[fluxinflex]

This is was the reason for the Opium Wars with the English. The English wanted Chinas tea but the Chinese didn't want anything from the English so the English were bleeding gold and silver into China.

So the English forced Opium onto the people of China against the will of the King of China. China rebelled, the English conquered and forced the Chinese to open their ports and accept Indian-grown opium as trade for Chinese tea.

That continued until the English found the secret plants that made the Chinese tea. They stole those plants and planted them in India.

[emmelaich]

That's a very dramatic narrative. As if the English or the Chinese were united among themselves. As if Chinese traders and smugglers didn't collude, or that the opium ban was a purely moral one and not commercial.

[fluxinflex]

Depends on which storyteller you listen to. The English would tell you that the Chinese were being unfair in their trade and had it coming it to them (the wars). The Chinese would tell you that they have had a century of humiliation[1].

Somewhere inbetween those stories lies the truth. However as with the current crisis, it was the English that invaded with their Navy, that would make them the aggressor and hence the bad-~guy~human. Taking todays value system and applying it to events that happened some 180 years ago.

[1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation