The junk is a type of an ancient Chinese sailing ship (known since the Han dynasty 220 BCE–200 CE). From the 10th to the 13th century, the Song dynasty and later in the 14th century the Yuan dynasty relied for both mercantile and military purposes on the very large junks carrying 1000 men (of which 400 men-at-arms and a crew of 600, an unimaginable scale for the European Middle Ages). More on Wikipedia
Our illustration of the junk Keying which travelled from China to the United States and England between 1846 and 1848 is meant as a metaphor of Chinese e-commerce and Internet ambitions to link the world trading routes
The theme is a work-in-progress considering the vast experimental field for on-line services which China has become, usually supported by one of the country's Internet giants, such as Alibaba, Tencent or Baidu
Our notes hope to provide a glimmer of future developments in China, likely to reverberate across the Asian region : a comptetitive challenge for the established Western titans in the making ?
