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10 - Chinese Business Organization

from Part I - 1800–1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2022

By
Madeleine Zelin
Edited by
Debin Ma  and
Richard von Glahn
Debin Ma
Affiliation:
Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo
Richard von Glahn
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

In this chapter we will examine how key institutions were mobilized to shape China’s early modern business practices under weak state engagement of the economy, and a growing foreign presence. Business practices in the late imperial period rested on four pillars, each a fundamental part of the institutional framework that structured social and economic life. The first, family, provided templates for the utilization of capital and labor and the mobilization of trust, tools that proved as useful for China’s late imperial commercial economy as for the early modern economy of industrial enterprise and global engagement. The second might be termed the system of private ordering that served generations of Chinese merchants and others in combining capital and establishing the terms of economic interaction, often through written contracts whose provisions established highly flexible forms of partnership that continued to form the basis of most Chinese business until the early PRC. The third, native place, in significant ways mirrored the intangible assets provided by ties of kinship, offering a predetermined basis for co-operation, nurturing and protecting group interests and skills and, like the fourth, grounding these intangibles in very tangible organizations catering to inhabitants of a particular city, region, or province.

Keywords

private orderingcontractpartnershipshareholdingtrustslineagecompany lawguildsnative placejoint-stock
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Economic History of China , pp. 324 - 353
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

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