I. Introduction

Chapter 14 showed that the British policy makers considered that the Chinese should have bought more manufactures from the United Kingdom in order to redress the imbalance in bilateral trade. This chapter demonstrates that they also thought the Chinese could have bought more.

Values will continue to be cast in perceptions likely to have been formed by the British policy makers on the basis of the statistics presented in the papers which were tabled in Parliament each year. In this regard, the statistics I present are one step further removed from reality than those in the last chapter. In the absence of similar statistics in China, I have to use the value declared in the United Kingdom as the value of British imports into China. In other words, the value of freight, insurance, trading profits, and the like, which were earned by the British who provided these services, are not included in the British imports into China. Similarly, I have to use the already problematic official value calculated in the United Kingdom as the value of Chinese exports to the United Kingdom. In other words, the value of freight, insurance, trading profits, and so forth, which were likewise earned by the British because they provided these services, are not included either. Thus, there is a double distortion in the figures I use. But these were the figures employed by the British policy makers to form their perceptions.