Shanxi merchants in the Ming and Qing Dynasties created the glory of "traveling ten thousand miles across Europe and Asia and dominating the business world for five hundred years." Shanxi merchants developed into the Qing Dynasty and established three monuments successively: the "Shuo Gang", the "Camel Gang" and the "Piao Gang". Among them, the "Ship Gang" is a merchant gang engaged in trade with Japan. It is named because it uses ships as a means of transportation. At that time, trade with Japan mainly involved using Chinese porcelain, silk, and the Four Treasures of the Study to exchange copper with Japan. This kind of trade is recorded in "Eastern Japan Kao", "The price in the mainland is usually one, and when it comes to Japan, you can get five; if you return the goods, you can get two for one." The Shanxi merchant "ship gang" is mainly represented by the Fan family in Jiexiu County, Shanxi Province.

Jiexiu Fan Family

The Fan family was most prosperous in the Fan Yubin era. Fan Yubin's grandfather, Fan Yongdou, traded in Zhangjiakou and Liaodong in the late Ming Dynasty. He made a fortune by secretly trading with the Hou Jin regime. After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, he was canonized as one of the eight "imperial merchants".

Copper coin crisis

In the early Qing Dynasty, China’s copper production was mainly in Yunnan, which was called “Dian Copper”. With the development of the economy, the money supply of the Qing Dynasty seriously lagged behind and it needed a large amount of copper coins. However, domestic copper mine production is temporarily unable to meet demand. The shortage of currency has led to a rise in prices, and the appreciation of copper coins has reached more than 30, which has become an unstable factor affecting the overall stability. Vigorously importing copper has become the key to solving this problem.

Therefore, the Qing government implemented the policy of "developing both the Yunnan and the Ocean" and imported a certain amount of copper from Nagasaki, Japan's famous copper producing area to the east, which was called "foreign copper" at the time, as a supplement. By the time of Kangxi, there was a serious shortage of copper jins in the country, so the imperial court allowed merchants to go to Japan to purchase copper jins. At that time, those who handled this kind of business were called "foreign copper merchants."

The rise of the "Boat Gang"

Shanxi merchants represented by Jiexiu Fan discovered the business opportunities and took the initiative to approach the government and request to undertake this business. At that time, there were huge profits from the copper trade with Japan and foreign countries. Fan took advantage of favorable conditions and privileges to transfer the business of purchasing Japanese copper to the imperial merchants' monopoly.

The "Ship Gang" of Shanxi merchants was formed from then on. His fleet began to cross the ocean and go to Japan for business, and was engaged in the copper trade with Japan for nearly seventy years. The Fan family played an important role in this. At that time, the ship gang owned about fifteen ships, and the Fan family alone had six or seven ships. They plied between the Yangtze River Estuary and Nagasaki, Japan. They also occupied an absolutely dominant position in the copper trade with Japan, accounting for more than half of the import volume and winning The benefits are extremely huge.

The success of foreign copper, the failure of foreign copper

Because the supply of Japanese copper mines cannot be maintained due to China’s huge purchases, the Japanese government has ordered restrictions on China’s purchases and stipulated that every year Exports shall not exceed three million catties. Fan's "Ship Gang" was forced to lengthen the trading cycle in Japan and increase costs. At first it was just a sharp decrease in profits, and later there were losses. At this point, importing Japanese copper has become a loss-making business. However, the Qing government rejected Fan's request to withdraw from the foreign copper trade. Fan was forced to continue to accept loans from the government and maintain a loss-making business. Eventually, his vitality was severely damaged, and he went bankrupt and ransacked his property.