The year 1913 should mark a stride in commercial progress in China such as the world never before has seen. 1912 will probably be a year of unrest and uncertainty. The formation of a permanent Government and the election of a Cabinet, the dispatch of competent officials to outlying places, and the putting down of outlawry in the provinces will be a big programme for this year--if it is accomplished. But 1913 and the following years will probably unfold a remarkably rapid advance in exports and imports. China has held back from all things foreign centuries enough, but during the past two decades the seed has been sown for such a harvest of trade and commercial prosperity as shall keep the factories of the West hard at work to cope with the demands--that is, if the merchants of the West are quick to seize their chances as they come. And in this volume the author feels that it were well at this juncture, when an opportunity is presented to English and American traders to come in and take possession of the trade China is prepared to foster, to speak of the commercial possibilities which the next decade will give. The reader will probably understand that, despite the enormous foreign imports which for years have come into China, there is not a tithe of the trade done yet {22} which will be done with the opening up of the country, now almost bound to ensue. China's market is stupendous. The possibilities are wider than the average home manufacturer has any conception of. From the China Sea to the British Burma border, from the southern port of Canton up through all the partially opened Eastern provinces, through the whole of the wonderful Yangtze Valley to the practically untouched west, and away into newly touched areas where the inhabitants are all anxious to buy foreign goods, there is presented an unparalleled opportunity for the foreign manufacturer. Any one who has taken an intelligent interest in China's trade with foreign countries must have been impressed with the fact that she was not importing one-hundredth part of what she could easily handle. And if he had studied closely any particular district where some foreign import had been taken or foreign industry had been started and watched the phenomenal commercial growth in that particular district, he immediately would gather some idea of the far-reaching possibilities for the expansion of foreign trade in China.