Britain went to war with China twice to keep selling it opium

In the 1840s, Qing China tried to shut down the British opium trade that was addicting millions of its people and draining silver from the empire. Britain answered with gunboats, twice, forcing open Chinese ports and seizing Hong Kong. The wars are still taught in China as the start of a 'century of humiliation.'

— Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of Modern China — Picador, 2011
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