Books by J. Y. (University of Sydney) Wong

The western reader is here presented with a biography of a major figure on the Chinese side in the crucial period of China's political contact with the western world, which describes a man of his own time and country, with his own background of education, endeavour and achievement and not merely a figure symbolic of Chinese obstruction of British purposes as he was seen from London or Hong Kong.

Wong reveals the extent of Britain's reliance on the opium and tea trade with China, and argues that Victorian free trade ideology was a less decisive factor in the Arrow War (1856-60) than was Britain's economic struggle to support a vast colonial enterprise.