Answer:
B: China launched a government-led program to industrialize its military and economy.
Explanation:
The Opium Wars were two war conflicts that occurred in the nineteenth century between the Chinese and British empires. The First lasted between 1839 and 1842. The Second, in which France became involved with the British, broke out in 1856 and lasted until 1860. Its causes were the commercial interests that created the British contraband of opium in India and China and the Chinese government's efforts to impose its laws on that trade.
The Chinese defeat in the two wars forced the government to tolerate the opium trade. The British coerced the Chinese to sign the Unequal Treaties, opening several ports to foreign trade and annexing Hong Kong (see Treaty of Nanking and cession of Hong Kong to the United Kingdom). Portugal followed the British, forcing unequal terms of trade with China and the expansion of Macao, under Portuguese rule since the sixteenth century.
This contributed to the Taiping Rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century, the Boxer Rebellion in the early twentieth century, and the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. It also ended the relative isolation of China from the West.
