Just remember that the situation which caused the Opium Wars was that since the 1300s or so, China had exported more than it imported, so the world's silver tended to settle in China. You can see the Spanish empire as a scheme to move silver from Mexico and Peru to China the long way via the Dutch.
The Honourable East India company settled on opium as the one commodity which might settle their balance of payments problem. The period when China was poor was 100, 150 years in the 19th and 20th centuries, linked to specific bad governments (Great Leap Forward, cough).
The Honourable East India company settled on opium as the one commodity which might settle their balance of payments problem. The period when China was poor was 100, 150 years in the 19th and 20th centuries, linked to specific bad governments (Great Leap Forward, cough).