The Opium wars

Opium substance derived by collecting and drying the milky juice in the unripe seed pods of the opium Poppy, papaver somniferium. Opium varies in color from yellow to dark brown and has a characteristic odor and a bitter taste. With nearly 2 million pounds of opium being sold in China each year, opium weakened a large amount of the Chinese population. In the 19Th century, 10 percent of the Chinese population was smoking opium.
This also affected China economically, due to the large amount of resources, especially silver, flowing out of the country to pay for the opium. When the Chinese government first discovered opium smoking in the country in 1729, government promoted policies to prohibit the sale of opium for smoking, and shut down and banned opium-smoking houses. At the time, it became a very serious offense to sell opium for smoking purposes. It was classified in the same category as robbery and murder. The punishment was either banishment or execution.
Although the harsh punishments helped rid cities of local dealers and treat drug addicts, they did not stop British merchants from bringing in more opium to China. Because many Chinese government officials were corrupt and accepted bribes from British officials, they also became a part of the illegal opium trade. When the Chinese government discovered the British smuggling opium into China to sell, it was alarmed.
That was when Emperor Daoguang appointed Lin Tse-Hsua, an imperial commissioner, to lead an anti-opium campaign.Lin, in 1839, finally went to Canton, which was then the main port for foreign trade. There, he found a British warehouse full of opium. He confiscated its content and publicly destroyed more than 20,000 chests of the opium seized from British merchants by mixing them with salt and lemon before throwing them into the ocean.
The Opium Wars resulted in the victimization of China by foreign powers for decades to follow. It was not until 1949 and the victory of Mao Zedong and communism that the unequal treaties signed between the Chinese government and the foreign powers were abolished. It was also after 1949 that China took back all the ports, except for Hong Kong. Hong Kong remained a British territory until 1997.