What China wants

摘要

Matthew boulton, James Watt's partner in the development of the steam engine and one of the 18th century's greatest industrialists, was in no doubt about the importance of Britain's first embassy to the court of the Chinese emperor. "I conceive", he wrote to James Cobb, secretary of the East India Company, "the present occasion to be the most favourable that ever occurred for the introduction of our manufactures into the most extensive market in the world."