That’s largely a misconception, Chinese authorities seazing illegally smuggled opium did spark the first opium war, however France and Britain did not invade China so that they could force Chinese to buy their opium. They wanted to force China to open more ports for trade and to stop persecuting christian missionaries and Chinese christians (obviously mainly due to political reasons, christians functioned basically like a 5th column inside China and allowed European powers to justify their military interventions to their own citizens).

The highly unequal treaties signed between Britain (and other European countries) after the war did not even require China to legalize opium and allow it to be freely imported (that would have been extremely hard to justify politically and the opium trade was not even a primary concern for the British government in the first place). China did legalize opium on their own during the second opium war basically as way to boost tax revenues (because of the Taiping rebellion the Manchu Qing government was near collapse) and Chinese domestic production soon surpassed the imports from British India.

> force China to open more ports for trade

of opium...

This is a bit like that debate about Confederate states fighting for state rights. The right to own slaves.

China didn't want to trade much except for silver and opium. The Chinese trade was emptying British coffers of silver so the British forced trade of one of the few things the Chinese were willing to trade in exchange for their highly sought out goods.

> China didn't want to trade much except for silver and opium

The Manchu Qing government wanted this, many Chinese considered them to be foreign oppressors not much better than the British and the French and were happy to trade with the Europeans (not only for opium).

> of opium...

Again, opium was only a part of it and it was not that important by the second Opium war. China was falling apart due to internal issues and European powers opportunistically used this to peel of parts of China and to expand their overseas markets (for all kinds of goods besides opium) further increasing internal instability.

I’m not trying to exonerate the British or to downplay their imperialist policies but the ‘Opium wars’ were not merely about the opium trade, they weren’t even widely called that until much later. The modern popular perceptions of the wars is highly influenced by Chinnese civil war propaganda (from both sides) which portrays them as beginning of some western plot to destabilize and destroy China while it’s much more complicated than that.

The difference being the scale and scope of government involvement in the stealing of technology specifically, not colonial antics of forcing the port of Canton open so opium can be imported from British India.

We're not talking about the history and legacy of colonialism. I think that debate has been long settled and traditional colonialism is behind us. The type of colonialism we are now seeing is, for example, infrastructure loans that end up as a backdoor into gaining control of strategic assets in resource-rich but underdeveloped countries, which seems to be the MO of the belt-and-road initiative.

So Chinese companies stealing ip is nothing to be concerned about because of the Opium wars?

The current human rights abuses like forced sterilization of minorities, body part removal of prisoners or the past abuses of chairman Mao are on a much grander scale of evil where do they fit into your worldview?

All countries have done bad things in the past. Mao Zedong killed millions.

He killed his own countrymen (primarily) and this is a discussion about international affairs.

You want to pretend like China has a stellar international affairs record? How do you feel about the Chinese treatment of Hong Kong and Taiwan?

I don't see how any of this is relevant anyway. What China is doing today with IP is bad. The opium wars have nothing to do with that.

Hong Kong and Taiwan could be argued as internal affairs, honestly. No matter how much it would pain me that 2 developed and thriving democracies (maybe Macau, too, if you squint really hard at it) are very exposed to nasty regime abuses. "Cuius regio, eius religio" isn't a Chinese saying, it's a Latin one from the Western world. Can't have it both ways.

If you want to go into more unequivocally international affairs abuses, use examples more like the Spratly Islands or the Chinese fishing fleets in international waters.

And regarding IP, I'm kind of torn. China is genuinely developing and innovating and making amazing products for the rest of the world. The UK, the US did the same at the start, also through blatant disregard for IP. Maybe this kind of competition is ok. After all, "If we each trade one apples, at the end we each have one apple. If we each trade one idea, at the end we each have two ideas".

He killed plenty Koreans too.

Most people using that phrase don't care much about that, it's about the Great Leap Forward. Plus you could argue that his intervention was legitimized by the North Korean government asking for it.

Anyway, we're getting side tracked here.

Whataboutism at its best

oblio is the one who brought up the Opium wars as a justification for China stealing IP. That is whataboutism. Responding to whataboutism with examples showing the original whataboutism as invalid is perfectly fine, IMO.

The thing is, that comment by GekkePrutser is not even showing my whataboutism as invalid.

Only wwtrv addressed by direct point and I can say that I only half-agree with him.

But GekkePrutser's reply is something like the OP saying the tram is going straight, me saying that it's going to the right pointing at a 15 degree angle and then GekkePrutser saying that there is no tram, it's a rocket instead and it's actually pointing down and to the left at a 30 degree angle, i.e., waaaaay off-mark.

Anyway, I'm probably breaking a chunk of HN rules continuing this discussion :-)