short of need. The unprecedented population growth exerted enormous pressure on Chinese society. In these conditions drastic land annexation and polarization of the rich and the poor were inevitable. A senior official in the early Qianlong reign (1736–1795) pointed out that a huge number of people who had been in possession of land had no alternative but to become tenant farmers.1 Echoing this, a minister said that when a family, which had once possessed huge wealth, went bankrupt, thousands of (dependent) families would be reduced to a state of abject poverty.2 In these circumstances, social contradictions were inevitably exacerbated. Hong
Liangji 洪亮吉 (1746–1809), a Confucian scholar known to us for his pioneering work in the study of China’s unprecedented population growth, clearly recognized that when population growth outpaced land cultivation, society would be engulfed by instability. To make matters worse, ordinary people led a miserable existence because of repeated natural disasters.
China’s long-running feudal society had an extremely stable landlord economy. As a small-scale peasant economy and still largely traditional, priority was given to agriculture rather than to commerce. This consequently prevented the highly developed handicraft industry in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta from growing into capitalist industry. As a consequence, China lagged behind Europe in terms of productivity growth. Simply put, China was in decline.
The Qing emperors were completely unaware of capitalist growth in other parts of the world and were still intoxicated with the country’s glory and greatness. Take Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736–1796), for example. He mandated that foreigners were not allowed to do business anywhere in China with the exception of Guangzhou (Canton).3 The British king in 1793 sent a seven-hundred-member diplomatic corps headed by George Macartney, a lord, to visit China to showcase his kingdom’s scientific and industrial prowess and to invite China to join. A high Qing governor mistakenly took Macartney’s mission as a celebration for the Emperor Qianlong’s eightieth birthday and thus treated these British merely as emissaries paying tribute. Macartney and his retinue were granted an interview in the Mountain Resort; however, there was an unpleasant dispute over the etiquette of Macartney’s audience with the Emperor. As a consequence, the two sides failed to reach an agreement. Qing’s ruling elites were all unaware of what was taking place in Britain and Europe, nor did they know that Britain had already emerged as a capitalist power. Rather, they regarded the rising British Empire as a barbarian state. At the same time, the haughty Macartney mission looked down on the Chinese sovereign, refused to observe traditional Chinese etiquette, and was wildly ambitious in trying to cajole Qing to cede territory to their sovereign. In the end, Qing and Britain parted in anger. The Macartney mission revealed the differences between the two civilizations. Qing also failed to seize the opportunity to understand more about the drastically changing world and the advance of capitalism.
Feudal China in its last stages was also plagued by rampant corruption. The ruling landlord class, which had historically been positive for China, did nothing to remedy the accelerating downturn. Emperor Qianlong lived an extravagantly luxurious life, demonstrated in his extensive travels, grand birthday celebrations and in magnificent buildings such as the Old Summer Palace. The ruling Manchu aristocrats turned politically stagnant. The Eight Banners, Qing’s proud armed forces that had once been brave and battle-ready, grew increasingly incompetent.
Heshen 和珅, a notorious top aide of Qianlong, epitomized Qing’s unchecked and contagious corruption. Heshen played a leading role in Qing’s central government for more than two decades and was extremely powerful and greedy. In folk stories he was referred to as the No. 2 Emperor. The new emperor immediately imprisoned Heshen in the wake of the death of Qianlong. The fortune confiscated from Heshen’s family was astonishingly high—850,000 mu of land and 220,000,000 taels of silver. It was five times greater than the state treasury. Some anecdotal evidence said that the confiscation of Heshen’s wealth completely filled the treasury of Jiaqing (Qianlong’s successor).
China then became a hotbed of peasant revolts. Rebellions broke out one after another late in Qianlong’s reign. At the time the White Lotus Society, which was strongly opposed to the Manchu and was very active in Sichuan, Hubei and Shaanxi, posed the greatest threat to Qing. The great mountain ranges between the provinces provided a geographical complexity that appealed to peasants and secret societies. In 1796, the White Lotus Society launched a huge rebellion in Hubei, dealing a heavy blow to Qing and which it took Qing’s government nine years to defeat. Qing’s brutal crackdown on the followers of the White Lotus teachings greatly intensified during this time. Consequently, the number of dispossessed and homeless people increased dramatically.
Meanwhile the British Empire intensified its efforts to smuggle opium into China, contributing to instability inside the country. China launched an anti-smuggling operation, which was as much a struggle against Britain’s aggression as it was against the drug trade. Not hesitating to engage in war to achieve its goal of becoming an unchallengeable global hegemon, Britain dragged China into the whirlpool of global conflicts. Consequently, China’s decline was inevitable.
British Opium Smuggling and Lin Zexu’s Anti-Smuggling Endeavor
As early as the seventeenth century, Britain began purchasing tea, silk and porcelains from China and later bought Chinese cloth. British products in China, however, did not enjoy the same popularity. Nor did Britain have enough commodities to trade with China. Take tea and cloth, for example. The number of dan (a unit of weight) of tea imported by Britain’s East India Company from China increased from 42,065 (from 1760 to 1764) to 235,840 (1830–1833).4 Essentially, the import increased sixfold in seven decades. Where the cloth trade between Britain and China was concerned, Britain’s imports from China at the beginning of the 1830s were 386,364 taels of silver while China’s imports from Britain were merely 246,189.5 Some indicated that within two years (1837–1839) of beginning trade with China,
Britain purchased 4.27 million pounds of Chinese goods and legally sold 0.91 million pounds of British products to China. Consequently, Britain developed a large trade deficit with China. Britain initially attempted to use its own supplies of silver to pay off the trade deficit which amounted to 3,300,000 pounds.6 However, in the 1770s, British traders began to replace silver with opium, essentially making opium smuggling the lifeline of Britain’s trade with China.
There was a dramatic increase in opium smuggling into China (see table below) in the 1820s.
| Years | Amount of Smuggled Opium (chests/p.a.) |
| 1820–1824 | (approximately) 8,000 |
| 1825–1829 | 12,576 |
| 1835–1838 | 35,445 |
| 1838–1839 | (more than) 40,000 |
Usually, British opium was sold at 600–800 taels of silver per chest and on occasion would reach 1,000 taels of silver. Not only did the enormous profits that resulted from opium smuggling substantially reduce Britain’s trade deficit but also brought more riches to the Empire. Most importantly, the flow of silver between China and Britain was reduced. Customs statistics in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras indicated that in six years (1833–1839) the annual outflow of sliver from China to the British Empire was 4,200,000 taels and on the eve of the Opium War China lost 10,000,000 taels of silver
