It has not escaped anyone’s mind that China and the West are not currently on good terms, even though the two systems are intertwined. And no surprise that each side is accusing the other one of all the evils in the world. It is in this light that looking at the past can sometimes enlighten the present or help the future.
You may have heard of the Opium Wars which took place in the middle of the 19th century between China and Western powers, in particular England and France. It is very enlightening to read its details. The link below takes you to the Wikipedia story about it.
You see, historically China was an industrial land with a lot of beautiful things such as silk, porcelain, and all sorts of teas, and decorative artworks. They also did have some ‘heavy industry’ but they were more into ‘craftsmanship’. The problem with this was that the Europeans, especially the English, loved this stuff and much of the China-England trade was a deficit to England, for the Chinese just wanted silver from them and had no need for any of the other stuff from England!
England’s leaders, being resourceful, discovered that Opium from their Indian colonies (Bengal) can be very profitable if it is supplied in large quantities and smoked recreationally in China. Furthermore, since it caused addiction, it was a wonderful source of recurrent income. The British went for the ‘harvest’, while the Chinese went down the addiction path.
By 1830s the emperor realized what is happening and how the Chinese society is being devastated by Opium, so he banned the substance and seized the goods. “Sensible thing, you would say”, right? Well, England saw this act as an attack on its commerce privileges, attacked China in 1839 and defeated it. This was the first Opium war and resulted in a major transfer of wealth and power from China to England. And by the way, it was due to this loss that China had to hand over Hong Kong to England, so UK’s sovereignty over Hong Kong was actually “Drug Money”.
The addiction of the Chinese and the exploitation of China by England continued through the 1840s and early 1850s until the Chinese tried again to ban the drug. Thus came the second Opium war in 1853, with France this time adding its support to the UK. Surely enough, the West won again and thus continued China’s downfall until the Chinese revolution of 1949 took over with everything that we now know.
The bottom line is that the West became a consortium of drug smuggling nations to plunder China, and much of their gains in China were through getting the Chinese addicted to Opium. Somehow, that seems to be a criminal action, yet I do not recall reading about any apologies or recognition for wrongdoing from England or any other Western power.
I am not trying to justify anything China does these days, but before lecturing other nations, maybe countries like England should look inwards a bit and recognize their own crimes (of not long ago). And by the way, I was surprised to find out that Warren Delano Jr, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grandfather, made his initial wealth through selling (to not say 'smuggling') Opium from Turkey into China.
The Wikipedia text on Opium Wars
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
Paris, February 17, 2022
Zeejay