Following the meeting between Lin and the Cohong on 18 March 1839, at which Lin told them that all European merchants were to hand over the opium in their possession and cease trading in the drug forthwith, Wu Bingjian aka Howqua, the leader of the Cohong passed Lin's orders to the foreign merchants. The merchants subsequently convened a meeting of their Chamber of Commerce on 21 March. To assuage Lin, Lancelot Dent of Dent & Co. agreed to surrender a small quantity of the drug and others followed suit, even though the amounts offered represented only a tiny fraction of the foreign merchants' total stock, which was worth millions of pounds. A dissatisfied Lin invited the top foreign merchants including Dent to his residence for interview which Dent accepted provided he received a guarantee of safe conduct.

Charles Elliot then ordered all British ships in Canton to head for the safety of Hong Kong Island before he himself arrived at the foreign factories on 24 March, 1839, three days after the expiry of Lin's deadline. After raising the Union Jack, the British superintendent of trade announced that all foreign merchants were henceforth under the protection of the British government. Chinese soldiers then sealed off access to the factory area and began a campaign to intimidate the foreign residents trapped inside. Elliot read out a petition stating that all opium was to be handed over, promising compensation from the British government for the costs of the merchandise, with a deadline of six pm on 27 March. By nightfall, British traders had agreed to surrender around 20,000 chests of opium (approximately 1,300 long tons (1,321 t)) with a value of £2,000,000.

By 21 May 1839, 20,283 chests had been unloaded at Chuanbi. On 24 May, all foreign merchants previously involved in the opium trade received orders from Lin to leave China forever. They departed in a flotilla under the command of Charles Elliot, who by now had become persona non grata with the British government for his acquiescence to Chinese demands. Lin then set about destroying the seized opium. The work commenced on 3 June 1839 and took a total of 23 days.

Once the opium had been destroyed, Elliot promised the merchants compensation for their losses from the British government. However, the country's parliament had never agreed to such an offer, and instead thought that it was the Chinese government's responsibility to pay reparations to the merchants. Frustrated that any repayment for the destroyed opium seemed unlikely, the merchants turned to William Jardine, who had left Canton just prior to Lin's arrival. Jardine believed that open warfare was the only way to force compensation from the Qing authorities and in London he began a campaign to sway the British government, meeting with Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston in October 1839. In the spring of 1840, an expeditionary force of sixteen warships and 31 other ships left India for China, which would become involved in multiple Sino-British battles in the First Opium War that followed.