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SCMP Reporter

Some readers were surprised by the claim in this column last week that the story of Hong Kong being won by the British in an 'Opium War' was untrue.

 It all depends who you want to believe. Since 1997, the generally accepted story in Hong Kong has been the view of film-makers and the mainland's megaphone mouths: the British deliberately forced innocent Chinese citizens to become hooked on dangerous substances. When noble Chinese individuals tried to stop them, the evil Brits brought in warships to force opium on them.

 This makes a dramatic story, but is largely fantasy. Historians say the argument was about a topic we are much more familiar with: trade barriers.

 The commercial dispute could have been about any product. 'Had there been an effective alternative to opium, say molasses or rice, the conflict might have been called the Molasses War or the Rice War,' the historian H. P. Chang said.

 'The Chinese were the opium distributors within China and soon became the principal producers,' said historian John King Fairbanks, quoted by Frank Welsh in A History Of Hong Kong.

 Now that the media in Hong Kong is emerging from the stifling jingoistic cloud it has been under during the transition period, let us at last consider the true story.

 What really happened was this. In 1836, mainland tax collectors noticed that the most popular item of trade in southern China was no longer tea-leaves but products of the poppy plant. Their complaint: no tax was paid on opium imports, which all went through unofficial channels.

 Chinese officials in Guangzhou were unanimous: The opium trade should be legalised immediately. That way, the huge profits that Chinese businessmen were making on opium would instead find their way into government offices in the form of taxes.

 But other persons, including the Emperor of China and Charles Elliot, leader of the British community, wanted the trade stamped out altogether.

 The Emperor gave the job of getting rid of it to a man named Lin Tse-hsu - nicknamed Clear Sky Lin. He was short, fat and brilliant. But although he had a fine mind, he knew little of the world outside China.

 For example, he believed that English people needed tea and rhubarb to survive. If China stopped the supply of these two commodities, the English race would die out.

 Elliot forced the British business community to dig out all their opium - more than 1,000 tonnes - and burn it. This should have been the end of the matter, but several things happened which caused tension to escalate.

 First, there was the greed of the business community on both sides. Although Elliot banned British ships from trading in opium, Jardine Matheson, Dent and a few other firms, quietly re-started opium sales, and the mainland buyers happily received it.

 The British community felt it was the victim of double standards. While they were at least trying to stamp out the trade, the Chinese government had apparently turned a blind eye to the huge opium trade within China for more than three decades.

 A second problem concerned not opium, but beer. A group of drunken sailors, British and American, got into a fight with local Chinese in Tsim Sha Tsui. One Kowloon resident died. Elliot reacted immediately, arresting the sailors and paying compensation to the dead man's family. The sailors were jailed, but Elliot was unable to find out which man struck the fatal blow.

 Lin demanded that one British sailor be handed over. But under the rule of law, only a guilty person can be punished. Elliot couldn't send an innocent sailor for execution. Commander Lin could not understand why.

 The tension caused trade between Britain and China to grind to a halt, leaving both sides unhappy.

 Lin was replaced by a Chinese official named Chi-i-san, but relations continued to be poor. By this stage, opium had dropped out of the discussion. Politics, trade relationships, and legal jurisdictions were the only subjects on the table.

 Foreign 'experts' in the British government, fed up with what they saw as the failure of Elliot's 'nice guy' approach, decided a show of strength was called for, and sent a fleet of warships to the south of China.

 After winning a single skirmish, Elliot called a halt and asked for a prize: US$6 million and a small island to the north of the Pearl River's main estuary.

 Back in London, Lord Palmerston berated him for choosing a booby prize. He said Hong Kong was 'a desert island'.

 Elliot eventually retired, and when the full story came out about his work to defuse tension between the two communities, he was hailed as a hero and given a knighthood.

  But perhaps the ultimate compliment came from his old enemy Chi-i-san. Years later, a French traveller found Chi-i-san working in Tibet, historian Frank Welsh reports.

 The old Chinese official said he remembered a man called Elliot (he pronounced it E-Lut) who, in the name of peace had been willing to anger the Hong Kong business community and the British Foreign Office. (At this point, shades of Chris Patten rise.)  Chi-i-san said that the story told in the Chinese community was that Elliot had been decapitated as a punishment.

 'A dreadful fate, that of poor E-Lut; he was a good man.' 



Opium one ingredient in a hot-pot of conflict