Stealing the best China
Brian Campbell explains how Britain came to occupy Hong Kong
Very little has been heard in the media in the run-up to the
British handover of Hong Kong of how the colony was acquired by
Britain in the first place. And no wonder. It is a dirty tale of
drug dealing, imperial bullying and greed.
Two hundred years ago Britain imported vast quantities of tea
from China; it was then the only place where it was grown. China
at the time was ruled by the powerful Manchu Emperor Chien Lung
and was a country which the imperial powers would not have
thought to attack militarily. The tea was paid for in silver
bullion until the British hit upon the idea of selling opium to
the Chinese.
The drug was produced exclusively in Bengal by the East India
Company, one of the trading companies which grew rich on British
imperialist expansion. Opium was exported to China in huge
quantities, doing great harm to the Chinese economy and to the
wellbeing of the growing numbers of people who smoked it.
The Chinese banned opium in the 1830s but the British simply
ignored the ban and continued the trade, smuggling the drug
through coastal towns and thus creating a network of criminals
who acted as their middlemen. By 1839 opium was India's largest
export and China was facing ruin with the loss of money and the
degeneration of its people who had been turned into addicts.
Quite literally, the British Empire in India grew rich and China
was ruined by British drug dealers.
In 1839 Emperor Tao Kuang - Chien Lung's grandson - ordered that
over a hundred tons of British opium be confiscated and
destroyed. This was done and Tao Kuang told the British to stop
further importation.
The British response was to say that this was a violation of free
trade. They sent gunboats and so the First Opium War began.
Within two years China had been heavily defeated and the imperial
powers gained control of important coastal cities. The war was
not just about opium - it was also aimed at opening up the
country and its vast market to imperial trade.
At the end of the war the British demanded six million dollars as
compensation for the loss of its hundred tons of opium as well as
an important addition: the island of Hong Kong. Britain acquired
the island ``in perpetuity'' and subjugated its people who, at that
time, were a few thousand fishing villagers.
A Second Opium War took place in 1860 and again China lost
territory to the imperial powers. It was at this time that China
was forced to cede Kowloon, a strip of the Chinese mainland
beside Hong Kong island, to the British.
Then, in an imperialist sleight of hand, the British acquired
what is now the largest part of modern Hong Kong - the New
Territories - on a 99 year lease signed in 1898. It is this which
expires at midnight on 30 June. The British were forced to
concede control of all of Hong Kong because Hong Kong island and
Kowloon on their own would not have been viable.
The Chinese have never recognised the treaties that handed Hong
Kong to the British - saying they had been signed under duress -
and the handover ends a national humiliation which has bitten
very deeply into the Chinese consciousness.
Related article:
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)