Behind the Failure of the First Opium War: Analysis of the Smoking Ban in China

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Behind the Failure of the First Opium War: Analysis of the Smoking Ban in China

In the 18th year of Daoguang, the Daoguang Emperor sent Lin Zexu to Guangdong to bring the opium use to an end. After Lin Zexu had arrived, more than 20,000 boxes of opium were confiscated and destroyed in Humen, Haikou. This move completely annoyed the British merchants, considering it as an invasion against Britain which destroyed the Sino-British trade and threatened the safety of British merchants in China, leading to the First Opium War against the Qing government. This paper holds the view that the reason why the Qing government banned opium was not that opium seriously harmed peoples health, but the opium trade caused the Qing government to lose a large amount of silver and the economy to collapse. Furthermore, the Qing government issued a series of anti-smoking regulations and policies, which failed in the end mainly due to the corruption and inaction of officials in the Qing Dynasty.

From the beginning of the Ming Dynasty to the first year of Longqing, China had imposed a sea ban for nearly 200 years. But in the past two hundred years, the West had experienced the two industrial revolutions, when earth-shaking changes took place, while China was stagnated in the East. At the same time, after the completion of the industrial revolution, the United Kingdom urgently needed a large market as a commodity export destination, and China just met the standards.

Although the British tried to export British goods to China as much as possible, the Chinese did not do purchases, and most of the goods could be produced by the Qing Dynasty, which resulted in great losses for British merchants. On the contrary, tea, silk, porcelain, and other products produced in the Qing Dynasty were very popular in the European market, which enabled China to earn a large amount of silver. This market power had led to long-term trade deficits in European governments, who were forced to face the risk of silver shortages in the domestic economy at the cost to meet the requirements of Qing merchants.[footnoteRef:4] This trade model was intolerable to British merchants who had gone to great lengths to do business in China.

While the British were still troubled by the trade deficits and debts, the opium trade opened a door for them. British merchants found that opium exports to China could bring a huge amount of profits and opium contained a lot of narcotic toxins so the Chinese could hardly quit once they were addicted to opium.[footnoteRef:5] As a result, British merchants began to export large quantities of opium into China in order to gain profits. However, the long-term use of opium would make people listless, and skinny, and even cause death. At that time, opium was popular in the Qing Dynasty from top to bottom. Not only did the elites like to use opium, but some merchants, civilians, and even soldiers in the army were addicted to opium as well. Opium abuse led to the destruction of many families and no one willing to farm. Government officials and ministers smoked opium without considering affairs for the country. And the soldiers were too weak and listless to fight.

In fact, although the opium trade entered the Qing Dynasty, the number of people who smoked opium only accounted for 5% of the total population of the nation. According to Chinese Modern History written by Fan Wenlan, the number of people smoking opium was estimated to be more than two million in 1835. However, in 1833, before the First Opium War, the population of the Qing Dynasty reached 400 million. Compared with the population of 400 million people, over two million people smoking opium did not strike as a serious social problem. It was the economy of the Qing government that the opium trade actually destroyed, rather than the health of the civilians. The opium trade provided the British East India Company with a great fortune in China. They not only earned back the silver they had spent on tea and silk purchased from the Qing Dynasty but also took a large amount of silver from China by selling opium. The import of opium under the rule of Emperor Yongzheng amounted to 200 boxes per year, the number of which steadily rose to 1000 to the times of Emperor Qianlong, 4000 of Emperor Jiaqing, and reached 30,000 of Emperor Daoguang. Before 1767, Britain exported less than 200 boxes of opium to China every year (each weighed 50-60 kg), but in 1839, Britain exported more than 40,000 boxes of opium to China. The outflow of silver from China was at least five million kilograms, with an average annual outflow of 5 million silver, making up ten percent of the total annual income of the Qing government. The opium trade profits accounted for 15 to 20 percent of British income and caused the scarcity of silver in China.

China was not a silver producer, always counting on foreign trade to support the domestic silver circulation. It was the standard currency of the Qing dynasty, which means that all taxes and financial settlements relied on silver and that in the market merchants used silver as money to buy products, and people also paid taxes with silver. However, as a consequence of opium trade, a large amount of silver flow from the Qing government was lost overseas, and the social economy was greatly affected. The lack of silver was doomed to cause problems in the operation of the entire empire system. The price of silver became expensive, the people could not afford to pay taxes, and the burden of living was aggravated, which eventually resulted in inflation. Lin Zexu insisted on banning smoking because he discovered the economic impact of the opium trade. In his report to the Emperor Daoguang, he wrote, If the traffic in opium were not stopped, a few decades from now we would not only be losing soldiers to resist the enemy but also in want of silver to form an army.Therefore, what opium really destroyed was the government’s economy, rather than the health of the people.

In 1729, the seventh year of Emperor Yongzheng, the Qing government issued the first smoking ban, which stipulated that if anyone is found to be selling opium, the illegal goods will be confiscated, and the traffickers will be detained for a month, and then sent to the border to join the army. This was the earliest anti-smoking law in China. But this law only prohibited the sale of opium, not the import of opium. In addition, this law distinguished the medicinal opium from the smoking type, that is, it only prohibited the smoking opium but the use of opium as medicine. In the fifteenth year of Emperor Qianlongs reign in 1750, the Qing court issued another smoking ban. The law prohibited the trafficking, sale, and consumption of opium in China, still not forbidding medicinal use.[footnoteRef:18] Therefore, the prohibition effect of this law on opium was weak. In the first year of Jiaqing in 1796, facing the useless decrees of the previous dynasty, Emperor Jiaqing issued a smoking ban. In this act, it was the first time that the regulation of opium had been established, and the prohibition of opium was extended to its use, where opium users were severely punished.

Despite the fact that Emperor Yongzheng had issued laws against opium since the beginning, but people did not really realize the harm of opium, the ban on smoking was not of any use. By the time of Qianlong, the official establishment of Canton Cohong aggravated the degree of corruption in the Qing Dynasty. In 1757, Emperor Qianlong limited all western trade to Canton and regulated it through Cohong merchants. As agents of the government and with full support, Cohong had legitimate monopoly rights in trade with foreigners, acting as intermediaries for foreign merchants in Chinese trade, responsible for their behaviors and goods.[footnoteRef:21] However, foreign merchants did not have any power in the Qing Dynasty, in that they were only allowed to do business with Cohong merchants and limited to live in the Thirteen Hongs of Canton. Under this rule, Cohong was responsible for all foreign merchants who came to trade in the Qing Dynasty. If Cohong failed to manage transactions with foreign merchants, it needed to pay off the loan owed by the foreign merchants. In this sense Cohong merchants were not only responsible for their own goods but also for the delinquent loans of foreign merchants. This unique feature had put Cohong in the position of a tool used by government officials to squeeze foreign trade. In terms of system, although Cohong were mainly under the control of the customs, whether it was the governor, general, Xunfu or any other government offices in Canton, they were able to impose orders on Cohong in varied ways. Faced with these officials with much more power, Cohong merchants naturally dared not offend anyone.

Although foreign trade was likely to generate high income, Cohong merchants had to establish good relations with government officials if they wanted to get through the inspection and supervision of the Qing customs without being targeted by local officials. The most direct way to satisfy officials greed and establish relationships with them was bribery. This forced extortion directly led to the creation of Consoo funds. According to John K. Fairbanks description in Late Qing dynasty Cambridge History of China, in order to protect themselves, Cohong merchants established a secret fund in 1775. Every member of Cohong ought to contribute a tenth of their trade profits to the fund to cover officials extortion. It was not until in 1780 that the fund became public and officially imposed a 3 percent tax on imports to ensure that Cohong merchants could repay the debts of foreign merchants. This particular Consoo fund was aimed to insure the industry by dealing with the government extortion.

Finance was another manifestation of the corrupt political system. The expenditure of the local governments in the Qing Dynasty was not allocated by the central government but had to be spared by the chief executives in all levels form their own salaries, which became the most justifiable objective reason for their extortion. Moreover, the taxes and bribes collected from the officers and the local governors could not be taken entirely by themselves, and in order to preserve their status, they had to satisfy their superiors, who must satisfy more senior officials than them as well along the system the bureaucracy of the Qing Dynasty was like a bottomless pit devouring the countrys finance and taxation. In the face of such a corrupt system, it was difficult to avoid the corruption and degradation of the whole system and even the whole society.

With the development of the opium trade, the Consoo fund to solve the official extortion began to rely entirely on the support of opium. Moreover, as government extortion grew, the importance of the opium trade increased. The more officials extorted, the more foreign merchants needed to sell opium to satisfy the desires and meet the demands of Qing officials. Although the Qing government increased the ban on opium during the Daoguang period, it actually promoted the profit margin of the opium trade. The smoking bans only forced the opium trade to go underground. Not only did it fail to prohibit the opium trade but it also raised opiums price. Only officials with senior positions were truly obeying and implementing smoking bans, but junior official positions would turn a blind eye to the smoking ban as long as they could profit from it. In the whole Qing Dynasty bureaucracy, such junior officials accounted for the most positions, whose inaction, non-cooperation, and corruption made it difficult for the smoking ban to take effect. Although Lin Zexu was determined to help the Qing government to get rid of the impact of opium smuggling on the social economy, faced with a bunch of incompetent and corrupt local officials, the only result waiting was a failure.

The reason why the Qing government banned opium was not that opium seriously harmed peoples health, but because the opium trade caused the Qing government to lose a large amount of silver and the economy to collapse. Although many emperors in the Qing Dynasty had issued smoking bans, all of them turned out nothing. The real reason behind was the corruption and incompetence of the Qing bureaucracy. The destruction of opium at Humen only brought the long smoking campaign to an end with its failure. At the same time, it also led to the First Opium War which led China to modern times.

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