A coast with an uneven record
China has a very long coastline and major rivers, and Chinese boats were in use for transport and trade for thousands of years. Yet the state’s interest in the sea rose and fell. At times emperors encouraged overseas trade and built large fleets; at other times they restricted it. A fair account separates the work of merchants, shipwrights and officials from the policies of individual dynasties.
Early vessels and the Song breakthrough
River and coastal craft are attested from early periods, and by the Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE) Chinese texts and tomb models show ships with features such as a steering oar and, later, a stern-mounted rudder. Many of the designs we now call Chinese junks developed over the following centuries.
The Song dynasty (960 to 1279) is often seen as the period when Chinese maritime commerce expanded sharply. With northern China lost to rival states from 1127, the southern Song court relied heavily on revenue from overseas trade, collected through offices in ports such as Quanzhou and Guangzhou. Shipbuilding flourished at the same time. Song-era sources mention use of the magnetic compass for navigation at sea by the early twelfth century, and Chinese sailors also benefited from sailing at the right season along known routes.
What made a junk
The term “junk” is a European word for a family of Chinese sailing ships, not a single design. Typical features, in varying combinations, included:
- a hull divided into watertight compartments by bulkheads, which limited flooding if the hull was damaged
- in many types, a broad, shallow hull form without the deep keel of a European ship
- a stern-mounted rudder that could often be raised or lowered
- multiple masts with battened sails, which could be reefed quickly by lowering the panels
The Venetian traveller Marco Polo, who described large Chinese ships in the late thirteenth century, and the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, who sailed on Chinese junks in the fourteenth, both reported on their size and cabins, though their accounts are not precise, and historians treat specific figures with caution. Archaeology has recovered a Song-era hull at Quanzhou, found in 1973, which gives physical evidence of the bulkhead construction.
Mongol and Yuan fleets
After the Mongols conquered China, the Yuan dynasty (1271 to 1368) assembled large fleets, including those sent against Japan in 1274 and 1281. Both attacks failed, with storms playing a large part in the second. The Yuan also supported sea transport of grain to the north, and trade through the southern ports continued.
The Ming and the treasure voyages
The Ming dynasty began in 1368. Early on, it restricted private overseas trade, mainly allowing exchange through the tributary system, in which foreign rulers sent missions and received gifts and trading rights. Under the Yongle Emperor, a series of large voyages sailed between 1405 and 1433 under the eunuch admiral Zheng He. The Zheng He voyages visited Southeast Asia, India, the Persian Gulf and East Africa, and the fleets carried many thousands of men. Exact numbers and ship sizes in later sources are disputed, and some figures are probably exaggerated.
The aim of the voyages was largely diplomatic and political, to display imperial prestige and bring foreign rulers into the tribute network, though they also carried goods. After 1433 the state stopped sending such fleets. Reasons cited by historians include cost, rival priorities on the northern frontier and the views of some court officials, although the story is not simple.
Sea bans, smuggling and reopening
Through much of the Ming period, the government maintained restrictions on private sea trade, known as haijin. These were hard to enforce. Smuggling and piracy along the southeastern coast, often involving Chinese, Japanese and other merchants, grew during the sixteenth century. In 1567 the court relaxed the ban in Fujian province, allowing licensed private trade to a number of ports, and Chinese junks sailed regularly to Southeast Asia. Silver from the Americas, reaching China through the Manila galleons and other routes, became a major import.
Under the Qing dynasty, the government again imposed coastal restrictions in the seventeenth century, partly to cut off the supporters of Zheng Chenggong (known in the West as Koxinga), who held Taiwan against them. These were later lifted, and trade at Guangzhou became tightly regulated for foreign merchants in the eighteenth century.
The long view
Chinese maritime history is a record of skill and variable policy. Chinese junk fleets, state and private, carried goods across the South China Sea and into the Indian Ocean for centuries, and the ports they served were cosmopolitan. The contrast between the great state-led voyages and the persistent, mostly private merchant trade is the main point to keep in mind. In the nineteenth century, steamships and Western naval power, and the new treaty ports they enforced, brought a different phase.