Free enterprise was to be given an opportunity to make the Philippines a profitable colony for Spain. As part of this general policy, in 1844, the Spanish government revoked the indulto de comercio and henceforth forbade Spanish officials to involve themselves in trading. This measure, retiring their major competitor from the field, would seem to have removed the last obstacle to mestizo dominance in internal trade, at a time when such trade was rapidly expanding. Yet it was not the mestizos that reaped the benefits; it was the Chinese. At the same time the provincial governors were removed from the field, Spanish policy also pushed aside the barriers to Chinese immigration and residence.Now, for the first time, Chinese could come to the Philippines without restriction as to number and with little if any restriction as to where in the archipelago they might reside. By the 1880's the Chinese population had soared to almost 100,000 — a figure
several times that of any previous high — and Chinese were found in every corner of the Philippines.