The Ming Dynasty's Destructive Appetite For Silver | Empires of Silver | Absolute History

It's here, in a tiny settlement, high in the Andes mountain range of South America, that global trade begins. And that's because of what is discovered deep inside this mountain. The purest silver the world has ever seen. It's 1581, and a buyer appears for this silver. 11,000 miles away, the Emperor of China, the most powerful man on earth, has decided that his people must now pay their tax in silver. This sparks a huge demand for silver in China, to the point where silver was worth more than gold. This series explores how the world is transformed when the King of Spain's silver meets the tax demands of the Emperor of China. It's a remarkable story that witnesses how China came to dominate at the dawn of world trade over 400 years ago. The first time the whole world was linked into one global network, and the most important element of this is silver. Silver allows China's emperors to become the most powerful men on earth. And silver makes this businessman the richest man in the world. A lot of America's industrial revolution was funded by this Chinese merchant. Chinese craftsmen go on to create silverware of unparalleled skill and beauty that are coveted across the world. Already in the 18th century, people were admiring this fantastic work because the wire is so thin, it's like hair. China's silver trade drives the growth of world cities from Boston to Hong Kong, Shanghai to Seville. But it also sows the seeds of China's near destruction and leads to war with Western powers. The British were determined to get a war. They got the war. It's the time when China enters what's become nicknamed the century of humiliation. The period when China was not in control of its own external affairs. But China won't let go its obsession with this precious metal. Only trust silver. It is almost like a religion in Chinese history. Silver is our gold in Chinese history. This series reveals how silver changes China's history and the history of the world. It's like holding a piece of history on your hand. How China and silver will affect the rest of the world can be seen perhaps for the first time in July 1588 in one of the most dramatic moments in the history of Europe. On the north coast of Spain, King Philip II, protector of the Catholic faith, has gathered a mighty armada. 130 ships and 30,000 men. The vanguard of a holy war he's waging across Europe and Asia. Elizabeth I, Queen of England and ruler of the most powerful Protestant country in Europe, knows she is his target. If Philip II succeeds, he will overthrow her and make England Catholic again. But how can Philip put together such an armada? How can he afford it? The surprising answer is a decision made thousands of miles from Spain by another ruler, not about power or religion, but about tax. In 1581, seven years before Philip unleashes his armada, the emperor of China commands that his people must pay all their taxes in the silver. Spain is the one country that can fully satisfy China's huge hunger for silver. The silver trade between Spain and China, we tend to think of European trade, particularly trade in bullion, as being something that Europe develops, that Europe pushes for, that Europe is the impetus behind. It's actually China. What we explore in this revelatory series is how through this one decision, a Ming emperor placed China at the heart of world trade. Globalization isn't a creation of the 21st century. China made it happen over 400 years ago. It is the 16th century in China. Within the walls of the Forbidden City, the largest palace complex in the world, the emperors of the Ming dynasty rule over a quarter of the world's population. Since the travels of Marco Polo in the 13th century, the rest of the world has been dazzled by the scale and sophistication of China. Beijing was impressive. Large city, beautiful buildings, tight control of the emperor. So visitors to China of Ming dynasty were very impressed. This country is much more advanced than Western Europe. And the Chinese think of themselves as the center of civilization, perfectly captured in a unique artifact. This is one of the most famous maps in history. It's called a map of the myriad countries of the world. It was drawn at the request of the Chinese emperor. At the very center, the mapmaker placed China, the hub of the world around which everything revolves. China, the Middle Kingdom. Ming dynasty China, in terms of territory, was a very much larger country than national states that were coming up in Europe. The emperor was much more wealthy than the richest kings in Europe. They were never shaken to believe that China was the center of the world. But Ming emperors do have one weakness. Their power is built on sand. They are hamstrung by a tax system of extraordinary inefficiency and complexity. The government was actually founded on people performing service as a kind of taxation and delivery of taxes in kind. So you had to pay so much in terms of rice or silk or cotton. In the Ming dynasty, they were master tax dodgers. It used to be that the emperor would require peasants to turn in certain amount of grain as to pay as tax or certain amount of meat as taxation, right? But that's very difficult to implement because it's hard to shape. Secondly, it's hard to measure the quality of grain, right? It's much better and much more flexible just to pay money. But the government has been issuing paper money on and off since the 11th century. But the people have little trust in its value. As we know, historically, when the emperor or the authority begins to issue paper money, the temptation to issue a lot of paper money is too hard to resist. So when everybody has paper money, right, it becomes worthless. People in Chinese history have deep, deep, deep rooted idea that only trust metal. So in China of the 1500s, it is the humble copper coin which remains the most reliable currency. But it has a major drawback, its weight. This is called one ming. It is 100 coins. And 10 of the 100, which is 1,000, is called guan. I think about if you put a lot of coins in your pockets, it would be very heavy and not easy to handle them. So you can try to buy something which costs 1,000 coins, or maybe you can take only one pair of the silver. So for good reason, the Chinese people begin to make larger payments in silver, far lighter and more valuable than copper. This change in society does not go unnoticed by one of the most influential politicians in Chinese history. His name is Zhang Juzheng. By the 1570s, Zhang Juzheng is the senior grand secretary to the emperor. So you can imagine how powerful the person was. So this guy was in control of whole China, running day-to-day operations. He quickly realized that without taxation, without enough financial resources, the country cannot run. So in response to the people's choice to use silver, in 1580, Zhang Juzheng boldly alters the tax system. The single-whip reform will forever alter the course of Chinese history. What is meant by the single whip is to collapse all of these different kinds of labor services into one silver payment. And silver is much easier for the government to collect a fixed amount of silver from everyone. Rather than going around and saying, you must go and do this job and you must go and do this kind of work and so forth. And it works. At the National Museum of China in Beijing, one artifact shows how the most powerful government on earth is no longer financed by complex and inefficient exchanges of wheat, rice and labor, but by simple payments in silver. This is a 50-pound piece of silver. What excites us is that it has a lot of words engraved on it. This tells us that there is a lot of information about taxation and currency use. That's why it excites us so much. The Shunde County of Guangdong, Guangzhou, was the starting point for the production and transportation of this piece of silver. Next, we see that it says, it means that this piece of silver is not to be kept locally in Shunde County to be used as local funds, but to be transported to Beijing and to be handed over to the central government. Next, we see that it says, it is a 200-pound piece of silver. This is a very interesting phrase. Because we know that the tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty experienced a shift from food to currency. At this time, we should pay attention to the fact that when the government was collecting the tax revenue, they had already used silver as the most important number to record the tax revenue, but they put the rice behind it. But with a population well over 100 million people now taxed in silver, China requires unprecedented amounts of this metal. With little silver of its own, China must look to the outside world for silver. What the Single Whipper Forum does is it forces China to be essentially at the mercy of foreign trade. They are essentially forced to import silver. This increases their trade with Japan. Japanese silver reserves were fairly quickly, not necessarily exhausted, but Japan was unable to meet China's demand. This Single Whipper Forum could look like a massive miscalculation by the Chinese emperor. Were it not for an amazing discovery 36 years before and thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean in one of the remotest corners of the rapidly expanding Spanish Empire. This is Potosi. 4000 meters above sea level in what was then Peru. Today a quarter of a million people live and work here. But in the early 1500s there were just a few farmers grazing their llamas. One lost llama in the mountain leads to an astonishing discovery. A discovery that will make this corner of the new world a jewel in the crown of the Spanish Empire. The Spanish give the mountain the name by which it is still known today Cerro Rico Rich Mountain A mountain of the purest silver the world has ever seen. In the 16th and 17th century at least at certain times it's estimated that 50% of all the silver produced in the world was coming out of Upper Peru, Potosi. It's amazing. So the Spaniards were very fortunate to discover the richest silver mines in the history of the world and also in Mexico. But the big one was Potosi. The Potosi discovery unleashes a silver rush. Its impact global and local. The population in 1545 was roughly zero and 60 years later it was 160,000. So it's really a mind-boggling probably the greatest boom city in the history of the world. But even with this population explosion the Spanish face a problem all across their empire in the new world. Where to get the manpower to extract the silver? You've got these vast continents with huge resources but you have no labor supply or at least a very depleted labor supply. So what are you going to do? In order to get the silver the Spanish enslave the indigenous people of the new world. One mine boss said if 20 healthy Indians enter on a Monday half may emerge crippled by Saturday. When the Indian population is decimated by European diseases and warfare the Spanish then turn to slaves from Africa. This mine it was called by many of the people who worked it as the mountain that eats men. And it's an illustration of the terrible human cost the very real cost in blood and lives of this silver trade. Even today it is a dangerous place to work. There are minerals here. The problem is that we don't know what to do. It has been reported that there have been companies that have been caught but it seems that they won't even rescue them. Over the centuries millions of African and indigenous people die extracting new world silver. In the words of one writer You could build a bridge from Potosi to Madrid from what was mined here and one back with the bones of those that died taking it out. But once the silver was mined the Spanish still had to find a market for it. They find it 12,000 miles away across the Pacific in another part of the world they'd recently colonized and named in honor of Philip II the Philippines. The Spanish established Manila as its capital. When the Spanish arrived in this fantastic bay one of the finest harbors in the world they already found Chinese engaged in a low level regional trade with the Philippines and the Chinese would sail from the ports of Yangzhou and also from Canton bringing their wares from farther inland in the factories in China, silk from Nanjing, porcelain from Jingdezhen all these wares were exchanged in Manila. Thousands more Chinese traders now sail to Manila with these luxury goods to sell to the Spanish and when they return home to China their ships are laden with one precious commodity. Already in 1570 the viceroy of New Spain in Mexico Don Martin Enrique wrote to the king there is nothing we can export to China that they don't already have and the only way to trade with the Chinese is silver. Silver is the only thing they want. Silver defined this trade so much so that we can call this trade the silver way. It's the silver pouring into China that's helping fuel the economic miracle in the Middle Kingdom. China that's the manufacturer of the world dates from this time they were manufacturing goods on spec for foreign buyers these were things that were not made in China for Chinese use they would be made for order for customers in Europe and Spanish America. Driven by China's need for silver the early global economy is taking shape. In 1573 a mint opens in Potosi that produces a silver coin that is at the heart of this early trade and one that becomes the first global currency. The eight real Spanish peso better known as pieces of eight. And of course this coin reached the most remote borders of Christianity to the borders of the Chinese Empire to the borders of India. Global trade really started in the 16th century you can see the world to a certain degree was beginning to be connected as integrated whole it's the first time the whole world was linked into one global network and the most important element of this is silver. Manila becomes one of the most important global hubs in this silver circuit. Between 1572 and 1580 the number of Chinese junk sailing to Manila laden with silk and porcelain jumps by over a thousand percent. To accommodate this increase in trade the Spanish need to build boats on a scale and durability never attempted before. These were of course wooden sailing ships built here in the Philippines for the most part of tropical hardwoods, they were almost indestructible, they were impervious to ship rot and even cannonballs to a very large extent and they were huge they were up to 2,000 tons at a time when a typical ship was 200 tons so these were what we call today container ships the largest ships in the world at the time. These ships become known as the Manila galleons Twice a year weighed down with new world silver they sail nearly 9,000 miles from Acapulco to Manila Manila is actually the center of a global trade that is immensely profitable on not only both sides of the Pacific but on both sides of the Atlantic as well Thanks to the silver China demands, Spain can now command a colossal empire. A Franciscan monk has moved to describe it to the king of Spain as an empire on which the sun never sets Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain experiences a golden age of high culture and grand architecture But it also provides Spain with the financial might to wage perpetual war and turn Europe into a battlefield It's a country of 6 million people going to become the dominant military power fighting the British, the Armada, or the endless fighting against the Ottomans in the Mediterranean and also fighting the Dutch endlessly and Asian waters for control I mean, how is a small country without industrial revolution, agricultural revolution going to pay for this? Well silver mines, thanks to China In Manila, the opportunities of the silver trade gives rise to something new A phenomenon that has been repeated in almost all of the great trading cities of the world ever since Welcome to Binondo Manila's Chinatown This is supposedly the oldest Chinatown in the world When Spain settled in Manila in the late 1500s, the Chinese followed suit They became the traders and the middlemen and also the skilled craftsmen for the Spanish colonial government Trade in Manila brings fantastic profits but it also brings suspicion and fear There is distrust and hostility between the Chinese and Spanish for one specific reason In the beginning, the Spanish hoped to use Manila as a springboard to potentially invade and conquer China The idea was that they could do this using the same model they had used to conquer Mexico After the Spanish realized that conquering China was not going to happen they began to focus on Manila as a trade center The relationship between the Spanish and the Chinese in Manila was extremely tense In the early 1600s the Chinese population in Manila massively outnumbers the Spanish In a city that forms a crucial part of their empire the Spanish start to behave as if they are under siege In most early modern cities, fortifications like cannons primitive artillery these sorts of things are pointed outward As time went on in Manila these weapons began to be pointed inwards so this is a situation that could at any moment escalate So this is Intramuros Intramuros literally means inside the walls and these are the walls we're walking on The Spanish part of the city was on this side of the walls and this is outside There were never more than a few thousand Spanish here at any one time There were many many more Chinese who lived on the other side of the wall sometimes up to tens of thousands There was always a love-hate relationship between the Chinese and the Spanish When there's too many of the Chinese in the country the Spanish would restrict immigration deport the Chinese en masse or even massacre them In 1603 the tensions erupt into a rebellion by the Chinese against the Spanish This is a rebellion that went on for multiple days There are multiple verifiable reports of the severed heads of both Chinese and Spanish being displayed throughout Manila on pikes, held in people's hands, essentially to intimidate and when it was over over 20,000 people had been killed Despite the carnage in Manila the Chinese population never dwindles for long The financial pull of the Manila trade is too powerful They're never able to fully expel the Chinese or even come close to it because of not only the numerical difference, but because of the vital role the Chinese play in the silver trade and how economically dependent both Spain and China had become on this trade For more than 50 years, silver flowing into China sees the Ming Dynasty prosper But in the early decades of the 17th century, silver will become a major factor in the downfall of the Ming Military campaigns are draining China's silver reserves The government cannot collect enough tax from its suffering people, and China's economy is now precariously yoked to silver from the mines of the New World The amount of silver required to sustain this economy from the Spanish alone averages about 50 tons a year throughout the 17th century When that supply is interrupted, Chinese emperors face an immediate problem In the late 1630s several galleons sank one after another It meant that the flow of silver stopped for a while This was the first time when financial activities in one part of the world had a global reach, had a global effect, so when for example, one of these ships would sink on the way to Manila and the silver would go down with the ship it would have what we would now call a money supply shock in China Silver had created an economic revolution in China but now its scarcity causes catastrophe Emperor Chongzhen doesn't have the money to bankroll his troops and his country is threatened by rebels and enemies to the north And that of course is creating all kinds of discontent not being able to pay the soldiers has huge damaging impact on the morale and the possible rebellion The consequences for the Ming Empire are devastating In 1644 after 276 years of Ming rule Beijing falls to a rebel army Disgraced and in despair Emperor Chongzhen walks to a small hill overlooking the forbidden city and hangs himself The man whose empire is tied to silver is undone for the lack of it A new dynasty the Qing takes control of China They are fearsome warriors from the north where there is a long tradition of fine horsemanship and hunting For 40 years the Qing put down resistance to their rule Only after then can the new emperor Kangxi devote time to what role China will play in the wider world For the last 40 years all maritime trade has been blocked Now Kangxi's empire is secure he has a decision to make Should he maintain the ban or open China to maritime trade In 1684 Kangxi issues an edict to his people I command you to go abroad and trade to show the populous and affluent nature of our rule By imperial decree I open the seas to trade With China's coast now open a vigorous trade develops and the flow of silver resumes Kangxi sets up custom houses at four major ports Custom silver flows directly into his personal coffers A period of peace and prosperity begins unparalleled in Chinese history This is where Kangxi's edict has the greatest impact Guangzhou also known as Canton Today 10 miles east of Canton vast container ships dock here at its port of Whampoa Round the clock 365 days a year Its location has made it one of the largest and one of the busiest waterways in the world In the wake of Kangxi's edict foreign ships laden with silver make their way to Canton up the estuary of the Pearl River The leading maritime powers of the world all come to Canton British, Dutch, French, Danish, and Swedish merchants all set up shop in this Chinatown So this is an incredibly elaborate set of 18 panels of Chinese export wallpaper with many different scenes of daily life in Guangzhou We see small shops that are selling local fare We see craftsmen creating things, people at leisure You can see the bustle of commerce on the river And indeed there are views of the river where you can virtually not see the water There are so many of these small Sampan boats in which many Chinese were living as well as transporting This trade is only good news for China, who levy tax on the goods and silver arriving in Canton The sky screen is used to measure the weight and purity of different And the flags represent the relationship between these countries and China's trade The process of using the sky screen of white silver is not too complicated Because white silver can melt foreign silver The merchants come to buy silks and ceramics But in the 1700s demand grows enormously for a product that only the Chinese produce One that they've treasured for thousands of years It's a drink that will change the world China had tea Nowhere else in the world as it was known at the time produced tea Tea takes hold quite rapidly It's an addictive drug Attempts to find and export seeds of tea plants covertly generally fail because the Qing Empire refused to allow foreigners to enter the interior of the country They could only deal with traders at the points of entry These tea terraces are in Guizhou in southwestern China known locally as the Sea of Tea Today tea exports from the area bring in millions of dollars 250 years ago the trade is just beginning to take off In the 17th century it's Catherine of Braganza wife of Charles II who makes tea popular in the royal court in London And where the royals lead the rest of the nation follows The more demand grows the more China benefits and it's a trade that guarantees Tea, the caffeine itself that you and I are addicted to that caused the return that resulted in the return of traders from the western world to China, to Canton asking for more year after year The tea trade becomes one of the largest trades in the world The holds of merchant ships are packed with tea crates But it also travels overland to another great empire on China's northern border Russia Caravans of camels make the long and dangerous journey along the tea road which stretches over 2,000 miles from the plantations of eastern China across the vast Mongolian steppes and ends in the great Russian city of St. Petersburg It's an exchange of Chinese luxury goods and tea for Russian furs and of course, silver The wealth generated from the tea trade helps build the monumental architecture of St. Petersburg The fabulously elegant city of Russia's imperial czars This trade was very important not only because it brought taxes to Russian state but because of this trade new generation of merchants have appeared in Russia and they were eager to invest their fortunes in different spheres of life So a lot of spheres of the Russian life economic and cultural were flourishing due to the money that were initially gained by the tea trade Like oil in the 20th century tea becomes one of the most valuable traded commodities throughout the 18th century world It generates huge revenues and the wealth has a transformative effect across China By the middle of the 18th century China's population has doubled and is on its way to tripling an increase virtually unprecedented in the history of the modern world China's growing population needs to be housed and its wealthy emperors want ever more lavish palaces So the demand for timber increases massively Buying the wood in ever greater volume forces merchants to travel deeper and deeper into China's interior Many come here to the densely forested hills of southeast Guizhou to trade with one previously self-reliant community called the Miao This trade in timber for silver would not only boost the fortunes but would profoundly alter the way of life of the Miao one of China's most distinctive people The Miao Having little use for silver as money the Miao use this beautiful white metal to create fabulous and intricate jewelry Silver becomes a symbol for wealth and status Miao's silver art endures today in an unbroken line of unique craftsmanship Why do I insist on doing this? Because in the process of constantly losing many traditional things the Miao are wearing the sacred nation So silver is very, very important During the festival we must wear our silver and wear our silver hats and silver necklaces When I got married I wore the biggest and happiest piece of silver the one my ancestors gave me This necklace represents the silver The more people wear it the wealthier they become This necklace was given to my mother and my mother gave it to me and I will give it to my daughter Less than 200 years after China demands that its people pay their tax in silver China has been transformed Increased wealth and unstoppable foreign trade has also created a more material mindset in China Now people are more focused on only make money, right? Make money Don't worry about what you actually do Right? So they change the mentality of people Making people more oriented towards commercial life Trade is bringing in silver but it also heralds the arrival of ambitious foreigners who are becoming a permanent feature in the daily life of the coastal ports of China And by the middle of the 18th century that, for the young emperor, Qianlong is becoming a greater and greater problem European merchants trigger a constant stream of trade disputes and complaints Their sailors are quarrelsome, rowdy and drunk Western traders consider themselves gentlemen They came from advanced enlightened societies Qing officials and others would increasingly come to regard them as uncouth barbarians In 1757 worried by the disputes and disorder, the emperor Qianlong takes drastic action With the exception of one port, Canton the Chinese coast will no longer be open to Western trade Emperor Qianlong can use the very river that brings the foreign ships to Canton to his advantage The Pearl River is the only route into the city and at the Boca Tigris the mouth of the Taiga where the river narrows it is decreed that merchant ships can go no further This keeps foreigners at arm's length and previous restrictions are now enforced more strictly Those foreigners are confined to a small enclave outside Canton city walls in residences known as factories What you're seeing here are the foreign factories in which all foreigners would have lived and worked from the late 18th century until really the first quarter of the 19th century These look like Western style buildings They're fundamentally Chinese buildings with a Western facade and the foreign merchants who were coming to Guangzhou would have both lived and worked in these spaces So having come halfway around the world this is literally all of China that you ever would have had an opportunity to see The restrictions on the life of foreigners may be stifling and monotonous But what is becoming intolerable for Western merchants in particular the British is a restriction that could be curbing profits They start to believe that there is a coalition of interests based in Canton which has a grip of the Canton trade which is going to prevent them getting to Chinese markets In Canton all Western merchants must deal exclusively with a small select group of influential Chinese merchants called the Koh Hong They are an official barrier to the potential riches of the Chinese interior If British traders can only get beyond Canton they can sell to the 300 million residents of China Spearheading this discontent is the most significant foreign trading operation not just in Canton but across the world The British East India Company It is a company like no other immensely rich and powerful with a private army that would grow to number 200,000 men It has the ability to act with the decisiveness and confidence of a nation state East India Company was a monopoly that was frustrated by the monopolies of others It had a monopoly of the trade with the Indies but it objected to the fact that the Chinese controlled the terms of the trade in China Its officials were always men on the make Men keen to make the fortune that they could make in a very few successful trading systems and then get out of the East get back to Britain buy an estate, settle down One such man is James Flint a junior officer of the East India Company Fired by raw ambition Flint takes it upon himself to contest the Chinese terms of trade on behalf of the British In so doing he sets a chain of events that lead to imprisonment and execution In 1759 Flint goes on the offensive He sails out of Canton to confront the Chinese Emperor himself He sails north to Tianjin with a petition which he was trying to send to the Emperor to complain about the specific terms of trade to complain about corruption at Canton and this petition did in fact get to the Emperor When Qianlong receives the petition he at first orders an investigation and then changes his mind and meets out tough justice Quite a large number of officials at Canton lost their jobs Two men who helped in the preparation of the petition lost their heads Having dealt with his Chinese subjects Qianlong then takes action against Flint for his impudence He imprisons him for three years and banishes him from the country forever James Flint was the first of a number of British officials and traders who tried to push the boundaries and change the rules of the game This would happen again and again and again But at this moment China sits unrivaled at the top of world trade The Flint Affair allows Qianlong to show the rest of the world that if it wants to trade with China they must abide by his rules In 1760 he issues his regulations against the barbarians definitively spelling out all the restrictions on foreigners China essentially runs the world economy and we tend not to think of it as westerners because we operate on the assumption that major global currents are initiated by Europeans when in fact China is very much the catalyst in all of this But China's global dominance is not restricted to trade. Its culture has taken hold of the world's imagination The royal courts of Europe are obsessed with the idea of China itself When Catherine the Great the Empress of Russia builds her famous Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg, she also commissions the building of an entire village for visiting nobility It is built in a fanciful and decorative Chinese style that becomes known as In the 18th century China was very fashionable throughout Europe Of course this is more their fantasy, that's how China was imagined You see these beautiful dragons there, the fish scale patterns on roofing, the curved roofs. Some people say that's a mockery but I would say that's like a nice fairy tale, what they created here The Hermitage Museum is Catherine the Great's legacy to Russia It houses one of the finest art collections in the world bequeathed by Catherine on her death in 1796 Part of the Empress of Russia's vast collection contains an extraordinary work of Chinese silver A 32 piece toilette set gifted to Catherine on her wedding in 1745 Such fine lace filigree It was well, special of Chinese in the 18th century and at the moment I think now we can be sure that no one can imitate it or it takes so much labor and well, money that it's not possible to do that Some of the details have Chinese symbolism like these apples of pomegranate so you can see that it's like a broken pomegranate with seeds and that was the symbol of omnipotence have as many suns as seeds in this pomegranate The wire is so thin it's like hair and you see that possibly this crab was used for lipstick or for rouge or for some cosmetics This mirror is adorned with more than 400 diamonds This mirror, you can see the shape is typically Chinese It's decorated with dragons Chinese dragons and of course well, you smile while looking at it because they are all shiny and beautiful and again show the richness and the wealth of Russian court and of Catherine the Great As the 18th century draws to a close China is at the height of its powers It remains the Middle Kingdom the axis of civilization and world trade In 200 years silver has led to an economic miracle, making China an even greater engine of global growth The world is clamoring for its exquisite crafts and its tea and the Middle Kingdom has never reigned over so much territory The Qing Dynasty appears to be invulnerable For most of human history China has represented the world's foremost economic power But the challenge posed by James Flint heralds a new and ominous chapter in the fortunes of China British merchants, fired by the rigid doctrine of free trade grew even more frustrated in their dealings with China, but now they are backed by unparalleled firepower The British had taken a quantum leap in terms of the amount of violence they were able to inflict on those who ran up against them Because of silver, China has no choice but to confront this seismic force, and that will lead to war and national shame It marks the beginning of a period that shapes Chinese thinking even today, in the early 21st century It's the time when China enters what's become nicknamed the century of humiliation