[corimaith]

>China was a peasant society that was dicked over for a hundred years by western powers addicting them to opium?

I think one should really try to study the actual dynamics of the Qing Dynasty instead of relying on frankly infantilizing stereotypes.

[tehjoker]

I imagine you'd point out that the Qing collaborated to some extent with the imperialists, and that's why the collaborationist monarchy needed to be overthrown, something the nationalists and the communists agreed on.

In America, the (false but popular) narrative is that the reason for the revolution was the British tried to tax us on tea, and that was enough to overthrow their regime lol There were plenty of loyalists in America too.

[corimaith]

That's one factor, but really, the Qing themselves being considered foreign minority (Manchu) that enacted a highly authoritarian and regimented society that forced cultural customs to the majority, then didn't have the strength or success to justify such oppresive policies probably had more to do with it. And then you've got famine, increasing banditry, corruption and then you're ripe for the loosing the mandate of heaven. Most of this has to do with failures of domestic policy than foreign intervention.

In any case with Opium, Qing estimates themselves only measured around 1% of the population to engaged with the drug, and domestic production actually became more competive than imports at around the 1900s. Nor was the average peasant actually able to realistically afford opium at the time. A large moral panic yes, but USA probably consumes more drugs as a percentage of the population today.

Even with regards to trade, the problem is that Qing had basically no idea or control over any of their finances. Many historians today believe that opium was not really the most signficant factor in heavy trade deficit, but a wider issue of domestic artisans being unable to compete against cheap mass manufactured foreign goods, but we don't know because the Qing didn't even know themselves.

That is to say, it's more accurate to say that Chinese peasants were being dicked over by the Qing (and the Ming beforehand), and foreign imperialism was the symptom, rather than cause of their structural problems. They were authoritarian, corrupt, could not modernize, didn't have control of their finances, all of these factors would have led to their collapse regardless of foreign actions, only that foreign actions revealed the extent of the rot.