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The Formation of the Modern East Asian Economy
      To prove this assertion in detail, however, is far from easy. Any Chinese merchant engaged in this trade would have readily been labeled a smuggler. Smugglers, as a rule, do not like to leave traces of their activities, particularly when in the Chinese case that would have meant execution and confiscation of their cargo. And it must be confessed that contemporary Chinese sources contain little to reveal their movements and contradict the conventional view of overseas Chinese trade. Seventeenth century sources, for instance, explain that from the early fifteenth century, the Fukienese fishing port of Yuegang underwent rapid development into a major port hosting trade from southeast Asia and the Ryukyu Islands. But early or late fifteenth century sources tell us precious little of this port. And so, as scholars usually write about only what they read, until recently little serious research has questioned the blinkers of our Ming sources.

      Yet in this re-assessment of our problem lies our solution. We sinologists tend to read only Chinese textual sources to learn about China. In the case of foreign trade, any effort to demonstrate its absence should require confirmation in the foreign record as well. And the search there, in Korean, Japanese, and southeast Asian sources-some printed, some archival, some archaeological, and some visual-has turned up considerable evidence at odds with the Chinese official record. This evidence obliges us to recognize not only the continuation of much Chinese and East Asian trade during these two centuries of the imperial ban, but also the ongoing links between trade and war, or piracy and private merchants during both of the two centuries Anthony Reid has called "the Age of Commerce."

      First, the Ming ban did not prevent private trading under its auspices. Its ban was essentially intended to establish a kind of state monopoly, rather than an outright ban. Thus, many Chinese merchants accompanied Zheng He's fleets on their foreign voyages to sell Chinese products and acquire foreign goods. Likewise, when foreign states' tribute missions came, they also brought their private merchants. For example, from 1433 onwards the Japanese tribute ships regularly included many merchants independently financed or engaged by powerful figures like daimyos, temples, and shrines to acquire highly profitable Chinese goods for the Japanese market. Later on, the Ming government actually relaxed its ban somewhat, allowing some Chinese merchants to set sail annually from Fukien to southeast Asia between 1457 and the 1540s.

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