Abstract

"Behind the Teacup: Transforming Joint-Stock Corporations to Reform China’s Tea Economy, 1881-1911"

Dan Du, University of North Carolina, Charlotte (ddu2@uncc.edu)

This paper investigates how Chinese merchants and officials adopted and adapted joint-stock corporations to reform China’s tea economy during the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), an organization initiative which previous scholarship mentions only in passing.

To revive China’s withering global tea trade, Chinese merchants and officials proposed to form joint-stock corporations from the 1880s. The term, corporation, was translated into gongsi 公司, which was a financial and social organization to pool monetary and human resources within Chinese local communities. Thus, this conceptualization emphasized the role of joint-stock corporations in serving public interest. Driven by the collective turn, these reformers attempted to form business trusts –so-called “American capitalism” or “monopoly capitalism” –-to centralize tea production and sales. However, their monopolies were based upon the model of the tea guild, a voluntary and self-regulatory trading association among Chinese tea merchants. Moreover, most tea reformers welcomed the government into their enterprises to form the largest trust possible, thus employing joint-stock corporations to retrieve China’s liquan 利權in the global commercial war and to combat the colonization of China. Transforming the ancient concept, liquan, from a term emphasizing “wealth and power” to a synonym of economic right, Chinese reformers integrated joint-stock corporations with the ethos of economic nationalism prevalent in China during the late nineteenth century.

Even though most of the efforts were abortive, Qing reformers’ emphasis on collective and centralized management of joint-stock corporations facilitated the nationalization of tea companies during the Republican and Communist eras. Thus, this research is another work that portrays modern reforms in China, including the so-called “State Capitalism” model, as not only a consequence of external influences but also a legacy of Chinese history itself.