Comments by "Pretty Purple" (@prettypurple7175) on "Sabbatical"
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Julia Lovell, author of “The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China,” said the trade tension between the Trump administration and Beijing reminds some mainland commentators of the mid-19th century conflicts so integral to the history of Jardines and colonial Hong Kong.
That came about after China seized opium from British traders in Canton, now Guangzhou, and began destroying it by the ton. Back in London, William Jardine lobbied for British action that would eventually lead to Hong Kong’s surrender. While these events are absent from Jardine Matheson’s history page on its website, they still resonate in Chinese society.
“It is never far from the front of public memory in China today,” Lovell said. Indeed, up the river from Hong Kong on the mainland, portraits of William Jardine and James Matheson stare down from walls inside the Opium War Museum in the industrial city of Dongguan. Beneath them, a label reads: “Opium Smuggler.”
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