Page 429 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

415.

duct most of their trade through the Hong merchants. These

Chinese merchants possessed more commercial skill, experience

and, most importantly, more capital.

Unfortunately, the Chinese government's attitudes and

policies toward trade penalized China's most capable and effi­

cient merchants. While Chinese merchants struggled to normal­

ize their trade under the new tariff system, local Chinese

authorities attempted to extort from these men the five million

dollars which the Chinese had been forced to pay the English
when Cantonese mobs had attacked the English Factories in May

1841. At that time Canton officials had "persuaded" the Hong

merchants to guarantee the money. Wrestling with the government

over this matter precluded their total involvement in business.

Other Chinese merchants unsuccessfully sought to absorb the for­

eign trade, but they were "men of insufficient capital, and with-

out the facilities necessary for the conduct of so large a busi-
41
h
.
� f
ness, ana oreigners ave, th us, b een t o muc h · inconvenience."
·
In August the Americans' position in the China trade
suffered an additional setback when Houqua (Wu Ping-chien), the

foremost Hong merchant, died. Although he had retired from

business years earlier, he had continued to advise American mer­

chants at Canton and to speculate in the foreign trade through

American commission houses. Two sons replaced him in his Hong,

each one taking the name Houqua in succession. The second son

to head the Hong, Wu Ch'ung-yueh, also regarded Americans as

41
Letter, A. Heard & Co. to W. Appleton & Co., Sep. 26,
1843, Heard MSS.