Talk:Japanese opium policy in Taiwan (1895–1945)

Untitled

I want to know the reference of the following writing 'Japanese offical news paper in Taiwan Showa Shinbun (昭和新聞) claimed opium was good for humans health.'. As far as I know, the name of official newspaper in Taiwan was not Showa Shinbun (昭和新聞). -Poo-T16 Nov 2004

Dutch ≠ Portuguese

I know, I know, they all look alike but honestly the Dutch and the Portuguese are actually different groups of people.

In 1544, Taiwan was used as a Dutch service station for ships sailing to China and Japan.[13]

There's a nonsense citation for this nonsense, but that's a century early. The Dutch only reached Indonesia in 1598. 1544 is the date for the arrival of the Portuguese on Taiwan. — LlywelynII 13:54, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

It's worse than I thought

In 1544, Taiwan was used as a [[Dutch East India Company|Dutch]] service station for ships sailing to China and Japan.<ref name=":4" /> It was during this period that opium was heavily trafficked by the Dutch from the East Indies through to Taiwan and then onto China.<ref name=":2" /> The use of Taiwan as a trading port continued throughout the Chinese occupation of Taiwan prior to the annexation. Taiwan was used as a Chinese trading centre for the French, Dutch and Portuguese where opium was continually traded across Taiwan.<ref name=":2" /> As a result, opium because widespread throughout Taiwanese society and the profitability of the trade was identified.<ref name=":2" />

Ignoring the bad grammar and phrasing, this is all obvious nonsense. There was a whole war involved in opening up the opium trade with China and it happened a damn sight later than 1544. (Yes, there was some trade before that but it wasn't societally corrosive at the levels discussed here but a luxury for the upper class. It also wasn't large until the British were running Indian plantations and going nuts thinking about how to pay down their tea bills.) That it pretends to be cited suggests that nothing on the current page can be trusted, certainly nothing by the editor who lied about all of this. Any student involved with this should be flunked and any editor interested in the page probably needs to review the entire thing at this point. — LlywelynII 13:59, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

This is a terrible article

The article has a lot of mostly off-topic information about the history of Taiwan, but missed completely the eradication of opium smoking under the Japanese colonial government until the more recent edit. It needs major revision. Samsontu (talk) 03:03, 19 June 2023 (UTC)