In the 18th c., did/would China accept gold from Europe as trade payment? Why / why not?

Upvote:4

My understanding is that the gold/silver value was different in Europe (~1:12) and in the Far East (~1:6), so it was quite beneficial for European traders to buy everything in Asia using silver and come back with gold and goods.

China was also peculiar in the sense that they wanted essentially nothing from Europeans, feeling they had superior goods in just about every ways. It wasn't until when the opium trade kicked off that Europeans had anything of value besides silver to offer the Chinese.

Source: J.M. Roberts, History of Europe (which has a big bibliography section, where you might find better sources).

Upvote:12

This article (emphasis mine) discusses the Canton System and its silver requirement:

But it wasn’t just any kind of trade: China deliberately (and exclusively) exported value-added, refined products (silk and porcelain) in exchange for exotic raw materials (they lacked sufficient domestic silver supplies)—this is called mercantilism.

Importantly, exporting cloth to Europe supported Chinese workers, and Chinese industries, while importing silver displaced no Chinese industry—

So they got a resource they needed, trading it for value-added items, and threatened no domestic industry.

Another essay here agrees that silver was the main focus of trade with China, though some goods were traded:

The original China trade was a simple bulk exchange of commodities. Until the mid 18th century, 90 percent of the stock brought to Canton was in silver, and the primary export was tea. In 1782, for example, ships carried away 21,176 piculs (1408 tons) of tea, 1,205 piculs (80 tons) of raw silk, 20,000 pieces of “nankeens” (cotton goods), and a small amount of porcelain. After the mid 18th century, the British began shipping large quantities of woolens from their factories to replace the drain of silver bullion, but this was not enough to balance the trade.

It again boils down to demand, the Chinese wanted silver (again emphasis mine):

the giant empire of China in 1800, as the Qianlong emperor boasted, in fact did have nearly all the products it needed within its own borders. It could feed itself, defend itself, and prosper without depending heavily on the outside world. The empire lacked, however, two key commodities: silver and horses. Horses, crucial for military campaigns, had to come from the pastoral nomads of Mongolia and Central Eurasia. The Qing solved this problem by conquering the Mongols in the 18th century and by purchasing large numbers of horses from the Kazakhs. After the mid 18th century, silver, the essential driver of the Chinese commercial economy, was the only scarce major article of trade in China. This was the one key product Westerners could offer, in exchange for tea, silk, and porcelain

Gold is not mentioned as a trade item in any of these sources.

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