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China: Front cover of a tract against opium smoking, c.1910

Official Chinese resistance to opium was strengthened on September 20, 1906, with an anti-opium initiative intended to eliminate the drug problem within ten years. The program relied on the turning of public sentiment against opium, with mass meetings at which opium paraphernalia was publicly burned, as well as coercive legal action and the granting of police powers to organizations such as the Fujian Anti-Opium Society. Smokers were required to register for licenses for gradually reducing rations of the drug.

The program was counted as a substantial success, with a cessation of direct British opium exports to China (but not Hong Kong and most provinces declared free of opium production. Nonetheless, the success of the program was only temporary, with opium use rapidly increasing during the disorder following the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916