6 ms·

Fascinating. It seems like the British people thirst helped China rise.

beaunative 6y ago
and its demise
Synaesthesia 6y ago
I would say the British and the West in general suppressed China for over a century and it only started to rise after attaining independence in 1947
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  China did not gain its independence in 1947. China has never been run by a foreign country (though the Japanese came the closest by occupying large parts of it during WW2).
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Would you say the same about East Germany (GDR)?
  - rypskar 6y ago
    Thing you are forgetting about the Mongols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_China
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      Well, in that case the Qing (Manchurians) themselves would be consider foreign conquerors, the ones in control of China during the 1800s. Ghengis Khan was also born in what is today Inner Mongolia of the PRC. After some time, it doesn’t make much sense to think about what it is to be under occupation by a foreign invader or not.
  - Synaesthesia 6y ago
    China was largely colonised and occupied by western powers for about a century leading up to 1947.
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      It wasn’t. A few coastal cities were colonized (HK, Dalian, Qingdao, Xiamen, Tianjin, Shanghai), but China is huge and that went nowhere near the qualification for “largely”. Also, in all of these cases, only parts of the cities were considered concessions (eg an island of Xiamen), not the entire city.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  I'd say the Qing dynasty played a bigger role in suppressing China. An interesting comparison in East Asia is how Japan and China responded to European colonialism. Japan quickly modernized its society after overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate during the Meiji revolution and became an industrialized nation-state in a few decades. Qing China dragged its feet on industrialization and spent a lot of its energy on political intrigue between reformers and conservatives, wasting valuable decades until it was too late. Most people think of the first Opium war as the start of Qing China's decline, but I'd say the real crippling blow was the Taiping rebellion that came a few years afterwards. The Taiping rebellion revealed the biggest flaw that was crippling Qing China's political system, that it was had a monarchy made of an ethnic minority Manchus ruling a majority Han nation. The Manchu nobility only survived the Taiping rebellion by negotiating with conservative Han warlords and using them to recruit enough Han soldiers to put down the other Han rebels, but after the Taiping rebellion the Qing dynasty had no good options. If you modernize too quickly, you take away the privileges of those conservative warlords and risk having them support another rebellion with the majority of the population. If you modernize slowly or not at all, you get to keep playing the game for a few more decades until Japan overtakes you. Compare that to Japan's experience with the Meiji restoration. They quickly overthrew the conservative Tokugawa shogunate, then eliminated the remaining conservative factions by crushing the Satsuma Rebellion. Then Japan could continue with industrialization without worrying about the resulting political instability that could result from conservative power structures being uprooted by modernization.
- closeparen 6y ago
  Is Colombia suppressing the United States? Should we double down on the drug war to win our independence?
  - jbay808 6y ago
    If Colombia responded by carpet bombing American port cities into submission, then it would be a fair comparison. That said, it's possible that the opium wars get too much credit for China's weakened position, relative to the Taiping Rebellion (Chinese civil war) which claimed around 20 million lives, comparable to the first world war. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
  - joshuaissac 6y ago
    Colombia is not invading the United States to force it to legalise recreational drug imports, so no, it is not suppressing the US. There is no parallel in this case with what happened between China and the UK.

and its demise

I would say the British and the West in general suppressed China for over a century and it only started to rise after attaining independence in 1947

seanmcdirmid 6y ago
China did not gain its independence in 1947. China has never been run by a foreign country (though the Japanese came the closest by occupying large parts of it during WW2).
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Would you say the same about East Germany (GDR)?
- rypskar 6y ago
  Thing you are forgetting about the Mongols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_China
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    Well, in that case the Qing (Manchurians) themselves would be consider foreign conquerors, the ones in control of China during the 1800s. Ghengis Khan was also born in what is today Inner Mongolia of the PRC. After some time, it doesn’t make much sense to think about what it is to be under occupation by a foreign invader or not.
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  China was largely colonised and occupied by western powers for about a century leading up to 1947.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    It wasn’t. A few coastal cities were colonized (HK, Dalian, Qingdao, Xiamen, Tianjin, Shanghai), but China is huge and that went nowhere near the qualification for “largely”. Also, in all of these cases, only parts of the cities were considered concessions (eg an island of Xiamen), not the entire city.
magicsmoke 6y ago
I'd say the Qing dynasty played a bigger role in suppressing China. An interesting comparison in East Asia is how Japan and China responded to European colonialism. Japan quickly modernized its society after overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate during the Meiji revolution and became an industrialized nation-state in a few decades. Qing China dragged its feet on industrialization and spent a lot of its energy on political intrigue between reformers and conservatives, wasting valuable decades until it was too late. Most people think of the first Opium war as the start of Qing China's decline, but I'd say the real crippling blow was the Taiping rebellion that came a few years afterwards. The Taiping rebellion revealed the biggest flaw that was crippling Qing China's political system, that it was had a monarchy made of an ethnic minority Manchus ruling a majority Han nation. The Manchu nobility only survived the Taiping rebellion by negotiating with conservative Han warlords and using them to recruit enough Han soldiers to put down the other Han rebels, but after the Taiping rebellion the Qing dynasty had no good options. If you modernize too quickly, you take away the privileges of those conservative warlords and risk having them support another rebellion with the majority of the population. If you modernize slowly or not at all, you get to keep playing the game for a few more decades until Japan overtakes you. Compare that to Japan's experience with the Meiji restoration. They quickly overthrew the conservative Tokugawa shogunate, then eliminated the remaining conservative factions by crushing the Satsuma Rebellion. Then Japan could continue with industrialization without worrying about the resulting political instability that could result from conservative power structures being uprooted by modernization.
closeparen 6y ago
Is Colombia suppressing the United States? Should we double down on the drug war to win our independence?
- jbay808 6y ago
  If Colombia responded by carpet bombing American port cities into submission, then it would be a fair comparison. That said, it's possible that the opium wars get too much credit for China's weakened position, relative to the Taiping Rebellion (Chinese civil war) which claimed around 20 million lives, comparable to the first world war. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  Colombia is not invading the United States to force it to legalise recreational drug imports, so no, it is not suppressing the US. There is no parallel in this case with what happened between China and the UK.