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This isn't the first time, either. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/663/why-did-china-shut-itself-out-of-the-world-in-the-15th-century https://histo
by duncan_bayne 9y ago
This isn't the first time, either.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/663/why-did-china-shut-itself-out-of-the-world-in-the-15th-century https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/663/why-did-chin...
- dis-sys 9y agoit is completely different, in the 15th Century, the Haijin policy was used to stop "barbarians" from flooding the country. there is nothing to gain from trading with the rest of the world because the country was ranked No.1 in the world in almost all metrics. today's GFW is to protect a young but fast growing industry - because the overall economy is not that strong.
- barry-cotter 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage The rest of the world totally did have things the Chinese wanted, silver and gold. Not much else at that stage to be fair but China was sucking precious metals from Western Eurasia for most of the first and second millenia.
- privateprofile 9y agoI was under the impression that silver was what the chinese emperor/government imposed as a means of payment for the most sought chinese exports: tea and silk. But the "rest of the world" (meaning mostly the UK in that time period) did have something that was "in demand" in china: opium. It was the imbalance between imports and exports - china wasn't interested in buying/importing what europeans were selling/exporting - that prompted the uk to start smuggling opium against chinese law, thus paving the way to the opium wars.