Trade in Ancient China: Foreign Moguls and Maligned Merchants

According to the General Administration of Customs of China, the private sector in China posted 28 percent of year-on-year growth of foreign-trade in the first 10 months of 2021, generating 48.3 percent of China’s total imports and exports. Its growth rate and share both outperformed those of foreign funded enterprises and State-owned enterprises. In 2019, China’s private companies contributed more to foreign trade than foreign-funded businesses for the first time. From 2000 to 2018, more than 49 percent of China’s foreign trade was made by foreign-funded businesses in China, according to China’s Ministry of Commerce.
In our previous podcast on November 10, we talked about how business people were discriminated against in ancient China. In contrast, foreign merchants were very active in ancient China. This was particularly true for foreign trade.