Let's put it this way, the reason why Britain launched the Opium War against China, this excuse was actually given to them by the Qing government.
What is opium in the eyes of the British? Opium is a commodity, a commodity. Although it can only enter China's vast interior through smuggling, it is still a cargo.
The British, including the Queen of England, believe that the principle of free trade is sacred and inviolable, and now that you have engaged in trade with the Qing government and restricted foreign trade, you have even used force to forcibly seize the goods of other merchants, which is directly against the values of others.
What Lin Zexu did in Guangzhou was simply unreasonable in the eyes of the British. He directly sent troops to blockade the merchant houses of various countries in Guangzhou, claiming that if opium was not handed over, water and grain would be cut off, which would violate the most basic principles of international morality and diplomacy today, and in the view of the Qing government and Lin Zexu, this was the most reasonable way to deal with the small country of Ruier.
We all know that the British shamelessly smuggled opium to the Qing Dynasty, and through this method, they earned Chinese of silver and reversed the trade deficit, which was a conspiracy. Now you force them to hand over opium, which gives them an excuse to go to war. People are eager to use war to solve the Sino-British trade problem that has been fruitless for decades, because it does not make sense to talk about win-win with agricultural civilized countries, and the two sides do not think about the problem at one level.
The British were not without effort, they knew that China was a vast market, but they did not initially think of solving the problem by smuggling opium, let alone to start any war. As early as the Qianlong period, the Magalni mission came to China in an attempt to establish equal trade with the Qing government. Although Magalney made some more non-discriminatory demands when he came to China, such as cutting off an island in Zhoushan for British merchants to live in and dry goods, if the Qing government had seriously considered the issue of trade with Britain, then with me as the mainstay, these things could actually be avoided.
There have been win-win opportunities, but they do not want to catch it, and the British have returned disappointed again and again, and can only think of reversing the trade deficit, such as smuggling opium. Later, Britain really became an empire where the sun never sets, and the Qing Dynasty no longer had the opportunity to talk with others, so it could only wait for others to dig a pit, and then you foolishly jumped in, colonized by others, exploited by others, and became people's commodity markets and raw material production areas.
The mentality of the victim does not let go for a day, and we will not really face up to modern history.