What role did transportation play for the Chinese economy and material life? 1577- 1880.
This essay will examine the importance of transportation for the Chinese economy and
material life by closely analysing the Oversized Hanging Scrolls, Petition 11 and the Chinese
Wallpaper and Porcelain Plate from the East India Company sources. 1 It is argued that the
movement of commodities abroad, the maintenance of China’s urban life and the
transatlantic movement of indentured people explain the crucial role of transportation for
the Chinese economy and material life.
Transport facilitated economic stability in China’s domestic market. The scrolls date from
the 16th to the 18th century. All the scrolls show water and land transport through depicting
carriages and ships, the commonality of which alludes to diversity and stability in China’s
urban economy over time. Historians have debated the veracity of the scrolls; traditional
thought argued the depicted city is Kaifeng, recent scholarship has proposed the city as
imaginary, and from 2003 scholarship largely returned to the traditional school of thought. 2
However, all schools of thought concur that Chinese markets were intricately connected by
roads and bridges like those portrayed in the scrolls, which connect areas within the city and
the city to the rural environment. The scrolls depict people using carriages and animals to
efficiently move across the roads and bridges. If the city is imaginary, then it is an idealised
portrayal epitomising transport within and between Chinese cities. In this way, real urban
environments would have emulated the example of the painting if they had not provided
inspiration to the artists for the heavy emphasis upon roads and bridges crossed by people
using carriages and boats. Otherwise, if the city is Kaifeng, the scrolls reflect the
aristocracy’s idea of good transport use in the city, noting that the court artists had a vested
interest to put a gloss over reality. In other words, the scrolls may overstate the good
aspects of transport and neglect poorer use of transport as the emperor commissioned this
piece of propaganda to glorify his city. Nonetheless, the scrolls are useful in examining the
value of transport in China over the period for moving goods and people to and between
markets to maintain a thriving domestic economy. Thus, the scrolls depict the transport that
was necessary for a stable domestic market.
Transport within China enabled urban economic prosperity. References to the cotton and
silk industries dominate the scrolls’ imagery. Transport was essential when producing these
commodities and when moving them from rural environments of production to the urban
markets. The multitude of related businesses in the Qingming scroll, such as dye houses,
testifies to the affordability of these luxury products for ordinary members of the urban
society. Thus, the cotton and silk industries were fundamental in lubricating the wheels of
China’s interior market. Furthermore, the depiction of city dwellers as economically capable
1
The National Palace Museum, Oversized Hanging Scrolls and Handscrolls Selection, 2010 <
http://www.npm.gov.tw/exh99/oversize9904/select_eng.html> [accessed 16 March 2018].
Lisa Yun, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2008), pp. 245-7.
The Leverhulme Trust, East India Company At Home, 1757-1857, < http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/eicah/case-studies-
2/> [accessed 17 March 2018].
2
Tsao Hsingyuan, ‘Unravelling the Mystery of the Handscroll ‘Qingming Shangehe Tu’’, Journal of Song-Yuan
Studies, 33, no. 1 (2003), pp. 155-179. Valerie Hansen, ‘Mystery of the Qingming Scroll and its Subject: The
Case Against Kaifeng’, Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, 36, no. 1 (1996), pp. 183-200.
, of buying cotton and silk products, testifies to the general economic prosperity within the
city underpinned by transport.
Transportation via long distance trade enhanced China’s material life. The scrolls depict the
trading of exotic items of their time, such as pearls and rare wood. Chinese merchants
privately and sometimes illegally traded with foreign powers, such as with Japan during the
rule of the Ming court in the 16th century. Silk was traded to obtain exotic items, which later
could be traded within China. Thus, the exotic appeal of goods obtained from foreign lands,
or long-distance trade using boats, enhanced the inherent sense of prosperity in China’s
material life.
Conversely, transportation was increasingly influential in shaping China’s commercial
interests abroad and her economy. Successive emperors decreed taxes and legislation
aimed at securing China’s self-sufficiency by limiting trade with other nations. In the 18 th
century for example, China limited foreign trading to the Canton port. The Chinese
Wallpaper, transported out of China by the East India Company exemplifies 18 th century
Chinese commodities as a rarity in Britain and as largely exclusive to the aristocracy. The
Chinese Porcelain Plate from the East India Company alludes to China’s relationship with
Britain, wherein Britain traded cottons for China’s tea, silk and porcelain. Clearly, maritime
transportation was essential for physically moving these commodities across large distances.
Evidently transportation within China enabling communication and the movement of goods
between producers, and between producers and directive members of the East India
Company was requisite. Legislative barriers regarding foreign trading frustrated the East
India Company, and made trading inefficient. However, China’s involvement in the world
economy grew over time, arguably due to the East India Company’s frustrations with their
transportation situation with China. The East India Company, through private enterprises,
orchestrated opium imports into China, which resulted in the first Opium War. The First
Opium War saw China open her ports to foreign trade, to alleviate domestic pressures from
the influx in opium transported by boats and to halt the drainage of silver from the country.
It is reasonable to believe that their luxurious Chinese goods, like wallpaper and porcelain,
were in high demand from the aristocracy. This promise of profit acted hence as impetus for
the Opium War. Transportation provided the means for China’s initial involvement in the
world economy. Additionally, it fuelled for some time Chinese production of porcelain, silk
and tea, and improved people’s quality of life by moving softer British cotton into the
country. Transport also aided Europe when yoking China to Europe as a producer of popular
European commodities. Transporting goods abroad is possibly the most significant as it had
the long term affect of opening China’s domestic market to the wider world, as China’s ports
opened. Furthermore, transport linked to the trade of silver for opium hindered the Chinese
economy because of the reduction of silver resources. This undermined the monetization of
China’s economy using silver and undermined trade within China. Thus, transportation had a
myriad of both negative and positive effects upon the Chinese economy and material life.
The transportation of people arguably had a negative effect upon the Chinese economy. As
accounted in Petition 11, Chinese individuals from the 1840’s until the late 1860’s were
