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Comment by wangii | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the motivation of the article. Does the author try to justify the Opium War? Or to remind 1+ billion Chinese that the intepretation of history always subject to rulers' agenda, which is clearly stated in Chinese textbook? To show off his not-so-sharp observation to his readers? Or, to warn USA not to abandon the free trade principle?

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It's from the Christmas edition. The tradition for that issue is to have a number of essays with no particular journalistic purpose, just to be interesting and lightly intellectually stimulating.

What about giving the readers a better understanding of how China sees the West? These things can be complicated, and pointing out some of the forming events can be very helpful.

Some Chinese people are still cranky about the Opium Wars, some Irish folks still talk about the 800 year occupation, some Native Americans are still miffed about the whole killing and taking stuff thing.

It may be news to some millennials in the tech industry, but the past isn't prologue. It isn't even past.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure a lot of IRA funding came out of Boston. Turns out there were children and grandchildren of potato famine refugees who were still pretty pissed - who’d have thunk it.

I recall seeing an article regarding an interview with a US Civil War veteran in the 1950's [1] which made me think, the Irish Famine was only some 150 years ago. It would have been likely that as recent as say, the 1930's you may have still had living survivors - and by extension, their stories of what they saw may yet be in living memory - it definitely would have still been in the 1970's.

[1] - http://attic.areavoices.com/2011/03/01/listen-to-a-1954-inte...

I think he tries to prevent the usual happening when a recovering nation with a victim complex drunken on past injustifactions stumbles around in the diplomatic public, ignoring the injustices it dishes out itself.

This whole affair would were it not for nukes preventing it, shape up to be just another Germany beating europe to pulp yelling "remember Versailles" in a asian setting.

It's hard to explain, but despite all the reminders of the opium war, I don't think the British has gained much notoriety in China, most Chinese probably have a neutral or even positive view of the old empire.

The message is more along the line of "weak countries will be defeated", so don't be weak, rather than incite hatred toward Britain.

The motivation of all such articles is that someone's job is to write articles, and so articles must be written within the publishing deadline.

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