What is the Chinese history in a nutshell?

by justcurious202002

I am a history newbie with limited knowledge in general. I am asking this question out of being inquisitive. Dont mean to offend anyone.

Here is what I know so far:

  • During the return of Hongkong to China by UK, I learned that UK defeated China in some war and Hongkong was given as monetary restitution as China was broke and Hongkong was a crucial port in world commerce. Basically BOOT without Build.
  • A Chinese guy told me that China was world's leading nation in commerce and lost the crown the to UK, which is now with USA. So when UK was coming up, there was a trade war like the current between USA & China. Then China accused UK of flooding the Chinese market cheap & low quality stuff (Opium being a hot button topic), that trade war escalated to war. There are claims that UK played dirty, so the Chinese justify that playing dirty is vital to be a super power. So, they feel stealing tech is fine as UK stole their Tea leafs which was the AI of that time.

So, What is details? have I got the right info so far?

hillsonghoods

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the history of a place that has thousands of years of history and now has over a billion people is quite complex and hard to sum up in a Reddit post. For more information on China, please see our FAQ on China and for more in-depth reading, there's a great list of appropriate books to read about China in our Book List. Hope that helps!

EnclavedMicrostate

To add on to what /u/hillsonghoods has said, you seem to specifically be thinking about the Opium Wars, for which our FAQ is quite extensive.