What happens
This episode of The Pacific Story, broadcast on November 4, 1945, examines China as a potential world market. It traces how Western merchants from Marco Polo's era onward dreamed of trade with China, and how American and British commercial interests competed there over the decades. The narration looks at China's natural resources, such as tungsten, antimony, tin and tea and silk, and at its textile industry and the impact of the war on factories moved inland. It then turns to the obstacles to trade, including low living standards, the need for agrarian reform, tariffs and competition from other nations, and the question of how China could pay for the goods it needs.
China and the Pacific, from the era of Marco Polo to the period after the Second World War, with references to the United States, Britain, Japan and Canada.
Characters: Marco Polo, Mr. Wong
Listen for: The narrator's account of China's resources and its potential as a market for American goods, and the debate over how China could afford them.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.