My Take | Shopping apps that allow consumers to ‘shop like a billionaire’ have lessons to learn from Qing dynasty traders

Wu Bingjian, a Chinese merchant known as Howqua or Houqua among foreign traders, was said to be the richest man in the world in the early 19th century. He accumulated massive wealth via trade between the Qing dynasty and the rest of the world.

As a senior merchant in Canton, Wu was one of only a few authorised dealers allowed to export Chinese silk and porcelain, two sought-after commodities produced by China at the time. He was so rich that according to one tale, his silver melted into a two-mile river during a fire that burned down one of his treasure rooms.

In the long period of history that followed Wu’s age, China’s role in global trade diminished even though the power to trade with foreigners was still seen as a privilege.

At the zenith of China’s command economy era in the 1950s and 1960s, the country’s foreign trade was tightly held by a dozen state-owned trading houses. However, market reforms since the late 1970s have turned the country into the world’s factory floor, making it once again a key sourcing destination for foreign traders.

This time around it is not simply a case of vases and silk. China is now the world’s top producer of an array of products, from microwave ovens to massage chairs. According to United Nations data, China’s share of global exports rose from 0.8 per cent in 1978 to about 15 per cent in 2020.

Today, the right to trade with foreigners has been granted to all businesses. In reality, though, whether a Chinese entity can do business with the outside world is subject to a number of barriers. These include basic stumbling blocks like translation – one of Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma’s first business ventures was called Hope Translation – to customs clearance issues, with many agencies created to facilitate China’s trade.