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
“And now, my beauties, something with poison in it, I think. With poison in it, but attractive to the eye, and soothing to the smell.” – Wicked Witch of the West, Wizard of Oz
At the risk of turning this into an opium blog — and really, Thomas de Quincey aside, where’s the harm in that? — I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention today’s diplomatic row over the power of a flower. As most readers know, it is custom among our British cousins to wear a poppy or poppy substitute on November 11 as a remembrance of those who perished in The Great War. Trouble happens though when you want to wear your ceremonial poppy into the Great Hall of the People; for you see, the Chinese have a different view of Brits bearing buds.* David Cameron and his entourage refused and the matter was dropped, but it presented an interesting clash of symbols. Lest anyone forget, the poppies are for all of the Allies who died in The War, including several thousand Chinese who gave their lives on the fields of Belgium and France.**
Nevertheless, I think most people can appreciate how — from a particular Chinese perspective —
This is a longish post…
A long time ago, self-congratulatory citizens and academics of Western Europe and the United States would explain the ludicrous assault on Qing Imperial sovereignty in the 19th century as the simple and sad story of the emperor who said no. Poor deluded Qianlong missed an opportunity to liberalize his trade policies and join the ‘comity of nations’ when he dismissed the noble, upstanding diplomat MacCartney with a sniff, a wave, and a haughty letter to His Royal Majesty King George III which boasted that, “Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its own borders. There was therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own products.”
Of course this narrative was a poppycock fairy tale to justify the armed expansion of trading and other privileges by the North Atlantic powers in the 19th century.
The Qianlong Emperor wasn’t declaring a new policy, rather he was describing an economic reality: The Qing Empire at the end of the 18th century was a continent-sized trading network of markets and hubs, mines, farms, plantations, factories, merchants, banks, guilds, and relatively sophisticated systems of finance and
This is the last of an informal three-part series on violence and historical memory in China. It wasn’t my original intention to write a series, but the past week or so has seen several anniversaries of great significance in Chinese history. Last week was the 110th anniversary of the Qing government’s tacit declaration of war against the foreigners during the Boxer Uprising of 1900; last Friday was the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War; and 170 years ago this week the British launched the first major offensive of the Opium War against the Qing Empire.
While there were land and naval skirmishes starting in 1839, it was on June 28, 1840 that an expeditionary force of 16 warships and about 4000 troops reached the China coast and began to bombard the area around Guangzhou before turning northward to other, less well protected, cities. The fleet took the island of Zhoushan and threatened Tianjin before the Qing court dispatched the Manchu official Qishan to parley with the British forces. Negotiations broke down and the war continued until finally the Treaty of Nanjing was signed by Qing officials — quite literally at gunpoint from British ships parked in the adjacent
Another classic attempt to “explain and understand” China from the CIA/NSC archives, this one is like some sort of unholy mash-up of John King Fairbank, Max Weber, Henry Luce, Edward Said, and the KMT propaganda department…but there is some useful archival footage as well as interviews with seminal American “China watchers” such as Theodore White and Pearl Buck. Huge h/t to my fellow historian G.T.
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