In 1684, China reopened its doors to trade with the outside world, which had a huge impact on the
development of global commerce. Canton quickly emerged as one of the few ports in the world where
everyone was welcomed and where everyone (except Japanese and Russians) had access to everything
including tea, silk, and porcelain. Unlike other ports, individual traders in Canton could buy and sell the
same high-quality products as those handled by the East India companies. As the Canton trade grew,
international networks became more sophisticated; as more ships went to China, new forms of
remittance such as Letters of Credit and Bills of Exchange became standard, which streamlined
international finance; as more money flowed into Canton, more goods were distributed worldwide, which
gave rise to globalization; as economies in both the eastern and western hemispheres became more
integrated with the Chinese market, there was a parallel decline in the risks of conducting trade, which
encouraged the advancement of private enterprise. One by one the large East India companies found it
increasingly more difficult to compete and went broke. However, the success of the Canton trade was also
its weakness, because the legal trade was so dependent on silver collected from opium sales, and because
a decline in opium sales would likely lead to a decline in rice imports, only minimal efforts were made by
local officials to stop the struggling foreigners were eventually able to overcome the system with the
outbreak of war in the late 1830s,but this happened because the system had already defeated itself.