Chinese officials had begun encouraging local production…

Chinese officials had begun encouraging local production of opium in the aftermath of legalization in 1860, and poppy cultivation has spread beyond the country's southwest.

As addiction rises throughout China, imports of Indian opium increase from forty-eight hundrd tons in 1859 to sixty-seven hundred tons in 1880.

Despite the growth of Indian imports after 1858, most of the higher demand is supplied by Chinese domestic production.

China is in the midst of a major opium boom by the 1880s, particularly in the rugged southwestern provinces of Yunnan and ...