
The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West - farnsworthy
https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21732706-britain-and-china-see-each-other-through-narcotic-haze-opium-wars-still-shape
======
hokus
The most significant to me is that all the death destruction and suffering was
all to further enrich some 5ish rich dudes.

It is significant because this aspect of the west has not changed at all. Just
look how our historians are happy to attribute such acts to countries(!???)
Until we start attributing invasions to the people who wanted them, those who
organized them and those who profited from them this wont change.

Its at best inaccurate to state Britain wanted the war, Britain organized it
and Britain profited. At worst it is the very formula to keep at it.

~~~
fredley
I wonder how many rich dudes are at the top of the opiate pyramid in the US at
the moment, profiting from the current crisis.

It's not an attitude I've come across before—attributing these actions to
individuals rather than nations. It's certainly an interesting one.

~~~
gregpilling
[http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-
famil...](http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-family-
oxycontin/)

This family is at the top of the opiate pyramid.

~~~
yakitori
It's amazing how these greedy people destroyed millions of lives and they get
to live the life of luxury. Sell weed and you are a felon. Peddle addictive
opiates to the masses and destroy countless families, you get to be a
billionaire.

~~~
mmjaa
Drugs have been weaponised in the West. Both 'legal' and 'illegal' forms.

Drugs are one of the principle means of social control used by the power elite
to keep society malleable and repressed - truly. Both illegal - and legal -
drugs have their covert uses in this regard.

------
patrickg_zill
I am surprised that the article makes no mention of the many Chinese action
movies made that are set in the time period of the Opium Wars and that make
explicit reference to it.

Given that the film is made in China and received state support, it is not an
accident.

By the way the story of Baghdadi Jew, David Sassoon and his rise in prominence
as a result of profiting from the Opium War is quite interesting in itself.

~~~
3pt14159
I love foreign films. Any reasonably high brow recommendations?

~~~
faitswulff
"High brow" is generally not what you'll get in Hong Kong cinema. The director
Wong Kar Wai comes to mind, but I'm not sure if any of his movies are set in
the Opium War or hand-off eras.

For those eras, Once Upon a Time in China is pretty iconic to me.

------
wangii
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?

~~~
thomasahle
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.

~~~
mcguire
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.

~~~
eastWestMath
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.

~~~
Tsiklon
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...](http://attic.areavoices.com/2011/03/01/listen-
to-a-1954-interview-with-the-last-surviving-union-civil-war-vet/)

------
evolighting
But every country teaching their version of history. Opium Wars is truly what
change the Old China, force it open door which has long been closed.

The so-called Freedom was just bullshit, it only profits, that drive the war.

And I think the western world just never really understand the Chinese
people's way of thinking, nor do they care.And that's how this article comes
out.

------
realPubkey
This reminds me of the articles saying that germans like to use cash because
of the inflation 100y ago. It's just not true and likely being written by
someone who has never asked a single german/chinese.

~~~
ajmurmann
I'm German and hyperinflation is a very real fear of mine. Not even my parents
actually experienced that and I've not lived in the country on a decade, but
I've heard many stories about it growing up. Transgenerational trauma is a
very real thing.

~~~
germanier
I understand the fear (and it's often cited as a reason) but how does cash
help with that? If it comes to a hyperinflation it will be worthless – this is
exactly what happened last time.

~~~
hutzlibu
But before that there will be people trying to get cash out of the atm. And
those who have cash already have a slight advantage, when there is no more
cash at the atm because the bank went bankrupt.

But apart from that, it is more a psychological thing, I guess. Cash you can
hold in your hands, feels more safe than just some plastic card. So it is more
about feeling, than real security I think.

But there is also the privacy issue. Paying with cash is anonymous. This is
still a big thing and maybe the more important factor why cash is more
important in germany ...

------
oldpond
Flowers in the Blood is an excellent read for anyone interested in this bit of
history. [https://www.amazon.ca/Flowers-Blood-Story-Jeff-
Goldberg/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.ca/Flowers-Blood-Story-Jeff-
Goldberg/dp/1626365407/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1517671999&sr=8-10&keywords=flowers+blood)

------
ptx
> _Julia Lovell, a British historian, makes a similar point. In her book “The
> Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China”, she says the move into
> opium by British traders was not, as claimed by many Chinese historians, a
> deliberate conspiracy to make narcotic slaves of the Chinese. “It was a
> greedy, pragmatic response to a decline in sales of other British imports,”
> she writes._

Is there a name for this fallacy? It seems to come up a lot. I.e., when
someone takes an action that has enormous and predictable negative effects for
someone else and a comparatively tiny positive effect for themselves, they
then argue along the lines that "I was motivated by my gain, not by your loss
(even though I knew it would result from my action), so you have no right to
complain!"

In this case, it can be _both_ a "deliberate conspiracy" and a "pragmatic
response". They deliberately conspired to hurt the Chinese for profit, judging
their suffering to be a less important consideration than their own profits.

~~~
Spooky23
I call it nationalist denial. Or deliberate ignorance.

This type of nonsense is embedded in English accounts of the British Empire.
Variants of the “white man’s burden” and the sacred principles of the market
can be spun in all sorts of interesting ways.

The most galling example of this that I’m familiar with is the Irish famine.
Millions died of starvation in the midst of a record bumper crop for export.
The British justification for deliberate inaction was and for many still is a
mixture of denial, high minded debate about the role of government, and a deep
concern for keeping Irish wretches out of a cycle of dependency.

~~~
diego_moita
It bothers me that almost every nation in the world has a "big shame" but
probably the only people that faces, admits and owns their "big shame" are the
Germans.

Belgium still keeps statues of King Leopold, Spain keeps statues of Cortez and
Pisarro, Portugal of Vasco da Gama, the US is only now arguing about the
statues for Confederate soldiers; Italy, Poland and France never did a real
"mea culpa" on how they actually helped and collaborated with the Nazis,
Brazil and most of Latin America keep ignoring the ongoing extermination of
their natives, most Japanese try to avoid knowing what their country did in
Manchuria during WWII, Turkey keeps denying the Armenian genocide,...

~~~
rocqua
Us dutchies are decent on admitting our faults. I think we are pretty clear
about our mistakes in Indonesia, the biggest issue is probably the triangle
trade in slaves. This is not something we stand behind as far as I know,
though we still harken back to the times of the VOC as good because it was a
'golden age'.

~~~
sangnoir
> Us dutchies are decent on admitting our faults. I think we are pretty clear
> about our mistakes in Indonesia

I respectfully disagree. I've always thought of Dutchies as open-minded but I
remember reading a plaque at the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) that left my jaw on
the floor by being overly euphemistic. It was an exhibit of about 2-dozen
weapons symbolically surrendered by Indonesian leaders; the text was worded as
if it was a voluntary gift of their own volution. I thought a little self-
honesty would go a long way.

------
mcguire
" _Then, in revenge for the torture and killing of a group of British
negotiators by the Chinese,..._ "

Wait, what?

The Chinese weren't entirely the victims?

(Just seems a little out of place, given the rest of the article.)

~~~
Sniffnoy
Yes -- I'm not sure people quite appreciate just how serious a matter killing
a negotiator is: [https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/dont-shoot-
the...](https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/dont-shoot-the-
messenger/)

------
akhatri_aus
Yet its the same problem today that prompted the Opium Wars as back then: The
West buys more from China than China buys from The West.

Hopefully that colours the decisions made to rebalance the trade system.

~~~
dis-sys
> The West buys more from China than China buys from The West

because there are long list of high tech & military stuff that China is simply
not allowed to buy. it is so bad to the extent that Chinese are not allowed to
buy Intel Phi processors which many of your local computer shops allow you to
make orders.

Surely Chinese are interesting in buying America's advanced jet fighters,
missiles, submarines, aircraft carriers, satellites etc. On the non-military
side, how about super computers, space techs, laser, semiconductor techs,
optical fiber, high end composite materials. EU has very similar laws &
policies, nothing really different from the US.

~~~
adventured
> Surely Chinese are interesting in buying America's advanced jet fighters

China's interested in buying precisely one round of each thing. And thereafter
replacing it with their own. That's not a criticism, it's a fact of life in
dealing with China. They have zero interest in being dependent on any outside
nation more than absolutely necessary.

The things you list, wouldn't even remotely dent the trade deficits China
rings up. You're talking about $5 to $6 trillion per decade with the US and EU
combined.

Intel processors et al. are not going to fix that. There's absolutely nothing
that can plug a $600 billion per year hole with China (US+EU), realistically.
Energy exports (in the case of the US) is the only thing that could dent it.
The solution is to move more manufacturing away from China and rebalance that
large concentrated deficit with other nations in a distributed manner, and to
make more things domestically. That will happen naturally as China's wages &
costs continue to rise.

~~~
mcguire
True story: In the late '50s and '60s, the Parker pen company had a
manufacturing operation in China, making the Parker "51", a rather singular
design. At some point, it was abandoned by Parker and closed down.

Sometime later, a Chinese company named Hero took over the plant and machinery
and started making their own pens, including knock-offs of the "51" such as
the Hero 616 and 100, and leading to a fair sized industry of Chinese fountain
pens, many of which are very cheap to purchase apparently due to export
subsidies by the Chinese government.

------
ttscar
In 2018's city of London, I can see small sliver laugh gas bottles frequently
on the street, almost every day in my commuting - as Economist suggested, "by
then, smoking the drug had come to be viewed not so much as a bad habit
encouraged by the British."

Selectively telling the truth and always weirdly emphasis on Chinese
government makes me feel sick after reading. I guess that's the reason I
stopped its subscription long time ago.

------
jk2323
China had accumulated a lot of the world silver reserves by selling tons silk
and porcelain but buying basically nothing. Selling Opium to China "solved"
this problem.

Today the have the idea of exporting everything to the world and buy nothing
besides a few raw materials, creating a giant trade deficit. Let's see how it
ends.

~~~
lithos
They already bypassed much of this generation's "drug of choice" by making
foreign social media difficult.

~~~
westiseast
China has its own highly addictive social media.

------
vonnik
I think a more accurate headline would be "China's perception of the Opium
Wars shape its view of the West." Why were the Opium Wars fought? One
narrative says the Qing were trying to protect their population from the harms
of addiction. But it is also true that the Qing were concerned about the
outflow of silver, which was being used by Chinese merchants to buy opium, but
which had also become the base currency of the Chinese economy in the mid-19th
century. China was accumulating silver because it was selling more than it
bought (sound familiar?), and opium was one commodity that found demand on the
mainland.

------
ksec
Well, that is the same as The World War 2 still shape x's view of the X.

------
erikb
It is not true. It's just that politicians need official reasons to do what
they do. And it's a great thing to use historical reasons because nobody can
really counter them. Not a single Chinese person I know thinks about
Westerners as sources of the Opium Wars and therefore as enemies. The opinions
move between "West is so rich, let's be more like them" and "We are nearly
back to our old glory, now also learn some of our culture!"

~~~
tanilama
>> Westerners as sources of the Opium Wars and therefore as enemies

The article is not wrong. Opium war, in the official narrative of recent
Chinese history, is phrased as "the start of a hundred years of humiliation of
China". It is heavily focused event in middle school history class. It
definitely still shapes China in a lot of way, like the strictest drug
prohibition may be in the whole world.

In every day communication, it might not be significant, but it does have a
greater effect on a subconscious level, serving as foundation for regular
Chinese folk to perceive the relationship with West in general, which is
centered with invasion, humiliation, lose of sovereignty and the shame of
inferiority.

~~~
cousin_it
Not sure you're disagreeing with the grandparent. A belief can be deeply held
and a result of manipulation at the same time.

Russia has similar grievances against the West that are promoted on TV, and
people care strongly about them as a result. In the early 90s, when the
injuries were fresh, the TV deemphasized them and fewer people cared.

I've come to believe that when a government makes its citizens care about
foreign policy, that's usually a distraction from domestic problems. In
Russia's case it's corruption. Not sure about China.

------
colorincorrect
and rightfully so. under the guise of chinese-communism, the opium wars serves
as canonical example of the evils of western capitalism.

------
partycoder
The British empire invaded 9 out of 10 countries.

------
Feniks
History shapes culture who knew? America is still fighting the Civil War.

But the Chinese don't blame the West for the decline of China and the fall of
the empire. They blame the old corrupt elite. When Deng Xiaoping went abroad
in the 80s he did his damnedest to appear cultured and in control.

~~~
b6
> They blame the old corrupt elite.

Hmm, I hope that's true. But there's also the "century of humiliation" thing
going on, which, to my mind, is an attempt to divert blame away from China
itself (basically Mao -- the greatest enemy China ever had) toward outsiders.
I don't know to what degree people are buying it.

~~~
analyst74
You have to understand that Chinese culture is very inward-looking. All the
invasions, unless they end up ruling China like Mongolians and Manchurians,
are merely considered external forces not too different from natural
disasters.

Also, Chinese people don't see China as a single continuous entity like
outsiders do, so most of the blame shifting doesn't have to go toward outside
sources.

------
yakitori
It's really sad how little we are taught about the opium wars. It is easily
the most important war in the last 500 years. The wealth that was taken from
china as a result of the opium wars provided capital to britain and the US to
fund our industrial revolution. It altered the course of history.

One of the largest banks in the world ( HSBC ) was created in hong kong to
launder opium money from china. FDR's grandfather was Warren Delano, one of
the largest opium dealers in china. The opium money is what funded our
institution building in the 1800s. The universities, museums, hospitals, etc
were built with money from our opium dealers in china.

[http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/07/31/opium-boston-
his...](http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/07/31/opium-boston-history)

It is odd how much time we spend on ww1 and ww2 when neither war altered the
balance of power. The opium wars ended the "faux parity" that existed between
china and the west and it catapulted the anglosphere to the top.

We live in an anglo world ( formerly british led but now US led ) because of
the opium wars.

------
StudentStuff
Communism will win

~~~
ben_w
Communism, like libertarian capitalism, simplifies the human condition too
much to win in a pure form. Both have important lessons, neither is
sufficient.

At least, neither is sufficient for now; I can image fully automated luxury
space communism working, once AI is good enough.

~~~
dogma1138
A post scarcity society is likely to be inerently more libertarian than
communist, true post scarcity does not need a centrally managed economy.

Communism doesn’t simplify the human condition as much as it replaces it, the
scary part of communism isn’t the economy but the eradication of the self in
favor of a group identity.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Communism is not a centrally managed economy. It is an anarchistic form of
society with no state. You might be confusing it with socialism which is what
most states that are colloquially referred to as "Communist" really are.
Socialism is supposed to be a short term form of government for transitioning
to a communist society, but no real-world socialist state has made any
significant progress at transitioning to communism.

~~~
dogma1138
Communism is certainly is a centrally manged state owned economic system.

Under communism there is no individual ownership and the state owns all of the
means of production.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
That is absolutely incorrect. Communism has no private property, but also has
no state. You are thinking of socialism. That said, there are no large scale
examples of real-world communist societies, so it is for the most part purely
hypothetical, unlike socialism which has many real-world examples.

You may be confused because of all of the states where the main political
party is called the Communist party, but those states do not self-identify as
communist. They self-identify as socialist states that are in the process of
transitioning to communism.

~~~
dogma1138
I’m not confused because communism does not exists in a vacuum a communist
society will be a state.

The “abolishment” of the state under communism does not do so in practice but
rather in principle when everyone belongs to the state there is no state but
it’s an empty and meaningless starlet.

Communism also outside of some fringe Marxism and anarcho communism is not
anarchist at all but rather very centralized.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Communism is by definition stateless, so any society where a state exists is
not communism. You might say that this is impossible, and that would quite
possibly be right, which is why there is no real-world example of a communist
society.

I think the only way that it could possibly work is with post-scarcity or at
least much less scarcity that currently exists.

~~~
dogma1138
How do you call a group of people with an shared identity and sovereignty?

No real-world example is a coupout and a no true scottsman all in one.

The stateless part is not what you think it means it just means that the state
is not a separate entity to the individual mostly because individualism does
not exist the only thing that exists is the group. When everyone is equal then
there are no senators or presidents or mayors but everything is still
centralized so some governing body forms or it’s total anarchy.

But that doesn’t matter as long as not everyone is commmunist you would have a
communist and a none communist state unless due to the authoritarian nature of
communism the non communist group is annihilated.

If anything the core principals of communism are much more abhorrent than any
implementation of it we had so far.

------
Pica_soO
China history is a warning sign against centralism and the ability of humanity
to get stuck in loops, economic and culturally - where it from a ruling partys
point of view doesn't make sense to do anything to escape the loop.

Impressive is that china at least kept- enforced by the layout of the country,
a centralized state. At least it did not decay as much as the middle east or
africa - after reaching peak people.

~~~
erikb
This is so western propaganda boilerplate. What is the warning sign? China
lifted more people out of poverty than all other countries combined. Actually
the whole world is recognizing how centralism seems stronger than western
federalism, and many western populations complain about their governments
moving their power into a more and more centralized system.

Have you for instance seen how Philipines and Turkey have moved away from a
pro-western position?

~~~
adventured
> What is the warning sign?

In the span of about 12 years, China became the world's most indebted nation.
They have to accumulate about $4 trillion in debt annually to add $600 to $700
billion in GDP expansion, of which 1/3 to 2/5 goes just to paying for new debt
interest costs. That debt scenario keeps getting worse each year. Local
government defaults are a common discussion now, it's assumed they're going to
suffer vast bankruptcies all over the nation. In just the next five years,
they'll increase their already shocking pile of debt by another ~75% or so,
adding between $20 and $30 trillion in new debt.

> the whole world is recognizing how centralism seems stronger than western
> federalism

That's incorrect. The whole world, including China, has attempted to partially
emulate the developed nations of the West. China has gradually abandoned
Communism and shifted to a market based economy, as one example. Their former
system failed entirely, their shift to market based systems is an obvious
admission of that. That process continues. All the developed Western nations
have far superior standards of living at the median than China. The top
Western examples are four to five times higher than China, and that's before
accounting for the near total dearth of human rights in China. That gap is
even greater when it comes to the poor. In China ~250 million people are still
living on $3 per day or less.

------
hungerstrike
If you disagree, I'd love to hear what you know about it! Did Mao not come out
of Yale? Did he not have help from non-Chinese during his reign of terror?
What part do you think I got wrong? The conclusion?

Do you think "China" just shot up out of nowhere over the past 70 years
because they had cheap labor? No. Their power could not have been created
without the help of western nations. The most prolific mass murderer in the
world, Mao Zedong, came out of Yale. Once he came to power, he had all sorts
of help from non-Chinese.

The plot here is fairly simple and you can see it happening every day. China
is the model for a new world government that will be implemented after the USA
is wiped off the map. "Made in China" is the type of curse that the elite
globalists who run things like to give people. They've been telling people
what's going to happen for a long time and once it does happen, the people
will get exactly what they paid for.

~~~
boomboomsubban
"Came out of Yale" means one year running a magazine for the Yale associated
school in China? As for the Western support, I can't begin to guess what you
mean. My complete shot in the dark is some Western capitalists tried to make
money in China, as they already have a history of being fine with the death of
Chinese people to make money.

~~~
hungerstrike
Western governments leak military technology to China all the time. Clinton
was accused of giving them nuclear secrets. Israel has definitely given them
technology.

Regarding Maos time at Yale, you can read more about that here -
[http://www.mygen.com/users/ufo/Mao_was_a_Yale_Man.html](http://www.mygen.com/users/ufo/Mao_was_a_Yale_Man.html)

~~~
boomboomsubban
Your claim was they helped Mao during Mao's reign of terror. Clinton being
born in 46 and Israel being founded in 47 does make that impossible for me to
have guessed.

That source for Mao seems to be nearly exclusively drawing from seemingly
unrelated dead third party sources. One of them is the Church of the
Subgenius, a parody religion. And the only real link I can find them stating
is that they were both in one of the most populous cities of China.

~~~
hungerstrike
I didn't say that Clinton helped Mao. I said he helped China by selling them
nuclear secrets. Subgenius was also founded and membered by some extremely
intelligent folks so, so invoking them as just a parody religion doesn't do a
whole lot for me.

There is actually a mountain of evidence if you care to look. Without even
looking at specific peoples actions or associations _I know_ what is going on
because of history and because of how obvious it is. There's always a group
trying to rule the world. Heck Britain almost did it with fucking medieval
technology!

China was definitely not built up solely from within. There are powerful non-
Chinese globalists and banksters with strangleholds over many industries at
work here. I mean, do you think Chinese farmers are putting this technological
tyrannical monster of a government together? The Chinese people aren't doing
this to themselves. They are loving it right now though because it's like
1950's USA there and people are getting relatively rich.

ADDENDUM: Anyway, these are not fun ideas to have rattling around in your
head. I suggest not looking into it at all because there is absolutely nothing
that you could possibly do about it if there's any truth here. The big take
away that I got from my investigation is basically this: Live like there is no
tomorrow and make sure you're doing what you want to be doing every day. Enjoy
as much as possible! Let go of whatever bullshit that you can, because life is
short.

