“The fall, rise and fall of China”, Firstpost, Aug 21, 2026.
“China was the world’s largest economic and demographic power for most of history. Its dynasties — from Han 2,000 years ago to Qing in the 20th century — regarded their country as the Middle Kingdom. Foreigners, including traders and soldiers from the West, were dismissed as barbarians.
Between 1644, when the Qing dynasty seized power, and the end of the 18th century, China was a global hegemon. The West’s rising powers in the 1700s, Britain, France and Spain, sought China’s silk, porcelain and tea. By the late 1700s, Qing China was at the peak of global power and wealth.
As the Industrial Revolution took off in Europe in the 1770s, isolationist China fell behind in science, technology and industrial production. Neighbouring India had meanwhile fallen to British colonial rule. India and China did not share a border. Tibet was an independent state till the early 1700s. The Himalayas were a shield between the two Asian giants.
China and India had not fought a war in 2,000 years. Ironically, it would be the British colonial conquest of India that would lead to what became known in China as its “century of humiliation” following the Opium Wars in the mid-1800s.
The British exported opium from its Indian colony into China. As a result, both India and China suffered simultaneously at British hands. Indian farmers in Bihar and Bengal were forced by the East India Company, a front for the British Crown, to grow opium poppies in place of food crops for export to China. That caused food shortages and famines in India and opium addiction in China…………………………”
Read the full article at Firstpost.
