I cannot fully answer your question regarding the west as my academic focus is late Imperial China but I can tell you about some Bronze age trading.

The Shang (1550s - 1046 BCE) and Zhou (1046 - 256 BCE) dynasties in China used bronze as a ritually significant material even though Zhou dynasty writings confirm that iron smelting knowledge was present during that time. Now there probably was some sort of trade going on between feudal China and the west as Chinese jade was used to make artisanal artifacts in a Scythian sort of style (there are pictures of such articles online, and I know for sure that the British Museum has some, too lazy to source it). Chinese silks have also been found in Germany from as early as the 6th century BCE (Christopoulos, L., 2012). It’s not too hard to imagine therefore, that bronze wares were also exchanged on ancient trade routes. There is still debate as to the full extent as to how much Western skills impacted the work of ancient Chinese metallurgists as written records are super scarce but some sort of cultural exchange was highly likely.