Comments by "" (@orboakin8074) on "Understanding Latin America." video.

Uh, no. It was because China was undercutting the tea trade in India that the British largely controlled because the Chinese were growing way more tea for a time and getting rich. It was not because they were "making what everybody wanted and everyone else did nothing what China wanted". China had cheaper tea and wanted money, the world had money and wanted cheap good tea. Britian didn't like the competition.
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So how the hell is Chile successful?
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@iwatchDVDsonXbox360 No. I am simply rebutting your early comment's assertion. You make it sound as if the reason the British started the opium wars was because China was an industrial self-sufficient power house that needed nothing from the world. But it was rather a case of the British destroying their tea competition Thucydides style. Keep in mind that other countries were also growing tea but either did it in partnership with the british or didn't grow as much as the british or the chinese. The Chinese were Britain's main competition.
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@iwatchDVDsonXbox360 Yeah, this just further proves my initial comment. China was a trade rival with the UK. They had more of those raw materials and luxury goods you listed (porcelain, tea and silk) and traded them with Europe. The British, under the British Raj (India) didn't like this competition and wanted either control or destroy it but couldn't just declare war on China. They started to sell opium because it was a cheap drug and they knew the emperor would try and sop it and that would give them cause to declare war. Also, despite what the letter says, China was not self-sufficient in all things. They still imported stuff from Europe e.g. machinery, vehicles, steel, weapons, etc. The only difference was that they had a trade surplus because they exported more stuff, mainly tea, silk and porcelain.
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@iwatchDVDsonXbox360 Tea was one of the main impetus' for the opium wars but the main goal was basically undercutting a trade competitor; hence, the unfair trade deals and ceding ownership of a port like Hong Kong to the British.
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