MCLC: Opium War review

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Vanessa Frangville <vanessa.frangville at vuw.ac.nz>
Subject: Opium War review
****************************************************************

Source: Hidden Harmonies China Blog (7/30/12):
http://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2012/07/opium-wars-julia-lovell-china-briti
sh-imperialism-tragicomedy-errors/

The Tragicomedy of Errors: China, British Imperialism, and the Opium Wars
By Maitreya

Julia Lovell, in her new book The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the
Making of China, finds something funny in the tragedy

Great Britain has many reasons to feel great about itself. Its empire was
the largest in history and covered over a fifth of the world’s population.
It had more Asian and African colonies than any other European power. It
came, it saw, it divided, and it conquered. It raped and it reaped,
gleefully slaughtered millions of people, joyfully massacred entire
populations, regularly caused civil wars, flattened countless cities and
towns, and destroyed whole civilizations and dynasties with pleasure. It
sucked the life out of its colonies and reduced them to what we now call
third-world nations. It drew and redrew boundaries and created whole new
countries randomly on a whim. Most of the conflicts in the world today can
be traced back to British Imperialism – the Kashmir issue and
India-Pakistan rivalry, the Sino-Indian border dispute and India-China
rivalry, the Tibet issue, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Northern Ireland,
Cyprus, Sudan – the list goes on.

Yes – Great Britain had reason to feel greatly proud about itself. It had
the largest empire in the world. It had managed to keep it’s European
competitors in check. There was no known threat to its global dominion. It
seemed that Great Britain was destined to rule the world.

And then it all came tumbling down. Sometime in the past century, the
great Island Story crumbled to pieces, and the empire followed. Slowly but
surely, the empire on which “the sun never sets” went out like a cigar
puff. Today it finds itself with as much geopolitical influence as an
American missile base. Once great, Great Britain is now America’s top
bitch – a tart of a nation that can be ordered to suck America’s coattails
whenever required. The relationship between the two countries is much like
that between a dog and its master, or as they call it in public, a
“special relationship".

 
Your guilt is worse than my guilt

Britain is a sunny place, but acceptance of its imperialist crimes is
rather chilled. For example, to this day, Britain refuses to return many
of the treasures that it stole from its colonies, such as the Kohinoor
diamond, which adorns the British Crown jewels. British government
officials today fondly think about the good old days of imperialism.
Somewhere deep inside the British consciousness, there still lurks a
forced feeling of trying to justify or deflect criticism from its
imperialist crimes. One of the best techniques ever devised to do so is to
imply that the colonies that the British terrorized and destroyed were
somehow deserving of their fate, that they brought it upon themselves –
the “blame the victim” strategy.

In order to make British imperialism appear less criminal and barbarous
than it really was – this white-man’s-burden-esque trick has proven to be
remarkably effective, and has served to a very large extent to shift
attention and criticism away from British bigotry.

Hence, Julia Lovell, author of a new book on the first Opium war, quotes
<http://www.thechinabeat.org/?p=3845> the typical anecdotal Indian
novelist as saying that Indians have “generally been aware that (they’ve)
been responsible for (their) own problems”, thus trying to create the
impression that this is the general prevalent opinion among Indians, when
in reality it is no such thing. However, since India is decidedly
pro-western (in terms of both its history textbooks and its foreign
policy) and presents no real threat, such arguments against India are less
common.

China, on the other hand, is a country that, regardless of whether it is a
threat or not, has been decided to be perceived as one by the western
establishment and media. The phrase “(Chinese) self-loathing” can be found
throughout the book. In the typical Thomas Friedman style of judging an
entire country’s opinion on the first person one meets outside the
airport, she quotes a Beijing taxi driver as saying that China “had it
coming”.

The basic premise of this western strategy has been to say that while the
west humiliated China for a hundred years, China was already rotting from
within. So what if Britain forced an illegal drug down its throat? The
Economist simply calls it “free trade”.
 

The Tragicomedy in the Opium War

Here’s part of the description of the book from the back cover:

"(The Opium War’s) brutality notwithstanding, the conflict was also
threaded with tragicomedy: with Victorian hypocrisy, bureaucratic
fumblings, military missteps, political opportunism and collaboration. Yet
over the past 170 years, this strange tale of misunderstanding,
incompetence and compromise has become the founding myth of modern Chinese
nationalism: the start of China’s heroic struggle against a Western
conspiracy to destroy the country with opium and gunboat diplomacy."

Yes – believe it or not, Lovell finds something funny in the tragedy. She
actually calls the war “threaded with tragicomedy”, something that was
aptly described by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing as a mixture of emotions in
which “seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain pleasure”. In other
words, Schadenfreude in its purest form. Of course it may be argued that a
tragicomedy is simply a literary device, or even a pathway to finally
accepting that 
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/601971/tragicomedy> “laughter
is the only response left to man when he is faced with the tragic
emptiness and meaninglessness of existence”. Very true, humour is indeed
something that is the ultimate form of cynicism and anger towards the
injustices of this world. But why stop there? Why not call every war a
“tragicomedy”? After all, doesn’t every war have its share of
“bureaucratic fumblings” and “military missteps”?

The usage of the term reflects the callous attitude towards the war, and
British imperial crimes in general, by westerners (who never had to really
face them) and by the British themselves. This indifferent attitude
pervades the entire book.

It would be unthinkable for a British or western historian to use the
epithet to describe, say, World War II or the Holocaust. In fact, just as
a mental exercise in parallelism, the entire blurb above can be modified
to produce an exact parallel describing the Holocaust, another tragic
incident that Israel derives its (and its nuclear weapons’) legitimacy and
justification from:

(The Holocaust’s) brutality notwithstanding, the conflict was also
threaded with tragicomedy: with Nazi hypocrisy, bureaucratic fumblings,
military missteps, political opportunism and collaboration. Yet over the
past 7o years, this strange tale of misunderstanding, incompetence and
compromise has become the founding myth of modern Israeli nationalism: the
start of Israel’s heroic struggle against an anti-Semitic conspiracy to
destroy the Jews.

 
Defending the indefensible

Officially of course, British crimes cannot be denied or justified. Hence,
any discussion about such issues appears with a disclaimer or
clarification quietly tucked away in a corner. As Humphrey Appleby once
famously remarked – A clarification is not to make oneself clear, it is to
put oneself in the clear. For example, The Economist's review of Lovell’s
book <http://www.economist.com/node/21534758> – an article that remains
one of the most imperialistic, chauvinistic, and sadistic pieces ever
written about the Opium war in modern times – contains a sentence, added
almost as an afterthought as if doing a favor to China in acknowledging
British crimes: “Westerners have good reason to be ashamed of their
treatment of China in the 19th century” which is quickly followed by a
counter-statement lest the reader read too much into it: “Yet Ms Lovell
contends that they administered only the final blows to an empire that was
already on the brink.”

This concept should come as no surprise to regular readers of The
Economist, a newspaper that quite enjoys reporting Chinese deaths in
incidents that prove the government’s incompetence and “wasteful
spending”, such as its satirical reaction
<http://www.economist.com/node/21526398> (“Whoops”) to the deaths of 40
Chinese in the Wenzhou Train crash. This disclaimer is issued in letter
and in spirit by Lovell herself in her book as well as on promotional
platforms 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/arts/19iht-opium19.html?_r=3&pagewanted=
all>: “The British national character is portrayed very negatively in
Chinese textbooks, which is right and proper. The British are ashamed of
our imperial past: the racism, massacres and involvement in the slave
trade.” Presumably that’s why they are still repeating it.

In her book she argues that the Opium war is the “founding episode of
modern Chinese nationalism” (which is the standard term specifically
reserved to describe Chinese people’s love for their country i.e.
patriotism). Lovell calls the Opium war a “useful episode” in Chinese
history – and repeats the much ballyhooed assertion that it is used by the
CCP to justify its rule. This “Opium war button” as she calls it, can
apparently be pressed by the CCP at any time to “remind the Chinese people
that the West has always been full of schemes to undermine China”.

However, how exactly this curious phenomenon of a government justifying
its rule by a 170-year-old war occurs is not very clear. Perhaps
proponents of this theory assume that a farmer whose land has been
forcibly taken away is going to forgive the government because Britain
forced China to import Opium 170 years ago. This would make a good story
for The Onion: CHINESE FARMER LOVES GOVERNMENT FOR LEAVING HIM HOMELESS
BECAUSE BRITAIN HUMILIATED CHINA IN THE OPIUM WARS.

 
The CCP and the Chinese people: The right to rule

Many in the west often interpret the relationship between the Chinese
people and their government to suit their own purposes – they fluctuate
between one of these two interpretations, depending on their current
argument:

1. The CCP doesn’t really care about people that it rules over and will
take policy decisions regardless of what the average Chinese actually
feels or desires (such as in the case of the Three Gorges Dam).

2. The CCP deliberately stirs up nationalist passions and panders to them
(such as in the case of the South China Sea disputes).

Western newspapers and academics often change their colors according to
the argument in question. The real justification for CCP rule
<http://indiaschinablog.blogspot.in/2010/02/difference-in-indian-and-chines
e.html> that it has envisioned – and a justification that is starkly
different from India’s – is hardly ever discussed. For fanatics of
democracy, winning an election is all the justification a government ever
needs to rule a country.

 
Two tragedies don’t make a right

Most Britishers have never heard of the Opium war. Those that have are
largely limited to historians and academics. Among them, the simple
reality of the Opium wars – that they were a blatant act of aggression by
a European power on a defenseless Asian empire – are sidelined, and the
only major aspect of the legacy of the war and the following century is
just reduced to blind criticism of the CCP and its “patriotic education”.
The usage of the century of humiliation by the CCP to “justify it’s own
rule” is used as a smokescreen to deflect a balanced discussion about
British atrocities and two-facedness. Julia Lovell, in this
well-researched work that has been universally praised in the media, tries
desperately to present this much-needed balanced view, and as those
numerous praises would have us believe, largely succeeds.

Lovell accuses the Chinese government of imbalance: “The problem with
these Chinese textbooks is not one of accuracy, per se, but of balance”,
she says. “China’s education system spends far more time remembering the
Opium Wars than the traumas of Communism, such as the man-made famine that
killed tens of millions, and the crackdown of 1989. It offers a skewed
sense of history.” (She then goes on to contradict herself, saying that
China “has tampered with the historical record”.)

This is again a standard tactic among analysts, who precipitately jump to
take refuge in false comparisons. To explain this phenomenon, I propose a
Goodwin’s law <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law> of Chinese
historical analogies, which states that, “As a discussion about Chinese
history grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Mao’s
policies or Tiananmen approaches one”.

Any discussion about Chinese history must necessarily mention about how
Chinese textbooks ignore the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward,
and anything else one can think of. This tendency has now become
ubiquitous, whether one is discussing the Nanjing massacre
<http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/01/31/flaying-flowers-an-example-o
f-western-media%E2%80%99s-bias-against-china/> or the Opium wars, even
when the two issues being compared have no relation with one another. The
Opium wars have nothing to do with the “traumas of communism”, but they
are still mentioned in one breath.

This tactic represents a useful tool in shifting blame towards China in
international disputes. Regardless of whatever the other party does and
regardless of whatever sufferings China has endured, it is inevitably and
unquestionably doomed to criticism and is always in the wrong because it
doesn’t tell its people about the Great Leap Forward. Any suggestion of
western hegemony and genuine attempts to weaken China are sidelined by
simply making the one simple statement that China and the Chinese are
overly suspicious of the west since the CCP has kept the “humiliations
alive” through its “patriotic education”.
 

One war, two perspectives: China and the West today

But Ms. Lovell doesn’t stop there. What could have been a unique work
about an important historical event is bastardized largely by recourse to
two specious tactics: selectively quoting extremist Chinese netizens’
reactions on various events to prove a point (this is readily explained by
the fact that she writes regularly for The Guardian and The Economist),
and by relating the Opium Wars and subsequent events to every aspect of
China’s current foreign policy.

The second transgression in particular represents an acute lack of
understanding of modern geopolitics. Towards the end of the book, she
ventures into territory clearly outside her milieu – foreign policy and
diplomacy. She desperately tries to relate recent events to China’s
patriotic eduction and suspicion. She argues that “delusion and prejudice
have bedevilled (China’s) relationship with the modern West.” In other
words, whenever China refuses to bow down to American hegemony and obey
its commands, it is not because America is indeed inherently hegemonic in
nature, but because China is unduly suspicious of the west. Hence it
transpires that when America and the west try to push through a skewed
climate deal at Copenhagen that requires major developing nations to be
treated on the same level as developed ones (as though the greenhouse
gases that the west has been emitting since 1900 haven’t contributed to
global warming at all), or when it hypocritically lectures China on human
rights, or when it arrogantly pokes its nose in the South China Sea
disputes, or when it continues to break promises and sell weapons to
Taiwan in the name of a pretend promise to defend it, or when it goes
about selling weapons all along China’s periphery and increases its
military presence in the region to surround China from all sides – China
is wrong to feel victimized and targeted – it is simply its paranoia and
oversensitivity talking! How can the west do anything wrong when China
treats everything the west does as suspicious? Perhaps it doesn’t know
that the west has always had China’s best interests at heart.

She even finds parallels between the Copenhagen Climate Change conference
and the Opium Wars. Lovell talks about that fateful day in December 2009
(an incident about which climate journalist Mark Lynas famously and
publicly flipped his lid) when Wen Jiabao allegedly snubbed world leaders
and “insulted Obama”. She finds Wen Jiabao’s absence from a meeting of
World leaders

“…an ominous return to the style of pompous, sino-centric diplomacy that
had so enraged men like William Napier and Harry Parkes in the run-up to
the first and second Opium Wars, as the emperor’s officials refused to
meet him in person, delegating instead the hopeless Hong merchants.”

Lovell, instead of presenting the balanced view that she purports to
present, fails to tell her readers that Wen Jiabao was in fact not even
informed by the conference organizers of the meeting
<http://www.thechinabeat.org/?p=1298>. Moreover, the fact that India,
South Africa, and Brazil also vehemently opposed the west is completely
omitted. Perhaps those countries too wanted to seek revenge for their
respective “humiliations”.

She also spends more than a few paragraphs gloating over the curious case
of Akmal Shaikh 
<http://indiaschinablog.blogspot.in/2010/02/akmal-shaikh-britains-double-st
andards.html>, the British drug mule sentenced to death in China for
carrying 800 times the permissible amount of drugs to China, and, like The
Economist <http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2009/12/post_1?page=3>,
speculates on whether the (irrelevant but useful) fact that he was caught
in Xinjiang (which had recently witnessed bloody ethnic riots) might have
had an effect on Chinese citizens’ reactions to the issue. She extensively
quotes media reports saying that Shaikh’s family insisted that he was
mentally ill, perhaps assuming that a death convict’s family would simply
come out in the open and  say that he deserved to die. A medical
examination was not held because there was no evidence or history of
mental illness and Akmal Shaikh did not have any papers on him to prove
it. A simple open and shut case (even his own lawyers admitted that the
evidence against hm was overwhelming) was converted into something
political by the media, and this was excellent fodder for Lovell to chew
on in her interpretation of justice – that Akmal Shaikh was not given an
independent medical examination and subsequently sentenced to death
because of the “Opium War button”. She also fails to explain why a drug
smuggler should have been given special treatment because he was British.

In all fairness however, Julia Lovell’s book is indeed more balanced than
other western views about the Opium Wars in the west, and about European
colonialism in general. The book represents an evolution in the study of
the “useful episode” and the century that followed it – from blatant
lopsidedness to a more nuanced approach. What she does not – and cannot –
understand is that China thinks that “the west has always been full of
schemes to undermine China” largely because the west has indeed been full
of schemes to undermine China. China might be paranoid about the west, but
that is only because the west gives it a lot to be paranoid about.

 
China doth protest too much?

The origin and centralization of the entire gamut of Chinese nationalism
and geopolitical decisions to a single point in Chinese history is
something that particularly suits the west, since it can be a useful tool
for deflecting criticism from one’s own devious policies. Whenever China
takes a decision that suits its own national interest, as any country
would, western governments and the media can simply press their own “Opium
War buttons” and claim that China is being uncooperative because of its
xenophobia. In the closing paragraphs of the book, Lovell asserts,

“In 1839, the Qing court was too distracted by fears of social unrest to
come up voluntarily with a pragmatic response to Western trade demands;
Britain interpreted this political paralysis as inveterate xenophobia. In
2010, the situation did not look so very different…”.

Portraying China as a pressure cooker about to burst and current Chinese
foreign policy as being driven by ancient history is extremely attractive
since it sanctifies the west and portrays it as an angel – China’s
benefactor that can do no harm. Any Chinese foreign policy decision can be
attacked, and any western decision can be defended by simply hinting that
China is unduly suspicious of the west due to its own xenophobia and
historical bias. Perhaps the Opium War was a useful episode after all.

(cross-posted from India’s China Blog
<http://indiaschinablog.blogspot.com/2012/07/opium-war-china-british-imperi
alism-julia-lovell-tragicomedy-errors.html>)