World Commerce and China

Commerce and Culture this chapter was really nice to read because it looks forward reminding us that the whole idea of exchanging and globalization had been around for many years and it’s not something new. Strayer tells us “the exchange of goods among communities occupying different ecological zones has long been a prominent feature of human history”. (p217).

In the past, as we have been studying, we can see that our ancestors started trading goods because they had a surplus of resources. Such surplus helped other members of their community who were lacking any type of grain, per ce. With time, we see that societies took advantage of their climates and kind of resources each of them had the most.

The advantage they took was to exchange those goods for the ones they did not have, allowing the birth of commerce, which nowadays it’s still one of the most important forms of business in our era. An example of good commerce exchange tradition was the Silk in China, which “symbolized the Eurasian exchange system” (p221). 

The exchange system also helped politically because a big decision had to be taking, this decision was whether or not cities governments needed to implement a taxing system or just keep it private in the hands of the men who were trading their goodies. With time, the resources trader escalated in numbers and also in diversity. Later on, what started to be traded were Gold, salt and Slaves. The culture simply changed and instead of seeing one another as human beings, the differences in color and in social status gave chance to men allowing themselves to sell one another. It has been really hard for men to stop thinking that way and leave slavery behind.

I think we are doing better every day but there’s a lot that needs to be still worked on. Now talking about China to be honest, I really do not know much about China. I know that it is a place where its citizens are extremely disciplined and hard working. After reading the chapter I can tell that China has gone through many very important changes that have shaped the way the government is now. I am personally not a fan of how they make some of their decisions or how their pride is portrayed in books or in dynasties, but I do know that their internal and external sources of change during history have helped it shape its political views and government.  For the most part China has not changed its status as a country since the time of Confucius.  Most other Countries have gone through extreme changes resulting in the formation of separate new countries.  These new countries may be standing on the foot prints of the old country before it but almost all other aspects of the old country are gone.

We think of ourselves as a new world where we have a global market but the truth is we are not doing something new, we are going back to the way it used to be, the way it should have always been.