Organizer and Discussant: Wellington K. K. Chan, Occidental College, Los Angeles
Chair: Andrea McElderry, University of Louisville
Generalizations about Chinese business history are many, but document research on Chinese business has been relatively rare. The proposed panel, sponsored by the Chinese Business History Research Group (CBHRG), consists of four papers based on recently available materials related to late Qing and Republican business enterprise in four coastal Chinese cities (Tianjin, Nantong, Shanghai, and Hong Kong). Each paper addresses the question of entrepreneurship and management in the particular political and social context of these cities. Collectively the papers raise new questions about generally accepted ideas regarding Chinese business development and organization, notably about the role of the family and the role of political institutions.
The panel participants have been brought together through the Chinese Business History Research Group and its bulletin, Chinese Business History. They reflect the international and multi-disciplinary nature of scholarship in the relatively new field of Chinese business history and of the group's membership. The three young history scholars come from three different continents. Elisabeth Koll is a German citizen who is a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford University; Pui-tak Lee is from Hong Kong and received his doctorate from Tokyo University; Brett Sheehan is from Colorado (not Ireland) and is a Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley. The senior scholar and sociologist, Gary Hamilton, will add a social science perspective to the panel. Both Andrea McElderry, serving as chair of the panel, and Wellington Chan, the discussant, are founding members of CBHRG. McElderry is also its bulletin's editor, while both have written extensively on various aspects of Chinese business history.
Families and Friends: Business Networks in Hong Kong during the 1940s and their
Relevance to Post-War Industrialization
Gary G. Hamilton, University of Washington
Wai-Keung Chung, University of Washington
Karen Cook, University of Washington
Daniel Rosens, University of Washington
This paper reports on an ongoing project to assemble a historically and theoretically important database from Hong Kong in order to test theories about the dynamics of Chinese firms and about the organizational structure of Chinese capitalist economies.
In 1944, the Japanese conquerors of Hong Kong required all substantial businesses in the city to re-register, and to list all of the principal owners, directors, managers, and shareholders. They were also required to describe the particulars of their businesses, including the type, history, location, assets, and profits. The directive initiating the re-registration is now lost, but the records of the 256 businesses that obeyed the order lay, until recently, untouched in a parking garage that serves as the historical archives for the Hong Kong Public Records Office. Also lost are all previous registrations done under the British.
The paper will address two aspects of our research to date. First, we will report the results of our preliminary analysis of the completed computerized database that lists and categorizes all the people and particulars associated with each of the 256 businesses. Using network methodology, we have identified the multiple relationships across these firms and used these relationships to "map" the important clusters of key individuals, families, firms and associations that structured Hong Kong's Chinese business community in 1944. Second, based on this mapping, we will analyze the organization of Chinese businesses in Hong Kong during the 1940s and suggest how it served or failed to serve as a foundation for Hong Kong's industrialization that took off in the 1950s.
The Making of Modern Chinese Financial Entrepreneurship: The Case of Chen Guangfu
Pui-tak Lee, University of Hong Kong
This paper attempts to offer a new assessment of Chen Guangfu (also known as K. P. Chen) and his Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank as a modern Chinese financial institution during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The assessment is based on (1) his personal papers deposited in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, and (2) recently published materials about him from mainland China's archives.
Chen Guangfu, born in China and educated in America, was the founder of the first modern Chinese savings bank, travel agency, as well as the China Assurance Corporation, Ltd. He was one of China's most successful Chinese entrepreneurs in the twentieth century, and was particularly influential in the financial business world of Shanghai. The source materials to be used will add an important dimension to understand his values and motives towards modern Chinese business. Up to now, studies on Chen have mainly stressed his entrepreneurship or his relationship with the Nationalist government. However, by using materials from the two new sources listed above, this paper will provide new insight into the social and economic contexts which contributed to Chen's entrepreneurial successes, while at the same time, show how his experience and business ideas conform to none of the major papers that have been written about him.
Strange Bedfellows: Warlords, Warlord Capital and Professional Bankers during the
Rise of Modern Banking in Tianjin, 1916-1925
Brett Sheehan, University of California, Berkeley
Modern Chinese banking saw spectacular growth in Tianjin between 1916 and 1925. Fifteen new banks were established during the ten-year period. This growth coincided with the expansion of Chinese domestic enterprises during World War I, but closer to home, with the death of Yuan Shikai and the beginning of China's warlord period. Warlord power was heavily reliant on the structure of the political economy which was enmeshed in a web of social, economic and cultural ties and conflicts.
With Yuan's death, a triangular relationship developed between individual warlords who invested heavily in founding banks, warlord governments which relied on banks as important sources of financing, and a new breed of banking professionals, many of whom were returned students from abroad. Each part of this triangle stood to gain from the development of a successful banking system. Although the rapid formation of the mutually beneficial, and as often mutually hostile, relationship between warlords and bankers was catalyzed by Yuan Shikai's death, its roots go back to the Qing New Policies Period (1900-1911), and even to the Self-strengtheners of the late nineteenth century. Professional bankers, like warlords, were the product of the late Qing reform movements and were often the sons and grandsons of Self-strengthening and New Policies period officials and businessmen.
From Family to Professional Management: Zhang Jian (1853-1926) and the
Development of Modern Business in Nantong
Elisabeth Köll, Oxford University
The enterprises founded by Zhang Jian in Nantong in the late Qing and the early Republic have often been looked upon by contemporaries as well as historians as examples of progressive industrialism. Zhang Jian himself skillfully promoted the image of Nantong factories as being governed by expertise, regulations and the spirit of communal development. Using documents now held in the archives and libraries of Nantong, this paper examines both Zhang Jian's role in these enterprises and the managerial organization that was developed in Nantong. It will be argued that a distinction must be drawn between the financial dealings, the aspiration for technological professionalism, and the day-to-day management in the factories, that in reality, Zhang Jian's role in Nantong was quite different from the popular image that is held of him, and that technological professionalism did not always spill over into day-to-day management.