Opium Wars Opium Wars The Opium Wars were two wars in the mid-19th century involving China and the British Empire over the British trade of opium and China's sovereignty. The clashes included the First Opium War (1839–1842) and the Second Opium War (1856–1860). The wars and events between them weakened the Qing dynasty and forced China to trade with the other parts of the world. In 1820, China's economy was the largest in the world, according to British economist Angus Maddison. Within a decade after the end of the Second Opium War, China's share of global GDP had fallen by half. In
History of the Jews in China Revolution arrived in China. By the time of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, only a few Chinese Jews were known to have maintained the practice of their religion and culture though the Kaifeng synagogue survived for around seven centuries until 1860. China's Jewish communities have been ethnically diverse ranging from the Jews of Kaifeng and other places during the history of Imperial China, who, it is reported, came to be more or less totally assimilated into the majority Han Chinese populace due to widespread intermarriage. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, some