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On 1 July 1997, Britain handed Hong Kong back to China after 156 years of colonial rule, closing the last major open account from the Opium Wars. Deng Xiaoping designed the deal but died four months before the flag came down, and the fifty-year promise he made has been fraying ever since.
On 17 April 1895, China signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki and surrendered Korea, Taiwan, and 200 million taels of silver to Japan. Eight months of unbroken defeats confirmed what the Self-Strengthening Movement had spent thirty years denying: Japan had transformed itself. China had not.
In 1836, a Qing official argued for legalising opium to save the empire. The emperor said no. Twenty-two years later, the empire was required by British treaty to permit it.
Britain forced China to buy opium at gunpoint. Now China is the primary source of the chemicals that make fentanyl, which kills tens of thousands of Americans a year. The symmetry is not accidental, but it is not justice either.
Four hundred and ten years ago today, a Jurchen chieftain proclaimed himself Khan. The dynasty his heirs built solved an ancient problem — and created the conditions for a modern catastrophe.