Comparison between Sino-US Trade War and the Opium War of the Qing Dynasty

Abstract

The Sino-US trade war has become more and more fierce. From March 2018 to the present, China and the United States have begun to constantly increase tariffs and restrict each other. Negotiations are still going on and it seems that no real progress has been made. Soybean procurement, sanctions against Huawei, chip battles, intellectual property wars, and technology transfer have been escalated, and both sides of the trade have been affected to varying degrees. At the end of 2019, if all the tariffs in the Trump plan were implemented, it meant that almost all goods from China (worth about $550 billion) would be subject to punitive tariffs. First Opium War‘ Britain often called it the first Sino-British war or "commercial war". It was a war of aggression launched by Britain from China from 1840 to 1842, and it was also the beginning of modern Chinese history. In 1840, the British government used Lin Zexu's Humen cigarettes as an excuse to decide to send the expeditionary forces to invade China. In June 1840, the British warships arrived in the Pearl River Estuary in Guangdong, blocking the seaport, and the Opium War began. The Chinese and British sides signed the "Nanjing Treaty", the first unequal treaty in Chinese history. China began to rip land, indemnify, and negotiate tariffs to foreign countries. The Nanjing Treaty seriously endangered China's sovereignty. China began to become a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society, losing its independent status and promoting the disintegration of the natural economy.