Finance kept up their attack, DIG Ding flew to Shanghai with a team of and there were certainly Chinese staff who senior staff and opened an office of the wanted an end to foreign employment in Inspectorate General. Reports on the the Service.
7 679(1), 25573, ‘Inspectorate General of Customs, Removal of to Shanghai or Nanjing’
Gale Primary Sources gale.com/empire Start at the source. Parts 1-5 contain a great deal of material Kishimoto customs, are one example of also relevant to the theme of this the material that awaits researchers in collection — Inspector General’s Circulars Nanjing. The confidential ‘IGS’ for both Services (Part 1), London Office correspondence between the Inspectorate correspondence (Part 2), and the Semi- and Commissioners is another. The post- Official Correspondence from select ports war Staff Investigation Committee files (Part 3), while Parts 5-6 have many flesh out many of the stories of men who overlapping files. We have also taken the served in occupied China throughout the opportunity here to rescue from the conflict. We present here, however, the obscurity of mis-cataloguing files of Sir foundations of an understanding of the Francis Aglen’s outgoing semi-official Chinese Maritime Customs as it faced its correspondence for the early years of his toughest test, and much detail from the control, and in particular the year of the ground. Altogether this provides a rich set 1911 revolution and its aftermath. From of new sources from across the country such a priceless archive we have inevitably for understanding what scholars are had to be selective. The rich files of beginning to understand as twentieth- debriefing reports from staff who crossed century China’s defining experience: the the front-line having served under the war of resistance against Japan.
General Considerations Concerning
Smuggling and Preventive Work at Canton.
1948-1949. The Policing of Trade
Gale Primary Sources gale.com/empire Start at the source.