The phrase “all the tea in China” means that the speaker will not concede to any proposition at any price. It refers to China’s large supply of tea, which would be extremely valuable. It may also have historical significance related to trade in China. It should not be confused with the phrase “what does (x) have to do with the price of tea in China?” which means that two different ideas are not connected.
The sentence “all the tea in China” is part of a longer sentence that usually includes a negative, for example: “I wouldn’t go there for all the tea in China” – the meaning of this type of sentence is that the speaker does not will concede to any proposition at any price, or that no amount of money or benefit would compel him to do any particular thing. Here, “all the tea in China” is presented as something that represents a large amount of something, or that would be of great value to the speaker.
Generally, English speakers understand the above sentence to be based on the idea that China, being a large country with a cultural association with tea, has a large supply of tea which, in its sum total, would be extremely large and precious. It is true that China has traditionally produced a large amount of tea and exported it abroad. When this colloquialism began to be used, many people probably understood that the amount of Chinese supply of this commodity would have a high value in a theoretical market.
While China produces a lot of tea, some experts argue that the phrase “all tea in China” may also have to do with historical events related to trade in China. In 1840, following the Opium War, in which foreigners attempted to promote drug smuggling throughout China, the Chinese government signed the Treaty of Nanking, in which China gave up certain trading rights. Among the traded commodities that figured in the results of this international agreement, tea was part of a larger set of Chinese products that would become less profitable as an export.
The phrase “for all the tea in China” should not be confused with another commonly used in some English-speaking nations: “what does (x) have to do with the price of tea in China?” This last sentence, which poses a rhetorical question, has a very different meaning and usage. In essence, it conveys that the speaker believes a proposed topic is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
In this second sentence, “the price of tea in China” is loosely related to the idea of effective trade in raw materials and the theory of interconnected markets. Many financial experts can draw lines from one seemingly unrelated financial value to another. Using the example of Chinese tea values, speakers using this phrase indicate that two different ideas are not connected.
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