In the field of Chinese history, the conventional wisdom is that China's maritime initiatives and sea power began during the Northern Song and reached their climax during the early Ming. After Zheng He's cross-ocean voyages, China unilaterally closed its door. Official bans on maritime activities, such as shipbuilding, shipping, and trade, became the norm, especially under the Qing rule. It is a consensus, therefore, that China had to pay heavy prices for its irrational and ignorant closed-door policy, which contributed to the downturn in China's global status, citing, for example, the “Great Divergence.” In the end, China's door had to be forcefully opened by wars in the nineteenth century (such as two Opium Wars, the Sino-Franco War, and the Sino-Japanese War). Such a neat narrative has now been seriously challenged by this book.
The author now presents a different Qing China whose maritime policies were quite open—rather transparent by any premodern standard—and highly rational. Zhao argues that the Qing administration was fully aware of the benefits of maritime trade to China's domestic economy on the one hand and the opportunity costs associated with a ban on it on the other. As a result, any restriction on maritime trade was only a temporary measure while keeping China's maritime door open was the Qing policy repertoire.
Zhao pays his main attention to the political center in Beijing, especially inside the Imperial Court, to reveal the mechanisms of the Qing decision making on the top. He has established two modes. One was a clear-cut new start marked by the “1684 Open-door Policy for Trade,” which seems to have come from Emperor Kangxi. The other was an ongoing evolution of government's dealing with maritime trade and agents. The best example was the replacement of the old “tribute trade” with the “Canton system,” which was far less discriminative and exclusive. In doing so, the Qing authorities watched what was traded, instead of who was coming to China to trade. Now the Europeans were allowed to partake in such trade like any of China's old tribute-payers. It must have been more conducive for maritime growth for both parties.
However, China was not a country in total isolation at that time. A maritime open door did cause certain “negative externalities” for the Qing state. One can cite the copper-silver embargo by Tokugawa Japan or European smuggling enterprises along China's long sea coasts, not to mention the potential threat from the Ming loyalists who challenged the Manchu legitimacy. So, as all these factors emerged, developed, and became entwined at the same stage, Beijing had to make a hard choice between China's national security and economic prosperity in its coastal regions. From what Zhao has demonstrated, such a decision was never made lightheartedly. Such a narrative shows the reader a humanistic or Confucian dimension of the Qing rulers. Naturally, one wonders why the Qing government resorted so often to a ban that was by definition a blunt instrument. The question inevitably becomes why Zheng He's glory was never repeated for over 400 years in China's history. This is relevant if the British perpetual sea power since its triumph over the Spanish Armada to the present day is used as a comparator. If so, the real question should be why the Qing state was so unable to effectively defend its territorial waters at sea.
The reader will find a rather neat structure in this book to help convey the author's message. The book has three recognizable parts. Part one includes chapters 1 and 2. It deals with the general background of China's maritime history. The survey of the literature is rather too selective for its own good. In other words, many works in both Chinese and English have been overlooked, especially in the fields of shipping and sea power—a great pity. Part two contains chapters 3 to 6, tackling Kangxi's 1684 policy and its consequences. This is the best-developed part of the book with great historical detail and causal analyses. However, the reader may find the approach top-down. It is also mainly a “supply-side” story.
Chapters 7 and 8 make up the last part of the book, which shows how the 1684 policy was undermined and withdrawn partially or completely. The author sees external factors as the causes, which was true but only to a certain extent. The internal weakness of the Qing state should share the blame, as it always takes two to tango.Footnote 5
On balance, this book sheds some new light on an aspect of Qing China where some entrenched opinions and hypotheses exist. I keenly recommend this work to colleagues and students of China and East Asia.
