Question: where did the saying price of tea in china

title: What's that got to do with the...?
text: A common form , what does that have to do with the price of tea in China ? , is a retort to an irrelevant suggestion . This facetious usage implies that the topic under discussion might as well be the price of tea in China for all the relevance the speaker 's suggestion bears on it . It has been said that this expression has stemmed from economists , who describe everything economic as affecting everything else , trying to find an expression which denotes the farthest logical connection from their current economic focus , in a sort of butterfly effect . In this way , the price of tea in China was used to denote the farthest possibility . It can also be used to denote an irrelevant topic .