This is different than what I would normally write, but I thought the story how Hong Kong became under British rule was very interesting. This was the story my class read about at my Saturday Chinese school a couple of weeks ago.
China was a country that exported goods to different countries. For example, they exported silk, gun powder, porcelain, and more. Later on, Europe imported more goods from China and it increased every year. Though, China didn't need to import goods from Europe, until the eighteenth century. The British found out that Chinese people enjoyed smoking opium more than tobacco at that time. Though, they didn't know that opium was horrible for their bodies. The British planted lots of opium plants in India, and sold it to China. They sold it at a very cheap price and once the Chinese got addicted to it, the price raised. The British were making a lot of money from this. When the Chinese government finally realized that opium was bad for them, they banned the British from selling it, but the British ignored their command. They continued to ship opium to China secretly. In 1839, a Chinese official named Lin Zexu, destroyed over 20,000 cases of opium. The British government soon found out and were very angry, so they decided to attack China. At that time, China's army wasn't that powerful and was defeated by the British. The Chinese ended up giving a lot of money to Britain as well as Hong Kong. They also had to agree that the British could sell opium to China. This made China suffer for over 100 years.
Thank you for reading my blog!
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