Sometimes, such regional associations could function as pressure groups,
especially as they were usually financially stronger than the guilds.
They often owned city property or farm land. Not all merchants, however,
were so organized. Although merchants remained under humiliating
restrictions as to the colour and material of their dress and the
prohibition to ride a horse, they could more often circumvent such
restrictions and in general had much more freedom in this epoch.

Trade, including overseas trade, developed greatly from now on. Soon we
find in the coastal ports a special office which handled custom and
registration affairs, supplied interpreters for foreigners, received
them officially and gave good-bye dinners when they left. Down to the
thirteenth century, most of this overseas trade was still in the hands
of foreigners, mainly Indians. Entrepreneurs hired ships, if they were
not ship-owners, hired trained merchants who in turn hired sailors
mainly from the South-East Asian countries, and sold their own
merchandise as well as took goods on commission. Wealthy Chinese gentry
families invested money in such foreign enterprises and in some cases
even gave their daughters in marriage to foreigners in order to profit
from this business.

We also see an emergence of industry from the eleventh century on. We
find men who were running almost monopolistic enterprises, such as
preparing charcoal for iron production and producing iron and steel at
the same time; some of these men had several factories, operating under
hired and qualified managers with more than 500 labourers. We find
beginnings of a labour legislation and the first strikes (A.D. 782 the
first strike of merchants in the capital; 1601 first strike of textile
workers).