The Opium War, generally taken as the opening event of Chinas modern history, has cynical Chinese patriots and ashamed devoted Westerners for more than a century. In mainland China it is used today not only as indication of firmly established Western immorality, but precisely as proof of the Marxist-Leninist principle that free-enterprise capitalism leads to hostile imperialism which allies with conservative feudalism to the expense of the common people everywhere. The modern Chinese sense of complaint over the war is reinforced by the obvious facts that opium smoking was harmful and that Commissioner Lins effort to repress the opium trade was the instantaneous event for battle.It would be hard to invent a more unmistakable and intelligible, black and white, story of Chinese victimization than the data of history seem to represent. In contrast, the wrongs suffered by the American colonists, who led them to rebel against British oppression, sink into lack of importance. Indeed, the question is inescapable: why was the Chinese reaction to the opium evil not more powerful?The inquiring philosopher finds the Opium War less starkly black and white. He may have concluded that the Anglo-Chinese armed conflict would have occurred, whether there was opium trade or not. The Western powers would have aggressed against China even if Britain had not, and that Chinese patriot today would have a sense of complaint even if Sino-Westerners relations had avoided warfare. These suppositions ensue from the fundamental fact that Chinese civilization had developed its own unique ways, distinct from Western ways, but that by 1840 it had lost the power to sustain itself vis--vis the expanding west. The rule of a million or so Manchus over some 300 million Chinese was a symptom of the institutional distinctiveness of the Chinese Empire. Which made it behave quite differently from a modern nation-state. The China of today, where a late-maturing patriotism now ...
