From Opium to Algorithms: How China Turned Humiliation into Dominance
In the early 19th century, Britain had a problem. China produced what the world wanted—tea, silk, porcelain—and demanded payment in silver. The British Empire was bleeding hard currency. Rather than accept the imbalance, Britain engineered a solution: opium. Grown in British India and smuggled into China, the drug created dependency at scale. Millions became addicted. Silver began flowing back out of China.
