Every Chinese schoolchild knows that the modern drive for wealth and power is, at root, a means of avenging the Opium Wars and what followed. How the conflict is remembered still matters very much.
(The Economist, "Memories and Hallucinations")
Specifically, the Opium Wars can be said to be the biggest, the dirtiest and most shameless of drug wars in the world history of war.
(Peng Guanqian et al., China's National Defense, 5)
In 1840, the British Empire launched a rather unremarkable campaign against a poor and primitive Asian backwater known as "The Empire of the Great Qing (the 'Celestial Empire' was another name this nation commonly used for itself)," in which the British Empire defeated their enemy with such ease that London's elite were embarrassed to even call it a war. Essentially, think of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and change the time, place and players. This conflict was of such little importance on the world stage that it is merely a footnote in British history textbooks, a single item in a lengthy list of conquests upon which India looms as a far more prestigious gem than the pretentiously-self-styled "Celestial Empire" does. In most other countries' textbooks the event is lucky to even receive that much attention. However, in the nation which claims to be the present-day successor state of the "Empire of the Great Qing," that is, the People's Republic of China, this event carries such weight that historians consider it the "beginning of modern history." The war in question was the First Opium War, typically referred to without the number attached because the second was little more than a postscript to it.
For those who are not familiar with the history of the war, here is a quick synopsis. In 1793 a British ambassador named McCartney went on an expedition to what is now China, lured to by the same siren call that has led so many other business tycoons to her shores over the years (namely, the damned fool belief that China's sprawling population equals a vast pool of potential customers). Carrying what he believed was an impressive collection of gifts for the emperor, mostly examples of British technological prowess, McCartney went before the Qianlong emperor to try and persuade the "Celestial Empire" to open its doors (which had been closed to the outside world since early in the Ming Dynasty who predated the Qing Empire) to foreign trade.
There was one problem. The "Celestial Empire" did not acknowledge that any nation on Earth was her peer, and her official State Doctrines stated that all other nations of the world were "barbarians," inferior in every way. Officially she recognized no "trade" with other nations, but merely "gifts bestowed by the magnificent emperor in recognition of tribute paid by barbarian vassals." Ergo, as a prerequisite for the "privilege" of trading with his empire, the Qianlong Emperor informed McCartney he would have to declare himself (and his nation) to be vassals of the "Son of Heaven," the emperor's oh-so-humble title for himself, and perform a grovelling act of obeisance called "kowtow." McCartney refused, and the emperor sent him away with a refusal note to King George III that ended with the declaration "You, O King, should simply act in conformity with our wishes by strengthening your loyalty and swearing perpetual obedience (Mosher, Bully of Asia, 66).
British resentment over this borderline megalomaniacal response from the Chinese emperor simmered for a while, while China's highly protectionist trading regime allowed vast quantities of exports (mostly tea) but almost no imports. Within half a century the British Empire, the most powerful nation on Earth, was running a trade deficit with China (sound familiar?). To solve this, the British introduced the Chinese to a product that was in high demand and which, due to its nature, would stay that way: opium. Cao Dawei and Sun Yanjing give voice to the fear that overtook the "Celestial Empire" as opium addiction spread throughout the land, albeit with a typically opinionated Zhonghua perspective.
The Chinese people suffered a lot from imported opium. If the import had continued without any restriction, China would "have no troops to resist invasion and no money to afford the army."
(China's History, 186)
In her book The Opium War, British historian Julia Lovell states (and most historians agree with her, even in China) that British opium-pushing was more about making quick sales and getting out with money, something that would have been accomplished by means of other imports if the Qianlong Emperor had not been such an egotist. Nonetheless, the Chinese were terrified that this was an "attack by stratagem," a dastardly foreign plot to leave "the Celestial Empire" helpless so the British could subjugate them as they themselves had done to so many of their neighboring kingdoms around Asia for millennia. So in 1839 a Chinese official named Lin Zexu confiscated 1,000 tons of opium at a port in Guangdong, announced that there would be no compensation for it, and banned the further sale of opium throughout the Qing Empire. Oh, and they used military force to blockade the British traders inside Canton and cut off their supplies, condemning them to starve to death despite the fact that they had broken no hitherto existing law.
To make a long story short, the British Empire responded by blasting their way in, extracting their traders, burning one of the emperor's palaces at Yuanmingyuan (in Beijing) to the ground, and handing the "Celestial Empire" an utterly crushing military defeat before negotiating the Treaty of Nanking, which permitted them to continue selling Opium and also gave the British Empire ownership over a God-forsaken spit of useless and barren rock known to the locals as Hong Kong. When questioned about the morality of this military backing of what was basically an early drug-pushing operation, the British Empire maintained that they were merely maintaining free trade. After all, the Chinese customers themselves provided the demand for opium, did they not? Could the British be blamed for fulfilling this demand (Chu, Chinese Whispers, 215)? It was a thin moral defense and the British knew it, but given the West's memories of the Qianlong Emperor's 1793 arrogance and East Asia's glee over seeing their centuries-old oppressor learn what it was like to be on the receiving end of foreign domination, most of the world was willing to shrug and look the other way. There was an apparent consensus that the Chinese had brought it upon themselves and needed to be taught a lesson in humility.
I doubt anyone in the West at that time knew that 170 years later, China's reborn Mandarinate, the Communist Party, would still be teaching their youth that same lesson.
From Heaven to Earth
For China [the Opium War] was more than just a military defeat; it was a profound cultural humiliation. The deeply ingrained sense of superiority, inculcated over millennia of dominating its neighbors, stood revealed as hollow pride.
(Mosher, 66)
Never forget this national humiliation.
-(translation of an inscription over the entrance to Yuanmingyuan Ruins)
It is impossible to overstate China's obsession with the Opium Wars. For a nation whose entire cultural identity was built upon the presumption of their own superiority in all things (Reminisci, Steemit), this instant role-reversal from conqueror to conquered would have seemed unthinkable up until the day it happened. The memory of these wars is an undercurrent in every discussion on any topic. In all the 3,500 years of a mostly-unified Han Empire (let's dispense with the 5,000 year myth and acknowledge that nothing before the Qin Dynasty could remotely be called "Chinese"), no other event has altered their view of the world -and their place in it- more dramatically. Even in everyday casual conversations on non-political matters I cannot think of a conversation I have ever had with any of my Chinese colleagues where the subject of "Western Imperialist humiliation of China" did not come up at some point. China's National Museum in Beijing opened an exhibition in 2012 called "The Road to Renewal" which begins with the Opium Wars and ends with the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Almost any Chinese treatise on international relations contains reference to the way China was "reduced to a semi-colony by Western Powers (don't look for any mention of China's own colonial holdings at the time of course, but never mind that)." School children are taken on field trips from as far as Guangzhou to be taken through the ruins of Yuanmingyuan, where tour guides give detailed descriptions of how evil and wicked all foreigners are. Adding to the poignancy of these descriptions is a "documentary" played on screens in the gift shops and indoor exhibits of the palace ruins where British troops are portrayed as rampaging savages, taking gleeful delight in the destruction of everything in sight, for the sheer sake of destruction. One of the most awkward moments of my career as an educator was when I went along on one of these field trips with a group of my 8th graders (having visited the ruins myself several times), and the tour guide made a point to say, in English, "never forget this, dear children; never forget this shame; never forget the Opium Wars; never forget the oppression brought to the Motherland from outsiders; we Chinese must stand together, united, under the leadership of the Communist Party. You must never trust the lying tongues of foreigners," while looking straight at me.
The Party encourages this kind of thinking, this "Bellicose Nationalism" as Liu Xiaobo described it, and carefully cultivates it. One of Xi Jinping's most often-used catch phrases is "The Chinese Dream," sometimes expanded to "The Chinese Dream of the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation." Sounds innocent enough right? Look again. The words translated as "Chinese Nation" are a specific form of address used in the Sinocentric centuries as a means of expressing China's perceived superiority over its neighbors. Additionally, the words translated as "Great Rejuvenation" do not refer to reinvigorating a broken nation. It is a phrase used by several nearly fallen dynasties to refer to retaking their thrones. In total, this phrase is an open statement of ambition of resurrecting a hegemonic system with China at its core (Shapiro, Geopolitical Futures).
And the message of "then we will take revenge for what was done to us (never mind that what was done to China by the British is rather pale compared to the suffering China inflicted on her own neighbors over the centuries)" is never buried very deep.
Fentanyl: A New Era, a New Opiate
As China pursues their rather unabashed quest to avenge what they describe as "the dirtiest and most shameless of drug wars in the world history of war (Peng et al., 5)," they have chosen a form of revenge which they feel suits the offense: distributing addictive opiates. However, addicts of the 19th century parlor drug would be hard-pressed to recognize fentanyl, the deadly modern form favored by China.
The Mayo Clinic lists 42 potential side effects of Fentanyl even when used under professional medical supervision on their official website ("Fentanyl (Transdermal Route): Side Effects"), and a large blue button provides a link to a rather dire precautions age ("Fentanyl (Transdermal Route): Precautions"). The American Addiction Center elaborates further, noting that due to its potency it is rarely used even medically except in cases where the patient already has higher than usual opium tolerance ("Effects of Fentanyl Use"). The same center also calls it "50 times more powerful than morphine" and notes that it is almost universally fatal when mixed with heroin, as was made evident by a rash of 72 overdose cases in Chicago in a single month stemming from Heroin cut with Fentanyl ("Record-Breaking Number of Overdoses Traced Back to Bad Heroin"). Even accidental exposure to the drug can be deadly. Science Magazine reported that 11 Conecticutt Police Officers were hospitalized in September, 2016 just from inhalation of the dust kicked into the air from an investigation of an overdose scene (McLaughlin, Science)
In short, if I were a paranoid, insecure former superpower struggling with a combination of narcissism and self-loathing, carrying a 170-year-old chip on my shoulder about having opium pushed upon my citizenry and looking to take poetic justice upon the world, this drug is the weapon I would use. It seems China agrees.
As China muscles their way onto the world stage then, armed with a more dangerous form of the drug that features so heavily in their bitter memories, their long-held grudge over the Opium Wars spells trouble for the British, right?
Well, it's not that simple.
In China's eyes, there are only two countries in the world. One is Zhōngguó (中国), meaning "Central Nation," and the other is Wàiguó (外国), meaning "Outer Nation." The former refers to China and the latter, simply put, refers to everything else, and it is not necessary in China's eyes for the target of their revenge to be the same foreign country who committed the acts for which they seek revenge, so long as some foreign country, somewhere, suffers. True, there has been some fentanyl distribution to the UK. The Chinese-based website website Weiku, for example, is rather casual about looking the other way while users openly sell the potentially lethal opium-derivative Fentanyl to UK-based users, dodging responsibility by saying "we are not responsible for transactions (Marsh & Kuo, The Guardian)." But China's new Opium War is primarily aimed at two targets. One, which I will address in another article, is the nation they have decided must be their next conquest if they are to gain access to the Pacific, the Philippines. The other is the nation which, by its very existence, stands in the way of China's quest to resurrect the Sinocentric Order: the United States of America.
China's Untamable Dragon
Recent Chinese doctrine articulates the use of a wide spectrum of warfare against its
adversaries, including the United States... These methods include trade warfare, financial warfare, ecological warfare, psychological warfare, smuggling warfare, media warfare, drug warfare, network warfare, technological warfare, fabrication warfare, resources warfare, economic aid warfare, cultural warfare, and international law warfare.
(US Army Special Operations Command; Counter-Unconventional Warfare White Paper, p. 32)
In recent years, Opioid addiction has reached the crisis stage in the United States. In New York, for instance, between 2015 and 2016, Opioid overdoses spiked from 2166 to 3009 (Massarella, New York Post). Throughout the rest of the country, synthetic opioids (primarily Fentanyl) accounted for 19,413 deaths, nearly 50% of all drug-related deaths in the US according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse ("Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids Drug Overdose Deaths"). As for the economic damage done, The journal Psychology Today reports that it is costing the US over $1 trillion per year ( ). Miller also points out that 60% of users are under 34, which indicates the number of addicts is poised to rise.
So if this drug is so deadly, how are people getting it so easily? Brian Zimmerman of "Becker's Hospital Review" provides an answer.
United States residents purchased nearly $800 million worth of fentanyl pills from China over the internet in two years, according to a Senate investigations report released Wednesday.
The Senate report in question, from 23 January, 2018, is visible here, and Section IV is devoted solely to China.
Indeed, there are striking similarities to the Opium Wars. China produces 90% of the world's fentanyl (Massarella, NY Post, and the US consumes 85% of the world's opiates (McLaughlin, Science), making it rather difficult to deny that it is a deliberate move on China's part, since China's surveillance state makes it difficult to credibly believe the operations necessary for producing this volume of a drug that is not legal within China could exist in China without the Communist Party's tacit approval. Of course Yu Haibin, the head of China's National Narcotics Control Commission (interesting phrasing; they don't seek to prevent narcotic distribution, they just want to be in control of it), has predictably attempted to give such denials (BBC News, "Fentanyl Crisis"), but former Mexican Ambassador to China Jorge Guajardo casts further doubt upon these denials by noting that China has never been eager (or even willing) to take any measures to work with his country to crack down on the import of drug components from China to cartels in Mexico.
"They just didn’t see what was in it for them to look into their own industries exporting these chemicals... In all my time there, the Chinese never showed any willingness to cooperate on stemming the flow of precursors into Mexico."
(Levin, NY Times
Much like the Opium War, the illicit sale of the drug has created a new caste of wealthy drug-dealers (Deprez, Li & Wills, Bloomberg). Much like the Opium War, the country pushing the drug has claimed they are blameless, and that the real problem lies with the country whose citizens are buying the drug (Reuters, South China Morning Post). And of course, much like the Opium War, a major government crackdown has seized enormous amounts of the drug coming in. Philadelphia alone was the site of two massive seizures of incoming Chinese fentanyl this year, one worth $1.7 million (Action News 6, "$1.7 billion") and one worth $2.6 million (Action News 6, "Drug Bust").
Thankfully, America is (slowly) waking up to the danger. The Administration has shown that unlike their predecessors they will not allow fear of China's ire to stop them from arresting Chinese citizens who run Fentanyl to the US (Farivar, Voice of America). Indeed the one thing Chuck Schumer and Donald Trump seem able to agree on is that it's time to put pressure on China to do more to stop the flow of Fentanyl into the US. There's just one problem.
China won't.
China won't, because there is every reason to believe the Chinese government is not merely allowing the flow of fentanyl, but indeed that it is being carried out under their banner, on their orders. China has been nursing a grudge against the entire world (especially the West) since the First Opium War. China views the return to global pre-eminence as their Heaven-mandated right, and they see the US as the greatest (and only remaining) obstacle to that. Most importantly, China considers themselves already at war with the US. This was stated by Jiang Zemin in September, 1991, when he declared the start of a "New Cold War" with the US. It was echoed in 1999 when PLA Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui wrote a "how to fight a dirty fight against the US" pamphlet "Unrestricted Warfare," which was published by People's Liberation Army Arts and Literature Publishers (a government-owned publisher, obviously) and applauded by the Party. Professor Stefan Halper of Cambridge University studied stacks of PLA doctrine and arrived at the conclusion that this is not merely posturing but is in fact China's policy (Halper, China: The Three Warfares). Yet they know they cannot beat our military toe-to-toe. So instead, they have employed the same tactic they have feared seeing a foreign power use against them for more than a century: reduce the population to addicts.
It is time to recognize this for what it is (namely a war, being carried out by China), and respond accordingly.
Works Cited
Books
Cao Dawei & Sun Yanjing. Trans. Xiao Ying Li Li & He Yunzhao. China's History. Beijing, 2010. China Intercontinental Press.
ISBN 978-7-5085-1302-7
Chu, Ben. Chinese Whispers. London, 2013. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
ISBN 978-1-7802-2474-9
Lovell, Julia. The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China. London, 2012. Picador Publishing
ISBN 978-0-33045-748-4
Mosher, Steven W. Bully of Asia. Washington, 2017. Regnery Publishing.
ISBN 978-1-62157-696-9
Peng Guanqian, Zhao Zhiyin and Luo Yong. Trans. Ma Chenguang & Yan Shuang. China's National Defense. Beijing, 2010. China Intercontinental Press.
ISBN 978-7-5085-1310-2
Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui. Unrestricted Warfare. Beijing, 1999. People's Liberation Army Arts and Literature Publishing House.
(Translation from Echo Point Books and Media)ISBN 978-1-54951-052-6
Government Documents
Halper, Stefan. China: The Three Warfares. Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense. May, 2013. Web, 18 Oct, 2018.
https://www.scribd.com/document/257037741/China-the-Three-Warfares
Combating the Opioid Crisis: Exploiting Vulnerabilities in International Mail. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 23 Jan, 2018. Web, 18 Oct, 2018.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Combatting%20the%20Opioid%20Crisis%20-%20Exploiting%20Vulnerabilities%20in%20International%20Mail1.pdf
Counter-Unconventional Warfare White Paper. U.S. Army Special Operations Command, 26 Sep, 2014. Web, 18 Oct, 2018.
https://info.publicintelligence.net/USASOC-CounterUnconventionalWarfare.pdf
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