What Was Traded on the Silk Road

The Silk Road was a network of overlapping overland and maritime routes that connected China to the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. The traffic was multi-directional, and the goods exchanged included silk, spices, precious metals, glass, horses, ceramics, textiles, and ideas. China was the largest producer of high-quality manufactured goods and a major consumer of foreign luxuries, and the balance of trade shifted across the centuries. The broader context of the Silk Road and Chinese foreign trade sets out the routes and their political history, and the maritime trade deep-dive takes up the seaborne half of the story. The larger economic context is in the overview of the imperial Chinese economy.

Outward: Chinese Exports

China was, for most of the imperial period, the world’s largest producer of high-quality manufactured goods. Silk, porcelain, tea, lacquerware, iron goods, and paper left the country through the overland and maritime routes.

Silk

Silk was the iconic Chinese export. Chinese sericulture was a closely guarded craft for many centuries, and the export of fine Jiangnan silks was a major source of wealth for Chinese merchants and demand for foreign silver and gold. The volume of the silk trade grew steadily from the Han onward. Pliny the Elder, in the first century CE, complained that the Roman Empire was being drained of gold to pay for Chinese silk. The Byzantine emperor Justinian is said to have smuggled silkworm eggs out of China in the sixth century, ending the Chinese monopoly of sericulture, but Chinese silk continued to dominate the high-end market for centuries. The Song, Yuan, and Ming saw the silk trade reach its greatest volume, with Chinese silks reaching as far west as Central Asia, Persia, the Arab world, and (after the Mongol period) Europe.

Porcelain

Porcelain, the fine white ceramic that China produced in enormous quantities from the Tang onward, was the other great Chinese export. The Song kilns at Ru, Guan, Ge, Jun, Ding, and especially Jingdezhen produced monochrome wares and blue-and-white porcelain that have been found on archaeological sites from East Africa to the Philippines to the Americas. Chinese porcelain was exported in tens of millions of pieces, and it remained one of the most valuable Chinese exports until the modern period.

Tea and Other Manufactures

Tea, although known in China from antiquity, did not become a major export until the Ming and Qing. The tea trade grew rapidly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the British and Dutch East India Companies entered the Chinese market. The Canton system restricted European trade to Guangzhou, and the Cohong of designated Chinese merchants handled the foreign tea trade. The deeper treatment of the late imperial monetary system is in the history of currency and commerce.

Iron goods, paper, books, lacquerware, fans, and medicines were also exported in large quantities. The volume of Chinese manufactures was so large that the late imperial Chinese economy is sometimes described as the world’s first major industrial exporter.

Inward: Imports into China

The Chinese economy was also a major consumer of foreign goods. Spices, precious metals, precious stones, glass, horses, and exotic luxuries entered China through the trade routes, with significant effects on Chinese consumption and agriculture.

Spices and Aromatics

Spices — pepper, cloves, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, and others — were among the most valuable imports. The trade was dominated by Southeast Asian and Indian producers, carried by Sogdian, Arab, and Chinese merchants. Spices entered China through the ports of the southeast, especially Quanzhou and Guangzhou, and were consumed by the wealthy, used in medicine, and re-exported to the inland markets. The Chinese demand for spices was large enough that the Song, Yuan, and Ming states all maintained active diplomatic and commercial relations with the spice-producing regions.

Precious Metals: Silver and Gold

Precious metals were the most important single category of imports, especially in the late imperial period. The Chinese economy had a chronic demand for silver, and the major sources were the mines of Central Asia (Tang and Song), the silver mines of Yunnan in the Yuan and Ming, and finally the Spanish mines of the Americas in the late Ming and Qing. The silver of Potosí, Bolivia, crossed the Pacific to Manila, was carried by Chinese merchants to Fujian, and was then distributed across the empire in exchange for silk, porcelain, and tea. The volume of the late imperial silver influx is estimated at roughly 20,000–30,000 metric tons of silver over the course of the late Ming and early Qing, a flow without precedent in the preindustrial world. Gold was a much smaller part of the import trade, but it was important for the luxury market and the reserves of the imperial treasury.

Glass, Stones, and Luxuries

Glass was a major import from the West. Chinese glassmaking, although ancient, was a relatively minor industry, and the high-quality glass of the Roman, Byzantine, Sasanian, and Islamic worlds was prized in China. Glassware from these periods has been found on Chinese archaeological sites, and the Song court was a major consumer of foreign glass. Precious stones, aromatic woods, ivory, and exotic animal products were also major imports.

Horses: The Strategic Import

Horses were the most important strategic import. Chinese breeds, although adequate for agricultural work, were generally inferior to the breeds of the Central Asian steppe, and the military effectiveness of the Chinese cavalry depended on access to high-quality horses. The “blood-sweating” Ferghana horses of Central Asia were a major reason for Chinese interest in the Tarim Basin. The Song, having lost the northern frontier, was unable to acquire the Ferghana horses, and the resulting weakness of the Song cavalry contributed to the dynasty’s vulnerability to the Jurchen and the Mongols. The Ming and Qing maintained a horse-import policy through the tea-horse trade, exchanging Chinese tea for Tibetan and Central Asian horses.

Ideas: The Most Important Import

The most consequential single category of import, in the long run, was ideas. Buddhism, Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Islam all entered China along the Silk Road and the maritime routes. Of these, Buddhism was by far the most important: it entered China in the Han, became one of the three great religious traditions of imperial China, and shaped Chinese philosophy, art, architecture, and literature for the next two thousand years. The history of Chinese philosophy and religion treats the Buddhist transformation of Chinese thought in detail.

Manichaeism reached China in the Tang and had a brief but significant following. Nestorian Christianity arrived in 635 with the missionary Alopen and left the famous Nestorian Stele of 781 in Chang’an. Islam arrived with Arab and Persian merchants in the Tang and grew steadily through the Song, Yuan, and Ming; the Muslim communities of Quanzhou, Guangzhou, Yangzhou, and the northwestern frontier were large and well-established by the late imperial period. The religious and intellectual diversity of Tang and Song China, one of the most striking features of the period, was a direct consequence of the openness of the trade routes.

The Balance of Trade

The balance of trade shifted over time. In the Han and Tang, China was a major exporter of silk and a major importer of gold, silver, horses, and exotic luxuries. The Roman Empire ran a chronic trade deficit with China. In the Song, the balance was more even. The late Ming saw a major shift toward silver imports. The early Qing inherited the silver-based system, and the late-Qing opium trade reversed the flow, with silver leaving China rather than entering it. The Silk Road was a multi-directional system of exchange in which China was a major node but not the only one, and the Chinese economy was deeply connected to the wider world.