My paper is concerned with how Qing officials began to conceive of economic activity less in terms of the primacy of "circulation" (流通，相通) and instead focus on agricultural production and productivity. Specifically, I narrate how tea merchants and government officials responded to a collapse of international tea prices and export tea sales out of China in the 1880s and 1890s. Spurred by the tea crisis, officials and observers began to take greater notice of their overseas competitors, namely, the large-scale and mechanized tea plantations of colonial South Asia. The writings of one official, Chen Chi (陳熾, 1855-1900), crystallized new ideas about the "unproductive" nature of tea merchants and the importance of efficient, integrated agricultural production. My paper is thus both an investigation into different policies championed by officials and observers -- articulated in imperial memorials and political commentaries -- but also an intellectual-historical inquiry into the deeper assumptions and logical structures beneath late Qing economic thought.