Latest news with #FirstOpiumWar
IOL News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- IOL News
Ed Sheeran concert sets record attendance figures: headlines from back in the day
Shivers' by Ed Sheeran is the best song to sing in the shower with a final shower singing score of 8.87 /10. With a high energy rating of 86/100. 1839 In Humen, Chinese official Lin Tse-hsü destroys 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants, providing Britain with a reason to start the First Opium War. 1899 The great WG Grace plays his last day of Test cricket, aged 50 years and 320 days. 1901 The Staatsmodelskool opens as the Pretoria Boys High School. 1934 Dr Frederick Banting, the co-discoverer of insulin, is knighted. 1935 The French liner SS Normandie sets an Atlantic crossing record of four days, three hours and 14 minutes on her maiden voyage. The modern Queen Mary II can do it in 5 days, but usually makes the crossing in 7. 1937 Britain's King Edward VIII marries US divorcee Wallis Simpson after abdicating. 1940 The last British soldiers are evacuated from Dunkirk while French troops allow them to get away by forming a rear guard. 1940 Nazi official Franz Rademacher moots making Madagascar the 'Jewish homeland'. 1946 The first bikini is displayed in Paris. 1962 Air France Flight 007 overshoots the runway and explodes in Paris, killing 130. 1973 A Soviet Tupolev Tu-144, AKA Concordski, disintegrates in mid-air at the Paris Air Show. 14 people died. It is the first crash of a supersonic passenger aircraft. 1984 A military offensive by the Indian government at Harmandir Sahib, the holiest shrine for Sikhs, in Amritsar, begins. It will cause more than 5 000 casualties. 2012 The Diamond Jubilee pageant of Britain's Elizabeth II takes place on the River Thames to mark her 60 years on the throne. 2014 Hashim Amla becomes the first non-white captain of the Proteas. 2018 A dead whale is found with 7kg of plastic in its stomach on a beach in Thailand. 2019 A Canadian government inquiry finds that the deaths of more than 1 000 indigenous women and girls, who were murdered or went missing and never found, to be 'genocide'. 2019 Jay-Z is the world's first billionaire rapper, says Forbes magazine. 2023 An Ed Sheeran concert sets an attendance record at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The concert pulled in 77 900 people. DAILY NEWS
National Geographic
07-05-2025
- General
- National Geographic
Inside Kowloon Walled City—a lawless metropolis where anarchy reigned in Hong Kong
Known as 'the city of darkness,' Kowloon Walled City was a crowded, tangled metropolis of 60,000 people with little political or legal oversight. The Walled City's interconnected rooftops were a combination of playground, laundry room, dumping ground, relaxation area, and observation deck for aircraft approaching nearby Kai Tak airport. Photographs by Greg Girard Until 1994, a tiny subsection of Hong Kong was dominated by a vertical city—a place so dense, it was hard to imagine how its 30,000 or more residents could survive there. Known as Kowloon Walled City, the area was littered with trash, cluttered with crime, and renowned for its anarchy. Lawless and largely forgotten by both Chinese and Hong Kong officials, the city 'has always aroused curiosity and fear, and few dared venture inside,' historian Elizabeth Sinn writes in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. But how did Kowloon Walled City become so chaotic—and why did people choose to live there? Once called the 'city of darkness,' this area was so tangled and contested that its legacy still lives on decades after its eventual destruction. Kowloon, Hong Kong military encampments on land and fleets in the bay during the Second China War. Photograph By Felice Beato, Wellcome Collection (Top) (Left) and Photograph By Felice Beato, Wellcome Collection (Bottom) (Right) Though it would later become known for its lawlessness, Kowloon Walled City was originally a military and governmental center. Established as an Imperial Chinese signal station in 1668, the eventual city within a city was located on the northeast side of the Kowloon Peninsula that partially makes up Hong Kong. (The history of Hong Kong, visualized.) In 1843, in the aftermath of the First Opium War, British colonial forces took over Hong Kong. But the walled city—so named because of fortifications like cannons, a gate, and watchtowers—remained in Chinese hands during the first days of the British occupation. The British colonial government gave the military garrison a special administrative status, and over the years its Chinese inhabitants added a shopping area, customs house, school, pier, and other features. Although it was seen by many as a necessary shield against British influence in the region, the city was nonetheless open to non-Chinese people. British colonists, Chinese visitors, and others flocked to the 6.4-acre walled city, which soon became a hotspot for gambling and recreation. In Kowloon, there were 300 interconnected rooftops where kids would often play. Then, in 1898, the British and Chinese signed the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory, a 99-year lease that would continue British rule in Hong Kong for another century. Now considered one of a series of 'unequal treaties' that reinforced British colonial rule, the treaty at first excluded Kowloon City from British occupation. The agreement came with a condition: Chinese officials were only given jurisdiction in the area as long as they didn't disrupt British colonial attempts to 'defend' Hong Kong. Just one year later, in 1899, the British decided that the city's governor was assisting resistance against British colonial rule. In response, the British overran Kowloon City, occupied it, and declared they would oversee it in the future. A police officer doing a stop and search, likely looking for drugs. This was a normal practice at the time, when officers were often looking for people who illegally escaped the mainland into Hong Kong. The view from the outskirts of the city. Photograph By Ian Lambot, Blue Lotus Gallery An aerial view of Kowloon Walled City shows how crowded these buildings were at the time. Photograph By Jodi Cobb, Nat Geo Image Collection Impoverished and isolated, the city's new residents lived in political and legal limbo. Neither the colonial government nor the Chinese government regulated the city, but the British tried, and Beijing officials resented the attempts. Thus, writes architectural historian Eunice Mei Feng in Resistant City: Histories, Maps And The Architecture Of Development, the city became 'a criminal hideout…an aggregation of illegal structures susceptible to fire and health hazards.' Ad-hoc buildings turned into multistory complexes connected by balconies and steep staircases. Gambling parlors, strip clubs, restaurants, and unregulated markets proliferated among the coffin-like buildings, and the city was riddled with theft and poverty. During the Second World War, Japanese forces occupied Hong Kong and tore down the city's walls to extend a runway at a nearby airport. But even without a wall, the city was a place unto itself. 'The disputed area is neither walled nor is it a city,' Paterson News wrote in 1960. 'In reality it is a tiny enclave of sin and filth.' Rooftops were a place of reprieve where children played and did homework. But the city below was dark and congested. Planes from Kai Tak airport would often fly closely above the city while residents did their laundry on the rooftops. Here, a man makes dough in a room covered in flour. Most of the city's shops and markets went unregulated. Photograph By Jodi Cobb, Nat Geo Image collection Though Hong Kong had laws, many non-criminal offenses weren't enforced due to the political status of the city. Kowloon had limited access to city infrastructure such as garbage collection and running water. But for its residents—who moved there due to necessity, bankruptcy, or blight—it was home. In an analysis of resident oral histories, a group of Hong Kong-based scholars concluded that Kowloon Walled City residents had strong community ties, affordable housing, and a higher quality of life than international reportage usually depicted. Topsy-turvy streets, ad-hoc residences, and crowded, tangled towers of homes and businesses gave the area a feel no other city could replicate. 'We walked along 'streets' no wider than my outstretched arms,' said U.S. foreign service officer Donald Michael Bishop in an oral history. 'Looking up, the small slice of sky between the buildings was obscured by a thicket of illegal electric wires tapping the current. I could make out one lonely star.... Had we turned into any alley, or climbed the stairs, we would have seen the dark and ugly sides of the Kowloon Walled City.' But tensions festered over the legal status of the city and its residents. Hong Kong's colonial forces regularly kicked out people they characterized as 'squatters' and destroyed homes and buildings. Yet officials largely abandoned the city's residents, leaving them on their own to build what a group of U.K. sociologists later called 'a form of makeshift community life, making do with what was available.' It is estimated that before the city's demolition in 1994, as many as 60,000 people may have lived in Kowloon. Photograph By Ian Lambot Ian Lambot, Blue Lotus Gallery It is estimated that by the 1980s, up to 60,000 people may have lived in city boundaries. But time was running out for both the British colonial government and Kowloon Walled City. As China and the U.K. made plans for the eventual handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese, they announced in 1987 that the city would be demolished. The city was leveled in 1994 after nearly a decade spent resettling its residents, and is now a park and archaeological site. Though known to the outside world as a den of vice and danger, Kowloon Walled City is still seen as an example of creativity and resilience in the face of neglect and repression. The 'city of darkness' may be just a memory today, but it continues to capture curiosity, hinting at what can be accomplished by communities struggling for survival.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - China is teaching Trump some tough lessons on trade
China is about to hand President Trump his head. Trump's efforts to bully China into submission via tariffs has already gone spectacularly wrong. Far from being intimidated, China has been invigorated with a new sense of national purpose. To anyone who had the slightest understanding of Chinese history, this was all perfectly predictable. The First Opium War in 1839 — there were two — was, ironically enough, a dispute over the trade deficit. It involved Great Britain attacking China to force it to allow Western powers, including the U.S., to sell opium into China. If you imagine the Chinese occupying New York City to force the U.S. to legalize the trade in fentanyl, you get some idea of what this incident means to people in China. The First Opium War began what the Chinese call the 'century of humiliation,' during which China was exploited and invaded by various foreign powers. It didn't end until the Japanese were driven out at the end of World War Two. This is still an open wound for China, so it is politically impossible for Xi Jinping to give in to Trump's intimidation even if he wanted to. And he doesn't want to. Trump's efforts to punish China by imposing a 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports was actually the greatest gift he could have given Xi. First, China is far better positioned to survive a trade war than is the U.S., for one simple reason: China can solve its biggest problem by throwing money at it. Exporters may lose business, but China can use some of the more than $750 billion it has invested in U.S. Treasurys alone to keep them afloat. The U.S. can't do that — we have a supply-chain problem, not a financial problem. Once China stops exporting to the U.S., there is no amount of money we can spend that will fill up our Walmarts. Remember trying to buy medical masks during the pandemic? Multiply that by tens of thousands of products. Many things will be completely unavailable, and what is available will be much more expensive. Not even Trump can repeal the law of supply and demand by executive order. China also has a long-term interest in making its economy less dependent on exports and decreasing its dependence on Western technology. Trump's trade war gives Xi the perfect opportunity to pursue these goals, since any resultant pain will now be the fault of rapacious foreigners seeking to humiliate China yet again. So China is in no hurry to end the current stand-off, a fact that is now making Trump extremely nervous. When pressed, Trump has a habit of saying whatever he thinks will buy him some time and take the pressure off, regardless of whether it is true or not. His constant promises to release some new policy 'in the next two weeks' became a running joke during his first term. He's doing the same thing now, issuing fantasy statements about how a trade deal with China is imminent. Despite Trump's claim that Chinese officials have 'reached out' to him a number of times and his insistence that active talks are going on 'every day,' there are no negotiations going on at all. Trump is essentially negotiating with himself. He abandoned his 145 percent tariff on Chinese-made electronics within 48 hours, and now, in response to Chinese silence, he's telling the world that tariffs on China will be much lower. He insists 'We're going to be very nice. They're going to be very nice, and we'll see what happens. But ultimately, they have to make a deal because otherwise they're not going to be able to deal in the United States.' You can practically smell the fear. If you have to begin a negotiation by insisting that the other side come to the table, you've lost already. Trump has good reason to be afraid, just as the Chinese have good reason to let him stew. While the impact of an effective trade embargo will begin to empty shelves in a matter of weeks, most wholesale Christmas orders are placed with factories by the beginning of June. None of those orders are going to be made if retailers think they might be hit with 145 percent tariffs on Christmas lights and Barbie dolls. 'The Trump That Stole Christmas' headlines write themselves. Of course, Trump is free to abandon U.S. tariffs on China unilaterally, but there is no guarantee that China will reciprocate. All this means that Trump has dug himself a very deep hole, and the Chinese are not going to help him dig his way out. Before they agree to restore normal trade, they're going to extract a price. It might be a groveling public apology. It might be a promise to abandon Taiwan — something Trump is probably temperamentally inclined to do anyway — or it might be a formal recognition of China's 'nine-dash line' territorial claims. But whatever it is, it will be big. And it will be bad for America. Trump's effort to punish China for 'defying' him was an essay in historical ignorance and economic foolishness. He is now getting schooled in real time. And it's going to be an expensive lesson, both for him and for us. Chris Truax is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain's primary campaign in 2008. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
25-04-2025
- Business
- The Hill
China is teaching Trump some tough lessons on trade
China is about to hand President Trump his head. Trump's efforts to bully China into submission via tariffs has already gone spectacularly wrong. Far from being intimidated, China has been invigorated with a new sense of national purpose. To anyone who had the slightest understanding of Chinese history, this was all perfectly predictable. The First Opium War in 1839 — there were two — was, ironically enough, a dispute over the trade deficit. It involved Great Britain attacking China to force it to allow Western powers, including the U.S., to sell opium into China. If you imagine the Chinese occupying New York City to force the U.S. to legalize the trade in fentanyl, you get some idea of what this incident means to people in China. The First Opium War began what the Chinese call the ' century of humiliation, ' during which China was exploited and invaded by various foreign powers. It didn't end until the Japanese were driven out at the end of World War Two. This is still an open wound for China, so it is politically impossible for Xi Jinping to give in to Trump's intimidation even if he wanted to. And he doesn't want to. Trump's efforts to punish China by imposing a 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports was actually the greatest gift he could have given Xi. First, China is far better positioned to survive a trade war than is the U.S., for one simple reason: China can solve its biggest problem by throwing money at it. Exporters may lose business, but China can use some of the more than $750 billion it has invested in U.S. Treasurys alone to keep them afloat. The U.S. can't do that — we have a supply-chain problem, not a financial problem. Once China stops exporting to the U.S., there is no amount of money we can spend that will fill up our Walmarts. Remember trying to buy medical masks during the pandemic? Multiply that by tens of thousands of products. Many things will be completely unavailable, and what is available will be much more expensive. Not even Trump can repeal the law of supply and demand by executive order. China also has a long-term interest in making its economy less dependent on exports and decreasing its dependence on Western technology. Trump's trade war gives Xi the perfect opportunity to pursue these goals, since any resultant pain will now be the fault of rapacious foreigners seeking to humiliate China yet again. So China is in no hurry to end the current stand-off, a fact that is now making Trump extremely nervous. When pressed, Trump has a habit of saying whatever he thinks will buy him some time and take the pressure off, regardless of whether it is true or not. His constant promises to release some new policy 'in the next two weeks' became a running joke during his first term. He's doing the same thing now, issuing fantasy statements about how a trade deal with China is imminent. Despite Trump's claim that Chinese officials have ' reached out ' to him a number of times and his insistence that active talks are going on ' every day,' there are no negotiations going on at all. Trump is essentially negotiating with himself. He abandoned his 145 percent tariff on Chinese-made electronics within 48 hours, and now, in response to Chinese silence, he's telling the world that tariffs on China will be much lower. He insists 'We're going to be very nice. They're going to be very nice, and we'll see what happens. But ultimately, they have to make a deal because otherwise they're not going to be able to deal in the United States.' You can practically smell the fear. If you have to begin a negotiation by insisting that the other side come to the table, you've lost already. Trump has good reason to be afraid, just as the Chinese have good reason to let him stew. While the impact of an effective trade embargo will begin to empty shelves in a matter of weeks, most wholesale Christmas orders are placed with factories by the beginning of June. None of those orders are going to be made if retailers think they might be hit with 145 percent tariffs on Christmas lights and Barbie dolls. 'The Trump That Stole Christmas' headlines write themselves. Of course, Trump is free to abandon U.S. tariffs on China unilaterally, but there is no guarantee that China will reciprocate. All this means that Trump has dug himself a very deep hole, and the Chinese are not going to help him dig his way out. Before they agree to restore normal trade, they're going to extract a price. It might be a groveling public apology. It might be a promise to abandon Taiwan — something Trump is probably temperamentally inclined to do anyway — or it might be a formal recognition of China's ' nine-dash line ' territorial claims. But whatever it is, it will be big. And it will be bad for America. Trump's effort to punish China for 'defying' him was an essay in historical ignorance and economic foolishness. He is now getting schooled in real time. And it's going to be an expensive lesson, both for him and for us.
Asia Times
31-01-2025
- Business
- Asia Times
Opiate War: US-China in a fearsome fentanyl fight
United States President Donald Trump recently threatened to impose an additional 10% tariff on goods coming from China in response to the illegal import into the US of the opioid fentanyl. Fentanyl has become the latest battleground in an ongoing trade war between the world's two largest economies. China is currently the primary source of the precursor chemicals needed to manufacture fentanyl. China and the US have taken steps to tighten the transfer of these chemicals. However, the illegal fentanyl pipeline has switched from direct export into the US to Mexico, where fentanyl is manufactured and then smuggled into the US. While synthetic opioids like fentanyl are a relatively new class of drugs, opium has a long destructive history in trade wars and warfare, beginning with the First Opium War of 1839-42. In the first half of the 19th century, the British government faced an economic problem. Imports of tea, porcelain and silk from China had created a large trade imbalance. One product that the British could access in large quantities was opium grown in territories under their colonial control. The British response to address the trade imbalance was to flood the Chinese market with opium. By the 1830s, millions of Chinese citizens were addicted to the drug. In 1839, in response to the addiction crisis, the Chinese emperor sent an official, Lin Tse-hsu, to Canton (modern-day Guangzhou), the home base for British opium merchants, to stem the flow of opium and destroy the stockpiles of the drug. The British merchants were outraged by his actions, claimed that the Chinese crackdown contravened the principles of free trade and demanded compensation for the destroyed opium. They successfully lobbied the British government for a military response to the Chinese crackdown. A painting from circa 1843 by British artist Edward Duncan depicting a scene from the Second Battle of Chuenpi in January 1841 between British and Chinese forces. Image: Edward Duncan via The Conversation The British forces inflicted a series of military defeats on the Chinese until 1842, when the war was ended with the Treaty of Nanking. The treaty opened five Chinese ports to British traders, imposed heavy reparations for destroyed opium stockpiles and gave the British control over Hong Kong as a permanent base. Further hostilities broke out in the Second Opium War of 1856-58 when combined British and French forces again inflicted military defeats on China and demanded further concessions on trade. Opium and opium-based products had an ambiguous status throughout the 19th century. Laudanum, for instance, was a mixture of opium, alcohol and spices and was available as medicine for pain relief and coughs. However, it was also recognized as both potentially addictive and fatal if taken in large amounts. Laudanum bottles contained both recommended dosages (starting at three months old) and a warning that it was poison. Fast forward to today, and opioids still have an ambiguous identity as an analgesic and addictive psychoactive substance. Aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies that downplayed or even denied the potential for addiction has created an opioid crisis that has led to millions in the US, Canada and elsewhere becoming addicted. Opioids such as OxyContin were effective in treating pain but have also led to increased problems with addiction. In 2016, synthetic opioids like fentanyl surpassed both opioids and heroin as the leading cause of overdose and deaths. China was initially reluctant to take measures to help the US deal with its addiction crisis, and the threat of tariffs does not make the Chinese any more likely to want to help. The Opium Wars signaled the start of what is referred to as the 'century of humiliation' in China, a period when the country was colonized and dictated to by foreign powers. Trump's rhetoric on tariffs is reminiscent of that period and is unlikely to make the Chinese government more cooperative on drug trafficking and other issues. This approach suggests that nothing has been learned about the importance of international cooperation in tackling crises of addiction since the Opium Wars. The relationship between China and the West has changed significantly since the days of the Opium Wars, and in many ways, the roles are reversed in this current opioid crisis. But rather than threatening a trade war that raises historical memories of previous conflicts, negotiation would work much better. Former US President Joe Biden's administration was able to reach an agreement through negotiation that may reduce the amount of fentanyl entering the country. This agreement provides a model on how to use compromise rather than threats to combat the international export of fentanyl. Martin Danahay is professor of English language and literature, Brock University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
