ABSTRACT
The late Qing period witnessed the appearance of modern transport such as steamers and the railway, improved roads to industrial production centres, the introduction of mass media such as newspapers and magazines, and the growth of treaty ports. According to M. Lin, the traditional economy is one that developed without the influence of modern science and technology. Skinner posits that modern markets occur only when a marketing system is linked by efficient transport to external efficient systems of production. Chinese nationalists remember the Late Qing and Republican period as ‘China’s century of humiliation’ because of the many invasions, unfair treaties and concessions that foreign imperialists inflicted upon the country. Treaty ports were governed by unfair treaties between China and foreign powers, where foreign governments could establish concessions and exercise extraterritorial jurisdictions. China during the Republican period was marked by tremendous divides between cities and rural areas, between coastal regions and inland regions, and between the rich and the poor.
