Tea Trade In Qing Dynasty

Jin merchant and Hui merchant are two business groups in Ming and Qing Dynasties. Their commodities are abundant, the main of which was Tea. Tea Trade was the important part in these two groups' business activities. In the long active time, Jin Merchant and Hui merchant occupied the head of Chinese Tea Trade. Jin Merchant took monopolizing the North trade as its own duty, such as the cities of Zhangjiakou, Guihua, the provinces of Gansu, Xinjiang, Mongolia and the country of Russion, especially the market of the town of Qiaketu. Hui Merchant took monopolizing the South of Changjiang and a part of North market, especially the city of Guangzhou,Shanghai and Beijing. They covered extensive areas from south to north in motherland, even on abroad. These were very rare in the history of Chinese business. Depending on the way of sea and land, they created one road of Tea with the relevant policies, which surprised the people.Having quoted a vast number of historical materials on the Jin merchant and Hui merchant's Tea trade, used the analytical tools of history and economics ,the article focuses on the differences between the Jin merchant and Hui merchant's Tea trade.Chapter one is the introduction part, firstly review and elaborate the contemporary researches and based on this put forward the article's researching purpose and significance, and then introduce this article's researching angle and structure. Chapter two compares the background of rising and falling of Jin merchant and Hui merchant's Tea trade. Chapter three is the core of the whole article, intensively comparing the scope of activities, tea's stocking, processing, line of trade, transportation and the way of payment. At last, estimates the trade volume, concluded that Hui merchant's trade volume are more than Jin merchant's. Chapter four analysis the reasons of differences between the Jin merchant and Hui merchant's Tea trade in the view of economics. The end of the article is conclusion part. Jin merchant and Hui merchant took monopolizing the all of the national Tea trade, after contrast ,we can conclude that the scale of Hui merchant's Tea trade are more than Jin merchant's, the reason are Hui merchant use the natural endowment in resources and institutional changes in appropriate situation.