Shanxi merchants
During its history, the banking industry in China has evolved parallel to that of the western world, the sudden appearance of genuine banks and financial companies from Europe in China exposed this. It is suspected that the banks created by the Shanxi merchants might have actually been inspired by western banks due to their trade with Russia. As the Silk Road had become completely choked off by the time of the Qing dynasty, and its government had the Chinese ports basically hermetically sealed off from foreign trade, only a small amount of international trade through the Gobi desert was conducted starting in Shanxi. The Russian Empire was eager to engage in trade with the Chinese, every year the Shanxi merchants would transport various goods such as silk, cloth, tea, sugar, cigarettes, and porcelain to the city of Lanzhou and the territory of Xinjiang, as well as through the city of Kyakhta to the branches of the Shanxi merchants in far away cities like Moscow and the Russian capital city of St. Petersburg. Chinese tea was imported primarily in the form of hefty hard-packed tea bricks which allowed each camel to carry large quantities in a more compact manner and were sometimes used as an alternative currency.