How powerful was Suzhou, known as the national economic center, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties?

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Suzhou existed just like Shanghai today. It is the economic center of the whole country and the richest city in the south of the Yangtze River. However, in modern times, after the opening of Shanghai, foreign capital and financial industry gradually moved to Shanghai, and Suzhou began to lose its sense of existence. However, with the economic development at the end of last century, Suzhou has once again become a city with developed light industry, and now its total economic output is second only to that of the North, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chongqing.

As we all know, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province is a very famous tourist city in China and a very rich water town in the south of the Yangtze River. Suzhou has been quite rich since ancient times. Although Suzhou is not a provincial capital or a city with separate plans, it is just an ordinary prefecture-level city, but its economic aggregate is still in the top six in the country, which can be said to be worse than many provincial capitals. Even the economy of Nanjing and Hangzhou is not as good as that of Suzhou, but we all know that Suzhou in Ming and Qing Dynasties can.

At that time, Suzhou was completely the industrial, commercial and economic center of the country. There are many classical novels and ancient poems that describe the bustling scene outside Suzhou. At that time, both printing houses and silk handicrafts were mainly developed in Suzhou, which was also the commercial distribution center of the north and south of the canal. It can be explained that only Yangzhou was comparable to Suzhou in the Qing Dynasty, but now Yangzhou has a lower sense of existence than Suzhou, just an ordinary tourist city, like the current commercial center.

However, with the opening of Shanghai, Shanghai began to slowly replace Suzhou as a new generation of international metropolis. At that time, both foreign capital and economic industries moved to Shanghai, so Suzhou slowly lost its sense of existence. Shanghai suddenly became the largest city in the Far East during the Republic of China from an ordinary fishing village, and it is still the most prosperous city in China. But in recent years, Suzhou's economy has also developed very rapidly, and tourism and light industry have made great progress. Suzhou is also an attractive immigrant city.