There are days when the state media in China just can’t help drunkenly staggering along that fine line between “self” and “self parody.”
Few events from the 19th century have such a grip on Chinese indignation as the Opium Wars of 1840-1842. In PRC historiography, the unequal treaties forced upon the Qing government at the end of the war mark both the start of the modern era and a “century of humiliation.” Patriotic education, media, and movies reinforce this emotionally charged linkage of drugs, violence, and forced submission in the collective consciousness
Most recently, British protests over the 2009 execution of Akmal Shaikh, a Briton convicted of smuggling drugs into China, sparked a strong backlash with few commentators failing to take up the flag of resistance against a modern opium war.
Last Friday, the People’s Daily Online edition (中文) brought opium into the digital age. CMP provides this translation:
In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the British East India Company, through the monopolization of trade, the sale of opium and open plunder, accomplished great works for England in its development of an “empire on which the sun never sets.” Marx once said concerning the British East India