- Chinese products (especially silk) were vital to the Afro-Eurasian trade networks
- Chinese technologies (shipbuilding, navigation, gunpowder, printing) spread to other regions of Eurasia
- Buddhism greatly affected China
- China's trade with the rest of the world made it the richest country in the world
- Most highly commercialized society in the world too, with regions (especially in the south) producing for the market as opposed to for local consumption
- China adopted cotton and sugar crops and how to refine them from India