The nations of East Asia share a common cultural heritage, but there is a marked difference in their adaptation to the modern world. During the past century Japan has been distinguished by enormous economic development, while China has experienced profound political turmoil. East Asian historiography reflects this trend. One can compile an outstanding bibliography on economic growth in Japan, and Japan's recent challenge to American business has prompted scholars to probe more subtly the business organization and managerial practices of that country. As for China, although there are numerous studies on political revolution, there are only a few studies on business history. This special issue of the Business History Review has helped to fill this gap in scholarship.

The primary purpose of this essay is to review studies in Chinese and Japanese business history that have appeared during the last few decades, and above all to review those that are relevant to the articles in this special issue either directly or as an aid to understanding the general background. As far as the latter is concerned, works of economic rather than of business history need to be mentioned. Although these works exist in Chinese and Japanese as well as in western languages, in this article reference will be made only to works in western languages and, when unavoidable, to Japanese-language studies. There will also be comments on the articles forming this special issue.

Students of Japanese business development have long debated the question of what has been called “community-centered entrepreneurship.” Most often, the debate has involved two groups: one which has contended that Japanese businessmen put the public interest ahead of personal gain, and another which has argued that profits from private enterprise were so large that public interests could be served without imperiling private profits. In this article Professor Fruin examines the concept of community-centered entrepreneurship in terms of the Noda soy sauce industry as it evolved from the period of entrepreneurial capitalism of the nineteenth century to the managerial capitalism of the twentieth. While analyzing this important early industry in Japan within the context of ongoing institutional and ideological change, Fruin not only offers substantial evidence to support one side of the controversy surrounding community-centered entrepreneurship, but also draws some interesting parallels between the philanthropic endeavors of Japanese businessmen and their counterparts in the West during this era.

Although East Asia's silk trade with the West stretched far back into antiquity, the middle and later years of the nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable growth in the European and American demand for silk. This imparted a tremendous impetus to the Chinese and Japanese industries. For some eighty years, from the 1850s through the 1930s, trade flourished until the coming of synthetic fibers and world war curtailed its growth. The rise of so large an international business obviously had a significant impact on these countries, one that was particularly profound in the case of Japan. When the upsurge in trade began, both China and Japan were at roughly comparable stages in their economic development, but when the trade ended with the onset of war, it was Japan, not China, which had emerged as one of the leading industrial nations of the world. While few would contend that silk alone, however important, accounted for this differing course of national development, the dissimilar paths followed by the Chinese and Japanese silk industries not only reflected many themes characteristic of business enterprise in those countries but also typified their divergent national experience during this dramatic era of economic growth.

Whatever economic growth and development took place in nineteenth-century China, it was by no means an expansion highlighted by a commercial and industrial revolution comparable to that which occurred in Great Britain, the United States, and Japan. While many factors accounted for these alternative paths of change, one element was clearly the differing organization of business enterprise. In this essay, Professor Chan examines the organizational structure of the traditional Chinese firm during the nineteenth century. Then he presents two case studies, one of which illustrates how an enterprise developed an innovative strategy of growth based upon traditional Chinese methods, and a second that illustrates how a company wedded western managerial practices to the Chinese model with spectacular results. While it would be dangerous to generalize about the entire Chinese managerial experience from such a limited number of firms, their successful, though divergent paths of development do indeed suggest the role that traditional Chinese organizational methods had in stifling modern development as well as the influence that western practices and techniques would have on China's growth in the early to middle years of the twentieth century.

Few would deny that British and American bankers played a large and often controversial role in the western imperialism that reached its zenith in China during the early years of the twentieth century. China had always seemed to be a country where large investments would bring handsome returns; many individuals hoped to take advantage of the situation; and capital invested there did indeed have far-reaching, unforeseen ramifications. Among the many contentious issues in the bankers' story, however, is the question of intent and motivation. Reduced to its simplest terms, did the bankers seek to manipulate national policy in an unbridled quest for profit? Or were they the willing, even altruistic agents of governments bent upon imperial ventures? Professor Davis assesses this question from the western perspective. Having based his research on financial, diplomatic, and personal records, he suggests that the objectives and activities of the bankers, vis-à-vis govenment policymakers, were far more shifting and complex than has been generally perceived.

As the twentieth century opened, numbers of American businessmen, spurred in part by the forceful persuasions of American diplomats, hoped to profit from the legendary China market by taking on Chinese partners. At the same time, groups of Chinese entrepreneurs, struck by the success and wealth of the United States, hoped to take advantage of American capital by launching joint ventures with the Americans. Such enterprises generally proved difficult to form, however, and once organized, tended to see the Americans predominate and the Chinese relegated to distinctly secondary roles. But there were exceptions, as Professor Pugach points out in this essay on the Chinese-American Bank of Commerce. While the founding of this firm provides ample proof that joint Sino-American companies had to overcome large hurdles to come into being, the formation of the bank suggests that mutual self-interest, ideal circumstances, and perhaps good luck could overcome the problems inherent in creating joint ventures in which both sides could share roughly equal positions.