Britain’s National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, near London, also displays exhibits of the Opium Wars. They take up a small, uncrowded corner with the story told in the wider context of the colonization of India. The account is accurate, but as in the school curricula of Western democracies, the Opium Wars story is but a part, while for China this is the story that propels the policies it now implements. China has never hidden its own historical weaknesses. In a speech on July 1, 2017, to mark the twentieth anniversary of China regaining control of Hong Kong, President Xi Jinping raised the
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