No Opium War

What would have happened if Britain respected China's wishes to end the opium trade in its country? How much longer could China have realistically stayed aloof to the affairs of the Europeans before something happened?

This would also affect Japan's development as well...
 
Probably another two decades at most. China was undergoing unprecedented population growth and was becoming ever more reliant on Indian cotton imports. The great bottleneck was lack of knowledge of the market as no British merchants were able to go inland to meet with the end user. There were also no Chinese buyer in India to communicate with the producer. Unless the Emperor wants to see his citizens go naked, expanding trade was the only way. Even if the emperor refuse to grant foreigners access, the spike in cotton prices would behoove Chinese merchants to do business in India.

Also by the late 1830s, Britain had completed the first industrial revolution. This was a textile revolution and the results were not visibly impressive to the Chinese. However the second IR (steel, steam) was just beginning. It would be impossible to dismiss the foreigners as barbarians when they show up in steamships, which is what happened during Perry's embassy to Japan.
 
The economic effects afterward were quite devastating to China, as many of the industrial developments seriously wounded the previously self dependent economy of China. I bet that if the Opium War had never happened that China could probably grow economically, as its population was skyrocketing. Another thing is that feudal lords actually started to control the businesses regardless of investors, and seriously stemmed the rise of the private sector.

The Opium War seriously hurt confidence in the all too real ruling governments failure in protecting them, and would probably get the Chinese into a conflict much more serious than the Opium War.
 
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