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What parts of China are still not under a nominally Chinese government, after the return of Hong Kong and Macau in the 1990s? Are we waiting for the absorption of Outer Mongolia and Jiaozhou into Chinese rule?
Even leaving aside that many of these wouldn’t reflect a drop in sovereignty or prosperity (sacking of Yuanmingyuan, cession of Hong Kong - notwithstanding that the cession of Macau was under the Ming 500 years ago!!!, and that that arrangement was amenable to all parties involved), or occurred late (e.g. Boxer indemnity being much more damaging than others prior, invasion of outer Manchuria was a failure by the Russians and only occurred in the 1930s by the Japanese), or are controversial in professional discourse (e.g. effect of opium smuggling in the long term), or that you’re intentionally using inflammatory rhetoric and wildly exaggerating historical fact to an astonishing degree (e.g. “forced the government to let it massively drug its population via opium” lol)…
Pray tell, what effect did you think the Taiping and the other rebellions in the 19th century have on Chinese prosperity?
I already mentioned the salient one in my comment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Manchuria
What are you talking about?
The rest of your message is extremely flawed, to deny that the century of humiliation implied a loss of sovereignty and sovereign interest is beyond absurd and bad faith.
One can attempt to analyze and mitigate that some of the unequal treaties or actions were not that potent but that is overall an impossible goal.
See e.g: among many:
The Boxer Protocol of September 7, 1901, provided for the execution of government officials who had supported the Boxers, provisions for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and 450 million taels of silver— more than the government's annual tax revenue—to be paid as indemnity over the course of the next 39 years to the eight nations involved.
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