When the First World War ended, Europe was a wasteland — a field of ruins. Industry and agriculture in every country had nearly collapsed, and the blood shed by European men could have filled Lake Geneva red. The nations of Europe desperately needed time to recuperate. To that end, they had no choice but to continue waving their checkbooks and hard currency, purchasing supplies from around the globe. China, having earned a favorable reputation during the war (abundant supplies, superior quality, skilled workers and farmers), saw increased imports from all nations: wheat, flour, soybeans, lard, jam, fruit juice, assorted pickled vegetables, toothbrushes, towels, even more hot-bulb engines, small quantities of crude steel and cement (relative to China's domestic output), countless agricultural implements, shirts and jeans numbered in the tens of millions, and strong young men (don't let your mind wander — their own young men had all gone to the front, leaving a labor shortage; if your mind went somewhere else, go stand in the corner)... and so on and so forth.

At this point, the volume and variety of China's exports were both surging dramatically. The number of countries and regions receiving Chinese goods also steadily increased, and China's influence on the world began to grow. However, because the bulk of Chinese exports consisted of agricultural products — industrial products, and especially machinery, were still too few in number and variety — and because Europeans associated Chinese exports primarily with labor, that is, with Chinese people themselves, China in Western eyes remained a vast but poor and weak nation. "Look, the Chinese are so poor that they've come to work in postwar Europe just to make money. They must be destitute!"

By contrast, America made a far deeper impression on the Europeans. Millions of American GIs had fought bravely for Europe. Young, handsome American lads comforted attractive young widows in every village. After the war, a great number of mixed-heritage children appeared... But jesting aside, America's postwar influence on Europe was genuinely enormous. The Dawes Plan was a prime example.

The ordinary European's impression of China changed very little before the Second World War. Even as trade and cooperation between various nations and China gradually deepened and the number of Chinese industrial products entering Europe steadily grew, this influence had a quality of "moistening things silently, without a sound." As for the higher-level cooperation between these nations and China in other domains — well, the average citizen naturally knew nothing about it (the media industry was insufficiently developed and channels of communication were limited). Thus, "China is a major agricultural and population power" remained the common person's image of the country.

Summary: In fact, post-WWI China had suffered no great losses, having not directly participated in the continental European war. The nation never entered total war. The people's lives were essentially unaffected. China was primarily engaged in its own massive internal construction — from agriculture to industry, from countryside to city, from north to south... Many industrial products, such as steel, were insufficient even for China's own needs, making large-scale export impossible. Agricultural products and wartime labor thus constituted China's largest exports of the period.