This article reviews the important role of regional components and structure in molding the development pattern of port trade through statistical analysis. While most other studies on this topic have chiefly focused on how trade impacts regional economics and how influences from the western world have impeded or enhanced foreign trade. Excluding external factors, the changes in the import and export of goods is remarkably influenced by regional structural changes across the hinterland. To some extent, the external trade pattern of Tianjin is also the external trade pattern of its hinterland, northern China (known as Hwa-Bei or "North China"). In the late Ching Dynasty the prosperity of Tianjin's external trade was based on the prosperity of Hwa-Bei's economy. Port-trade, a kind of external economy, was one of the most important trade incentives and prospects. But port-trade was not the only reason for the city's prosperity. The relationship between port trade and regional society, though indirect in certain circumstances, was also a contributing factor. This examination uses a specific reciprocal logic of development to explore the external causes.