Talk:China

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Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

China is about cannabis in China. It covers the mainland of the People's Republic: Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan figures are not combined with mainland figures, so the census total quoted is the mainland count with the armed forces, and the narcotics and eradication figures are those published by the national narcotics control office. Two accessions are recorded for the country, a herbarium sheet of 1912 from the Chumbi Valley and a seed reproduction of a vendor line from Yunnan.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

Classical texts are cited from Chinese Wikisource transcriptions, and each citation names the edition used: the Siku quanshu text for the Qimin yaoshu, the Bencao gangmu, the Zhenglei bencao and the Zhouli zhushu, and the recension of Sun Xingyan and Sun Fengyi for the Shennong bencao jing. That recension heads the entry 麻賁, while Brand and Zhao and the Zhenglei bencao write 麻蕡; the article uses 麻蕡 with the romanisation mafen. English renderings of Chinese passages are made for the article unless a published translation is named, as with the Brand and Zhao renderings of the Shennong bencao jing.

Two Chinese journal articles, Hu, Zhang and Hao (2015) and Zhou (2015), both in the Chinese Journal of Drug Dependence, are cited from their republication on 杜新忠戒毒网 (jhak.com). The journal's own records confirm the authors, issues and pages. The republished text has not been compared with the printed issues, so passages quoted from them rest on the republication.

The 1991 Xinjiang regulations are cited from the Wikisource transcription, which gives the text as amended on 11 December 1997. The national law database lists them as repealed, so the article describes them in the past tense.

Areas given in mu (亩) are converted at 15 mu to the hectare and rounded.

The 1912 herbarium sheet's label names Lingmuthang but not the valley. The article places Lingmuthang in the Chumbi Valley on the evidence of other labels of the same collector's 1912 gatherings, which name the valley; that evidence is set out at Rohmoo Lepcha 57 (1912).

Where the sources disagree

Date of the 1990 Decision on the Prohibition of Narcotic Drugs. The Decision's own heading in the Gazette of the NPC Standing Committee gives 28 December 1990. The State Council Information Office's white paper Narcotics Control in China (2000) gives 18 December 1990 in both its official printings. The article uses the date in the Decision's own heading.
End of the charas trade from Xinjiang. The United Nations Secretariat (1953) concludes that the Sinkiang provincial government prohibited the export of charas in 1934. Kreutzmann (2026) describes a rise in the duty in 1936 and a prohibition announced in Kashgar in January 1936. I. C. and R. N. Chopra (1957) date the Indian stop on imports to about 1934–35. The article gives all three.
Date of the Yanghai burial. The tomb was first dated to about 2500 years before present; Russo and colleagues (2008) report the calibrated date of about 2700 years. Both appear in the article.
Earliest cannabis grains in China. Dal Martello and colleagues (2024) give Zhuzhai, about 5900 to 5800 BC, as the earliest reported. The supplementary material of McPartland and colleagues (2019) names Chengtoushan in Hunan, 6400 to 5300 BP, as the oldest. The article reports the Zhuzhai statement with its attribution.
Location of Yanggua. Zhou and colleagues (2011), who recovered the seed, place the site in the Longdong basin of eastern Gansu. Dal Martello and colleagues list it under Xinjiang, and McPartland's supplementary table gives western Gansu. The article follows the excavation report.
Size of the national hemp germplasm collection. The director of the national bast-fibre germplasm bank gave more than 1,300 industrial-hemp accessions in 2020. A 2023 review gives more than 1,500 cannabis accessions in the national bank. The counts may differ in date or in what they include; the article gives the 2020 figure with its date.
THC content of Yunma No. 1. The breeders' paper of 2003 gives about 0.03 per cent. A 2010 award record of the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences gives 0.148 per cent. A 2008 company account calls the cultivar free of THC. The article gives the breeders' figure and attributes it.
Industrial-hemp area in Yunnan. A 2018 provincial news report gives "more than 100,000 mu" a year. A report on the founding of the provincial hemp industry association gives 90,000 mu in 2020. Association figures quoted by journalists in 2022 give 92,000 mu actually planted in 2019 and about 150,000 in 2020. The article gives the 2020 figure from the association's founding report and names that source in the text.
Bole clearance of June 2016. The headline of the report says ten thousand plants; its text says more than 100,000. The article uses the figure in the text.
Whether Yunnan is the only province with a hemp regime. A government-run account reposted in December 2020 calls Yunnan the only province to have clearly legalised industrial-hemp cultivation and processing. Heilongjiang's narcotics control regulations of 2017 provide for approved varieties grown on filing with the county police. The article describes both regimes and does not repeat the "only province" statement.
Heilongjiang and cannabidiol. A 2020 reply by Jilin's development and reform commission reports that Heilongjiang decided on 28 August 2019 to stop growing and processing cannabis for cannabidiol. No Heilongjiang document stating this was found. Heilongjiang's five-year plan of December 2021 still reports 33,000 mu grown for flowers and leaves in 2020 and sets a target of 200,000 mu for 2025. The article attributes the 2019 decision to the Jilin reply.
Date of the cosmetics ban. The National Medical Products Administration announcement (2021 No. 74) is signed 26 May 2021; it was published on 28 May 2021. The article cites the signed announcement and says "from May 2021".
Wild or feral. Ren and colleagues (2021) found the plants they sampled to be feral escapes from cultivation. Zhang and colleagues (2018) call their populations wild; Chen and colleagues (2022) write "wild (or feral)". The article reports each study in its own terms.
FAO figures. The FAOSTAT series for mainland China mixes official figures with FAO's own estimates. All years from 2019 are estimates, and the article says so.

Not used, and why

Seed-vendor claims. Only ACE Seeds' own description of its "China Yunnan" line is reported, as the company's description. A vendor offering a "Xinjiang Landrace" says only that its seed was obtained on travel near Almaty, in Kazakhstan, and names no collector, site or generation inside China; it is not used.
Licence counts and prices in Yunnan reported by journalists in 2022 are known only from reposts of a messaging-platform article; the original publication was not located, so they are not used.
A national narcotics control notice of March 2019 on industrial hemp is cited by two provincial documents, one of which gives its number. The notice itself was not found, and the article does not describe its contents.
The THC clause of the agricultural standard NY/T 3252.1-2018 is in an image-only scan that could not be checked mechanically, so the standard is not cited for a figure.
A claim of two thousand years of cannabis use at Ürümqi was not found in any source read and is not used.
A listing of Naxi hemp spinning as intangible cultural heritage was not found. The article reports the Shangri-La government's account of the craft at Baidi and makes no claim about a listing.
The 1932 annual report of China, which describes the smokers of Sinkiang hemp as "aboriginal tribes", is not quoted; the article reports only the 1933 and 1935 statements on the control of Indian hemp.

Open content questions

Whether the wild stands cleared in the north-west and north-east are relics of old cultivation, escapes from recent hemp fields or both is not settled by the clearance reports. They describe plants growing without pattern and with no sign of planting, and in one case spread by birds, but give no history of the sites.
The industrial-hemp area actually grown in Heilongjiang in 2025, against the plan's target of 1,000,000 mu, is not given in the sources read. The provincial agriculture department expected the 2025 area to be lower than in 2024 and the 2026 area to rise.

Infobox fields

Legal status. legal_status = Illegal (industrial hemp excepted). Cannabis is a narcotic drug under the Criminal Law and the Narcotics Control Law, which prohibits its illegal cultivation. The exception the field names is industrial hemp: Yunnan licenses its growing under the regulation in force since 2010, and Heilongjiang allows approved varieties to be grown on filing with the county police under its regulations of 2017.
Year. legal_status_year = 2025 marks the catalogue of non-medical narcotic drugs published on 21 July 2025, under the regulations as amended from 20 January 2025, which lists cannabis among the substances that may not be produced, traded or used. It is the latest instrument, not the start of prohibition: national statute named cannabis among narcotic drugs in the Decision of 28 December 1990.
Enforcement. enforcement = Compulsory eradication of illegal cultivation; clearance of wild stands. The Criminal Law requires illegally cultivated cannabis to be eradicated compulsorily, the Narcotics Control Law obliges local governments to stop and eradicate it, and police and local governments report clearing naturally growing stands.