Chapter 10 Toxic wave hits China

In China, only a few places in Yunnan and Guizhou provinces can grow opium.The opium that Dutch merchants taught China to smoke was imported from India by Portuguese merchants, sporadic and limited.It was not until Britain took full control of India and established the East India Company that a powerful drug trafficking network was established.In fact, the East India Company was a huge drug trafficking organization. With its encouragement and support for export operations, it actively opened up the eastern market for opium. Because the wealth of other countries was not worth mentioning at that time, all their strength went straight to China.China's bad luck for three hundred years began from here.

The East India Company initially used opium instead of gold and silver for the sole purpose of balancing the trade balance.In the nineteenth century, the total amount of opium exported far exceeded the total amount of Chinese goods imported, and a large amount of gold and silver flowed back to Britain in turn.China is like an old man crawling with blood-sucking worms, on the brink of death.Businessmen from other countries also joined the ranks of drug trafficking with red-eyed eyes.The UK is of Indian origin.The United States, the country with the strictest and fiercest anti-drug stance now, monopolized the production of Turkey at that time and also imported it to China.

China is aware of the seriousness of drugs and has banned them.As far back as 1729, the Manchu Qing government issued a prohibition order.In 1800, the last year of the eighteenth century, the Manchu Qing government once again issued a ban order.However, anyone who understands the special content of China's "official circles" knows that order and execution are two completely different things.As far as the government is concerned, as long as it issues an order, it is considered to be a complete merit and has done its best. Didn't you say that the government does not care about people's health?We have "repeated orders and five applications" to ban it, and there are notices written in black and white as evidence.As for the results of the ban, no one asked any more questions. If they dared to ask questions, they were reprimanded as "picking and making things difficult" and "having ulterior motives".However, the ban has led to the combination of corrupt officials and profiteers. The stricter the ban order, the closer the combination of corrupt officials and profiteers, and the richer they become.The government and businessmen have jointly woven a tight network to protect drug traffickers.As a result, opium surged like raging waves.In the year 1837 in the nineteenth century, the official recordable import volume was 2.4 million kilograms. No country can bear this kind of murder, but the Chinese have to bear it.

According to the price of opium at that time, it was worth five taels of silver coins per kilogram. In just one year in 1837, about 10 million taels of silver coins flowed out of the country. If it was changed to a small country, the economy would have collapsed. , also makes people tremble.It is a brutal trade in which the most civilized gentlemen in the West sell poison to the ignorant Chinese, squeeze them poor, and poison them.The outcome of this development is predictable. First, the Chinese people will run out of money, the social structure will collapse, and the huge land of more than 10 million square kilometers will be in chaos and desolation.One is that the Chinese people are degenerate, and there are ghosts and ghosts, and the genocide.

God's obstruction of this tragedy has alerted thoughtful Chinese to the above two consequences.In 1838, Mr. Mianning, the eighth emperor of the Manchu Qing government, ordered his ministers to put forward their opinions. The ministers advocated that it should be banned.In particular, Mr. Lin Zexu, governor of Huguang (Hunan and Hubei provinces), a great man who has gone down in history, had the most violent attitude. He said in his memorial to the emperor: "If this kind of trade is ignored again, after decades, China will no longer be able to trade. The soldiers who resisted the enemy no longer maintained the food and pay of the country." He told the truth, not only did not exaggerate, but minimized the disaster.

Mr. Mianning adopted the opinion of banning, and appointed Mr. Lin Zexu as the imperial envoy, the emperor's representative, to go to Guangzhou for execution. The following year, the last year of the 1830s, in 1839, Mr. Lin Zexu arrived in Guangzhou.But like other Chinese officials at the time, he lacked the minimum level of international diplomatic knowledge and was accustomed to high-handed tactics.On March 18th, eight days after arriving in Guangzhou, they ordered the ban on opium, ordered foreign businessmen to hand over all the existing opium within three days, and also issued a guarantee: "I will never carry opium in the future. If violations are found, I would like the ship to be confiscated immediately and the personnel to be executed on the spot." This was a bolt from the blue, which surprised all foreign drug dealers.After a period of stalemate, other countries had to make commitments.Mr. Elliot, the British commercial supervisor, would also like to guarantee that British merchant ships will never carry opium in the future, but he made two requests:

First, if opium is confiscated, compensation must be paid. Second, offenders cannot be executed on the spot, they must go through a public trial before they can be convicted. ——We should understand that Britain has upheld the dignity of human rights since the seventeenth century. The government cannot just order the arrest of those in power when they are happy or unhappy; public trial.In order to adhere to this principle, even the head of the king was cut off.Therefore, in ancient China, this method of executing people on the spot without a trial (in situ Fa-rectification) is unacceptable.Because this may result in unjust imprisonment, one being framed maliciously, or other reasons (for example, taking someone else's luggage by mistake, and there are drugs in someone else's luggage), there will be no chance to prove his innocence.