Also the Taiping Rebellion happening alongside and between the opium wars is probably one of the most important historic events of the 19th century with ramifications to the modern day. The European powers put their finger (heavily) on the scale for the Qing (for Opium reasons) instead of the historically progressive and also kind of weird Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

I can't even imagine the way China (and the world) would look if the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and their leader who they thought was Jesus' younger brother won. There'd probably not be a People's republic of China, but also probably no century of humiliation. It's hard to picture. Would it stay a kingdom, become a republic earlier or later? Would the wildly divergent Taiping Christianity sweep Asia? IDK

Libs telling on themselves when they say things like that is so funny. Like, I get that in some ways, it makes sense that if something happened a long enough time ago then it stops being relevant. But that's only really true of the stuff that makes local news. A major historical process like the Opium Wars literally shapes history for eternity: it determines crucial changes in the allocations of capital worldwide, impacts the entire society of major geopolitical powers, and shapes international relations forever because they have cascading echoes of tit-for-tat that will literally last until the end of human history. But if you're a liberal, I guess all of that isn't as important as the vibes and just using racist caricatures as the tea leaves to do geopolitical analysis with.