How Did The Tea Trade Affect China In The Late 1800s

In the early 1800's, China was still largely cut off trading with the outside world; Canton was the only port for all the trade with Europe. At that moment, Europeans restricted themselves to trade with a designated group of Chinese agents known as the Hong Merchants. However, some of the Chinese products were very popular in Europe. Tea had the highest demand in Britain, and gradually tea was becoming the most popular trade product between China and Britain. The tea trade caused Britain a huge drain of silver; due to the expensive payoff, the King of Great Britain had decided to bring up the free trade system for their trades in China. “Free trade” is based on the regulation of the foreign trade agreements, which maintains a balance international

This made China the only way for getting tea. Sooner by the late 18th century, when Britain had an even greater demand of tea, there was the problem. They needed to pay bribes to every Chinese official as they came along to do trading with Hong, and British merchants could not bear the constantly fluctuating tariffs and port fees any more . In Britain’s point of view, they only needed to return products such as woolens, cottons, and other articles ; but China did not have the attempts to buy any British products. In this case, British merchants lost one side of the benefit, whereas they earned less than they supposed to get. Also, the British were unable to sell their products to China, and they had to trade in bullion for buying tea. The British government was leading the way in the Industrial Revolution and was promoting to have a free trade system. They thought free trade was a way to minimize the silver drain in this imbalanced trade. As well, they thought free trade system would give their manufactured goods an edge to against the more expensive handmade goods while their foreign competition was