| Volume 8, Number 4, October 2011 |
Hot in Europe and America
Export Art Works from the Qing Dynasty China
by 白芳 Bai Fang |
From “China Trade” 1760-1860
to “China Rise” 1979-2011
刘孟达 Richard M. Liu |
| LOCATED on the coast of the South China Sea, Guangdong is blessed with many bays and sounds, straits and good harbours. From the Han Dynasty onwards, Guangdong has been an important hub of maritime trade and transportation linking China and overseas countries. As the global trade routes were constantly expanded in the Ming and Qing period, Chinese intellectual thinking, culture, science and technology, arts and crafts were steadily introduced to Europe and America. The promulgation of the imperial decree that allowed only one port open to foreign trade across China in the 22nd year of the reign of Emperor Ch’ien-lung (or Kien-long, Qianlong), made the Thirteen Factories (also known as the Thirteen Hongs and the Canton Factories) in Canton (Guangzhou) the sole place to engage in the sea trade authorized by the Qing government. The advantageous geographic location, and special policy made it possible for Canton to monopolize the sea trade in China for almost a century, serving as the centre for foreign trade as well as a production and... [ Read more ] |
ON 2nd-3rd March this year, I attended as an observer the Workshop on “China Trade”, Merchants and Artists (1760-1860): New Historical Cultural Perspectives organized by the Macau Ricci Institute. It was a remarkable learning experience for me, a retired practitioner in banking and finance, with no expertise on the products traded, nor indeed in any knowledge in the area of that period of history.
As I listened to the lively discussions, a sense of déjà vu came to me. At the same time, I realised as well that “China Trade” of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries actually provided useful lessons for the late twentith and early twenty-first century Chinese leadership, who had made good use of these lessons when they took steps to “modernize” China.
The purpose of this essay is to reflect on some of these “lessons”—in terms of their causes and effects, be they gleaned from the products traded, the methods for settlement of the accounts, the performance of the market, the imbalance in trade that developed, and events arising from... [ Read more ] |
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| Issue 8.4 |
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The Double-Ten
Uprising
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