The East India Company didn’t directly even ship opium to China, that was all done by private merchants. And in any case initially it wasn’t so much about opiu

The East India Company didn’t directly even ship opium to China, that was all done by private merchants. And in any case initially it wasn’t so much about opium as about free trade in general. The British would’ve been fine with selling textiles, tools and other stuff to the Chinese people who wanted to buy them. Opium was just much easier to smuggle than anything else.