Text/Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Ai Yu
It's another year of autumn. The "Canton Fair moment" arrived as promised.
In the millennium business capital of Guangzhou, the 130th Canton Fair opened its doors to welcome guests, and tens of thousands of enterprise buyers gathered in Guangzhou to participate in offline exhibitions. On the 19th, this international trade event across time and space is about to come to an end.
Turning over the exhibitor list of this Canton Fair, 26,000 enterprises were distributed in 51 exhibition areas, 16 categories of goods were dazzling, and more than 200,000 buyers came to the scene to "sweep the goods".
Weishui, the Cantonese meaning of "great" and "very powerful", the Canton Fair deserves the evaluation of "Weishui".
From the "only son" and "eldest son" of the New China Exhibition to the "First Exhibition of China", the Canton Fair in 65 years is a condensed history of the development of New China's foreign trade.
Canton Fair: The first window of New China's foreign trade
After the founding of New China, in order to break the blockade and embargo imposed on China by the Western capitalist camp and open up a channel for exchanges with the world, the Canton Fair came into being.
On April 25, 1957, the first China Export Commodities Fair opened in the former Sino-Soviet Friendship Building in Guangzhou, and Premier Zhou Enlai proposed to shorten it to the Canton Fair.
The first Canton Fair, organized by 13 professional foreign trade companies to participate in the exhibition, displaying more than 10,000 kinds of commodities, including China's self-developed Jiefang brand trucks, ordinary lathes, etc., as well as a variety of daily light industrial products, agricultural and sideline local products and traditional handicrafts.
At the first Canton Fair, a total of 1223 buyers from 19 countries and regions attended the meeting, with a transaction of 86.86 million US dollars, accounting for one-fifth of the total national revenue and foreign exchange that year.
Today's well-known Moutai wine is to accept the suggestions of Hong Kong business circles at the Canton Fair, from a black pottery bottle with sand holes to a white porcelain wine bottle, and the red star trademark was changed to a Feitian trademark with Chinese cultural characteristics that refers to Dunhuang mural art.
From 1957 to the present, the Canton Fair has received a total of 117 foreign dignitaries from 83 countries. It is worth mentioning that in 1972, two months after US President Richard Nixon's visit to China, the US trade delegation composed of 40 senior executives of American Boeing Aircraft and Global Communications was invited to visit the Canton Fair, which was the first US trade delegation to visit China since the founding of New China.
In October 1978, at the 44th Canton Fair, the crowds were crowded, and various languages came into the ears from time to time. Every bit of information about foreign trade will be amplified here, and people will smell the breath of spring and excitedly exchange news.
This Canton Fair for the first time to "sell to fix production" as a foreign trade policy, some silk companies produced silk printed satin is not selling all year round, at the Canton Fair to hear the buyer's suggestion, the pattern from tractor, hoe and sickle to peony, lotus, since then very popular, leapt to become a favorite of foreign businessmen fragrant food.
On the first day of the Canton Fair that year, American buyers caught a number of new products and immediately placed orders for 10,000 dozen – the first batch of jeans exported by China, from Guangdong Textile Import and Export Co., Ltd.
Since 1965, the annual export turnover of the Canton Fair has accounted for more than 30% of the country's total annual exports of foreign trade, and in 1972 and 1973, it accounted for more than 50%, becoming a well-deserved "half of the sky" of foreign trade.
Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet. The Canton Fair in 65 years has almost condensed a history of China's foreign trade development and become a "barometer" and "wind vane" for China's foreign trade.
Thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises are coming out of here to the world. Haier, Midea, Zhengtai... A number of world-renowned brands have taken off from the Canton Fair; countless well-known enterprises have grown step by step since receiving the first order at the Canton Fair.
Liuhua Road Exhibition Hall, Oriental Hotel New Building, Liuhua Hotel, Baiyun Hotel... A majestic complex of buildings rises. The Baiyun Hotel, which was completed in 1976, was 120 meters high, setting a new record for the tallest building in the country at that time.
The canton fair supporting services have prospered a large number of industries. At that time, there was a popular saying: Guangdong has "three treasures", drivers, doctors, pork guys. The development of taxis is also based on Guangzhou as the source, radiating to various cities, and truly entering the lives of ordinary citizens.
Open arms, chain through the world, inclusive of the world, through the open window of trade, the world sees the running China.
Since ancient times, China has never lacked the heart and courage to go out. What guangzhou people are proud of is that for thousands of years, Guangzhou has always been the window of China's foreign trade.
Guangzhou City: the "Thousand Year Commercial Capital" that thrives on the sea
Guangzhou has experienced more than 2,200 years since its founding, and in the pre-Qin period, Guangzhou Port began to engage in foreign trade. It can be seen that guangzhou's history is destined to be associated with prosperous commerce.
Persian silver boxes, African ivory and Red Sea frankincense excavated from the tombs of the Nanyue kings are all evidence that the "South China Sea Silk Road" began in Guangzhou.
However, at that time, the maritime trade did not have a special name, let alone the "Maritime Silk Road", until the Tang Dynasty, this route did not have an official name - Guangzhou Tonghai Yi Road.
The New Book of Tang contains a record of the "Guangzhou Tonghai YiDao", which details the chinese sea vessels setting sail from Guangzhou, crossing the Strait of Malacca to southern India, and then along the southern coast of India to the west, and then west to the Persian Gulf, sailing to the end of the Persian Gulf. The route was more than 10,000 kilometers long, making it the longest ocean route in the world at the time.
At that time, under the guidance of the Tang Dynasty's policy of "except for the foot, the closing of the market, and the advancement, let them flow back and forth, trade for themselves, and not be allowed to increase the rate tax", "flooded Han Land, up to Guangzhou". Therefore, Guangzhou Port became the world's largest foreign trade port in the Tang Dynasty and even at that time.
China's unique silk, porcelain, tea and copper and iron goods are gathered from all over the country to Guangzhou, and then travel through Guangzhou's Tonghai Yi Road to other countries and regions in exchange for rare domestic spices or other rare treasures.
Han Yu said in the "Preface to sending Zheng Quan Shang Shu": At that time in Guangzhou, "the goods of foreign countries were in full swing in China, and the pearls, elephant rhinoceros, tortoiseshells, and strange things overflowed in China and could not be used." According to historical records, even in the late Tang Dynasty, when the national power was already declining, there were still more than 4,000 Arab merchant ships arriving in Guangzhou every year.
After entering the Song Dynasty, the port of Guangzhou still dominated for a long time. To witness the former prosperity of Guangzhou City, there are also archaeological discoveries that shocked the world - Nanhai I.
This is an ancient wooden ship that was wrecked and sunk during trade through the Maritime Silk Road in the early Southern Song Dynasty, and the shipwreck unearthed a large number of porcelain, more than 15,000 copper coins, and many gold objects, which still shine today.
You know, the Nanhai I. was just an ordinary merchant ship in the grand situation of the Thousand Sails Ferry in Guangzhou Port at that time, which shows how prosperous the city of Guangzhou, which was the starting point of maritime trade in ancient times, should be a prosperous scene!
Thirteen Elements: The "Wall Street" of the World at That Time
Among the four ports opened to the outside world in the Qing Empire (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong), the revenue of Guangdong Customs has always been the first.
In 1757 (the 22nd year of Qianlong), the Qing Dynasty ordered the closure of the remaining three ports and the implementation of one-port trade in Guangzhou. This directly prompted Guangzhou to become the only legal "foreign trade special zone" in China at that time, thus bringing huge business opportunities to the thirteen lines.
Today's Thirteen Lines is just the name of a road in Guangzhou, and more than 200 years ago, thirteen lines were China's only foreign trade and trade port, and Guangzhou's foreign trade entered a period of rapid development.
In 1684 (the 23rd year of the Kangxi Dynasty), the Cantonese customs office recruited thirteen local trading houses in Guangzhou, designated them to do business with foreign merchant ships arriving at Huangpu Port and collected customs duties on behalf of the customs, known in history as the "Thirteen Lines of Guangdong".
In the nearly 100 years since, Guangzhou has become China's undisputed foreign trade center, as foreigners lament at the time, "the scene of busy ships running on the Pearl River is like the River Thames under London Bridge." The difference is that the sailing ships on the river are of different forms, and there are galleons, which are no more spectacular in the eyes of foreigners than the sailboats arranged for miles."
At that time, Guangzhou, "foreign ships docked, merchants gathered, and were rich and prosperous", not only provided nearly 40% of the customs revenue for the imperial court, but also provided a large number of rare and exotic products for the Qing Emperor who liked a luxurious life.
Houli attracted the special favor of the imperial power, and the Qianlong Emperor always appointed his closest confidants of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as the inspector of the Guangdong Customs. Under the operation of the royal family, Guangzhou became a veritable "Tianzi Nanku".
Taking advantage of the convenience of dealing with foreign merchants, a large number of foreign goods were transported to the court every year, which was called "procurement of official goods" at that time. Rare objects such as glass lamps, carpets, automatic toys, mechanical clocks, dioramas, copperplate engravings, etc. in the Western-style buildings of the Yuanmingyuan in the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens" were all purchased and transported to Beijing by Guangdong Customs through foreign merchants.
Many poems of that year can reflect the prosperity of the thirteen lines. The poet Qu Dajun of the early Qing Dynasty has a cloud in the "Bamboo Branch Words of Guangzhou":
The foreign ships competed for the official businessmen, and the cross door opened to the second ocean.
Five silks and eight silks are wide satin, and the silver money is piled up in thirteen rows.
During the Qianlong period, the poet Li Tiaoyuan's two "Bamboo Branches of the South China Sea" can be glimpsed in a general overview of Guangzhou:
Since it is bustling differently, fish scales thousands of households in the sea city.
People are stocked with coral birds and high railings in jasper cages.
Most of the rare treasures are out of the West, and they are also installed when they return.
The new cowherd is printed and forged, and the lace money is full of thirteen lines.
Map of the Thirteen Merchant Houses of Guangzhou in the late Qing Dynasty. Source: Collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, USA
The diligence and integrity of Guangdong businessmen have promoted the rapid development of the economy and trade of the Thirteen Elements. The Thirteen Lines Street was equivalent to the "Wall Street" of the world at that time, and the large businesses had assets of tens of millions of silver and two, and a group of world-class rich people appeared.
There are "four major families" in the thirteen lines: the Pan family, the Wu family, the Lu family, and the Ye family. Among them, there are only two families that are really the most profitable, the Pan family of Pan Zhencheng and the Wu Bingjian wu family.
At that time, Pan Zhencheng, the chief merchant (that is, the head of the merchants) of the Thirteen Lines in Guangzhou, was called the richest man in the world. The Pan family's Tongwenxing, the only one with a history of one hundred years in the thirteen lines, mainly engaged in tea and silk business, and the silk business probably monopolized half of the country. It had trade with most of the countries of Western Europe, and the Thirteen Lines tongwen street, because one of the thirteen lines of the merchant house, Tongwen street, got its name from this street, and foreign merchants called it "New China Street".
The Wu family's Jardine Matheson Bank once owned 26 million silver dollars, almost equivalent to a year's fiscal revenue of the Qing government, and invested in railroads, securities trading and insurance business in the United States, which was a veritable transnational consortium.
Guangzhou has the special status of the thirteen lines, the only official overseas trade "special economic zone" and "one mouth of trade", which made Guangzhou climb to the peak of the history of urban development at that time and enter the ranks of the world's top ten cities in the middle of the 19th century; in 1850, Guangzhou ranked fourth among the top ten cities in the world's economics.
After the Opium War, the one-port trade system in Guangzhou was replaced by five-port trade. The Qing government let the merchants of the thirteen lines raise funds for war reparations, and the wealthy merchant families also went bankrupt.
In the Second Opium War, artillery fire reduced the 170-year-old trading house to ashes, and the merchants went their separate ways, and the thirteen lines withdrew from the stage of history. After the fall of the Thirteen Lines, China's foreign trade centers moved to Hong Kong and Shanghai. Many powerful merchants of the Thirteen Lines went north to Shanghai with a large amount of wealth and became the forerunners of the opening of the port of Shanghai.
The thirteen lines of prosperity have fallen, but Guangzhou has not declined. Today, guangzhou, with its long history of foreign trade and the geographical advantages of the important starting point of the Maritime Silk Road, is moving towards a more prosperous era.
Pazhou Island was once the starting point of the ancient "Maritime Silk Road" (Huangpu Ancient Port). It has witnessed the success of this thousand-year-old commercial capital with the change of time and time, and now it has also become the hope of Guangzhou's future.
In the more than 2,000 years since the founding of Guangzhou, it has integrated business factors into the blood of the city. Today, riding on the strong wind of the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, we continue to break the waves. (For more news, please pay attention to Yangcheng Pie pai.ycwb.com)
Resources:
Sun Minghua, Wang Jiyong, Dong Lei, Xu Shujing: "Selling the World"
Huang Qi: "Canton Fair, the earliest window opened in the Chinese market"
Xiang Heng: The Millennium Shang Capital That Changes with The Times
Lan Ruo: "The "Thousand-Year Commercial Capital" of the Yangbo Maritime Silk Road
Yang Heqing Yanmin: "Thirteen Elements - Witnessing Guangzhou's "Millennium Shang Capital""
Xiao Wu: "Guangzhou- A Thousand Years of Business Capital and OpenNess"
Source | Yangcheng Evening News • Yangcheng Pie
Editor-in-charge | Zheng Zongmin
Source: Yangcheng Evening News • Yangcheng Pie