Although there was no Friends Mission to China until 1886, many Quakers had been involved in protests against the "Opium Wars" and the traffic they supported earlier in the century. The first Anglo-Chinese war had been fought by the British East India Company against the Qing Dynasty to force China to import British opium. It ended with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, by which the Chinese ceded Hong Kong to Britain and opened five ports to Western trade. In 1856 an incident over the ship Arrow registered in Hong Kong was used as an excuse by the British Government for an attack on Canton. This began the Second Opium War, in which the British were joined by the French. 

Picture from The Chinese Opium Smoker: 12 illustrations showing the ruin which our opium trade with China is bringing upon that country (London: Partridge, 1881?) [Lib ref. 058.4 CHI]

Many individual Quakers had been active in the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade and the Society of Friends had sent a memorial to the British government opposing the traffic in opium as early as 1859. It was not until 1881 that Meeting for Sufferings formed the Anti-Opium Committee; under its later name of the Opium Traffic Committee it lasted until 1931.

The Mission to China