The Research On International Trade In Late Qing Dynasty

The Chinese international trade shares a long history. However when it came to Ming Dynasty, severe "Haijin" (sea restriction) was committed to block the international trade. And the Blockage policy continued at the beginning of Qing Dynasty. But Opium War changed the situation. The Western strong nations imposed a series of treaties on China and China became the market of their industrial products and raw materials' supplier. Then Semi-colonized international trade came into being. Some Chinese wise talents started to "open their eyes to the World". And bourgeois industry and commerce developed with difficulty during the pressure between imperialism and feudalism. Late Qing Dynasty was forced to be open to the world by continual readjustments of its foreign trade policies. Although traditional academic critics sang nothing good on incompetence of late Qing Dynasty, there was the other side of development of its international trade when objective analysis was used. For instance the measures taken by late Qing such as protection of the overseas Chinese, opening of commercial harbors, enlargement of trade, encouragement of investment, establishment of Customs system and improvement of quality of exporting goods played an active role. This thesis analyzes mainly the situations, policies, goods structure, trade partners, social ideology tides of late Qing Dynasty international trade. I think late Qing Dynasty internationaltrade had the primary characteristics of modern international trade though with strong characteristics of semi-colonization, And it has important realistic meaning to understand the modern history of Chinese international trade, the origin of modern system of Chinese international trade, the sovereignty in international trade and the development of modern international trade.