China and Capitalism: A History of Business Enterprise in Modern China

A Note on Further Reading for the Non-Chinese Reader

A Note on Further Reading for the Non-Chinese Reader Most non-specialist readers will probably need at hand a textbook on Chinese history from the Ming dynasty onwards in order to wade through the literature. A readable account would be, for the dynastic period, Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, or, for the twentieth century, Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, New York: Norton, 1990. For insights into the workings of imperial government administration, read Ray Huang, 1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, or Philip A. Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. For a general background volume, read R. Bin Wong, China Transformed, Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997; or one which deals specifically with the economy in the first half of the twentieth century, Thomas G. Rawski, Economic Growth in Prewar China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. For a focus on business, the obvious place to start for readings in English is Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown, ed. Chinese Business Enterprise, London: Routledge, 1996, in four volumes. The essays included span several decades of research. Although numerous collections of Chinese articles on similar subjects exist, none has been translated into English. Where I know that a Chinese article I cite has been translated into English, I cite the translation along with the original. For other examples, read Tim Wright, ed. The Chinese Economy in the Early Twentieth Century: Recent Chinese Studies, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992; Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown, Chinese Business Enterprise in Asia, London: Routledge, 1995; and Xu Dixin 122 China and Capitalism and Wu Chengming, eds. Chinese Capitalism, 1522–1840, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000, which is the first of three volumes the two compilers produced in Chinese on the subject of the development of capitalism in China. Few Japanese articles are available in English translation. A handful on subjects relevant to this volume may be found in Linda Grove and Christian Daniels, eds. State and Society in China: Japanese Perspectives on Ming-Qing Social and Economic History, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1984 and the Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, annual. A substantial number of monographs in English deal with individual firms and businesses in China. There is as yet no substitute for Albert Feuerwerker, China’s Early Industrialization, Sheng Hsuanhuai (1844–1916) and Mandarin Enterprise, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958, for the important contribution of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company to changes in business practices in the late nineteenth century. For the reader who does not read Chinese, H. D. Fong, Cotton Industry and Trade in China, Tianjing: The Chihli Press, 1932, is still one of the most ready sources into the development of Chinese manufacturing before the Second World War. This book may be supplemented by H. D. Fong, Reminiscences of a Chinese Economist at 70, Singapore: South Seas Society, for a taste of the life of the returned Western-trained economist in China during the 1920s and 1930s. Other works of individual Chinese firms or businesses in English include: Sherman Cochran, Big Business in China: Sino-foreign Rivalry in the Cigarette Industry, 1890–1930, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990, and Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese, and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880–1937, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; Elisabeth Köll, From Cotton Mill to Business Empire: The Emergence of Regional Enterprises in Modern China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004; and Kai-yiu Chan, The Structure of Chinese Business in Republican China: The Case of Liu Hongsheng and His Enterprises, 1920–1937, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, forthcoming. Lillian M. Li, China’s Silk Trade: Traditional Industry in the Modern World, 1842–1937, Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1981, provides a simple account of China’s major export industry A Note on Further Reading for the Non-Chinese Reader 123 from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, and Tim Wright, Coal Mining in China’s Economy and Society, 1895–1937, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, does the same for a major mining activity. W. A. Thomas, Western Capitalism in China: A History of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, gives a brief and straightforward account of the...