The China tea trade was a paradox of global capitalism
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A similar logistic marvel was the transport of ice from North America and Europe — this wasn’t a business where industrial scale was the primary complexity, but a challenge of supply-chain construction in an age without local refrigeration and cooling.
The article’s joining of “capitalism” and “industrialisation” is, in my opinion, a narrowing of reality that naively ignores all the other contexts in which capitalism has been quite successful. Large ships are capital intensive, mercantilism in general has been a long-term, capital intensive business far longer than industry has been.
Then it would negate modern History, specifically in regards to the collapse of the Soviet Union, wherein a country with 100s of ICBs with nuclear warheads, warehouses churning out AK47s and ammunition surplus that still are being exported to this day (Viktor Anatolyevich Bout), tanks and war ships in such quantities that they'd trade Pepsi for them [1]! And still end up destitute, with a plutocracy and a massively disenfranchised population both at home as well as much of the former satellite nations.
Capital investment is best spent on a sound currency, strong local manufacturing base and a strong legal system to protect both from corruption as well as the Human rights of its populations; unfortunately no nation Western or Eastern seems intent on doing that... like ever in History. Thus proving that Humanity is not capable of not giving into the intoxication of ending mutually beneficial collaboration with others for extended periods of Time in exchange 'for more of their share.' It may occur for short windows, but so long as a Human entity remains in charge of those aspects of Civilization it will always succumb to the same avarice and corruption regardless of whatever the rhetoric is espoused of National Brotherhood or Patriotic duty. Hence the argument for currencies and economic models outside the control of centralized systems like Governments.
I'm sure many of you are seeing visions of Westworld or Psycho pass type dystopias but I'm convinced there is a middle ground between the two we just haven't been able to arrive to due to constant conflicts, and endless wars that drain the World of Human capital and technological resources best used for this end.
But I also find it funny how some of Elon Musk's, an openly declared Utopian Anarchist, biggest proponents haven't realized the fact that all of his and Kimbal's businesses are aimed to help establish a colony on Mars where he has gone on record to say one of the biggest reasons to do so it try and re-do all of this non-sense on Earth with a blank slate canvas approach, and this is the extreme one has to go to do it.
People keep accepting that War with China is inevitable, as it were some unavoidable deterministic outcome, but I disagree and have hope that Humanity can come to reason and refuse to participate. War is never in anyone's best interest, I really wish that we'd have learned that by now.
1: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-pepsi-briefly-became-the...
In the West (and in ex-Soviet countries now) when you see an obvious gap in the market that you can provide a solution for you can start a business to do that. During Soviet times you could complain to the government and that was more or less it.
That is to say, I don't think the Soviet Union's lack of wealth is necessarily a strong counterargument to the weapons-as-investment idea.
Its population was and is, some are so much so they opine the former Soviet Union where it seemed to most that all were on equal terms because of this. Especially when they see the stark contrast of the oligarch's wealth in Moscow.
> That is to say, I don't think the Soviet Union's lack of wealth is necessarily a strong counterargument to the weapons-as-investment idea.
Well, then there is no appeasing you based on reason or logic then, because that example concretely shows how that met the criteria yet still failed as a nation-state, one that has real consequences to this day: eg Crimea annexation.
It gets more complicated when you look at where the money went. The U.S. built up a massive global navy to control commerce and the shipping lanes. Meanwhile, the Soviets focused large on the European theater and ultimately could not compete with the U.S. Navy.
Eventually you wind up considering a philosophical question about money, especially modern fiat currency, where there is a big question about why we continue to value it the way we do. Sure, we have all agreed on some common exchange rate for goods using it, but this is backed by the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government". It can be argued that faith and credit is ultimately backed by the war machine behind it.
Even in older times, if you traded in a currency, and you had to go collect a debt in that currency from another nation, what are you going to use to collect it? Angry letters? No, you're going to send the military.
The same goes for China in the American controlled world.
The reason the Soviet Union did not have access to global commerce is that they spent inordinate amounts of money telling everybody how they would destroy their countries, had a communist party controlled by Moscow in every country, were refusing to pay Russian debt and were questioning the concept of private property.
Russia neither had the sea ports or the shipping industry or the international partners to control commercial trade. I am sure they would have loved to do so.
> Sure, we have all agreed on some common exchange rate for goods using it, but this is backed by the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government". It can be argued that faith and credit is ultimately backed by the war machine behind it.
It is not backed by the war machine, but rather by the Federal reserve controlling its supply, or at least the effect of its supply in the market and by the US economy as a whole. To some extend that economy is secured by a military, but even if 90% of the US military went away tomorrow, the $ would not lose its value.
The $ would lose its value if China decided to blockade the US from international trade and destroy its economy, but we are pretty far into the world of hypothetical and ignoring nukes besides.
Britain controlled global trade with small % of its budget, and an even smaller % of the budget of the whole empire. The US could do so to, but for political reasons it spends like crazy on the military, but that does not make the most of the military necessary to keep up the value of the $.
The crux of my argument is that a nations currency is only as good as the gun behind it. Do you think the European powers after WW2 would have even gone along with the Bretton Woods agreement without the U.S. having been the first nuclear power? France in particular did not want to go along with it, referred to it as America's "exorbitant privilege", then proceeded making nuclear weapons a national priority. Then in 1965, Charles De Gaulle sent the French Navy to the U.S. to pick up the French gold reserves. This lead, along with other factors, to the Nixon Shock and ending the gold peg.
There are numerous historical examples. When you run a global empire, even a benevolent one, you still have to enforce it. Otherwise, you're just left with worthless pieces of paper.
As an aside, the Soviet Union didn't actually trade tanks and war ships for Pepsi. Well, I mean, technically they did but not in the way people might assume when they read the sentence trading Pepsi for war ships.
Pepsi became nominally the owner of a derelict fleet headed to the scrap yard in 1989 as a way to bypass the Soviet Union lack of dollars. The Swedish scrap yard then directly paid Pepsi.
> And still end up destitute,
Capitalism doesn't guarantee returns. There are winners and losers on the big gambles.
> Capital investment is best spent on a sound currency, strong local manufacturing base and a strong legal system to protect both from corruption as well as the Human rights of its populations; unfortunately no nation Western or Eastern seems intent on doing that... like ever in History.
This is pretty much what every single western country has done.
Can you argue that they didn't do it perfectly. Sure, but what the are you comparing it to? Some perfect utopia. Everything falls short to that.
Your assertions fly directly in the face of the existence of you having a computer that you are typing that on.
The British government has existed for arguable 100s of years, would you call that a short time? Since about 1700-1800 they had about 2% growth per year.
> I'm sure many of you are seeing visions of Westworld or Psycho pass type dystopias but I'm convinced there is a middle ground between the two we just haven't been able to arrive to due to constant conflicts, and endless wars that drain the World of Human capital and technological resources best used for this end.
Wars now are in fact less common then at any time in history, and that includes the casualties of war.
By any actual look at the numbers war was never less frequent and human prosperity never higher. I really don't understand the pessimism that western elites seem to believe in so strongly (I'm assuming you are part of a western elite).
> But I also find it funny how some of Elon Musk's, an openly declared Utopian Anarchist,
Can you give me a source on that? Asked about his political views he said he was socially liberal, economically conservative.
He seems to me to be more of a libertarian type, certainty not a left anarchist or even an anarcho-capitalist.
> biggest proponents haven't realized the fact that all of his and Kimbal's businesses are aimed to help establish a colony on Mars where he has gone on record to say one of the biggest reasons to do so it try and re-do all of this non-sense on Earth with a blank slate canvas approach, and this is the extreme one has to go to do it.
He has said about 100x more often that in general having a backup in case of extinction level that is gone happen is 100% on a long enough time scale. He has also said that separation often lends itself to experimentation with social structure, but he made those comments based on historical knowledge.
We know that is happens like that, I don't think he said that in a Utopian spirit.
> People keep accepting that War with China is inevitable
I certainty don't.
His own words:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1008120904759402501
He certainly went off on a Anarchist tirade on his earning's call, and his stance on Alameda County.
> This is pretty much what every single western country has done.
By inflating the currency until absolute oblivion? I will admit that the State has done so at a time when overall prosperity has increased by orders of magnitude for a large segment of the Species, but that's more consequential than it is a direct causation.
Me having a computer has nothing to do with how the US has lost 90+% of its worth since 1913 when it was severed from the Gold standard and its monetary policy. And more to do with the risks taken by Market participants to drive the price to an accessible level for me, the end consumer. I'd wax on Market dynamics but to be honest that would take an entire other conversation and today is Crew Dragon flight test!
But just so it's clear, I think PM are a relic of 18th Century thinking and that money has evolved by orders of magnitude since then.
> We know that is happens like that, I don't think he said that in a Utopian spirit.
I was just watching the 3rd row podcast and saw Todd behave surprised when he only realized that even Kimbal's Square Roots was built specifically for the intent for Food production on Mars.
However, if others see the 'opportunity' and also participate in that market, profits decline until your income can barely cover production costs.
Have a look at the quality of life of the Soviet Union. They spent everything on weapons with a very limited return on investment.
On the other hand, Guns Germs and Steel argues that the military competition within Europe has led to western dominance. From that perspective, investing in weapons leads to huge profits even if short term returns are very low.
The "Triumph of the West" by Roberts has a more compelling thesis - that Western culture is more favorable towards new ideas and new ways of doing things. We see this as country after country discards the old ways and adopts western culture.
I don't understand the rationality, wouldn't your thesis mean that other countries which are supposedly more closed won't abandon their ways? With what I know about history, western culture doesn't seem more prone than others to incorporate other cultures. We can find evidently countless examples of western culture adapting to new ideas and foreign cultures, but only seems special if we ignore the rest of the cultures doing the same.
Sometimes you'll see countries violently reject western culture and return to their old ways, but it's a losing game for them.
I think the construction of nuclear weapons post-1950s are an example of a successful hedge, wherein machines of war were invested in, but never caused destruction. To your point, though, it is definitely an interesting and worthy data point if the proposed thesis is being pursued.
This is very likely. An example of a war investment that panned out over time was the Manhattan project. One that did not would be something like the Maginot line. At some point, it's just an investment with no guarantee on return.
From somewhere around the War of Spanish Succession until probably the Napoleonic War there were huge changes in military technology/organisation, and the ones who innovated fastest ended up winning (also, guns were one of the first products to be manufactured in a factory system...so there were spillovers). There was, of course, innovation after but this period was when the modern military really took shape.
However, it is also probably true that the military was often an output of economic strength, not a technological input (in the way that we might think of technology/knowledge today). A big reason why there was military innovation was because of the huge growth in govt borrowing and creation of financial markets in the 18th century. So you saw countries start to take power that could innovate financially (i.e. Dutch Republic, Spain) and then you saw these countries implode when they couldn't keep pace with France and Britain (France is kind of tricky because they frequently imploded through the 18/19th century, always making a miracle comeback...usually through dint of having such a huge population i.e. Napoleonic Wars).
To give a concrete example: one part of British dominance was the Navy (which was in part a technological advantage), another part was their ability to subsidise pretty much every other country in Europe to fight France...there isn't really one without the other.
In terms of the 20th century, it is probably true as well. Like Britain in the 19th century, the US has kind of guaranteed security and freedom of trade around the world...and to do this you need to have the resources to bash some heads every once in a while (and btw, the US has done this in a far less evil way by seeding multilateral institutions). And, as you know, that investment is the reason why we have Silicon Valley so there are definitely spillovers from military tech still.
Pretty meandering answer but there are quite a few threads here because the military has never been easy to separate from the rest of the economy.
1% of your budget into the military is probably a great investment for many countries, some countries maybe up 2-3% and when you are higher then that you either need very great reasons, or you are probably doing something stupid.
Britain controlled the world trade with small % of its budget and with a tiny % amount of the whole imperial trade size.
I would argue their success was precisely because the didn't need gigantic military to reach their aims. An part of that is to have reasonable aims in the first place.
Iraq and US military spending is case and point, Iraq was a both a strategic disaster and a very expensive one. If you didn't have the aim of remaking the whole middle east, you would need that much spending.
Germany before WW1 is a great example of spending lots of money on stupid aims. They invested in a fleet that was utterly useless and was directly opposed to what their aims should have been.
No amount of military spending by itself gets you anything, only military spending combined with great strategy focused on your particular nation can be great investment.
They also got involved tactically, even someone like Palmerston who was an interventionist didn't intervene before the point when it was necessary. And a lot of the direct military intervention was to secure trade in countries where you had a gun, and the enemy had a spear. So they really maximised what they spent in a way that others couldn't.
Compare this to France, who probably spent the most on military, if war breaks out then they don't have a choice...you are getting invaded. Britain didn't need a big standing army (and really didn't have one until WW1).
Also, whilst British expenditures were small relative to budget (I don't know this but assuming you are correct), it was still very difficult for anyone to catch up until the late 19th century because their economy was so much larger.
Germany invested in a fleet because they, correctly, concluded that the only way to beat Britain was their navy. France tried the exact same thing in the mid 18th century, they were actually predominant for a short period, but they imploded financially (this was pre-Napoleonic, although they obviously tried to rebuild with Napoleon).
I think the issue for Germany was their economic strength was kind of shaky (they were still a largely agricultural economy until the 1960s) and there was no scenario in which they wouldn't need to spend heavily on the army as well.
But it wasn't useless or opposed to what their aims should have been. War started, they got blockaded almost instantly (just like France in the Seven Years War), and that crippled them. So I don't think there was any easy answer (there was no way in which they were going to avoid war either).
I am not sure I said military spending by itself is valuable...but I don't think it is.
The invested in a navy because the Kaiser was gelly of his cousin, so he promoted the people who wanted a big navy and used his power to get it. That would absolutely not have happened without the Kaisers personal opinion.
Many in Germany thought it was an idiotic idea and it was.
It was simply bad strategy, bad decision making against the strategic interest of Germany.
First of all, a Navy that is can operate in the North Sea is basically spending crazy amounts of money and saying publicly, "We build this to destroy Britain".
Second, they knew they could not out-build Britain, so trying would be utterly useless. And as it turned out, it was utterly useless when the war started.
If that is not bad strategy then nothing is.
> I think the issue for Germany was their economic strength was kind of shaky
That is not necessary a negative, they were very elite economically by WW1, but Britain could still cut their supply. Without that they would have been unbeatable.
> But it wasn't useless or opposed to what their aims should have been.
Yes it was. German had no strategic conflict with Britain, outside of a few people stuck in the last century who still believed that Germany need to create a colloquial empire.
Britain was perfectly happy with German economic growth and the British dominated world had nothing but advantages for Germany. Germany was increasingly surrounded by 2 strong powers and thought 'Great idea, lets do everything we can to get even more enemies'.
Britain was the natural enemy of Russia, by far the most dangerous enemy for Germany. There was a huge amount of common interest between Britain and Germany with regards to policy in the East.
Its only historically bad diplomacy on a level that boggles the mind that Britain ended up fighting on the side of Russia.
> War started, they got blockaded almost instantly (just like France in the Seven Years War), and that crippled them.
Yes and all the money they invest in a navy helped them how exactly?
And btw, the got blocked because their idiotic generals had the totally wrong believe that invading Belgium was a great idea.
Again, from the time Willy takes over, Germany foreign policy is just historically terrible and misguided. And its a real battle between the generals, the foreign office and the Kaiser himself who makes dumber moves. When Bismark left Germany was in a historically strong position in Europe, 20 years later the next 3 powerful states were against at them.
not buying tea from the chinese with them.
I think, in understating socioeconomic dynamics of this portion of the trade, you overstate the impressiveness of the rest. The British forcefully drugged an entire country and then compelled it in this weakened state towards its model of an economic monoculture. They didn't so much build their own advantage as tear down China's. In that light, one has to wonder the character of the trade in terms of its benefits for the populations involved and civilization as a whole. The imperialist regard for trade and diplomacy alike lead directly to multiple devastating wars, and the distortion of the economic model in vassal states arguable retarded resource cultivation (outside if what was useful for Europe) and encouraged bloody revolutions that further warped society in these regions.
Taking the long view, it's possible that these "marvels" of global trade were actually examples of colossal mismanagement of resources on a grand scale.
Also, the Chinese invented opium and the British didn’t introduce the opium dens, they used that a a a vector to massively increase supply that the Qing restricted before. That doesn’t by any means absolve they west, but it doesn’t absolve the Qing dynasty either, Empress Cixi was quite the villain in China’s decline herself.
The key thesis for me is that this was the local optimum for British control of the tea trade, and I would say Asia writ large. Controlling the source of opium in a local-ish way gave them an easier time moving it to China, while also allowing them to extract additional wealth from their previous conquests in Asia. In a meta sense, it may be very inefficient, but I’m less convinced that from a British perspective it was at all sub-optimal. Their input costs were primarily capitalistic: Ships, guns, bribes.
This is where the marvel comes from, the magnitude with which Europe successfully extracted grand value out of Asia (Just as it had previously done with Africa, South America, and North America to varying degrees). Upon reflection, it is so extractive that it seems slightly misleading to even levy it in discussion as trade.
I think my contention is that how narrowly scoped this extraction is belies the alternative, of broader-based capital development which might have produced greater value in the long run. It seems impressive, because it fed the imperial machine in an extremely lucrative manner for the empire; however, what happens when you factor in the value extracted from Britain by the 20th century's wars, resulting in a rapid decline to present circumstances? The British Empire was incredibly short-lived compared to its predecessors, depending on how you look at it. Is this part of a trend? Possibly. But there's room to conceptualize the situation as one of optimizing towards catastrophe, of the entire enterprise being wrongheaded on balance, and of an alternative approach - one which doesn't strip mine non-European civilization, leaving existing structures not to collapse so violently, with ramifications to the present day - being "better" because the knock-on effects might have been less destructive.
Would Mao's purge of intellectuals have happened in a world where Britain's appetite for wealth extraction had been less voracious or narrowly-focused? Would we today be reaping the rewards of Chinese academia emerging from the mid-century intact?
I mean, in a sense, it's impressive what the modern war "trade" bankrolls. 200-300 years from now, will we characterize the military-industrial complex as eliciting the same sort of sense of awe, in its complexity but basic effectiveness in maintaining hegemony and access to resources crucial for the unprecedented build-up of global wealth since the 1950s?
It may be comforting to think in such simplistic black and white terms, but they weren't giving it away for free! Chinese traders gladly swapped tea for opium since there was huge Chinese demand. In fact opium production in China during this time skyrocketed, becoming far larger than imports by the end of the century. You may argue that it was immoral for the British to sell opium into China and I won't disagree, but the real reason Chinese authorities wanted to stop opium imports was simply protectionism (even though it was technically illicit). They wanted to protect the prices of opium produced internally and they were very happy for their own people to be drugged on their own supply.
The opium trade is notable for being one of the only times in recorded history when China had a negative balance of trade.
I have a quibble with the headline writer (which actually relates to the above): that capitalism didn’t arise without “factories”: as the article shows, the tea production process would have been perfectly clear to Adam Smith. It was simply low tech (and the article is quite clear about this). In addition, though “factory” today means manufacturing, in the early days of European empires, the “factory” was the warehouse where goods were stored and financed (factoring accounts receivable is still common today). The factories of the Bombay Presidency were the first effective toehold of British expansion into India. Over time value add (labor/processing) crept into those warehouses as the goods were already there, leading to today’s meaning. The author seems to understand this so it’s only whoever wrote the headline that I am criticizing.
* apologies for the accidental tea metaphor
It does raise a good question as to what exactly was meant by "capitalism". All the freely-optimising workers mentioned in the story definitely existed within a more feudal system of land management.
I'm pleased that it mentioned the Opium War, even in passing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20582387
- ed
Might help if I posted the right URL!
https://aeon.co/essays/potosi-the-mountain-of-silver-that-wa...
And yes, farming was subsidized by Washington.
but yes, it's unclear if soybeans are still the top export from the US to china, but china is apparently still the top export destination for american soybeans.
Many local economies (sugar in Jamaica, cow meat in South Africa) could not compete with this practices and went bankrupt.
https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/Dumping_on_the_Poor...
Yes, subsidies suck, production is not always as efficient as it can be and there's a political aspect to subsidies. But food insecurity sucks more. And no, outsourcing everything won't work.
But if you can't compete with agricultural produce done with higher labour cost and with freight on top there's something very wrong with your means of production. Because I can assure you most 3rd world countries don't need to import sugar or beef.
But hey now the UK farmer's won't have the big bad EU subsidies and tariffs anymore so I guess it will work all good for them, no?
Isn't the point that EU agricultural surpluses are being dumped in undeveloped economies below cost? You can't compete on price against free (to exaggerate a bit).
As I understand it, the EU subsidizes agriculture in order to ensure an overabundant food supply (and because of the political agricultural lobby). This may be a completely fine policy, because you don't want there to be famine if something goes slightly wrong.
These subsidies lead to overproduction. Some of the surplus is dumped in foreign markets at prices that are well below cost. Farmers in undeveloped countries cannot compete on price. Since undeveloped countries depend more heavily on agriculture, this has an outsize impact on their economies.
Yes, but you would still have the transportation costs on top of them. Which depending on the product is not so cheap.
It seems the policies and subsidies change with time as well and some of the overproduction was used by the EU in humanitarian programs as well.
It definitely seems to be a politicized topic and I definitely don't think it is without problems.
But saying it costs "16GBP per week per each family in increased food costs" is a misrepresentation at the most charitable interpretation. Feel free to compare supermarket prices of unprocessed products (with comparable quality)
First of all, the US has EXCELLENT land for farming, the idea that all food production would be outsourced without subsidies is the kind of nonsense that lobbies make up to scare people who don't understand a shred of farming or economics. You act like the US is Saudi Arabia or something.
The US will have sufficient food security and significant food export without subsidies. Specially if something happened to the international food market.
In New Zealand they massively cut farm subsidies and everybody expected farming to basically collapse as an industry, now they have the most effective agriculture sector in the world.
In Colombia that very wrong thing is called Monsanto and its lobby.
Yeah, that's a whole container filled with pallets of cans of corn-fed worms
Soy bean exports are basically a proxy for pork, since exported soy is primarily used in animal feed.
The Dutch British Empires started as companies. Nationally backed, but shareholder owned and employee run.
In any case, the lynchpin to all this trade had to be something that had value at home.. where the ships ultimately returned.
The Spanish and other empires before the Dutch & British sought gold directly. Steal it, Buy it, Mine it... Doesn't matter. This was, broadly "mercantilism." Get Gold. Bring it Home.
Adam Smith noted a century earlier that this wouldn't work. Gold has no inherent value. I think Smith was wrong on the margin, but right on the bigger point. The gold did have value. Kings could use it to raise armies, for example. The Spanish monarchy was always trying to fill its war chest. But, gold didn't fuel a trading cycle. Consumer goods & industrial materials did.
Anyway... my point is that whatever happened in between leaving London ports and returning, they were returning with goods... not gold. They may have been trading gunpowder for slaves, to be sold in the colonies and exchanged for cotton. They may have traded for spices in India. When the ships returned, they returned with goods. Tea & spices were luxury goods, that beneficiaries of the empire could enjoy. This is important, because it balanced consumption with revenue and created a cycle. Tea sippers had money because they owned shares. Revenue flowed to The Company from tea sipper. The Company used that revenue to keep bringing tea (also cotton & indigo for the mills and other luxury goods like spices). The market was secured (to an extent) by rising share values.
When a spanish ship returned with gold, someone had gold, probably the king, probably for war. When a British ship returned, someone paid gold for tea, to The Company, to fund more trade.
Early/mid 19C, with metal-backed currencies, as most of the circulating Silver had ended up there, it was deemed necessary to reverse that flow.
The Opium wars began, to get all the silver back.
I think westerners underappreciate the salience of these events in the chinese worldview.
And which Colony was established by treaty with the chinese defeat ?
Hong Kong.
https://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/trading/story/trade/4...
The period of the opium wars saw China stripped piece by piece and, indeed, that is having consequences to this day.
The events within China were ongoing and had their roots in the 18th and 19th centuries, as per previous comments, and they are still ongoing.
Japan had invaded in earnest in 1937. That in itself was a consequence of what had been going on for more than a century in both Japan and China. WWII's impact is that suddenly the US was happy to help the RoC and even the communists against Japan. The US did shorten the Japanese invasion of China but I don't think Japan could have prevailed anyway because they were to swallow too much.
Then the US supported Korea and Japan in the aftermath of WWII in their global play against communism and the USSR but that did not have much impact on China.
China is the natural and historical super-power in (East) Asia and there is nothing the US can do for or against that on any relevant historical timescale.
What WWII did is making the US the main power in East Asia. That's neo-imperialism, really, and again linked to the temporary weakness of China. This can be useful for some countries in order to balance Chinese influence but, again, in the long run the overwhelming power will remain China. However one looks at it a 300 million people country on the other side of the world cannot outdo a 1.4 billion country next door in the long run.
I was simply commenting on the trade. What made them different was, in some sense, macroeconomic. By bringing goods home, these trade empires were generating feedback loops. Gold wealth (or share wealth, as is relevant in this context) was spent on goods, in a process that created more of it... Not more of it in the world, necessarily. More of it in London and Amsterdam.
As you say, europe had been importing asian luxury goods since forever. The trade routes were old before Rome was young, as they say.
At the end there, are you implying something salient about the current HK crisis?
Given it was recommended to me on HN, I’ll pass on the recommendation in kind for anyone wishing to learn more about some of the context surrounding this. Really a quite different world with respect to power balances and, as has been noted in this thread, a cornerstone of the Chinese worldview.
"The lopsided British victory in the first Opium War (1839-42) inaugurated what is known today in China as the ‘century of humiliation’.... Only with the rise and victory of the Communist Party in 1949, the nationalist lore goes, could the original shame of military defeat and colonialism be redeemed."
so in effect, british imperialism, through a coerced opium trade, pushed china from capitalism to communism.
"...and he did, because you did, because his parents, and your parents, because America, because England, because ancient Rome, because primordial ooze."
While you can model the world like this, one of the issues is often determining the "first mover", as it is hard to reasonable assert that the complexities of our world are primarily caused by primordial ooze. To continue the reduction, someone could come and say "Because a molten earth" after "Because primordial ooze" and there isn't necessarily grounds to refute that if the "Because primordial ooze" point was accepted.
That's too crude an analysis. The Qing dynasty was hidebound and in long decline, the feudal system was breaking down, and the communists were only one faction fighting in the civil war. During WWII the nationalists were provided training, support and materiel by the US; the communists received the same from the Soviets.
The Opium War was merely one in a chain of events, and far from the most proximal.
for instance, the US spent most of the 20th century vilifying communism/socialism, going to war, invading other countries, and undermining independent states through all manner of subterfuge. do you really think it's that far-fetched that those experiences pushed china away from the kind of budding capitalism described in the article?
certainly open to debate, but not summary dismissal.
The British never controlled China anywhere near the degree they controlled, say, India. Their presence didn't penetrate beyond the coastal provinces (you can see this in that the Chinese presence in other British colonies was largely Cantonese/Fujianese). Even Japan never managed to control more than a section of the country.
The Chinese civil war is legitimately (not euphemistically) referred to as a civil war: Elites battling for control as the center weakened.
I'll agree that the use of the British as a propaganda foil was somewhat effective, and legitimately pointed out atrocities and unfair treatment by all the foreign powers involved. But the value of that propaganda (still effective today) was disproportionate to the actual influence. Nothing wrong with that by the way: state building always involves such propaganda.
By contrast you can see that Britain fully controlled the Indian economy (though for many people lower down on the feudal hierarchy the British were merely one part of the control system, essentially trading one prince for another). And, like China, Britain was one in a punctuated string of foreign invaders who displaced the remnants of a fading prior system. "Indian" identity was more a construct of the educated upper classes who were able, in the 20th century, to eject the British.
the british didn't need to control china in any degree for this to happen. just some greed at the wrong time, in the wrong manner.
I tried to remember what book I read this in but can't at the moment, but more or less the British were not the most happy about the balance of power status of the pacific after the pacific war (especially after losing naval balance of power in the Atlantic also), so while America was supplying and financing CKS, the British (post-WWII) started at first quietly supporting Mao and then later being one of the first governments to officially recognize and then supply Mao. At least partly a planned Asian type of strategy of tension with Stalin in the northern regions of Mongolia, etc. (they had planned to perhaps let the KMT have a sliver of the south)
The reason the British hated CKS and KMT was because they were the heirs of Sun Yat-sen's anti-colonialist movement that sought modern economic development and because of pragmatic or what others might call Machiavellian strategic reasons for not wanting the US to completely dominate the pacific and Asia (which an American friendly nationalist would have made more likely). Interestingly enough, I view the Korean war (police action) as just an extension of this (Cambridge5/6) but I'll leave that for some other time and/or place.
You forgot to mention WHY the opium trade happened. China was exporting tea, silk and porcelain like there is no tomorrow and at the same time had accumulated the majority of the world silver reserves since they did not want to buy anything, therefore chocking the world economy. Then the British said, wait, we have something that you want to buy!
The British did not have a power to manufacture demand in China and in fact could not place personnel in China. British opium was smuggled into China by Chinese merchants.
besides, the british didn't need to be in the interior of china en masse to induce demand.
Its not like England had this huge imperial stockpile of opium laying around that they went out to find a buyer for. The opium supply grew because there was demand.
The nature of drugs is that supply also induces some demand, but the idea that the British had some masterplan to get the China hooked on Opium is kind of conspiracy theory nonsense. Capitalism responds to market prices and the limits of the market regulations enforced on them.
So is it OK to export to banned drugs in the UK if there is demand for them, or if demand arises?
I think that term was coined to describe the EIC.
What is the indian or chinese equivalent to "The Fox and the Crane"?
To be sure, I do think selling Opium is a moral thing to do, but my point is that this is not government policy, but merchants seeing a demand and responding to it. Only when China Imperial Government comes in and destroyed British stores, do this escalate to a national level conflict.
I think it was stupid for the Britain to start a war over it to be sure.
China had been purchasing opium abroad from other countries for several centuries. The importation of opium was banned in the 1700s, but opium was still legal for sale in China. The effect was that foreigners were barred from participating in the business. Chinese merchants smuggled British opium into China and sold it as Chinese opium.
Chinese people definitely wanted British opium and Chinese merchants definitely wanted to sell it to them. If opium had been illegal, you might have a point; but it was legal for sale in China until 1799.
> Chinese people definitely wanted British opium and Chinese merchants definitely wanted to sell it to them.
As in the Americans want substances banned by their federal government, and Escobar and others definitely wanted to sell it to them?
Will that justify another country dumping those in America?
Opium is the obvious case.
China made opium trade and cultivation illegal in 1799.
So what? The fourty years after that still saw the British smuggle in opium against the wishes of the Chinese empire, eventually declaring war for the right to deal drugs.
That China had some opium use without British influence doesn't mean the British did not manufacture a demand for it. They massively reduced the price of an addictive substance, making it available to a whole new market.
That China had some opium use without British influence doesn't mean the British did not manufacture a demand for it.
We can't take it as given, without proof that the British did manufacture a demand for it. This is a form of "argument from ignorance". Lowering prices is not manufacturing demand. How could the British have manufactured demand, if they could not even enter China outside of Hong Kong?
We know that the British increased poppy cultivation and manufactured a monopoly on opium for the purpose of export to China. Without it, I don't see how the Chinese demand would grow at the level it did. I have no idea what "proof" would be, an alternate world without British interference?
>How could the British have manufactured demand, if they could not even enter China outside of Hong Kong?
Guessing you meant Canton here, by smuggling/buying off locals.
Having a monopoly on opium doesn't make people want more of it. Smuggling doesn't make more of it, either. What you're describing are both forms of taking control of supply, and don't speak to demand.
When one supplier takes control of supply, that doesn't generally lead to lower prices; but expanding production -- which the British did -- certainly can.
“China is a sleeping lion. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world.”
He was trying to warn the Europeans to not destroy the good thing that they had going with China: Trade and Commerce.
Sadly, the British were too corrupt and greedy, and they had to destroy it.
Yes, of cause. I did not point it out explicit. I am also not surprised nor do I care that my post got downvoted.
"Useless to talk with someone where the hint of an idea is not sufficient" Gomez da Vila.
It is all pretty well explained in "The rise and fall of great powers" by Kennedy or "On China" by Kissinger.
I think it is mentioned in "On China" that, when they saw an army steam ship heading upwards a river in the war they realized, the west had something they should have bought: Technology and weapons.
LOL. You’ve gotta admit, that the British are total scumbags for thinking this.
How does this logic serve your moral goals? Hey, let’s get a bunch of Chinese peasants addicted to drugs, and then we will supply them that drug. Profit!
You’ve got to admit that the British has lost any moral standing for doing such things.
Easy steps:
1. Get foreigners addicted to drugs
2. Supply them with drugs, and make it legal to operate there.
3. Meanwhile, the drug is illegal in Britain.
4. Profit
"Prior to 1916, there were no restrictions on the possession and use of cocaine, opium and other psychoactive drugs in Britain; the Poisons and Pharmacy Act of 1908 stipulated only that pharmacists had to have been introduced to prospective buyers by someone known to them, and must record their names and addresses in a poisons register."
http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/body-and-mind/drugs-and-do...
I don't think that British traders selling opium to Chinese buyers in the 1800s was inherently more deplorable than Canadians selling liquor to Americans during Prohibition. What was deplorable about the Opium Wars and the Prohibition era gangs was the use of violence. If it had just been the era of Opium Smuggling instead of the Opium Wars I wouldn't fault Britain's behavior. But Britain did, deplorably, use military force when Chinese authorities prohibited and confiscated imported opium. That was inexcusable.
An Communist don't just 'take over' a huge amount of things, happened to get to that point.
To draw a straight line between these two things is just reading history knowing the result and then declaring it deterministic.
Any potentially history of China would have run into their own weakness eventually, no matter what Britain did, modern ideas would invade the country, no matter what Britain did Japan was rising already, no matter what Britain did, WW2 would have happened anyway. There is no alternative history where China remains idyllic pre-modern empire in the modern world.
And the 100 year timeline doesn't really add up, after the Communist Party took over they were not exactly powerful and absolutely destroyed the country without outside influence for while, only when they eventually embraced modern capitalistic principles did they truly emerge from their weakness.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23302410
The end of the Canton System after the first Opium War doesn't have any bearing on what the economics were like in the time that preceded it.
That root comment is sharing an interesting tidbit from the article, which is about the Chinese economy during the "Century of Humiliation."
The post is a reaction to the article, describing how the tea trade led to a capitalist system which later fell to Communism. There's no ambiguity.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-china-tea-trade-was-a-paradox-of-...
I agree with this sentiment. China in a vacuum would be more open than it ended up. Having to deal with bad-faith/dangerous neighbors would make you a more controlling parent as well.
Both Opium Wars combined only led to a few thousand casualties; compare that to, say, the Taiping Rebellion, which was a contemporary event (1850s and 60s) and led to somewhere between 10 and 30 million dead overall, per Wikipedia. At some points, whole provinces were controlled by the Taiping. Compared to that, the Opium Wars just looked like an annoyance by some foreign pirates.
It was only later, when it became clear how technologically behind China really was, and when nationalism surged after the fall of the Empire, that the Opium Wars began to seem hugely important. And after the Communists took over in 1949, they vastly inflated the significance in retrospect in order to drive the narrative that the CCP had rescued China.
My wife is from China and came up through their educational system. She barely remembered the Taiping Rebellion, and had no idea what it had been about or how many people had died as a result. But she knew _individual artworks_ that had been stolen by the invaders from the Summer Palace. That's a bit crazy.
And realize that this is the running excuse given by Western nations, in order to delegitimize China, and to cover up the Western nations’ own historical moral failings.
After all, why bother to admit that you f‘ed up, when you can easily blame someone else? Easy, just blame China for their own stupidity and inferiority in losing the Opium Wars to the superior white people.
After the Opium War 1, China was effectively a puppet government under the British. But, after the Opium War 2, it was completely a puppet government, under all the western countries (including the United States).
Why? Because the Chinese authorities were under house arrest. The western countries stationed their military outside the imperial palace.
Did you even know about this?
The westerners, as kind as they were, gave the Chinese authorities a democratic choice. 1) Enforce our edicts and pay our ransom, or 2) We will kill all of you on the spot.
Hah! So what choice do you really have?
The sole purpose of the Western nations were to drug the Chinese population, in order to extract maximum profit.
The Taiping Rebellion was the result of foreign control of China. The Chinese peasants were sick of being treated as human scum by the foreign white powers.
Imagine black African slavery in the United States, but this time, the Chinese slaves actually revolted, in their attempt to throw out the white people.
So in America, the whites enslaved the blacks for labor. While in China, the whites enslaved the Chinese, as drug addicts, in order to extract maximum profit from them.
And not surprisingly, this bit of historical perspective is not taught or even discussed in any western textbook.
Ahh.. let’s just brush our [westerners] bad behavior of the past, under the rugs. It happened a long time ago, let’s just forget about it, ok?
I didn't say anything like that. It turned out that China was technologically backwards, but they also just didn't care that much about the Opium Wars. I...don't know how you got from what I said that I thought it was because of racial superiority.
...And then you then go on to suggest that with a bunch of traders, a couple gunships, and 10k troops, white people were able to enslave and subjugate (in secret!) the entire Chinese Empire, which was at the time the largest and richest empire on earth? Who has a warped perspective of the capabilities of white people?
> After the Opium War 1, China was effectively a puppet government under the British.
Citation very much needed. They allowed some British presence in Beijing for the very first time. That made the Empire a puppet?
> Why? Because the Chinese authorities were under house arrest. The western countries stationed their military outside the imperial palace.
Yeah, the Chinese were strong-armed into allowing foreign access to their markets. It was a bit of a shock.
> The sole purpose of the Western nations were to drug the Chinese population, in order to extract maximum profit.
At the peak of the British opium trade, something like 80% of opium in China was locally sourced.
Western nations traded opium with China because it was the most valuable black-market commodity for which they had a supply. The Emperor refused to trade officially, so Westerners resorted to the black market.
> The Taiping Rebellion was the result of foreign control of China. The Chinese peasants were sick of being treated as human scum by the foreign white powers.
White people had access to a small handful of cities, on the Yangtze and Yellow rivers and on the coast. In those cities, they had zones where they effectively governed, but outside of that they had no real power. 99% of the Chinese population never saw a white person. The Taiping rebellion was related to Western presence, but it was absolutely not a reaction to abuse by white people.
> Ahh.. let’s just brush our [westerners] bad behavior of the past, under the rugs. It happened a long time ago, let’s just forget about it, ok?
Westerners did some shit in China. I mean, the Opium Wars were seriously morally bankrupt, they just weren't that significant from a contemporary Chinese perspective. I'm not trying to brush it under the rug, just to put it in perspective.
But there doesn't seem to an intelligence service worth it's salt in the imperial palace at the time.
Didn't china learn to get it's navy together after the largest pirate empire in the history of the world forced it to capitulate? So the woman that ran it could retire.
But, there is no lack of study into China pre-Industrial Revolution or the period mentioned by the author. This was maybe true when Landes was writing (the author picks the leading culprit of Eurocentric economic history...this is somewhat inaccurate, Landes just didn't know much about China but his books are valuable) but isn't true anymore.
There is a huge volume of books comparing China and Europe: Pomeranz is probably the best, there are many others. Many of these also look at India...Tirthankar Roy has some great stuff on Indian business history but India is also in Pomeranz (Great Divergence is by far the most important book here...it is huge).
So yeah: I would say that what the field is lacking a good bottom up history of Chinese business (say pre-1900) but documentation is tricky and there is a fairly complete top-down understanding of capitalism/how people worked/etc. anyway.
And just generally, I would actually say that most economic historians that look at this period don't actually look at Europe at all anymore...they almost solely focus on the integration of hinterlands into the capitalist global economy (I studied economic history in the UK...I did precisely no courses on UK/European economic history...in this period: Australia, the US, China, Caribbean/early US colonial...and all looking at the interactions that the author alludes too...talking about Eurocentrism is largely an anthropology student's meme of history students at this point) which was the most interesting trend in the period.
I'd argue that if you really want industrialization and you want it quick, capitalism will only slow you down.
You seem to mistake a market economy with capitalism, which are not the same thing. In the middle ages we had a barter economy and more or less a market economy. Nevertheless we dd not have capitalism.
Which pieces of the system described above don’t match up with capitalism?
Economic growth was also likely close to zero due to lack of energy resources. With no expected future growth you won't make any investments that bet on future growth. Capitalism also requires an external energy source like coal, gas, possibly nuclear since economic growth and wealth needs energy to be sustained. I have a paper about it, which calculates it in mW per dollar growth and mW per Dollar of wealth.
Edit: With me "having a paper" I mean on my data collection. It was not published by me.
I don't know a book in English out of my head that explains some inherent features of capitalism. Gail Tverberg does a pretty good job but she does not explain a lot of things, she just assumes that you are aware of some things:
"There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)" http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-stat...
Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt...
Partly relevant if you accept: 1. The need of growth in capitalism 2. That growth and energy consumption are interlinked:
Galactic-Scale Energy http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e...
The was one guy he wrote, I think it was in the HBR if I remember correctly, that he found that the US has more and more industrial output/GDP growth with fewer energy needs. This is not wrong but it is only true because the US outsources energy hungry productions to China. I actually emailed him with some data. Unfortunately he never replied.
It's true that the US effectively imports energy via foreign goods, but I don't think that effect accounts for all the decline in US energy consumption per capita.
Carbon dioxide emissions are an imperfect but (IMO) good-enough proxy for energy, since the world's energy supply is still dominated by fossil fuels. If the US counted imported goods toward its CO2 emissions, as of 2016 they would be 7.7% higher:
https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
Primary energy consumption per capita peaked in the US in 1978:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita?tab...
It was down to 79,056 kWh/capita as of 2015, compared to 98,139 kWh/capita in 1978. If you adjust the 2015 number up by 7.7% it's 85,143 kWh/capita -- not down as much, but still down. That's lower than the average for the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. (And China didn't really become an export powerhouse until after it joined the WTO in 2001.)
Not only this. Apple designs IPhones. iPhones are produced in China, some may be shipped to the US, some may be shipped to Europe. If you do this via HK, you basically pay zero Tax on the profits. This leads to:
1. High profitable US tech companies
2. Little tax revenues
3. As a side effect, the US and Europe have a trade deficit with China since an iPhone shipped to the US or Europe appears in the export balance sheet of China. There is a paper, I think from 2007 about this, that calls this "dark matter in accounting" https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878096
Based on google (it shows me a graph: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+energy+use+per+capita )
I would call the per captia consumption basically constant from the 80ies to 2008. After that is is shrinking.
Please also see:
Is it really possible to decouple GDP Growth from Energy Growth?
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/11/15/is-it-really-possible-...
EDIT: Added the link the the dark matter paper
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/what-is-peak-oil/
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/is-this-a-false-alarm/
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/08/06/peak-oil-whats-ahead/
Did she make more cautious predictions going forward, after making such badly failed predictions 13 years ago? If she did, I didn't see it. It looks like Our Finite World is still a drumbeat of predictions about crises just ahead. If she's eventually correct about a specific prediction it will be a case of the stopped clock showing the correct time by chance.
That doesn't mean that I'm unconditionally optimistic about the future. The "Galactic Scale Energy" post is exactly right. The problem is that constraints like "growth can't go on like this for another 1000 years, because of physics" can't provide much guidance for the next 15 years. And predictions from the Peak Oil crowd from 15 years ago about what would happen in 15 years were mostly wrong.
My personal take: after the 1960s, people basically stopped inventing more energy-intensive goods and services that could achieve mass market adoption. Jet air travel was the last big energy intensive service to reach the mainstream. The diffusion of energy-intensive lifestyles continued in the United States and is still diffusing throughout the world, so we're rushing toward a global warming disaster faster than ever. But GDP growth per capita in the developed countries has slowed. Energy consumption per capita in the developed countries has stabilized or reversed.
Small efficiency improvements in existing technologies accumulate without enough new energy-intensive technologies being invented to push up the per-capita demand from the median American. We are encountering the per capita "limits to growth" in highly developed nations but the limits showed up on the demand side before the supply side.
Global warming also -- and unfortunately -- seems unlikely to be curbed by supply-side fuel constraints any time soon, since we don't need any new energy-intensive technologies to blow out the global carbon budget. All we need for that is for the rest of the world's population to try to live like Americans circa 1990.
How sustainable the production of non conventional oil is, has to be seen, taking into account: costs of production and ROEI.
"And predictions from the Peak Oil crowd from 15 years ago about what would happen in 15 years were mostly wrong."
I am not sure about this either. The limits of growth projected the problems into the 1st half of the 21th century. This would end 2050, in 30 years. The questions is: Are the roller coaster oil prices and negative interest rates we are seeing the pre-curser of problems ahead or just a funny coincidence?
"My personal take: after the 1960s, people basically stopped inventing more energy-intensive goods and services that could achieve mass market adoption." This is wrong. Most people would like a flying car or a trip to the moon. Bitcoin consumes energy too.
This may be an overstatement: By 2040, computers will need more electricity than the world can generate
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/25/semiconductor_indus...
Please also consider jevons Paradox. A more efficient use of resources leads to faster depletion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
"We are encountering the per capita "limits to growth" in highly developed nations but the limits showed up on the demand side before the supply side"
I doubt that either. In this book scientists explain there most dangerous ideas: https://www.amazon.com/What-Your-Dangerous-Idea-Unthinkable/...
One idea was: Purpose of live is energy dissipation. Consequently, I remember a scientist saying, in what to look for in extraterrestrial live: Look for an entropy source.
Most people would like a flying car or a trip to the moon.
That's possible. But the technology to offer those to the mass market hasn't been invented! If the only problem with flying cars was that they burned a lot of fuel, millions of high-income people would be flying around in them today. I'm not saying that we can never invent more energy-intensive devices that reach the mass market. But I have observed that nothing like this has reached the mass market in 50 years. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for routine Moon vacations or flying cars.
I find that the Jevons paradox is cited more often in online discussions than it is understood. The Jevons paradox can be considered a special case of the energy rebound effect. Energy rebound is the tendency of people to use more of an energy service when that energy service can be supplied more efficiently. For example, replacing incandescent light bulbs with LED light bulbs saves energy, but some of that energy savings is negated if people also install brighter bulbs when they switch from incandescent to LED. The Jevons paradox is the unusual case where the rebound effect is greater than 100% -- like somebody installing 20 new LED lights for every incandescent they replace. It's remarkable enough to get its own named paradox because it is a surprising, rare situation. The far more common case is that energy saving technology really does save net energy, without inducing enough new demand for a 100%+ rebound.
[1] Is This a False Alarm? https://ourfiniteworld.com/2007/07/16/is-this-a-false-alarm/
The was a lot of Peak-Coal talk in 1800 Britain as well. Now they seem to have moved on to 'rare' earths (that aren't that actually rare).
They always excuse every individual wrong prediction with 'well this factor we couldn't predict and nobody could have' so we were right. No matter that that does not make sense and is exactly the point the other side makes.
The Club of Rome and the 'Population Bomb' are some of the most mainstream example. The author of the 'Population Bomb' was often on mainstream TV.
The 'Populationbomb' crowed for example wanted limit growth of population in India, and wanted to US government not to trade with them or help them with agriculture. Their logic was that millions were gone die anyway, not helping them might kill them sooner and that will limit growth, much more humane. There is a long history of that thinking.
The Club of Rome of course hilariously came back back and said 'we were actually right, juts off by multiple 100%'. Great, thanks guys, I'm defiantly gone listen to you now.
People who think in zero sum games will never understand how a non-zero sum game works. These are the most dangerous people in the world. The earth is not threatens by limited resource, but rather people who believe resources are limited. The biggest catastrophes of the modern happened because of people who believed in zero sum games.
Even if Jevons paradox were always true, there is no issue with growing energy use for the next couple 100 years, or even couple 1000s. There are plenty of energy sources around. As long as we have energy, food is not an issue either.
I wanted to link the Wikipedia page for Chinese foot binding, but last time I googled that my stomach turned by how disgusting bound feet look, to me at least. You will have to do the research yourself, sorry.
It's incredible how physical attractiveness is mostly a product of its time and culture.
The silk road was not Western, but represented (or real or mythical) a time a Asian (China to Middle East) golden age. There's a reason that "Belt and Road" is presented as building a new silk road.
To me, free market capitalism was invented in the 1700s, and is what sparked the Industrial Revolution, which is still going on.
> The Chinese tea trade actually represented China’s entry point into global capitalism. Tea was traded, directly and indirectly, for Patna opium, Peruvian silver, Caribbean sugar, English textiles and Burmese rice.
I think silk would qualify, over a thousand years prior, and being traded at least as far as the Roman Empire.
After some time, it doesn’t make much sense to think about what it is to be under occupation by a foreign invader or not.
Most people think of the first Opium war as the start of Qing China's decline, but I'd say the real crippling blow was the Taiping rebellion that came a few years afterwards. The Taiping rebellion revealed the biggest flaw that was crippling Qing China's political system, that it was had a monarchy made of an ethnic minority Manchus ruling a majority Han nation. The Manchu nobility only survived the Taiping rebellion by negotiating with conservative Han warlords and using them to recruit enough Han soldiers to put down the other Han rebels, but after the Taiping rebellion the Qing dynasty had no good options. If you modernize too quickly, you take away the privileges of those conservative warlords and risk having them support another rebellion with the majority of the population. If you modernize slowly or not at all, you get to keep playing the game for a few more decades until Japan overtakes you.
Compare that to Japan's experience with the Meiji restoration. They quickly overthrew the conservative Tokugawa shogunate, then eliminated the remaining conservative factions by crushing the Satsuma Rebellion. Then Japan could continue with industrialization without worrying about the resulting political instability that could result from conservative power structures being uprooted by modernization.
That said, it's possible that the opium wars get too much credit for China's weakened position, relative to the Taiping Rebellion (Chinese civil war) which claimed around 20 million lives, comparable to the first world war.