China is a country in East Asia where, on whole-genome evidence, Cannabis sativa was first domesticated in early Neolithic times. On the same evidence, all current hemp and drug cultivars diverged from an ancestral gene pool now represented by feral plants and landraces in China.
A harvest list in the Shijing names hemp with grain, beans and wheat, and the sixth-century Qimin yaoshu gives separate instructions for growing it for fibre and for seed. The Shennong bencao jing (神農本草經), a materia medica that E. Joseph Brand and Zhongzhen Zhao date to the first or second century AD, warns that eating too much mafen (麻蕡) makes a person "see ghosts and run about frenetically".
Cannabis is named among the narcotic drugs (毒品, dúpǐn) defined in the Criminal Law and in the Narcotics Control Law, which prohibits its illegal cultivation. Since July 2025 it has been listed in the catalogue of non-medical narcotic drugs, which may be used in research but may not be produced, traded or used. Yunnan's police license the growing of industrial hemp, defined there as plants with less than 0.3 per cent … read more →
