Row Over £500M London Development Highlights Tensions Between Investment And Human Rights An image of one of the new buildings in the Chinese embassy complex at Royal Mint Court
At the end of the first Opium War in 1842, the victorious British forced the Chinese to pay 6 million silver dollars in return for opium that had been seized as China tried to rid the country of unwanted British influence. Those small, silver coins were shipped back to Britain, transported to the site of the Royal Mint on the eastern edge of the City of London, smelted and turned into British currency. It is a small element of a defeat that is still today seen as a moment of national trauma in China.