The New Opium War?

The role of narcotics in the escalating trade war with Beijing has a curious echo in the First Opium War — but this time, the roles are reversed.

“Nemesis Destroying Chinese War Junks”, Edward Duncan, 1843

The opening days of the second Trump administration have provided no shortage of headlines. From the dramatic re-ignition of the Greenland Question to picking up the pieces left by the deadly fires in California, events have moved swiftly.

Of arguably even greater consequence however, is the rapidly escalating trade war between Washington, Canada, Mexico and — above all — China.

‘Free Trade’ has been the established dogma of the Anglosphere ever since the repealing of the Corn Laws and the tariffs which protected British agriculture from foreign competition in 1846. Yet with such a large scale return of economic patriotism and renewed calls for tariffs, many of the assumptions entrenched in the postwar West have swiftly been upended.

A critical driving factor in the present trade war is the attempt to stop the illegal import of fentanyl into the United States, and the spiralling social crisis that has resulted from it. The drug in question traditionally serves as a painkiller, but due to the ease with which it is synthesised, it is now mixed into other illegal narcotics on an enormous scale.

Since just two milligrams of fentanyl can be fatal to humans, the consequences have been disastrous — by the CDC’s own data, no fewer than 74,702 Americans perished to fentanyl related overdoses in 2023 alone.

With criminal gangs smuggling fentanyl into the United States across the land borders from Mexico and Canada, and China being the primary source of the chemicals required to synthesise the drug, Donald Trump’s choice of trade targets makes rather more sense. Perversely, however, this dynamic is the almost exact inversion of what happened when the West and China first came into commercial collision.

It was a conflict that had enormous ramifications for the development of the latter, and which is now perhaps coming back to haunt the former — the First Opium War.

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The Second Great Wall of China

“View of the Canton Factories”, William Daniell, c. 1810

As was the norm for many of the world’s states, for much of the world’s history, China under the Qing Empire was fiercely protective of both its borders and especially its markets. When Europeans first made contact with the Orient, they found a China almost hermetically sealed behind exceedingly tight restrictions on foreign trade.

Not that these restrictions were necessarily ‘needed’. While many Chinese commodities, from silk to tea and porcelain, were highly sought after in the West, there was little that the West then produced that the merchants of China saw value in. As a result, European merchants were forced to marshal vast quantities of silver to pay for these commodities up front.

Having the clear upper hand, the Qing Emperors allowed a pinprick to penetrate the national shield by opening the port of Canton (today’s Guangzhou) to foreign trade in 1757. By funnelling everything through a single point of entry, it was rationally deemed, trade could be permitted but also controlled.

Foreigners were strictly forbidden from travelling elsewhere in China, and could do business only through a guild of Chinese merchants — known as the Cohong — as part of a collective trade policy known as the Canton System. The economic wall China had constructed was formidable.

But even the most formidable wall is vulnerable to undermining…

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The Chemical Corruption of China

“Two Poor Chinese Opium Smokers”, unknown artist, 19th century

The use of opium, a drug produced from the unripe seeds of the opium poppy, proliferated across the Earth after its first cultivation in Mesopotamia over 5,000 years ago. It was indeed present in China by the 7th century AD, though as a medicinal remedy that was consumed orally.

But when the practise of smoking tobacco entered the Ming Empire from the Americas in the 17th century, the use of opium combined with this new delivery method, and it is here that the situation took steep plunge.

Opium addiction quickly swelled into a major social evil of China. It continued to worsen until the Yongzheng Emperor, who was profoundly disturbed by the arrival of the habit even at court, banned the sale of the drug in 1729. Combined with the introduction of the aforementioned Canton System, the Emperors of China had cause for optimism that this ruinous foreign practice might one day be rooted out.

Unfortunately, however, things were about to get immeasurably worse.