Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Zhongping Chen is Associate Professor of History at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

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Modern China's Network Revolution

Stanford University Press

Contents

List of Illustrations.......................................................................................ixPreface: In Search of a Broader and More Dynamic Network Approach to Chinese Studies........................xiAcknowledgments.............................................................................................xviiAbbreviations...............................................................................................xxIntroduction................................................................................................11 Guilds and Elites in the Face of Domestic and Foreign Challenges..........................................182 Elite and Official Interactive Movements toward Chambers of Commerce......................................473 Changes in Organizational Composition and Interrelations..................................................764 The Expansion of Associational Networks and Influences....................................................1095 Political Maneuvers in Commercial and Industrial Affairs..................................................1386 Joint Actions in the Constitutional and Revolutionary Movements...........................................1697 Nationwide Chamber Networks and the Republican Governments................................................199Conclusion..................................................................................................208Appendix 1. General Chambers of Commerce in the Lower Yangzi Region, 1904–1911........................217Appendix 2. Affiliated Chambers of Commerce in the Lower Yangzi Region, 1904–1911.....................219Appendix 3. Branch Chambers of Commerce in the Lower Yangzi Region, 1906–1911.........................223Notes.......................................................................................................225Character List..............................................................................................253Bibliography................................................................................................261Index.......................................................................................................279

Chapter One

For Western visitors to late nineteenth-century China, one striking discovery was that "the people crystallize into associations; in the town and in the country, in buying and selling, in studies, in fights, and in politics." Foreign intrusion from the mid-nineteenth century reinforced the Chinese tendency to act as social groups for self-defense, while the influence of social Darwinism also galvanized late Qing elites to organize themselves for national survival and revival. Thus, in addition to the traditional clans, guilds, charitable institutions, secret societies, and so on, anti-Qing revolutionary organizations began to appear from 1894, and reformist associations such as study societies also experienced ephemeral development before the failure of the 1898 Reform. Among these organizations, merchant guilds were the direct predecessors of Chinese chambers of commerce, which also displayed strong foreign influence.

However, the Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce were neither the natural results of guild evolution nor simple imitations of their Western counterparts. Like the late Qing reformist and revolutionary organizations, these chambers represented the collective responses of social elites, especially guild leaders and other elite merchants, to domestic and foreign challenges. Therefore, the rise of such elite merchant leadership in the guilds preconditioned the development of chambers of commerce. It also reflected relational changes more important than organizational evolution from guilds into chambers.

Chinese guilds have usually been divided by previous studies into regional guilds of merchants from the same native places and occupational guilds of people within specific trades. Actually, the guilds in late Qing China developed along both regional and occupational principles, as is shown by Goodman's research on native-place associations and other merchant organizations in Shanghai. Nevertheless, these merchant guilds are still treated roughly as native-place or common-trade associations in my study simply because they emphasized one or the other of the two organizational principles in their titles, memberships, functions, and so on. Such merchant guilds could develop because of informal patronage rather than legal guarantee from local governments, and their elite leaders were crucial in helping them acquire such patronage from local officials.

In order to develop, defend, and dominate such merchant groups under business competition, governmental intervention, social unrest, and foreign economic intrusion, guild leaders in the Lower Yangzi region made constant efforts to expand and intensify their regional, occupational, and official connections. As a result, they promoted guild development and also turned their personal and familial dominance into formal elite leadership. In the face of domestic and foreign challenges from the mid-nineteenth century onward, these guild leaders expanded their associational activities from business into community affairs such as charities, because of their concern not only for market and social crises but also personal wealth and power. Such elite merchants also joined radical reformers in response to the challenge from Western chambers of commerce in treaty ports, and they planned similar Chinese organizations with the double purpose of strengthening their socioeconomic dominance and saving Chinese business and the nation. However, their plans also included designs for widespread chamber networks, a matrix of the future relational revolution.

The Growth of Guilds and Elite Merchant Leadership: The Shanghai Case

The guilds in late imperial China included urban organizations with various titles, such as huiguan (meeting hall) and gongsuo (public office). The Lower Yangzi region nurtured some of the earliest merchant guilds in late imperial China, and it was also one of the few regions with large numbers of guilds by the late Qing period. Although this study argues against the assumption that these guilds directly federated themselves into chambers of commerce, their organizational development still provided an institutional foundation for the latter. In particular, the institutionalization and expansion of their elite merchant leadership and their interrelations directly prepared for the advent of the Shanghai CCA and successive Lower Yangzi chambers.

After huiguan began to appear as native-place club houses for officials in the imperial capital of Beijing from the 1420s, sojourning merchants and officials from the same native places also founded similarly titled organizations in Suzhou around the beginning of the seventeenth century. In this Lower Yangzi city, a gongsuo for silk weavers had probably existed as early as 1295, although merchants did not make wide use of this term for their associations until the mid-seventeenth century. The unique features of these Chinese guilds, especially their regional and official connections, contrasted...