UK-China relations and the politics of remembering and forgetting the Opium Wars

UK-China relations are complex, and they have undergone several changes under different UK governments and Chinese leaders. From the UK side, UK-China relations have been through ‘golden ages’ particularly under the years of David Cameron, (2010-2020), where it has been suggested that ‘Cameron’s engagement with China was a response to the crisis of the global economy in 2008 and the divergence of the economies of China and the West’.

However, after the Cameron era, UK-China relations cooled again, and it has been contended that many contentious issues including Hong Kong, Xinjiang and espionage concerns have led to a hawkish perspective on China. More recently, under the leadership of Keir Starmer, UK-China relations seemed to have warmed up once more – especially after his visit to Beijing in January 2026. Writing for Aljazeera, Federica Marsi has suggested that the UK-China ‘ice-age’ has now thawed, although ‘areas of disagreement’ persist.

To create better UK-China relations, I argue that greater historical transparency and critical readings of the recent British and Chinese past is required if the UK and China are to establish stronger long-lasting bonds.

First encounters and the Opium Wars

The most well-known and politically significant interactions between the UK and China happened during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Specifically, the Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) which involved the imposition of several unequal treaties on China by the British, saw the creation of several treaty ports, the acquisition of Hong Kong and eventually the authorisation of the western importation of Opium into China. All in all, as historians of the Opium War and western Imperialism have argued ‘China’s encounter with Western imperialism was often deforming and dehumanising’.

Sino-Anglo politics of the past

Yet, while historians are relatively clear with regards to the facts of these encounters, arguably, the interpretation of these histories within British and Chinese collective memory is slightly more complex. Firstly, in British terms, memories of the Opium War are largely forgotten. Thus, it’s fair to say that Britain’s role in these events is not particularly well understood or known in Britain today. Even the physical traces are neglected. Moreover, it is possible that amnesia surrounding the Opium Wars developed when a narrative of guilt and social justice was gradually replaced by a discourse of blame and fear. Nevertheless, in the recent past the wars have become a vague and distant memory in Britain.

In China, however, arguably the opposite is true and the Opium Wars – and the colonial injustices caused by the wars – have become embedded within wider patriotic education campaigns understood as ‘humiliation history’ or the ‘century of humiliation’. Rather than a recent phenomenon, historians have argued that humiliation-based discourse begins with the late Qing and early Republican eras, when patriotic Chinese referred continuously to the humiliations their country experienced at the hands of colonial actors beginning with the Opium War.

In post-PRC campaigns, the idea of a ‘century of humiliation’ starting from the Opium Wars has become central to China’s national narrative and has helped legitimise the authority of the contemporary Chinese state.

Importance of historical transparency in the construction of better UK-China relations

Considering these different histories and the politics of remembering and forgetting, I would like to tell a brief anecdote. In 2019, as part of an undergraduate field trip to Beijing, I took a group of students to the Yuanmingyuan Gardens (also known as the Summer Palace in Beijing). Established in 1709, the Yuanmingyuan were a grouping of classical gardens and waterways, which also included thousands of buildings, housing a vast art collection. Lamentably during the second Opium War, Yuanmingyuan was famously sacked by British and French forces in October 1860.

On walking through the grounds, my students (who were mainly British) reported that they had absolutely no idea that these events had taken place. Many reflected critically on the lack of discussion of the Opium Wars in their early education and suggested that there should be more teaching on the impact of British colonialism in China.

Reflecting on these comments, if UK-China relations are to improve, better educational strategies and programmes are needed if British people are to understand the negative impact of British colonialism upon China.

Nevertheless, greater critical debate is also needed within China to understand how discourses of humiliation and patriotic narratives shape understandings of the Opium Wars and foreign ‘outsiders’. While critiques of patriotic education and humiliation discourse are still needed in China, public spaces to create these critiques are limited.

Conclusion

To summarise my arguments, I do not want to undermine the importance of teaching colonial history in the UK and/or China; and additionally, I do not want to unsettle that idea that British imperialism was an aggressive and damaging force in late Qing China. However, questions need to be asked about how these histories are interpreted and emphasised differently by the British and Chinese state.

UK-China relations in the future will only improve if both nations do more to reflect on these difficult, complex and uncomfortable histories.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Statecraft Institute.