Page 48

The Formation of the Modern East Asian Economy
Thus, a Chinese ship heading overseas needed formal stamped approval from four separate government offices; its officers and crew all required separate personal guarantees of good conduct from village or urban neighbors; their papers would be checked at all inspection points as they passed; the side of their boat would bear the owner's name; and from 1742 they were obliged to return to their motherland within as few as three years (in contrast to the five or 10 year voyages commonly undertaken in the Ming).22 The attitude of the Japanese government was even less welcoming, as over the course of the eighteenth century, it increasingly reduced the quota of Chinese ships allowed to trade in Nagasaki. From a peak of 194 in 1688, their number fell to just 30 in 1715, 20 in 1740, 10 in 1742 and in 1791, and eventually to just two in 1861.24 Thus, the Japanese ban on silver exports, combined with the import substitutions policy I explained last time, greatly reduced the overall importance of the China-Japan trade in the overseas operations of Chinese merchants. The best statistical indicators of this sharp decline in activity and profitability from the seventeenth century heyday are the maritime customs revenue figures from the four ports designated for foreign trade in 1685 and 1686. In 1745, the maritime taxes collected at the two Chinese ports dealing with overseas trade in northeast Asia, Ningbo, and Shanghai, accounted for just a fifth of the overall maritime taxes income. By 1786, although they register a small increase in revenue, their share of the total revenue for all four customs stations would drop to one tenth. Thus eight to nine-tenths of the maritime customs revenue came from overseas trade with southeast and South Asia and the West out of the ports of Amoy and Canton.25

At mid-century, Amoy and Canton collected roughly equal amounts of customs duties, about 40% apiece of the total revenue. And as Chinese junks frequented both Amoy and Canton and Western boats only Canton, we can conclude that even if all the Chinese junks were taxed-which is most unlikely-their trade would have counted for more than the trade on Western boats at this time. Contrary then to the impression usually found in accounts of pre-Opium War Chinese overseas trade, the main story was Chinese trade with the rest of Asia.

That this trade was considerable is clear from a study of Amoy, the port through which much of the southeast Asian trade passed. Between 1715 and 1754, 54% of the 480 Chinese boats entering the port of Batavia had originated in Amoy, and 53% of the 442 Chinese boats leaving Batavia were returning to Amoy.27 The number of Chinese ships leaving it to engage in overseas trade was about 30 in 1733. By the early 1750s that figure had virtually doubled, to range from over 50 to over 70 boats; in 1755 it stood at 74 boats.28 When combined with boats heading overseas from Canton, the figure came to over 100 vessels leaving China in the mid-eighteenth century.29

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