"Some U.S. officials go further, arguing that Chinese authorities have decided as a matter of policy to foster the drug trade in the Americas in order to destabilize the region and spread corruption, addiction and death here."
Just as it is used in other countries racial hatred and jingoism is also used in China for political and social control (or to justify immoral profits).
Oh, that's right it would be terrible and millions would suffer from terrorism through nuclear, biological, or chemical means so maybe enforcing your own laws equitably would be a reasonable plan?
Also good thing China has nuke and willing to go beyond 300 warheads.
The simpler explanation is it’s a lucrative way to make money.
It's one of those "just so stories" that people love because it ties everything into a nice bow.
I'm not saying it's irrelevant, but if the Opium Wars never happened does anyone believe they wouldn't be doing the same thing anyways?
I'll bet a lot of people involved in the fentanyl trade don't even know much about the Opium Wars anyways.
It's like claiming smuggling of liquor from Canada to the US during prohibition was Canada's attempt at getting back at the US for the War of 1812. Nahh.. they just wanted to make a crap ton of money.
I’ll bet you aren’t familiar with the grammar school Chinese history curriculum.
Besides, as a modern kingpin, think with scale! Recruiting goes much smoother when you can sell it as “you’re a soldier for the country, fighting an undercover war”. How many companies have “make money” as their mission statement besides Amazon?
The comparison to Canada and prohibition doesn’t pass the smell test. Given that the war of 1812 wasn’t predicated on getting the Canadians into a drunken stupor as a tactic of economic warfare.
Oh, and as far as USA vs British East India Company, it’s all “the west” in the end.
Since we’re speculating freely anyway, why does the revenge have to come in the same form as the initial affront?
(A tael was a unit of Chinese silver bullion; heads references the death penalty for drug running, which applied only to Chinese subjects for most of the opium years.)
Making money and then feeling patriotic that you are helping China slowly destroy America because of what they did in the past.
Source: Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America by Peter Andreas (2013)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13689883-smuggler-nation
> "Smuggling was also common practice for U.S. merchant ships penetrating the Chinese market for the first time... In the first decade of the nineteenth century, U.S. merchants would also begin to make inroads into the ilicit China opium market, much to the alarm of the British East India Company, which jealously protected its opium-smuggling monopoly. Jacque Downs, the foremost historian of the early U.S.-China opium trade, writes: "The Americans were marvelously ingenious in their exploitation of the commerce. They managed to circumvent both the East India Company's franchise and the Chinese Government's prohibition and carried on a very lucrative, if antisocial and ultimately ruinous trade." Dominated by a handful of players, opium smuggling by American shippers would become increasingly vital to U.S.-China trade relations, with opium sales generating the revenue to buy Chinese goods such as silks and teas. Many of America's most elite merchant families made fortunes in the opium trade: "Girard, Astor, Joseph Peabody of Salem, John Donnell of Baltimore, and the Perkins firm (now allied with Bryant and Sturgis) were among the largest shippers of the drug." "
Yes, legalization/decriminalization plus public health education campaigns and a ban on marketing and doctor kickbacks would probably destroy drug profits around the world.