People, both the highly privileged and the least fortunate, still sometimes travel
by sea. Cruises are a high-growth industry. Illegal immigrants travel by sea, often
as the final passage in their circuitous routes. The Vietnamese boat people found
new importance in the China seas as an avenue for escape. Elsewhere in the
world, the desperate are using the sea to flee oppression and poverty in their
search for freedom and prosperity.China’s Maritime Past
The impetus to open up the sea routes and to sail the world ocean came in the
1400s from the Atlantic edge of western Europe, at the time the fringe of the
fringe in terms of its overall place in global accomplishment. But it was the
European genius to enter the unknown South Atlantic and to move beyond, to
incorporate known sea regions and known sea routes into a new global network,
and in that process to begin to explore and discover new regions and new routes,
fusing them into a new global network. Atlantic Europe, using the gunned sailing
ship as its instrument of power, rediscovered the New World and brought Pacific
Asia into continuing contact with a global community.
The initiative could have sprung out of maritime East Asia; the means were
there, but not the will. China has a vibrant if often overlooked maritime history.
But oceanic experience was not part of the formative rhythms of the many early
centuries that cut the templates of Chinese civilization. Nor was it part of the
traditions of the rest of Pacific Asia.
Northern China was a major core of civilization from earliest times. But
Chinese historical geography slowly propelled the culture in a southerly direc-
tion, with an ultimate shift of the national center of gravity from the Yellow
River valley to the Yangzi and farther south. Although the center of politics
would largely remain in the north, theeconomic heart moved to the south,
reflecting the suitability of climate and terrain to the growing of rice, a richer
caloric crop than the wheat and millet staples of the dry and cool plains of
north China.
As long as that great plain and the Yellow River basin remained the key center
of power, culture, and wealth—until 900CEor so—China’s focus was riverine,
like that of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. But, unlike the Nile, the Yellow River
was almost useless for navigation because of its heavy load of silt; its fluctuating
water levels; and its large, swampy, and shifting estuary. The river lured no one
down to the sea.
All along the northern China coast, furthermore, from just below the
Shandong peninsula down to the mouth of the Yangzi River, no harbors punctu-
ate the coastline. Even the navigable Yangzi does not thrust voyagers out to sea.
Not until the mid-nineteenth century and the stimulus of European presence
did Shanghai emerge as a great international seaport.22 Asia Looks Seaward