In one of the biggest actions the administration has taken against fentanyl trafficking, the U.S. on Tuesday announced a series of indictments and sanctions against 14 people and 14 firms across China and Canada related to the import of the drug to the United States.
If you’re downvoting this: the opium war was a series of conflicts where Britain fought to smuggle opium into China and China trying to stop it. The Boxer rebellion was an anti colonial uprising to kick westerns (British, American, and others) out of China. The Boxer protocols was a heavily imbalanced treaty that heavily destabilized China and in my opinion put conditions in place that made communist China possible.
We get the references, it was just a shit comment.
I don’t think every single person got the reference but that aside I don’t think it was a “shit” comment either. The opium war and the boxer protocols are very much in the minds of the Chinese communist leadership, which could be just Xi Jinping nowadays. Xi has referred to them as an “intense humiliation for the country” and a “great pain for its people”. These cultural memories are, in my opinion, definitely playing a part in china’s policies when it comes to fentanyl. And that’s how I interpreted that comment. Perhaps it could have been started less crassly but the core point that in the past the shoe was on the other foot is completely valid.
It’s not really valid to speak of shoes and feet unless the US were the ones subjecting China to the opium, which isn’t true and this whole thread conveniently glossed over.
American traders participated in trading opium in China (source)