As the title suggests, due to my lack of knowledge in the materialist view of history, and also to avoid spiritual emptiness and to promote Marxism to Zheng, I plan to study the book “Draft History of Modern China” long-term to understand the true history of modern China. I will try to keep updating.
Chapter One: The Opium War Against British Aggression
Section One: The Struggle Between Drug Trafficking and Drug Prohibition
To resist the invasion of European and American colonialists and to prevent foreigners from supporting domestic anti-Qing forces, the Qing government implemented a “closed-door policy” restricting foreign trade in 1757: closing the three customs gates of Zhangzhou, Ningbo, and Yuntaishan to foreign trade, allowing only Guangzhou to trade; establishing the “Cohong” system, where the Cohong monopolized all import and export trade, collected and guaranteed foreign merchants’ taxes, and handled negotiations between the government and foreign merchants; restricting the types and quantities of exported goods; and limiting the activities of foreign merchants. The Qing government’s adoption of the “closed-door policy” towards foreigners was a necessary self-defense measure that China could take at the time.
The "Cohong" system could prevent foreign goods from flooding the Chinese market, but why restrict the export of goods? My thought is that because China had a self-sufficient natural economy, it did not need to gain profits through exporting goods.
In short, the widespread opium addiction had caused a profound national disaster, turning the national contradictions between the Chinese nation and foreign capitalism gradually into the primary contradiction.
The Wikipedia entry on "Opium" even states that during the Qing dynasty, Chinese people loved smoking opium the most. How hateful! Isn't it because the British and American bourgeoisie, in pursuit of profits, continuously dumped opium into China and opened the door to the Chinese market, that millions of Chinese people became addicted to opium?
Do the landlord class suppress commodity production? Foreign trade can also promote domestic capitalist production, and importing gold and silver from abroad can increase the capital of Chinese industrial and commercial entrepreneurs, thereby strengthening the anti-feudal forces of the urban middle class. Not sure if this is the case.
This damn Wikipedia still claims to be a “free encyclopedia,” and this is truly freedom—the freedom to spread nonsense and distort history!
It is indeed possible
Wikipedia is a liberal encyclopedia, a bourgeois liberal encyclopedia