Chris Ma deplores the protesters waving American flags. They "should be ashamed of themselves". (Rioters waving US flags need a history lesson, December 14). Ma gives some history of malign US policy against China and Chinese as reasons.
I agree and would like to add to that history.
We all know about Britain deliberately addicting China's youth on opium and starting the Opium Wars when China resisted. One result was Hong Kong, forcibly taken by Britain. [And protesters also fly the Union Jack??]
Less well known is that the United States was an enthusiastic supporter of the opium trade, as described by Karl Meyer in The Opium War's Secret History. A "24-year-old Yankee", Warren Delano arrived In Canton in 1823 to work for Russell & Company America's largest trading house in China. Delano made his money through the alchemy of opium, "black dirt" from India turned to silver by Chinese addicts. Meyer in The New York Times of June 28 1997, reports:
Warren Delano returned to America rich, and in 1851 settled in Newburgh, N.Y. There he eventually gave his daughter Sara in marriage to a well-born neighbor, James Roosevelt, the father of Franklin Roosevelt.
That is the very same Franklin Delano Roosevelt who became 32nd president of the United States, a presidential connection that helped keep America's role in the China opium trade long hidden.
But it is history. History that led to China's "Century of Humiliation". Hong Kong protesters wave the American flag, ignorant of this horrid history and in a deluded belief that America will come to their aid should things turn nasty.
I join Chris Ma in saying "shame on them". And add: "Get real".
Peter Forsythe
Siena One
Discovery Bay
9308 0799
