Abstract
After the Opium War, European and American companies began to advance into China. With the
opening of the shipping market in China, the steamship revolution that occurred in the western
world during the 19th century, spread to the East Asian waters by the opening of the Suez Canal
in 1869. Since the 1860s, trading companies in Europe and the United States gradually made the
shipping department independent, and established steamship companies in China, to start operating
navigation business by using steamship. As a result, the Junk, a traditional Chinese sailing ship,
which was inferior in terms of speed, transportation amount, stability, etc., was beaten hard. Several
prior studies have attempted to estimate the number of Junks in China, but the situation of Junks’
transportation remains unknown. In addition, the overall picture of the Western-style sailing vessels
and the steamships’ conditions in the Chinese shipping market has not been disclosed. However,
in modern China where railway constructions fell far behind, shipping was extremely important
in transportation. In order to clarify the fundamental significance of logistics in modern China’s
economic development, it is extremely important to clarify the structure of the modern Chinese
shipping market and its transitional process. This article will analyse the historical transformation
process of the Chinese shipping market in the second half of the 19th century to the first half of the
20th century from the macroscopic point of view, in accordance with the CIMC （China Imperial
Maritime Customs）.
