How the 19th-century opium war shapes Xi’s trade clash with Trump

ASIA PACIFIC / Politics

How the 19th-century opium war shapes Xi’s trade clash with Trump

Visitors line up outside the Lin Zexu Memorial Hall in Fuzhou, China, on Oct. 23. Chinese President Xi Jinping draws on lessons from Lin Zexu, a 19th-century official whose defiance of Britain in a confrontation over trade led to China’s humiliating defeat but made him a national hero. | GILLES SABRIE / THE NEW YORK TIMES

By Andrew Higgins
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Oct 30, 2025

FUZHOU, CHINA – Climbing the ranks of the Communist Party while working in a coastal province, Xi Jinping — the man now leading China’s push to overtake the United States — kept a poem on his desk that helps explain why he has fought back fiercely against U.S. President Donald Trump in their trade war.

The poem, a patriotic ode to the sanctity of national interest, was written by Lin Zexu, an imperial commissioner from Fujian, the same coastal province, who oversaw China’s foreign commerce in the early 19th century. He is celebrated today in Chinese textbooks and speeches by Xi as a national hero for standing up to Britain, the superpower of the day, in a confrontation over trade.

That confrontation, triggered by Lin’s efforts to halt opium smuggling, ended in disaster for China — a crushing military defeat that gave Britain control of Hong Kong and, in China’s telling, started a “century of humiliation,” a shameful stain whose removal Xi has set as one of his most important goals since becoming China’s leader in 2012.