By the late 18th century, people at all levels of British society, from the very wealthy to the destitute, were addicted to tea, imported from China mostly by the Portuguese. The British wanted to know more about China, this distant, indirect trading partner to whose product they were addicted. The Chinese seemed to be calling the shots in trade deals, demanding payment in silver, running a large trade imbalance and forbidding traders from leaving highly restricted areas of China or learning Chinese. The British wanted to negotiate at least as equals, so in 1793 King George III sent a colonial administrator, George Macartney, on Britain's first diplomatic mission to the ruler of China, the Qianlong Emperor. As a gift to commemorate the emperor's birthday, Macartney attempted to give him a gold box studded with diamonds, but before he could do this, to his shock, Macartney was ordered to kowtow (literally: "bang the head") before the emperor, an act in which "supplicants," as representatives of trading nations were termed, had to kneel and bow down until their foreheads touched the floor, an obvious expression of subservience. This was considered appropriate even for another ruler's delegate because the emperor was the "Son of Heaven," the representative of the divine on earth, so all other monarchs and leaders on Earth were subordinate to him. Macartney refused to kowtow because he believed that George III, though by then a "constitutional monarch" who shared power with Parliament, was certainly an equal ruler to any. The emperor took the gold box and tossed it aside as one would a cheap bauble. The mission was a failure, and 50 years later the British invaded China in the Opium Wars, forcing China to accept imports of opium and widespread addiction to it. It's basically a history of rival drug gangs.
The obsession with trade balances and the question of who is supplicating whom is reminiscent of today, as President Trump imposed a 34% tariff on China affecting U.S. imports of Chinese produced hi-tech, pharmaceuticals, auto parts and other addictive elements of modern culture. Chinese president Xi responded with a 34% tariff affecting imports of U.S. agricultural goods and restricting export to the U.S. of rare earth minerals essential in producing highly addictive electronics. Trump responded with an additional 34% tariff, China did the same and the struggle has escalated so that now each country has levied over 140% in tariffs on the other.
