Alec Ash is a writer in Beijing, author of Wish Lanterns (Picador, 2016) about the lives of young Chinese, a BBC Book of the Week. His articles have appeared in The Economist, Dissent, The Sunday Times and elsewhere. He is a contributing author to the book of reportage Chinese Characters (UC Press, 2012) and co-editor of the anthology While We’re Here (Earnshaw Books, 2015). He is currently Managing Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel.
The Opium War, understood as the start of an unprecedented crisis inflicted on China by foreigners, is a key source of political legitimacy for China’s contemporary ruling party. The official Communist historiographical narrative of the Opium War relates that it brought on a national emergency which different generations of Chinese reformers—from...