Note 6 — The Chinese

The British merchants and bankers are, by far, those who give most credit to the Chinese. The Spanish and native creditors of the Chinese are but a small minority, taking the aggregate of their credits, and instead of seeking malevolently to impose new hardships on the Chinese, they could have abstained from entering into risky transactions with them. All merchants are aware of the Chinese trading system, and none are obliged to deal with them. A foreign house would give a Chinaman credit for, say, £300 to £400 worth of European manufactured goods, knowing full well, from personal experience, or from that of others, that the whole value would probably never be recovered. It remained a standing debt on the books of the firm. The Chinaman retailed these goods, and brought a small sum of cash to the firm, on the understanding that he would get another parcel of goods, and so he went on for years.6 Thus the foreign merchants practically sunk an amount of capital to start their Chinese constituents. Sometimes the acknowledged owner and responsible man in one Chinese retail establishment would have a share in, or own, several others. If matters went wrong, he absconded abroad, and only the one shop which he openly represented could be embargoed, whilst his goods were distributed over several shops under any name but his. It was always difficult to bring legal proof of this; the books were in Chinese, and the whole business was in a state of confusion incomprehensible to any European. But these risks were well known beforehand. It was only then that the original credit had to be written off by the foreigner as a nett loss—often small when set against several years of accumulated profits made in successive operations.