Imperialism In China Essay

After the UN hearing on British reparations for their acts of imperialism and colonialism in China the council has decided on having Great Britain give a public apology for their actions and millions of pounds to support environmental restoration. This seems like a small price to pay for the acts by the British who took over China in order in profit for themselves. But this can be justified better when taking into consideration how China is currently more productive than Britain, and is growing at an exponential rate, the addiction to opium has been greatly curbed and in many ways China is out-developing the original industrial nation. This does explain why the council chose to issue an apology rather than give unnecessary financial payments.
The time period when the British took over was the period of Imperialism with global powers around the world attempting to spread, and profit.
This was also during peak of the British empire, who controlled land all over the world. In China the british saw great opportunity, a huge economy and population to profit from, and so they started to sneak-import opium into China in order to get the population addicted, and when the chinese rejected and attacked opium ships, the British had an excuse to attack. This led the the Opium wars, which the british won, and forced the Chinese to sign unfair treaties that gave the british power over
them.
The UN council sought the truth and sometimes this went against awarding reparations.
Some of the most persuasive points were that the British ended some patriarchal practices such as foot-binding, along with giving chinese women more rights. They also brought new european ideas to chinese education, china already had a complex education system but European science and technology had surpassed Chinese and so they brought new ideas and concepts to Chinese education. The British also forced China into participating largely in the global market, at the time only profiting the British but in the long run allowing China to develop into a great world
power. The reparation petitioners also brought up valid arguments for reparations such as how the British forced the Chinese into signed unequal treaties giving the British free-reign and giving them dominion over Chinese lands. They also forced China to give them territory, areas such as Hong-Kong to the british. They also started the Opium wars by getting the Chinese population addicted to opium and then punishing the Chinese government when they attempted to stop the importing of opium into their country. I don’t agree with the reparations given as even if the Chinese economy is booming currently, it does not equate to an equal society, as china is ranked #88 in per capita gdp, meaning most people don't earn very much money. And so i think they should have had reparations to help the poor people of china, whether it is through financial means or education. The idea of giving money to try and help the environment is good, especially in china where pollution is a huge problem, but this isn't necessarily a result of the British as they mostly used China for cash crops and raw resources to be used back in Britain. A public apology is alright, not much, but it is good for public relations with China.