So it looks as though outourcing the manufacture of everything to China may come back

[Burney]

I agree 100%. The Opium Wars were great. In the 1790s, we sent a mission headed by Lord Macartney to get them to open up for trade.

We pointed out that all the silver coming from the Spanish American mines was ending up in their hands due to us buying tea. And that they should really buy some of our manufactures that their upper middle classes wanted, such as clocks, as this would allow the trade to keep circulating and everyone to get richer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macartney_Embassy

But the economically-illiterate Tibet invading scum refused, as they thought it was more economically productive if all that silver sat in their vaults doing nothing. This is why we had to start flogging them opium to get the silver we needed to buy the tea.

They talk about their century of humiliation. When will they admit that they were wrong? That if we'd done it their way, then all global trade would have ground to a halt, with silver only being used twice on its journey from Latin America to China as opposed to circulating in the economy making us all richer.

Backward race. They owe us an apology.

Actually, their big problem is that they were MASSIVE racists who believed that dealing with stinking, red-haired, round-eyed barbarians was beneath them as the supreme race.

They still actually think like this.