George Walden: Before Preaching, Remember the Opium Wars
[George Walden’s book China: A Wolf in the World? is published by Gibson Square Books. He was a diplomat in Beijing in 1966-69.]
Collecting calligraphy in China during the Cultural Revolution, I found some by Commissioner Lin Zexu, governor of Canton in the early 19th century when Britain and others were booting the country about.
A cultivated man with a bold and vigorous script, he remains a hero to the Chinese to this day, one of the few incorruptible civil servants in a period when his country was in a state of political dissolution and moral meltdown, not least through the soaring consumption of opium.
After tipping our opium stocks in Canton into the Pearl River (that we pushed drugs in China partly to pay for imports of their tea gives this a nice Bostonian touch) the commissioner went straight to the source of the problem.
A letter he sent to Queen Victoria read: “It is said that the smoking of opium is forbidden in your country, the proof that you are clearly aware of its harm. Since you do not permit opium to harm your own country you should not allow it to be passed on to other countries, certainly not to the Central States [China].
“Of all the products that the Central States exports ... there is not a single item that is not beneficial to the people ... Has any article from the Central States done any harm to foreign countries?”
Certainly not the tea, silk and porcelain that Her Majesty consumed in some quantities. Such a pity our moralising Queen does not appear to have seen the letter.
It wasn’t just the lower classes that Lin was worried about: opium helped to stupefy the minds and to dissipate the energies of an already decadent elite, weakening China further in the face of the foreign challenge. So the merciless treatment of Akmal Shaikh, the British citizen executed yesterday for smuggling 4kg of heroin, is rather more than another instance of China’s lack of delicate feeling towards criminals, home- grown or foreign.
Few in China have forgotten the past. A statement issued by the Chinese Embassy yesterday said that the “strong resentment” felt by the Chinese public against drug traffickers was the product of “the bitter memory of history”. Paranoid as it seems, many a Chinese official still believes that, after ransacking the country in the imperialist age, the West today will stoop to anything to impede it from finally taking its rightful place as a — or, as they hope, the — global power.
Nonetheless, my hunch is that Shaikh might have been reprieved if we had kept the pressure intense but out of sight. Democracies don’t work that way, however, so China found itself on the spot over a subject where historical memories could hardly be more poisoned, or more vivid.
What should we do now? For the people who seriously suggested that we station a nuclear submarine off Hong Kong to keep British the colony that we acquired through the Opium Wars, there’s no problem. When it comes to post-imperialist posturing our latter-day Palmerstons have a thing about China and the Chinese, just as the Victorians did:
John Chinaman a rogue is born The laws of truth he holds in scorn About as great a brute as can Encumber the Earth is John Chinaman.
So wrote Punch at about the time we were foisting drugs on the Chinese brutes, and sending gunboats if they resisted.
What we should do is make our disgust known vigorously, bilaterally and in international forums, while keeping our part in China’s history in mind, on the assumption that we want to understand a power that already touches all our lives, and will affect them more. We should also keep a keen eye on China’s overall direction — of which the fate of a heroin mule is not necessarily a symbol...
Read entire article at Times (UK)
Collecting calligraphy in China during the Cultural Revolution, I found some by Commissioner Lin Zexu, governor of Canton in the early 19th century when Britain and others were booting the country about.
A cultivated man with a bold and vigorous script, he remains a hero to the Chinese to this day, one of the few incorruptible civil servants in a period when his country was in a state of political dissolution and moral meltdown, not least through the soaring consumption of opium.
After tipping our opium stocks in Canton into the Pearl River (that we pushed drugs in China partly to pay for imports of their tea gives this a nice Bostonian touch) the commissioner went straight to the source of the problem.
A letter he sent to Queen Victoria read: “It is said that the smoking of opium is forbidden in your country, the proof that you are clearly aware of its harm. Since you do not permit opium to harm your own country you should not allow it to be passed on to other countries, certainly not to the Central States [China].
“Of all the products that the Central States exports ... there is not a single item that is not beneficial to the people ... Has any article from the Central States done any harm to foreign countries?”
Certainly not the tea, silk and porcelain that Her Majesty consumed in some quantities. Such a pity our moralising Queen does not appear to have seen the letter.
It wasn’t just the lower classes that Lin was worried about: opium helped to stupefy the minds and to dissipate the energies of an already decadent elite, weakening China further in the face of the foreign challenge. So the merciless treatment of Akmal Shaikh, the British citizen executed yesterday for smuggling 4kg of heroin, is rather more than another instance of China’s lack of delicate feeling towards criminals, home- grown or foreign.
Few in China have forgotten the past. A statement issued by the Chinese Embassy yesterday said that the “strong resentment” felt by the Chinese public against drug traffickers was the product of “the bitter memory of history”. Paranoid as it seems, many a Chinese official still believes that, after ransacking the country in the imperialist age, the West today will stoop to anything to impede it from finally taking its rightful place as a — or, as they hope, the — global power.
Nonetheless, my hunch is that Shaikh might have been reprieved if we had kept the pressure intense but out of sight. Democracies don’t work that way, however, so China found itself on the spot over a subject where historical memories could hardly be more poisoned, or more vivid.
What should we do now? For the people who seriously suggested that we station a nuclear submarine off Hong Kong to keep British the colony that we acquired through the Opium Wars, there’s no problem. When it comes to post-imperialist posturing our latter-day Palmerstons have a thing about China and the Chinese, just as the Victorians did:
John Chinaman a rogue is born The laws of truth he holds in scorn About as great a brute as can Encumber the Earth is John Chinaman.
So wrote Punch at about the time we were foisting drugs on the Chinese brutes, and sending gunboats if they resisted.
What we should do is make our disgust known vigorously, bilaterally and in international forums, while keeping our part in China’s history in mind, on the assumption that we want to understand a power that already touches all our lives, and will affect them more. We should also keep a keen eye on China’s overall direction — of which the fate of a heroin mule is not necessarily a symbol...