Du Yuesheng
Du Yuesheng (1888-1951) was the most famous figure in the modern Shanghai Youth Gang. In 1911, he joined the "Stupid Party" which specially transported illegal goods for cigarette dealers. He joined the Youth Gang leader Huang Jinrong and started selling opium.Later, he and Huang Jinrong worshiped as brothers, opened Sanxin Company, relied on the influence of foreigners, recruited and emigrated, oppressed the people, and sold opium.Became one of the leaders of the Green Gang in the French Concession in Shanghai. In 1927, he participated in the "April 12" coup and killed Wang Shouhua, chairman of the Shanghai General Strike Committee.He once served as a consultant to the Kuomintang government, chairman of the French Concession Business Federation, Chinese director of the Public Board of Directors, chairman of Zhonghui Bank, manager of Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shanghai Cotton Cloth Exchange. After 1937, he and Dai Li organized the Songhu Ranger Corps of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Action Committee of the Military Committee (later called the Loyalty and National Salvation Army). In 1941, Zhonghua Industrial Trust Company was established in Chongqing. He returned to Shanghai in 1945 to rectify and expand the gangster organization Hengshe. Went to Hong Kong in 1949. He died in Hong Kong in August 1951.
The outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War in the summer of 1937 provided a series of opportunities for Dai Li to expand his secret kingdom.As his former assistant Shen Drunk later sarcastically said, "When the country is in crisis, it is good luck."The war spread across the country, hindering Nanjing's top-down unified military and police expansion plan, and the loss of coastal areas cut off Chiang Kai-shek's irreparable source of funds.However, due to the fragmented territory occupied by the Japanese army, Dai Li was able to extend his organization to the local public security and semi-military forces, and the two connected wartime economies enabled the secret police to withdraw from the black market and transportation controlled by Dai Li. Access to new sources of funding.The war also brought together secret service chiefs with gangsters like Du Yuesheng, making the military even more reliant on illegal profits from the drug trade.
People at the time said that Dai Li had known Du Yuesheng as early as 1921-1923 when he was a hooligan in Shanghai. In the autumn of 1927, when Chiang Kai-shek resigned from the Nationalist government and temporarily disbanded his secret investigation unit, the relationship between the two became close.Dai Li, who was almost penniless, came to Shanghai again to look for ways to make money, but he went to his old friend Du Yuesheng for help.At that time, Du Yuesheng was already a "celebrity", and he gave Dai Li 50 yuan twice to deal with the predicament.Facts have proved that Dai Li's poverty did not last long.But after Chiang Kai-shek returned to power and reorganized his private secret agents, Dai Li always remembered Du Yuesheng's generosity.
During this period, the Chiang regime began to cooperate with Du Yuesheng in opium trade in Shanghai.From a practical point of view, it is more convenient to concentrate the opium trade in the hands of one gang and separate this problem from other state affairs, so that if it makes a fool of itself, it is easy to deny it.There is no longer blind competition, transactions have become orderly, and huge incomes have quietly flowed in.As soon as the new Nationalist government was established in Nanjing, the Ministry of Finance began to establish a formal monopoly on opium, which was extended to the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions on August 20, 1927.Du Yuesheng opposed this plan at first, because it threatened the interests of the large companies he controlled.Later, however, an agreement was reached between Du and the Kuomintang: the latter handed over the monopoly of the Shanghai area to a subsidiary of a large company called "Sanxin Company", and the income in exchange was protected by the Kuomintang army.
As mentioned earlier, Dai Li began to use part of this income to pay for the secret service within the Blue Shirts Society. CC faction also made money through Du Yuesheng.In order to fight against the CC faction—to use the former members of the Blue Shirts Club to sum up Chiang Kai-shek’s policy, that is, "fight poison with poison"—Dai Li and Du Yuesheng formed an alliance as brothers, and began to recruit members of the Qinghong Gang to join the Secret Service, so as to strengthen his ties with the underground The link between society and drug smuggling.
The cooperation between the Ministry of Finance and Du Yuesheng in 1927 was generally unstable, because the amount of smuggling was so large and the profit was so high that both parties to the agreement could not resist its huge temptation.By 1931, the world economic depression began to seriously affect the Chinese economy. China itself produced about 12,000 tons of narcotic drugs every year, which was more than 7/8 of the world's illegal drug supply.As the source of opium and its products, China replaced the Middle East and dominated the American market.In fact, most of the heroin in the United States comes from laboratories in Shanghai and Tianjin.In Shanghai, where some 100,000 people are addicted to opium, Du Yuesheng's men operate 10 such refineries.The two biggest ones make a profit of 40,000 yuan a day, just paying 400,000 yuan a month for the Kuomintang government to protect these factories.
In May 1931, Du Yuesheng met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing.Jiang proposed to the leader of the gang that he would give 1 million yuan if Du's Green Gang could participate in the "communist suppression".He also promised to share the government's nationwide opium monopoly with gang members in return for investing 6 million yuan in the underground society.However, the payment to the leader of the Green Gang was depreciated government bonds from the Ministry of Finance Song Ziwen.Song also showed no sincerity in the agreement governing the secret opium monopoly.The Minister of Finance, who was trying to find ways to pay for Chiang's huge military expenditures in the campaign of "suppressing the Communists", became jealous of narcotic drugs and began to plan to monopolize the market with opium confiscated by the Bureau of Control.
Despite the Nanking authorities' decree on June 18, 1931 that all officials must obey the law and not engage in the opium trade, Song Ziwen and his supporters continued to establish their nationwide opium monopoly, which was expected to Bring additional revenue of 100 million yuan to the government.In some provinces, opium trading companies emerged, and warehouses for storing confiscated drugs were established in Anqing, Datong, and Wuhu.These warehouses were not controlled by the Opium Control Bureau to which they belonged, but by Song Ziwen's Special Taxation Bureau.
