Commerce. —The rivers and numberless canals Of China are covered with vessels of all sizes, employed in the internal commerce of the country. The Chinese are devoted to traffic, and the Middle Kingdom is throughout its length and breadth a perpetual fair. The total value of the imports into China in 1876 is given at £23,423,190, and of the exports, £26,950,170. Tea and silk are the great staple exports from China. The table gives some recent statistics of British trade with C. : There is no coinage in China except the copper tchen, or " cash," which is in value about the tenth of a halfpenny; and all but the most trifling payments are made by a certain weight of silver, or in Mexican or Spanish dollars. Chinese accounts are kept in taels, mace, candareens, and cash. A tael is worth 6s. 8d., British currency.
The following works (which have been used as authorities in the preparation of this article) may be consulted for further information on China. Meadows's Chinese and their Rebellions (Lond. 1856); Davis's (sir J. F.) China: a General Description of that
Empire (Loud. 1857); Davis's uhina during the War and since the Peace (bond. 1852); Williams's Middle Kingdom (New York and Load. 1848); Oliphant's _Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan, in the years 1857, 1858, and 1859 (Edin. 1859); Marquis de Moges's Recollections of Baron Gros's Embassy to China and Japan in 1857 and 1858 (Lond. 1860); Hue's Chinese Empire (Lond. 1858); Cooke's China in 1857 and 1858; Fortune's Three Years' Wanderings in China (Lond. 1847); Fortune's Visit to the Tea Districts of China (Lond. 1852); Edkin's Religious Condition of the Chinese (1858); Cobbold's Pictures of the Chinese by Themselres (1859); Twelve Years in China, by a British Resident (1860): Memoires sur la Chine (1869); Rev. A. Williamson's Journeys in Korth China, etc. (1870); also Dr. Gray's China: a History of the Laws, Manners, and Opinions of the People (1878); and the Freiherr von Richthofen's great work, China (1st vol. 1877).