Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional stories - Why did the Opium War "signal a change in the traditional social orbit of China by means of commodities and capital"?

Why did the Opium War "signal a change in the traditional social orbit of China by means of commodities and capital"?

Before the Opium War, China had been a traditional economy, a small peasant economy, with men farming and women weaving, self-sufficient and self-developing.

After the Opium War, there was a massive influx of commodities into China, whether useful or not. There was a huge outflow of capital, so the traditional economy could not do any more. For example, a piece of cloth, you weave it yourself and machine weave it are both used to make clothes, but machine-made is cheaper. So the traditional economy disintegrated. After the Opium War, China's capitalist economy began to sprout. A large number of "landowners" and merchants started "national industries". Everyone went into the factories to work, and then used their capital to buy goods for distribution.

Capital export, Britain opened the door to China with its ships and cannons, with the aim of dumping goods and earning silver.

Capital export means silver export. Only, after the Sino-Japanese War, Japan was too much more excessive than Britain.