Lin Zexu

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Lin.

Lin Zexu
A Chinese artist's drawing of Lin (published 1843)
Viceroy of Liangguang
In office 21 January 1840 – 3 October 1840
Preceded by	Deng Tingzhen
Succeeded by	Qishan
Viceroy of Shaan-Gan
In office 1845
Viceroy of Yun-Gui
In office 1848
Viceroy of Huguang
In office 1837-1839
Personal details
Born	30 August 1785(1785-08-30) Fuzhou, Fujian
Died	22 November 1850(1850-11-22) (aged 65) Puning, Guangdong
Occupation	Politician
Military service
Battles/wars	First Opium War

Lin Zehu
A painting of Lin supervising the destruction of opium
Traditional Chinese	林則徐
Simplified Chinese	林则徐
Transcriptions Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Lín Zéxú [lǐntsɤ̌ɕy̌] - Wade–Giles Lin Tse-hsü - Gwoyeu Romatzyh Lin Tzershyu Min - Min-dong BUC Lìng Cáik-sṳ̀
Courtesy name
Traditional Chinese	元撫
Simplified Chinese	元抚
Transcriptions Mandarin - Hanyu Pinyin Yuánfǔ [ywǎnfỳ] - Wade–Giles Yüanfu - Gwoyeu Romatzyh Yuanfuu

Lín Zéxú (simplified Chinese: 林则徐; traditional Chinese: 林則徐; Wade–Giles: Lin Tse-hsü; Foochow Romanized: Lìng Cáik-sṳ̀; Styled: Yuanfu (元撫); 30 August 1785 – 22 November 1850) was a Chinese scholar and official during the Qing Dynasty.

He is most recognized for his conduct and his constant position on the "high moral ground" in his fight, as a "shepherd" of his people, against the opium trade in Guangzhou. Although the non-medicinal consumption of opium was banned by Emperor Yongzheng in 1729,^[1] by the 1830s China's economy and society were being seriously affected by huge imports of opium from British and other traders based in the city. Lin's forceful opposition to the trade on moral and social grounds^[2] is considered to be the primary catalyst for the First Opium War of 1839–42.^[3] Because of this firm stance, he has subsequently been considered as a role model for moral governance, particularly by Chinese people.

Early life and career

Lin was born in Houguan (侯官) (modern day Fuzhou), in Fujian province. In 1811, he received the Jinshi degree, the highest in the imperial examinations, and the same year, he was appointed to the prestigious Hanlin Academy. He rose rapidly through various grades of provincial service and became Governor-General of Hunan and Hubei in 1837, where he launched an opium suppression campaign.^[3]

Campaign to suppress opium

An ever-growing demand for tea, combined with the acceptance by China of only silver in payment, resulted in large continuous trade deficits.^[4] Attempts by the British (Macarthney in 1792), the Dutch (Van Braam in 1794), Russia (Golovkin in 1805) and the British yet again (Amherst in 1816) to negotiate access to the China market were resounding failures.^[5]. By 1817, the British hit upon counter-trading in a narcotic, Indian opium, as a way to both reduce the trade deficit and finally gain profit from the formerly money-losing Indian colony. The Qing Administration originally tolerated the importation of opium because it imposed an indirect tax on Chinese subjects, while allowing the British to double tea exports from China to England, which profited the monopoly for tea exports of the Qing imperial treasury & its agents.^[6] However, by 1820 the planting of tea in the Indian and African colonies, along with accelerated opium consumption, reversed the flow of silver, just when the Imperial Treasury needed to finance suppression of rebellions against the Qing. The Viceroy of Guangdong began efforts to constrain the trade, but due to large increases in the supply of opium and the large coast line of South China and corruption (the Qing coastal navy was one of the largest smugglers of opium), these efforts failed.^[7]

A formidable bureaucrat known for his competence and high moral standards, Lin was sent to Guangdong as imperial commissioner by the Daoguang Emperor in late 1838 to halt the illegal importation of opium from the British.^[8][9] He arrived in March 1839 and made a huge impact on the opium trade within a matter of months.^[8] He arrested more than 1,700 Chinese opium dealers and confiscated over 70,000 opium pipes. He initially attempted to get foreign companies to forfeit their opium stores in exchange for tea, but this ultimately failed and Lin resorted to using force in the western merchants' enclave. It took Lin a month and a half before the merchants gave up nearly 1.2 million kilograms (2.6 million pounds) of opium. Beginning 3 June 1839,^[10] 500 workers laboured for 23 days in order to destroy all of it, mixing the opium with lime and salt and throwing it into the ocean outside of Humen Town.^[11] 26 June is now the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in honour of Lin Zexu's work.

Lin also wrote an extraordinary "memorial" (折奏/摺奏), by way of an open letter published in Canton, to Queen Victoria of Great Britain in 1839 urging her to end the opium trade. The letter is filled with Confucian concepts of morality and spirituality. As a representative of the Imperial court, Lin adopts a position of superiority and his tone is condescending,^[8] despite the British clearly having the upper hand, military-wise, when the event is examined with hindsight. His primary line of argument is that China is providing Britain with valuable commodities such as tea, porcelain, spices and silk, while Britain sends only "poison" in return.^[8] He accuses the "barbarians" (i.e. private merchants) of coveting profit and lacking morality. His memorial expressed a desire that Victoria would act "in accordance with decent feeling" and support his efforts.^[12] He writes:

We find that your country is sixty or seventy thousand li from China. Yet there are barbarian ships that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great profit. The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China. By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience?

—Lin Zexu, Open letter addressed to the sovereign of England and published in Canton (1839)^[12][13][14]

The memorial was never delivered to the queen, though it was later published in The Times.^[15]

Open hostilities between China and Britain started in 1839.^[16] A naval skirmish in the autumn of 1839, following the politic afterspell of the opium hand-over, was in fact the very first act of war, in what later should be recalled as "The First Opium War" . The immediate effect was that both sides, by the words of Superintendent Captain Charles Elliot, and the Chinese High-commissioner Lin Zexu made a ban to all trade. Before this, Lin had pressured the Portuguese government of Macau, so the British found themselves without refuge, except for the bare and rocky harbours of Hong Kong.^[17]

Exile in Xinjiang

Lin made significant preparation for war against the possible British invasion. The British sailed north to attack Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The governors of these two provinces failed to heed a warning from Lin, however, and were unprepared when the British easily landed and occupied Dinghai.

Because of this defeat, and also because of the intrinsic behaviour of Chinese imperial political structure of the Qing Dynasty, Lin was popularized as a scapegoat for these losses. His position was then given to Qishan in September 1840. As punishment for his failures, Lin was sent to the remote Ili in Xinjiang. The Chinese government considered Lin to be an official of rare virtue, and in 1845 he was appointed as governor-general of Shaanxi-Gansu. In 1847 he became governor-general of Yunnan-Guizhou. But these posts were less prestigious than his previous position in Canton, and his career did not fully recover from the failures there .^[18]

While in Xinjiang, Lin was the first Chinese scholar to take note of several aspects of Muslim culture there. In 1845 he noted in a poem that the Muslims in Ili did not worship idols, but bowed and prayed to tombs decorated with poles that had the tails of cows and horses attached to them. This was the widespread shamanic practice of erecting a tugh, but this was its first recorded appearance in Chinese writings. He also recorded several Kazakh oral tales, such as one concerning a green goat spirit of the lake whose appearance is a harbinger of hail or rain.^[19]

Death and legacy

Fuzhou Memorial Hall of Lin Zexu

He died in 1850 while on the way to Guangxi, where the government was sending him to help put down the Taiping Rebellion. He was a patriot of ability who attained an international reputation as "Commissioner Lin." He was opposed to the opening of the country but felt the need of a better knowledge of foreigners, which drove him to collect much material for a geography of the world. He later gave this material to Wei Yuan, who published an Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms (Hǎiguó túzhì 海國圖志) in 1844.

June 3, the day when Lin confiscated the chests of opium, is celebrated as Anti-Smoking Day in the Republic of China in Taiwan. Manhattan's Chatham Square, in Chinatown, contains a statue of Lin, commemorating his early struggle against drug use. Although he has in essence led the war against the debilitating drug with some initial success, with the arrest of 1,700 opium dealers and destruction of 2.6 million pounds of opium, he had been made the scapegoat for the actions leading to British retaliation, and ultimately failing to stem the tide of opium import and use in China.^[20] Nevertheless, Lin Zexu is popularly viewed as a hero of superlative conduct and national service, and whose likeness have been immortalized at various locations around the world.^{[21][22][23][24]}

Despite the antagonism between the Chinese and the British at the time, the renowned English sinologist Herbert Giles, who was active in the later part of the 19th century and was the co-creator of Wade-Giles transliteration, praised and admired Lin. He wrote: "He was a fine scholar, a just and merciful official and a true patriot." A wax statue of Lin also appeared in Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in London.^[8]

More recently, Lin Zexu has appeared as a character in River of Smoke, the second novel in the Ibis trilogy by Amitav Ghosh, which takes the Opium Wars as its setting to shed new light on a much-repressed history while offering a contemporary critique of globalization.^[25] The novel takes place in 1838-1839, during which time Commissioner Lin arrived in Canton and tensions escalated between the foreigners and the Chinese officials.

Influence

Lin Zexu Statue, New York City, USA

Although he was not seen as such until well into the twentieth century, Lin Zexu is now seen as a national hero for Chinese people; three films have been made on his role in the Opium Wars such that he is now one of the symbols of modern China's resistance to European imperialism.

A statue of Lin stands in the United States in Chatham Square (Kimlau Square) in New York's Chinatown.

See also

• 7145 Linzexu
• Prohibition (drugs)
• War on Drugs

Notes

1. ^ Spence, Jonathan D. (1999), The Search for Modern China, New York/London: W.W.Norton, pp. 131 
2. ^ East Asian Studies Documents: Lin Zexu to Queen Victoria
3. ^ ^{a b} Spence, op.cit., pp.152-158.
4. ^ Peyrefitte 1992 p520
5. ^ Peyrefitte 1993, p487-503
6. ^ Peyrefitte, 1993 p520
7. ^ Peyrefitte, 1993 p520-521
8. ^ ^{a b c d e} De Bary, Wm. Theodore; Lufrano, Richard (2000), Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century, 2, Columbia University Press, pp. 201–204, ISBN 978 0 231 11271 0 
9. ^ Ebrey, Patricia Buckley; Walthall, Anne; Palais, James B. (2006), East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History, Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 379, ISBN 0 618 13384 4 
10. ^ "China Commemorates Anti-opium Hero". Global Times. June 4, 2009. http://news.cultural-china.com/20090604103010.html. Retrieved 2 June 2011. 
11. ^ Salisbury, Harrison E. China: 100 years of Revolution (1983), London: Andre Deutsch
12. ^ ^{a b} Teng, Ssu-yu; Fairbank, John K. (1954), China's Response to the West, Harvard University Press, pp. 24–27 
13. ^ From Ssuyu Teng and John Fairbank, China's Response to the West, (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), repr. in Mark A. Kishlansky, ed., Sources of World History, Volume II, (New York: HarperCollins CollegePublishers, 1995), pp. 266-69 and hence published at Brooklyn.CUNY.edu
14. ^ J.L.Schuck: Portfolio Chinensis . 1840 (googlebooks)
15. ^ The Opium Wars Hanes, W. Travis, et al., pg. 41 ISBN 0-7607-7638-5
16. ^ "The Opium Wars -Lin's opium-destroying action was the Chinese equivalent of the Boston Tea Party". Cornell University. http://dspace-local.library.cornell.edu/web_archive/explore.cornell.edu/scene2945.html?scene=wason%2520collection&stop=WC%2520-%2520Narrative%2520Opium&view=allViews. Retrieved 2008-10-22. 
17. ^ P.C.Kuo: A critical study of the first Anglo-Chinese War . Hyperion 1973, reprint.(Shanghai Commercial Press 1935)
18. ^ On the progress of war, and Lin Zexu's role, cf. P.C.Kuo: A critical study of the first Anglo-Chinese War . Hyperion 1973, reprint.(Shanghai Commercial Press 1935)
19. ^ Newby, L.J. (1999), "The Chinese Literary Conquest of Xinjiang", Modern China 25 (4): 451–474, doi:10.1177/009770049902500403, JSTOR 189447 
20. ^ East Asian Studies
21. ^ Monument to the People's Heroes, Beijing - Lonely Planet Travel Guide
22. ^ whoguys
23. ^ Lin Zexu Memorial
24. ^ Lin Zexu Memorial Museum | Ola Macau Travel Guide
25. ^ Long, strange trip: River of Smoke finds globalization's roots in the Opium Wars

References

• Hummel, Arthur William, ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644–1912). 2 vols. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1943
• Arthur Waley The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958; reprinted Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1968)
• Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1963)
• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
• Alain Peyrefitte, The Immobile Empire-- Thefirst great collision of East and West -- the astonishing history of Britain's grand, ill-fated expedition to open China to Wsestern Trade, 1792-94 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)

External links

• Text of Lin's Letter to Queen Victoria
• Lin Zexu Memorial
• Example of Lin Zexu’s calligraphy (archive.org)

Government offices
Preceded by Deng Tingzhen	Viceroy of Liangguang 1840	Succeeded by Qishan

Persondata
Name	Lin, Zexu
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	30 August 1785
Place of birth	Fuzhou, Fujian
Date of death	22 November 1850
Place of death	Puning, Guangdong