The Quest for Elite Dominance, Associational Autonomy and Public Representation: The Lower Yangzi Chambers of Commerce in the 1911 Revolution

T h e Q u e s t fo r E lite D o m in a n c e , A s s o c ia tio n a l A u to n o m y a n d P u b lic R e p r e s e n ta tio n : T h e L o w e r Y a n g z i C h a m b e r s o f C o m m e r c e in th e 1 9 1 1 R e v o lu tio n * b y Z h o n g p in g C h e n The Chinese chambers of commerce in the Republican Revolution of 1911 have received frequent attention in Chinese studies, especially in research on late Qing merchant organizations and revolutionary movements in the Lower Yangzi region. 1 Early studies from the 1960s generated many disagreements, but they demonstrated a similar tendency to interpret these chambers of commerce as either impotent or important bourgeois forces of the 1911 Revolution. Recent Chinese and Western scholarship on these chambers has further highlighted their contribution to late Qing political reforms, economic modernization and the development of a civil society and public sphere. But recent scholarship continues the previous trend of either emphasizing or downplaying the significance of these organizations according to their revolutionary performance in 1911. In contrast, this paper attempts to reinterpret the Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce in the 1911 Revolution not only from the new perspective of civil society and public sphere, but also within a historical context beyond the revolutionary focus of the previous scholarship. In Western academia, Marie-Claire Bergere has pioneered the line ofbourgeoisie -centered analysis of Chinese chambers of commerce in the 1911 Revolution . She defines these chambers as the bourgeois organizations of the "urban elite connected with modern business," such as the manufacturing and transport industries based on new technology, as well as Western-style commercial and financial establishments. In her view, this bourgeois class and its chambers of commerce were too impotent to lead the revolution, and they contributed little to the revolutionary movement except in a few modern cities like Shanghai (Bergere 1968,230,241,249; 1989,25-31,191-99). Certainly, the fact that * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Third International Conference on Chinese Business History sponsored by the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong on 6-8 July 2000. I am grateful to the participants for thoughtful discussion. I am also grateful for the comments of Harry J. Lamley, Kwangching Liu, Robin D. S. Yates and an anonymous reader of the journal Twentieth-Century China. Twentieth-Century China, Vol. 27, No.2 (April, 2002): 41-77 4 2 Twentieth-Century China most chambers of commerce did not lead or support a radical revolution does not mean that their impact on the revolutionary course was insignificant. Chinese Marxist historiography used to attribute the 1911 Revolution to the lower and middle strata of the national bourgeoisie, which was composed of the anti-imperialist industrialists and commercial entrepreneurs in particular, and of the pro-revolution intellectuals and other social forces in general. It regarded the chambers of commerce as organizations of the upper-stratum national bourgeoisie , which was reluctant to join the revolution, or even as institutions of the bureaucratic comprador bourgeoisie, which served imperialist interests, controlled state-sponsored enterprises, and opposed the revolution (Du and Zhou 1983). Recent Chinese scholarship from the 1990s has tacitly accepted Bergere's definition of an undivided bourgeoisie in discussion of chambers of commerce. However, it still follows the loose political definition of the national bourgeoisie in searching for these chambers' class relationship with revolutionary intellectuals and the 1911 Revolution. Because such a relationship was tenuous, the chambers of commerce have still been criticized as weak bourgeois forces in the revolution, especially for their final defection from Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary government and switch to Yuan Shikai's regime (Xu and Qian 1991; Ma and Zhu 1993; Yu 1993). The recent work of Zhu Ying (1997) goes one step further by interpreting the late Qing...