Change over Time - China (post Classical)

In China during the classical period from 600-1450, there were many economic changes and continuities. The changes were the merchant status and the expansion of overseas trade. The continuities were the usage of the silk roads and China’s agricultural focus.

During the 600’s, the Tang and the Song were the ruling dynasties. At this time, merchants did not have a high status, and the silk roads were being used for trade helping sustain their ever growing economy. About a hundred years prior, the Grand canal was started to connect parts of northern and southern China. This helped stimulate trade both within China and to other nations. Finally, the usage of paper money began to grow helping merchant status rise and trade and commerce grow rapidly.

In the 600’s, Chinese merchants were not very important. As the Tang dynasty came into control, merchants were near the bottom of the social ranks, put there by the more superior Confucians. During the 600’s China’s economic standing was not as high making merchants simply unneeded. As time went on, this status began to rise as they started to create guilds and become necessary in the global trading of silk via the silk roads. The formation of guilds helped make merchant groups stronger and helped job stability. Within a merchant guild, a merchant was insured his job because the local townspeople relied on him for their goods making him necessary for Chinese economics. As China transitioned into Song and Yuan dynasties from 960-1300, merchants were deemed more important as China became a head of the trading industry. Merchants were needed to buy and sell goods, such as silk and spices, in and out of China, therefore Chinese economics heavily relied on merchants for its survival. During this time, the rest of the world was becoming more interested in the materials China had to offer and the Mongols had started their expansion. When the Mongols started their rule over China, trade routes became much more safer. Security checkpoints were installed along with border patrol systems called yams. These systems made merchants trade more making them prosperous and important to sustaining Chinese economy. As the merchant class grew more stable, so did the economics of China, enhancing their role as a superior civilization.

Another change from the 600’s-1450 was the expansion of overseas trade. With the completion of the Grand canal, a 1,776 km stretch of water connecting the Yangtze and Huang rivers from the north and south, water trade expanded and flourished. With the construction of this canal, materials could be transferred and traded more efficiently from the north to the south and vice versa. One specific example of this is the transportation of rice from south to the north. Rice production was very slow and the journey over land to the north slowed the process even further. Rice, being a large export of China,