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The Opium Wars brought China to its knees, from which it is only now recovering. I'm surprised that the leaders of the US aren't more worried about this.

mac01021 9y ago
Only now? Can you elaborate?
- anovikov 9y ago
  Probably he meant that China went from being a top #1 economy in the world by a huge margin when the opioid epidemic began there, and it has just recently became #1 again, so far by a small margin. That sounds about right. They lost ca. 200 years. Of course explaining that by opioids alone would be balancing between a huge oversimplification and a plain lie, but at least opioids have been the biggest single factor.
  - Banthum 9y ago
    Just because they fell in the rankings doesn't mean they actually lost anything. E.g. Another way for a country to lose the #1 economy spot is for it to simply stay the same while other nations (e.g. Europe in this case) make huge advances. Being fair, a few other things happened in there too. I don't think that during the communists' Cultural Revolution the country was primarily being held back by opiod abuse.
    - anovikov 9y ago
      In a way it was. Majority of population were just off the drugs, and most kids who became 'red guards' - they were born in China's darkest days - had prenatal drug problem so they were kinda mentally impaired which caused most or all that shit. If such a relatively innocent thing as inhaling lead vapours from suddenly omnipresent cars in 1960s and 1970s could cause a 1980s-1990s crime wave in the U.S., it is easy to see what putting whole nation on opioids could do with the next generation.
- PakG1 9y ago
  China's Century of Humiliation started on the eve of the opium war. The current Chinese government has a goal to never let China ever experience anything like that ever again. I visited their museum of Chinese history in Xian, really eye opening about how this thought drives almost ALL of their foreign and domestic policy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation The Century of Humiliation started them on a road of weakness that took several revolutions to figure out how to stop. Only with Deng Xiaoping in the 80s did China begin to find its stride, and only now are they starting to finally become a world power that the world needs to reckon with instead of ignore. Whatever you think of politics and philosophies, China is now considered a world power in a way it never has been before.
- tim333 9y ago
  The opium wars were from 1839 to 1860. If you check out this graph of Chinese percentage of global GDP since 1000AD, it started dropping from about 30% to <10% around the time of the wars and started recovering around 1970 but still isn't back to where they used to be. You could argue us brits owe them a few trillion in damages. In the scheme of a 1000 years of history you could argue 1970 counts as only now perhaps. https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/mis-charting-economic-history https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/mis-ch...
oskarth 9y ago
The president seems fairly worried about it. (Or does he not count?) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40891691 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40891691
- rando444 9y ago
  He says he wants to spend money on it, but judging by the types of people he's put into positions that have no qualifications to be there, it's hard to see his future intentions as anything more than funneling money to people connected to him. The one thing that the US has consistently shown recently is for every state that has legalized or decriminalized/medicinal marijuana, opioid abuse and related deaths have plummeted, yet we have trump trying to crack down on this emerging trend. So it's just more of say one thing but do another.
- snovv_crash 9y ago
  Saying "we'll spend a lot of time, effort and money" is very different from actually doing something, for example restricting their sales/production to 5% of the current levels. Opioids are prescribed to 1/3 of the population at the moment, and that doesn't even include the illegal usage. Can you imagine the neonatal issues, and the resultant repercussions of bringing up a whole generation of addicts?
ed78 9y ago
I don't think its just drugs. Take a look at this months natgeo cover story http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/the-addicted-brain/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/the-addic... They are basically saying porn, social media, the news hype cycle are all tied to dopamine increase in your brain. Its the same mechanisms that drugs, alcohol,cigs can produce.

mac01021 9y ago

Only now? Can you elaborate?

anovikov 9y ago
Probably he meant that China went from being a top #1 economy in the world by a huge margin when the opioid epidemic began there, and it has just recently became #1 again, so far by a small margin. That sounds about right. They lost ca. 200 years. Of course explaining that by opioids alone would be balancing between a huge oversimplification and a plain lie, but at least opioids have been the biggest single factor.
- Banthum 9y ago
  Just because they fell in the rankings doesn't mean they actually lost anything. E.g. Another way for a country to lose the #1 economy spot is for it to simply stay the same while other nations (e.g. Europe in this case) make huge advances. Being fair, a few other things happened in there too. I don't think that during the communists' Cultural Revolution the country was primarily being held back by opiod abuse.
  - anovikov 9y ago
    In a way it was. Majority of population were just off the drugs, and most kids who became 'red guards' - they were born in China's darkest days - had prenatal drug problem so they were kinda mentally impaired which caused most or all that shit. If such a relatively innocent thing as inhaling lead vapours from suddenly omnipresent cars in 1960s and 1970s could cause a 1980s-1990s crime wave in the U.S., it is easy to see what putting whole nation on opioids could do with the next generation.
PakG1 9y ago
China's Century of Humiliation started on the eve of the opium war. The current Chinese government has a goal to never let China ever experience anything like that ever again. I visited their museum of Chinese history in Xian, really eye opening about how this thought drives almost ALL of their foreign and domestic policy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation The Century of Humiliation started them on a road of weakness that took several revolutions to figure out how to stop. Only with Deng Xiaoping in the 80s did China begin to find its stride, and only now are they starting to finally become a world power that the world needs to reckon with instead of ignore. Whatever you think of politics and philosophies, China is now considered a world power in a way it never has been before.
tim333 9y ago
The opium wars were from 1839 to 1860. If you check out this graph of Chinese percentage of global GDP since 1000AD, it started dropping from about 30% to <10% around the time of the wars and started recovering around 1970 but still isn't back to where they used to be. You could argue us brits owe them a few trillion in damages. In the scheme of a 1000 years of history you could argue 1970 counts as only now perhaps. https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/mis-charting-economic-history https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/mis-ch...

oskarth 9y ago

The president seems fairly worried about it. (Or does he not count?) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40891691 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40891691

rando444 9y ago
He says he wants to spend money on it, but judging by the types of people he's put into positions that have no qualifications to be there, it's hard to see his future intentions as anything more than funneling money to people connected to him. The one thing that the US has consistently shown recently is for every state that has legalized or decriminalized/medicinal marijuana, opioid abuse and related deaths have plummeted, yet we have trump trying to crack down on this emerging trend. So it's just more of say one thing but do another.
snovv_crash 9y ago
Saying "we'll spend a lot of time, effort and money" is very different from actually doing something, for example restricting their sales/production to 5% of the current levels. Opioids are prescribed to 1/3 of the population at the moment, and that doesn't even include the illegal usage. Can you imagine the neonatal issues, and the resultant repercussions of bringing up a whole generation of addicts?

ed78 9y ago

I don't think its just drugs. Take a look at this months natgeo cover story http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/the-addicted-brain/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/the-addic... They are basically saying porn, social media, the news hype cycle are all tied to dopamine increase in your brain. Its the same mechanisms that drugs, alcohol,cigs can produce.