yes, but the opium wars sowed mistrust and discord, souring chinese folks on euro-centric westernism, and capitalism was held up as the shining beacon of westernism for the last century or two. that prior systems were crumbling and other factions fueling the fight is (co-)incidental.

for instance, the US spent most of the 20th century vilifying communism/socialism, going to war, invading other countries, and undermining independent states through all manner of subterfuge. do you really think it's that far-fetched that those experiences pushed china away from the kind of budding capitalism described in the article?

certainly open to debate, but not summary dismissal.

Your thesis really doesn't hold up to history. The Nationalists were winning the Chinese Civil War until WW2 put the conflict on hold. Had Chiang Kai-shek made a few different decisions, there would be no communist China.

no, chiang kai-skek wouldn't have even been in the position to make a series of mistakes had the people not been mistrustful of the british and looking for an alternative.

I think it's historical revisionism to claim "mistrustful of the british and looking for an alternative."

The British never controlled China anywhere near the degree they controlled, say, India. Their presence didn't penetrate beyond the coastal provinces (you can see this in that the Chinese presence in other British colonies was largely Cantonese/Fujianese). Even Japan never managed to control more than a section of the country.

The Chinese civil war is legitimately (not euphemistically) referred to as a civil war: Elites battling for control as the center weakened.

I'll agree that the use of the British as a propaganda foil was somewhat effective, and legitimately pointed out atrocities and unfair treatment by all the foreign powers involved. But the value of that propaganda (still effective today) was disproportionate to the actual influence. Nothing wrong with that by the way: state building always involves such propaganda.

By contrast you can see that Britain fully controlled the Indian economy (though for many people lower down on the feudal hierarchy the British were merely one part of the control system, essentially trading one prince for another). And, like China, Britain was one in a punctuated string of foreign invaders who displaced the remnants of a fading prior system. "Indian" identity was more a construct of the educated upper classes who were able, in the 20th century, to eject the British.

that's all interesting, but not particularly pertinent to whether the opium wars changed sentiment enough to push china away from capitalism right as it was budding in china.

the british didn't need to control china in any degree for this to happen. just some greed at the wrong time, in the wrong manner.

I’m not really sure what argument you’re trying to make. Obviously the British had an impact on Chinese history at the time. How that directly leads to communism is again, unclear and contingent on a number of other factors, many of which could have easily been very different. I don’t see how one can argue for a direct link.

It seems exposure to western style business did cause this withdrawal. Sad truth is a democratic China is a lot easier for western capital to control remotely, hence the need to avoid this trap as long as the wise want to escape an updated form of recolonization.