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.