This paper studies the trade of China in the past 150 years, starting from the first opening of China after the Opium … War. The main purpose of the paper is to identify what is (and was) China's 'normal' level of foreign trade, and how these … levels changed under different trade regimes, from 1840 to the present. We present new evidence on China's foreign trade …

The First Opium War (1840-42) was a watershed in the history of China. In its aftermath Britain and other countries …-organized under Western management, Western legal institutions were introduced in China in form of courts and legal practices, and … foreigners in China were tried according to the laws of their country of origin (extraterritoriality). To better understand the …

In this paper, we provide aggregate trends in China's trade performance from the 1840s to the present. Based on … historical benchmarks, we argue that China's recent gains are not exclusively due to the reforms since 1978. Rather, foreign …, Shanghai already accounted for more than half of China's foreign trade. In tracking the levels and growth rates of the city …