The controversial trade war between the United States and China has been going on a lot longer than most people realize. While some may suggest that it began in earnest with President Trump, the reality is far different. By looking at history, we can discover why China seems an unrelenting and disagreeable partner in the game of trading. Why does the Chinese government seem so obstinate in their refusal to play by the rules? And most importantly, perhaps it is the historical perspective that can show us the way out of this impasse.
Without understanding the historical context of trade with China, the anti-Western revolution, the thievery on both sides, trying to negotiate a fair deal may be all but impossible. There are a series of historical events that shaped East and West’s attitudes, and it is these same attitudes that are hindering our current progress.
You see, in the West, we live in such a fast-paced society in terms of how soon things are consigned to the past. A few examples, the Democratic Party was the party of the KKK, quite literally; even Hillary Clinton’s mentor, former Senator Robert Byrd, was a clan recruiter and Exalted Cyclops of his local KKK branch. And in the U.K., the nation was led into the Iraq war by lies. The public was told that there were weapons of mass destruction by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, this turned out not only to not be true but also that he likely knew full well that they didn’t exist. Yet now, is Blair pilloried? Is he shunned for his lies and warmongering? No, he’s feted as an election-winning machine who spends his time being amply rewarded as an elder statesman in the middle east peace process!
We, as a society, have very short memories; the Chinese do not. Every historical slight, every shaming that they as a culture have experienced is not forgotten; in fact, episodes of actions against China are taught in schools in a very non-partisan manner. The children grow up with the sins of the fathers thrust very much upon them.
Is it any surprise they may not make a present-day trade deal easy?
The Historical Perspective
In the 1800s, there was a major trade imbalance between Britain and China, Chinese silk, Chinese tea, porcelain, and most importantly, opium.
Because they considered foreign currency as worthless to a country that doesn’t import, the rulers would only accept silver in payment for products. The silver soon started to dry up.
After the First Opium War, the emperor had made opium illegal; the punishment was death. In an effort to apply pressure to the ruling Chinese, the Brits began growing opium in Bengal and then importing en masse, causing major friction because millions of Chinese wanted to use the drug. And what did the foreign traders demand to be paid in? Silver. This went some way to resettling the trade balance.
The nation was being drained of silver and suffering under the weight of a whole new generation of opium addicts. In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor decided to halt the entire trade of the deadly drug. The viceroy Lin Zexu made a terrible mistake. After initially appealing to Queen Victoria to halt the trade, he decided to use force against the British suppliers by barricading their ships and seizing their goods. This was at the height of the British Empire and – as they saw it – couldn’t let this insult pass.
The Royal Navy was dispatched to teach China a lesson, and in an almost run and gun style, began hitting various points in what later became known as Gunboat Diplomacy.
Treaty After Treaty
In 1842, facing defeat after defeat, the Qing Dynasty signed a peace treaty called the Treaty of Nanking, ending the opium war but forcing the Chinese to open five foreign ports for trade and control Hong Kong as a strategic base. This treaty became known as just the first of the Unequal Treaties.
This was not the first time that the West had been less than delicate in building trade relations, and it certainly wasn’t the last.
Robert Fortune
Keen to end the monopoly of Chinese Tea, the British East India Company, major traders with their own armies, asked the Scottish botanist, Robert Fortune, to undertake a dangerous and potentially profitable enterprise. He was to go into the heartlands of China – tea country – and steal tea plants that the company could then grown in India on plantations of their own, thus undercutting the entire trade.
The Chinese knew how valuable their tea was, and the sale of seedlings to foreigners was strictly forbidden. Not only this, because the plantations were more than a day’s journey from the five foreign ports won in the Opium War, to be caught beyond this zone was almost certain death.
Fortune’s job was to collect samples and figure out exactly how the tea plant was prepared, a closely guarded secret. On his numerous trips to China, due to the regulations regarding foreigners, he would dress in the local attire and hired guides to do his talking for him. When he was forced to speak out loud, the guides would explain to the curious onlookers that he was merely from a different province and only spoke the local dialect. You have to remember that many people inside China, away from the trade ports, had never seen what a westerner looked like, and with the limits on travel over such a large country, they found it quite plausible that he was just not local.
Robert Fortune did manage to smuggle seedlings out of the country, but due to the differing weather conditions in India, the plants failed to take root. However, he did discover some curious and useful things on his journey.
The Tea Trade
He was the first westerner to realize that both green tea and black tea were the same plants. He also discovered that the casual brutality and disregard was not just a one way street from west to east. On a visit to a tea factory, he was surprised to see that many of the tea workers had blue stains on their fingertips; after enquiring through a translator why this was, he was shown that the producers were adding handfuls of iron ferrocyanide or Prussian Blue as it’s known to paint manufacturers. It got worse. In the same factory, he came across workers adding a foul egg-smelling ingredient to the tea: gypsum – used in plastering. As it breaks down, gypsum produces hydrogen sulfide gas, which can cause miscarriage, illness, and even death in high doses.
The Tea producers were not looking to purposely poison their customers. The gypsum made the tea look greener and gave it a uniform color. It appears that they didn’t really care if it just happened to be poisoning the drinker… this was strictly for the export market.
We can clearly see that there was no love lost between China and its trading partners.
This cultural baggage was carried around for the next 100 years until Mao Zedong came to power on a tide of ant-Westernism. He took every opportunity to drill into the people’s minds that all of the country’s woes and corruption could be laid squarely at the feet of the West. This was taught in schools; those kids became teachers or politicians and passed on their own version, the same things they were taught. These wounds are still active, still alive in China today.
Revolutionaries
Robert Hormats, Barack Obama’s Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs, has a long history of dealing with international relations, working for both Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. In 1973, as part of Nixon’s efforts to stimulate trade with the Middle Kingdom, he went along with the U.S. China Trade delegation (or USCBC as it became known). He spoke with a party official, asking him what kinds of goods the Chinese people or government might want to buy from America; the man replied, “We’re revolutionaries. There is nothing you could sell us that we want.”
This response has been at the heart of the matter ever since. Coupled with a long memory for affronts, China, or at least the ruling classes of China, have never really wanted trade other than for what it can add to their own pot.
I’ve mentioned culture numerous times, and that’s what it comes down to. But the culture is changing; the young urbanites of Shanghai and Beijing, the go-getters from 2nd-tier cities desperate to send their kids to Western colleges and schools, they’ve been bitten by the trade bug – for goods and for CULTURE.
The government can’t stand in their way forever, they will demand, they will find back doors to make money and connections, and no one, not even a government as strict and controlling as the Chinese Communist Party, will be able to stop them. Remember, these are not faceless consumers ready to buy products on a whim. They are, in their souls, still revolutionaries.
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Read more by Mark Angelides.
