Abstract:

The fishery and salt are people’s main living resources in the coastal region. The fishery and salt resources and the utilization of them during the Middle Ages was mainly in coastal waters and regions located in the Bohai Bay, Laizhou Bay, Haizhou Bay, the Yangtze River Estuary, Hangzhou Bay, the gulfs belong to Zhejiang and Fujian, as well as the Pearl River Estuary and the Northern Gulf. Such distribution pattern, of course, was restricted by the distribution pattern of the fishery and salt resources on Chinese coast, but the more important reason was that the exploitation and utilization of fishery and salt resources must be linked to the national transportation network. The economy of coastal region based on exploiting and using the fishery and salt resources was not self-sufficient and suffered from structural shortage, so it must obtain food and other daily necessities from the external environment by means of trade and others. The lack of self-sufficiency contributed to the important feature of the economic openness in the coastal region. At the same time, the production of fishery and salt resources required a strong technical condition, particular productive tools and cooperation with different industries, and consequently the inter-dependency of different peoples in the coastal region was reinforced. Therefore, the economy in the coastal region was characterized by the communication in the coastal region, the communication between the coastal region and the external environment and the necessity of trade.