Chinese Merchants Alarmed At Continued Smuggling Petitions were reported to have been sent to the Customs by Chinese sugar merchants for measures to prevent the sales of smuggled sugar.
According to these merchants, no fewer than 2,000 piculs of Japanese sugar have been smuggled into Shanghai and are being stored in Hongkew. The distribution of this cargo will undoubtedly seriously affect the local sugar market These merchants also point "out that local sugar trade has already been adversely affected by the continued arrival of duty-free sugar. Many small hongs are selling the goods at cut-throat prices.
British and Netherlends sugar merchants have also approached their respective authorities for assistance, according to Chinese report. and translations of articles of interest to the Police were made daily. Prosections were instituted against 38 persons for dealing in indecent literature, publishing indecent matter or articles endangering public peace and order, or failing to register their publications with the Chinese puthorities. The defendants, with a few exceptions, were sentenced to fines ranging from $10 to $120. The Police also raided several bookstores and ized large quantities of reactionary and other objectionable literature.
When Sino-Japanese hostilities broke out in Shanghai, a number of suspended publication and appeared in reduced form. About 14 war pictorial magazines were published and gained considerable popularity. After the withdrawn! of Chinese forces from Shanghai in November, 30 other publications suspended business and four news agencies including the Central News Agency, a government orga ceased operations.
The Municipal Council on August 17 issued a proclamation containing emergency measures one of which stated: "No person shall deliver an; speech, or print, publish or distribute any document, picture, flag, banner or any other device in the streets or any public place or do any other calculated to cause public alarm a breach of the peace." In consequence of this proclamation, the Municipal Police closed 11 publications for publishing false reports or other objectionable articles and warned 23 other journals on 45 different Occasions for similar reasons.
The Municipal Council on October 21 issued Notification No. 4878 requi all newspapers, magazines ring periodicals and pamphlets published, printed or distributed in the International Settlement to register with the Council Up to the end of the year, 22 registration certificates had been issued to foreign publications and 64 to Chinese publications.
The revised Press Law was promulgated by the National Government on July 8, 1997,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.