This is all tied together even more closely than that. Consider that from the beginning of the European China trade, the only reliable good that westerners coul

This is all tied together even more closely than that. Consider that from the beginning of the European China trade, the only reliable good that westerners could exchange for silk, tea, porcelain, etc was silver. An enormous fraction of the silver mined in Potosi and Mexico wound up in the hands of Cantonese merchants and Manchu officials eventually, by way of Manilla, Macao and Hong Kong. While Britain lost her colonies in the new world, Spain was facing her own troubles with her colonies, and many of the long productive mines started playing out in addition. So the silver specie supply grew tighter in the 19th century, and more expensive to sustain. Conversely, in China, all this influx of Mexican dollars was distorting the currency - there was a bimetallic system where ordinary coinage was used everyday, but silver bullion or ingots were used for larger transactions, like taxes, set in so many ounces of silver. The cash price of silver floated on the market rate, and farmers changed cash or produce for silver to pay taxes. All that silver made silver cheap, right until the start of the opium trade. Then the flows reversed, and China became an exporter of silver. Tax rates set in silver remained the same, however, while the exchange rate became increasingly expensive. This impoverished many Chinese small farmers, and Manchu banner garrisons, and contributed to the waves of revolt that nearly tore the Qing state apart, most notably the Taiping Rebellion.