The British and American merchants in order to increase their profit margin came up with the

idea of smuggling opium to the interior of China. This smuggling started in 1780 CE and the
Chinese people very soon became addicted to it. a great amount of Chinese silver now started
going to the hands of the foreigners. Hence not only did China start suffering economically at the
same time they suffered moral degeneration too.

In 1835 CE the Manchu government in order to control the foreign trade and stop the smuggling
of opium came up with very strict laws.

A special commissioner was now appointed at Canton Lin Tse Hsu who was a strong-willed
patriot and a royal official.

On 10th March 1839 CE Lin arrived at Canton as the special commissioner. He was really intent
on stopping the smuggling of opium of China and wanted to take the strictest measure for that

Lin knew that in order to stop the opium smuggling in China he had to enter into direct
confrontation with the Western powers specially England.

At first he successfully started campaigning against corrupt Chinese opium merchants. Within
12th May, 1839 more than 1600 such merchants were arrested. Corrupt royal officials who were
associated with this illegal opium trade were also punished severely. However the main obstacle
before Lin was the foreign smugglers.

On 24th March 1839 CE he gave orders to seize the factories of the foreigners in order to stop
this illegal opium trade. Almost 350 foreigners as a result got stuck within the premise of the
factories. Lack of food and domestic help pressurized the foreigners.

In 1839 CE Lin ordered the English merchants to surrender their reserve of opium to him.
Presurrized and compelled by the adverse circumstances the foreign merchants gave up 21,000
cartons of opium to Lin. This happened in the month of May and on 3rd June Lin destroyed this
huge amount of opium in a public places before the entire population of the region. The British
merchants felt very insulted and humiliated with this event and they started getting ready to take
revenge.

On 12th July 1839 CE a Chinese peasant of the Canton-Macau region got killed by a group of
British sailors of Kawlun. Immediately Lin ordered the criminals to surrender themselves before
the Chinese authority. However the then representative of the British merchants Elliot negated
this order and stated that the Chinese authority had no legal jurisdiction over the British subjects.
In fact Elliot himself judged the criminals and it was a farce whereby murderers were given very
insignificant punishments. This turn of event had strongly disappointed Lin and so he pressurized
the Portugese authority at Macau to drive out the British from the region

. Hence on 26th August 1839 all the British subjects of Canton went to Hong Kong which was
90 miles away from Canton. This was a victory for commissioner Lin and according to historian
Immanuel Hsu till now Lin had become victorious at almost every stage of Anglo-Chinese
controversy.