# Britain wants to start a war with you if you ban Opium? Just have India ban it for you, instead!

Day one, you can sign a treaty with the British East India Company that prohibits you from trading Opium with the world market. This alone has +21 acceptance (77% chance). Give like 1k money and it's guaranteed. The AI doesn't notice that this is really bad for it, since you're no longer able to import their opium.

**Why is this important?**

The Opium Wars for Qing aren't hardcoded to start in February 1836. It has specific triggers that can hit other nations, too:

* You are neither revolutionary nor secessionist
* One of your primary cultures is obsessed with Opium
* You're unrecognized
* You have at least 5 million pops
* No other Opium War is going on
* You have at least one trade center
* You're not a subject
* You don't have free trade
* Your reliance on opium imports is above 25%
* A treaty port or investment rights agreement does not already exist (with the exporter?)

Signing the prohibition of trade with Opium drops imports to zero, no longer fulfilling the import reliance condition. The Opium Wars don't trigger anymore.

This gives you multiple options:

1. Keep the treaty active until you can defend against Britain, at which point you can cancel or replace the treaty to start the wars. This way, you get the buffs from winning the opium wars.
2. Keep the treaty active until you no longer fulfill another condition, like being recognized or having enough domestic supply to not be reliant on opium imports as much (max import tariffs also help here).
3. Forget about the treaty and keep it permanently active

Please note that waiting too long to cancel the treaty can make it impossible for the Opium Wars to trigger again if the trade volume doesn't increase by enough anymore.

# The second way: Is this Qing? No, this is Qian!

There's another way to not trigger the opium wars: Getting rid of all the trade centers. You could do this by nationalizing all of them and deleting them on day one, but this eats up all of your sarting gold reserves. Additionally, this prevents you from building new trade centers - even in the correct state. I assume this is a bug.

You instead release "Qian" as a puppet, which makes you lose direct control of Western Guangdong. They don't have Canton System, but rather actual Isolationism, which means the trade centers are nonfunctional. Somehow, this also deactivates the Macao treaty port, allowing you to reconquer it easily later.

You should be aware that taking back Western Guangdong from your subject will once again allow the Opium trade. Imports will slowly increase and can eventually trigger the Opium Wars if the other conditions listed earlier apply.

Two new ways to bypass the Opium Wars (caution: they're stupid)