Shanghai Foreign Trade Of Inter-port Transport (1864-1930),

As the National Foreign Trade Center of China, Shanghai also became the National Transit Center of Foreign Trade of China with great influence on most China ports. It's meaningful to explore the history of Shanghai's transit trade to find whether Shanghai has always played such an important role.The data and materials about foreign trade and native trade recorded by Maritime Customs of China were of great value for this research. After analysis of these abundance data and materials combined with other historical materials, I drew my own conclusion. I considered that the last 40 years of 19^th century was the height of Shanghai as the National Transit Center of Foreign Trade of China. The main ports and the wide inland of the Mid-China, North China and also the Northeast China all depended on Shanghai's Transit Trade of Foreign Trade and influenced by it deeply. In the first 30 years of 20^th century, the North China and Northeast of China turned to trade with Japan directly and no longer depended on Shanghai. By 1930, Shanghai has declined from the National Transit Center of Foreign Trade of China to the Regional Transit Center of Foreign Trade of Mid-China. This also changed the foreign trade pattern of China ports.The change of Shanghai's role in China's foreign trade reflected the relationships between Shanghai's role as the National Center of Industry and National Center of Foreign Trade of China. In the foreign trade the former gave strong support to the latter, meanwhile, in the native trade the influence of the latter exceeded the former. Shanghai's transit trade of foreign trade also reflected the importance of Shanghai as a multi-function center of economic.