dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Anonymous ID: 2fb171 Dec. 12, 2020, 10:32 p.m. No.12005473 🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>12005406

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/entertainment/books/2020/06/28/book-review-how-two-jewish-families-shaped-modern-china/41740643/

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jonathan Kaufman has produced a fascinating history of modern China by focusing on two Jewish families who built business empires there that have lasted nearly 200 years.

Referred to by the natives as “taipans” – a leftover colonial term that conveyed power and money and roots that stretched back to the Opium Wars, the Sassoon and Kadoorie dynasties used their massive wealth to propel the cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong into the financial capitals of the East, inspiring and enabling a generation of Chinese to be successful capitalists and entrepreneurs. They helped open “the world to China – and opened China to the world” in the 1920s and 30s.

Losing most of their fortunes following the Japanese invasion of Shanghai during World War II and the Communist takeover in 1949, they partnered in Hong Kong with fleeing Chinese factory owners “to set the stage for the export boom that in the twenty-first century would make China the world’s factory floor,” Kaufman says.

He opens his history with David Sassoon, a member of a prominent Jewish family in Baghdad. When forced to leave by the Turkish rulers, he moved to India where, even though he never learned English and wore robes and a turban, he partnered with the British East India Company in expanding its trading empire throughout Asia. Along with his eight sons and their wives, Sassoon “piloted his family to dominate China trade, subdue and shape Shanghai, control the opium business, bankroll the future king of England, and advise prime ministers.”

David’s grandson Victor Sassoon rose from “dilettante figurehead to impresario,” transformed Shanghai by building world-famous luxury hotels, bankrolled the Nationalist Chinese under Chiang Kai-shek, defied the Japanese and, along with the Kadoorie sons, offered sanctuary to thousands of fleeing European Jews, many of whom came to America after the war.

“In 1979, United States treasury secretary Michael Blumenthal stunned officials he was meeting in Beijing when he began to speak to them in Chinese – in Shanghai dialect.” He had been a refugee there as a teenager and had learned Chinese on the street and English at the Kadoorie School.

Elly Kadoorie, who started out as an employee of the Sassoons recruited from Baghdad, then ventured out on his own to build a comparable fortune, added to Shanghai’s opulence with his own hotels and mansions. His sons, Lawrence and Horace, who suffered under the Japanese during the war, rebuilt their fortune in Hong Kong (they owned China Light and Power, the electric utility) after the anti-foreign Communists took over Shanghai. They eventually won back the communists’ approval by investing billions in modern Chinese industry. Grandson Michael continues to oversee this modern alliance.

Writing with a reporter’s flair, Kaufman gives us a fascinating and informative look at this bit of long-hidden history.

First Opium War

Opium was first introduced to China in the 17th century, in the form of madak, a blend of opium with tobacco smoked with bamboo pipes. Countless smoking dens popped up along the Southern coastal cities and were viewed as corrupting the Chinese both morally and physically. In 1729, Qing Emperor Yongzheng (雍正帝爱新觉罗胤祯) banned the smoking of madak. British merchants complied.

During this period, China’s interest in Western goods was very limited whilst European demand for Chinese silk and tea was insatiable. They loved the texture and beauty of silk and they found drinking tea prevented them from getting sick — instead of drinking water straight out of lakes and rivers, tea called for boiling the water first which assisted in killing bacteria and germs; however, this was not common knowledge at the time and the European contributed the health effect of drinking disinfected water to tea. The large trade deficit drained Europe of its silvers, as this was the only form of currency acceptable to the Chinese.

By 1780, the added pressure from the British East India Company’s rapidly deteriorating financial health made Britain re-evaluate and subsequently resume opium trading, despite any Chinese legislation. The British grew opium in its tropical countries, namely India, and sold it to the Chinese . By 1800, the British East India Company dominated this supremely lucrative opium market in China.

Commissioner Lin Zexu destroying opium outside of Humen Town (虎门销烟). [chinesegeography.skyrock.com]

In the 1830s, over 20,000 chests, each containing about 75 kilograms of opium, arrived annually in Canton, the only port open to foreign trade. Chinese consumption skyrocketed except this time, instead of madak, they smoked pure opium. The drastic increase in narcotic addicts, plus the rapid outflow of silver, caused grave concern for the Qing Imperial Court.

In 1838, Emperor Daoguang (道光帝爱新觉罗绵宁, 1820-1850) appointed special commissioner Lin Zexu (林则徐) to ban the illegal import of opium. After a letter sent to Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom pleading for a stop to the opium trade was ignored, Lin confiscated and destroyed over 20,000 chests of opium and ordered a blockade of European ships to prevent more opium from coming into Canton.

The British retaliated with military force which resulted in a devastating defeat for the Chinese and the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. In addition to pay a large indemnity and hand Hong Kong to Britain, four additional ports — Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai — were forced open to foreign trade. The treaty furthermore exempted all foreigners from Chinese law, meaning their degree of freedom was so significant they were essentially above the law.