Industrialisation and Chinese big business in colonial Singapore, Malaya, and China: The transnational enterprises of Lim Peng Siang (1904–41)

Abstract

While most studies of industrialisation and modernisation in Singapore have focused on the post-1960 period and the role of the new nation-state, multinational corporations, and government-linked companies, Lim Peng Siang's business career shows that these processes and engagements were already under way before the Second World War. This study seeks to foreground the dynamics of industrialisation and modernisation in the historiography of Chinese business in colonial Singapore, Malaya, and Southeast Asia through examining Lim's business career. It shows how the projects of industrialisation and modernisation that Lim and his contemporaries embodied extended beyond business and the economy, and were entangled in broader cultural, sociopolitical, and urban forces and developments in Singapore and other parts of colonial Southeast Asia, maritime Asia, and the world-at-large between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His experiences highlight the pitfalls of assuming a simple traditional–modern dichotomy, and any essentialistic and ethnic constructions of culture, and the discourses surrounding business strategy, behaviour, and thought.

One of the greatest magnates living in Singapore is Mr Lim Peng Siang, J.P., founder of the famous Ho Hong firms. His is a romantic career, furnishing an outstanding example of hard work, energy and enterprise—a combination which marks the truly great pioneer.¹

In July 1936, a reporter from the Sunday Tribune described Lim Peng Siang, the founder of the ‘famous’ Ho Hong group in Singapore, as one of the ‘greatest magnates’. This group had interests not only in oil and rice processing, shipping, and banking, but also cement manufacturing and shipbuilding. In his book on the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), Dick Wilson opines that Lim—whose Ho Hong Bank was one of the three predecessors of OCBC—was among the first to ‘reclaim swampland for industry, long before Jurong was even a gleam in Dr Goh Keng Swee's eyes’.²

Yet, little research has been done on Lim Peng Siang as compared to his better-known contemporaries such as Tan Kah Kee and Oei Tiong Ham. The making and vicissitudes of Lim's Ho Hong conglomerate have been surveyed by Yong Ching Fatt with limited information obtained from business reports.³ Lim's philanthropic activities, lineage, and business interests in China have been covered by Ng Gee Ling and Lin Ben Liang.⁴ Taken together, these works provide important details on Lim's social and business activities without taking into account the broader connections and issues of industrialisation and modernisation in colonial Singapore and Southeast Asia, and debates in the field of Chinese business history in Southeast and East Asia.

While most studies of industrialisation and modernisation in Singapore have focused on the post-1960 period and the role of the new nation-state, multinational corporations and government-linked companies,⁵ Lim's business career shows that these processes and engagements were already under way before the Second World War.⁶ His entrepreneurial career and experiences thus offer important insights into debates surrounding Chinese business history not only in Singapore, but also colonial Southeast Asia and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Using documents from the National Archives of Singapore's Registry of Companies and Businesses and the Public Records Office of Hong Kong, trade journals, newspaper articles, oral history, and findings from fieldwork conducted in Lim Peng Siang's ancestral hometown in Zhangzhou, this study seeks to show how Lim's enterprises were exemplified by the adoption of modern manufacturing technology, and new business structures and strategies. His ventures in manufacturing, shipping, and finance show that the economic spaces of colonial Singapore and Southeast Asia, if not South China, were sites of innovation and change propelled by the agency of Asian entrepreneurs like him.

Industrialisation, modernisation and Chinese business

The period spanning the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries represents an important watershed in modern Southeast Asian history. This era saw the expansion, elaboration, and consolidation of colonial states, carving up the region into clearly delineated ‘geo-bodies’, providing the foundations for contemporary Southeast Asian nation-states. It was a period of rapid transformation, embodied in new economic enterprises, migration, urbanisation, infrastructural and environmental change, as well as social and cultural changes.⁷ The forces of capitalism and colonialism paralleled technological developments in transport, communications, production, and consumption, all of which connected the world in new ways, expanding the movement of people, goods, ideas, and capital to a scale hitherto unseen, as Southeast Asia came to be incorporated into the modern industrial capitalist world-system.⁸ It was, as Takashi Shiraishi puts it, an ‘Age in Motion’.⁹ The modern and the industrial became key catch-phrases and embodiments of this new order.¹⁰

Chinese migration, enterprise, and labour played an important role in these transformations, encouraged by colonial states in Southeast Asia in their early expansion and consolidation phase. While not the only migrant community enticed or brought into these new frontiers or port-cities—Chinese mercantile and labour migration had been an important dimension of early modern Southeast Asian history—the Chinese were, for much of the nineteenth century, seen as the most significant by the colonial regimes, especially in the creation of new economies, infrastructure, and urban centres, providing important sources of capital, manpower, and revenue, while performing intermediary functions in the new order.¹¹ By the late nineteenth century, however, they were increasingly seen and portrayed in a negative light by European officials and business circles, in terms of their inefficient labour-intensive production methods, the environmental impact of their agricultural and mining methods and technologies, the parochialism of their business practices, the threat posed by their numbers and social institutions (such as secret societies) to law and order, and as competitors to European enterprise.¹² The domination of the Chinese in key sectors of the colonial economy was seen as an impediment to the ideals of progress, development, and order which had become important tropes in the legitimising narratives of colonial states and European-American business circles alike in Southeast Asia.¹³

Nonetheless, between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chinese entrepreneurs in colonial Southeast Asia, especially in mining and agriculture, as well as other new sectors in the port-cities and satellite towns, were facing growing competition from new enterprises backed by financial markets and banks in western Europe, North America, and Asia, which operated on a scale and scope that few Asian enterprises could match.¹⁴ These European and American enterprises brought in more capital, better technology, and expertise to achieve greater economies of scale and scope in key sectors.¹⁵ In the face of these challenges and the changing economic environment, some Chinese business people in Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia, especially those with access to European business or government circles, were adopting Western practices and expertise to improve and expand their own enterprises.¹⁶

These modernisation and industrialisation projects within Chinese business communities in Southeast Asia and late Qing/early Republican China were closely intertwined with issues of reform, nationalism, and growth.¹⁷ This era saw various attempts by Chinese entrepreneurs and enterprises in Southeast Asia and China, as well as the Chinese state, to adopt new technologies, managerial expertise and practices, as well as Western business institutions like joint-stock companies, modern banks, insurance companies and chambers of commerce, to enter new business sectors.¹⁸ These business modernisation projects overlapped with various initiatives for reform, if not revolution, across Chinese society, from politics to education to popular culture.¹⁹

While these issues have been explored for late nineteenth century and early twentieth century China, they have been discussed in a more limited fashion with respect to Chinese business in Southeast Asia in the same period, despite the important role that the latter played in the former. Michael Godley's work on Thio Thiau Siat (Chang Pi Shih) has shown how the late Qing state looked to prominent Chinese entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia for capital, expertise, and connections in economic modernisation projects, involving the establishment of new railroad and steamship companies, albeit under the Guandu Shangban system.²⁰

Rajeswary Brown has argued that Chinese business in colonial Southeast Asia was characterised by a lack of investment in industrialisation. This unwillingness to invest in manufacturing, Brown writes, was due not only to Chinese entrepreneurs’ tendency to send funds to China to support economic modernisation, but also their preference for earning short-term profits through speculation rather than committing to long-term capital investment in machinery and technology, which hindered specialisation in related industries.²¹ In addition, the lack of support from the colonial state discouraged investment in large-scale manufacturing. The peripheral markets of British Singapore and Malaya, as Wong Lin Ken writes, exported primary commodities to the colonial metropole and imported manufactured goods from it.²² With this arrangement, on the periphery of the Wallersteinian modern world-system, there was ‘never a good time’ for these colonial regimes and their metropolitan governments to encourage industrialisation in the manufacturing sector.²³

Nevertheless, case studies of entrepreneurs have shown that prominent Chinese businessmen in colonial Singapore and Malaya, and other parts of Southeast Asia, were also adopting new technologies and practices, as they sought to expand their business interests and compete in a rapidly changing landscape. However, most of these studies have treated modernisation and industrialisation as background factors, and situated these entrepreneurial careers or communities within the colonial political economy and Chinese business-colonial state ties, as well as broader Chinese diasporic networks in Southeast and East Asia. They also offer insights into the dynamics of family, interpersonal networks (both Chinese and interethnic), and alliances with the colonial or Chinese state, as well as European and indigenous elites.

This study seeks to foreground the dynamics of industrialisation and modernisation in the historiography of Chinese business in colonial Singapore, Malaya, and Southeast Asia through examining the business career of Lim Peng Siang. Lim achieved fame in the first half of the twentieth century for building a conglomerate that included not only older types of businesses like parboiled rice, but also new ones like the industrial production of oil and cement, and the creation of a regional (and later transregional) steamship line. He was also involved in the establishment of two modern Chinese banks, and in the formation of insurance companies, and expanded his banking, shipping and other business interests to Southern China. The range of his business interests and the strategic sectors that he chose to invest in reflected broader pressures and opportunities in the changing business landscape of early twentieth century Asia and the world. Far from being just speculative investments with a view to short-term returns, or the diversification of his business interests to reduce risk, Lim invested in the creation of an integrated business group combining modern industry, transport, and finance straddling Southeast Asia and China, and in the case of his industries, producing for global markets.

Lim Peng Siang's career also provides insights into key debates in Chinese business history, especially with regard to the relative importance of culture, family, ethnicity, and networks vis-à-vis context/environment, the modern managerial enterprise, and formal rationality in explaining business strategy, behaviour, and structure, and ultimately success and failure. Even as he drew on familial and even hometown ties at times, he was ready to tap on extra-familial networks of capital and technological expertise in expanding his business concerns. He also utilised modern business institutions like the limited liability company and the joint-stock company, albeit transforming some of them into effectively family-controlled businesses. His experiences and strategies warn against the pitfalls of assuming a simple traditional–modern dichotomy, and any essentialistic and ethnic constructions of culture, and the discourses surrounding business strategy, behaviour, and thought.²⁴

Ultimately, as we will show, the projects of industrialisation and modernisation that Lim and his contemporaries embodied extended beyond business and the economy, and were entangled in broader cultural, sociopolitical, and urban forces and developments in Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia, maritime Asia, and the world-at-large during this period.²⁵ Thus, even their philanthropic contributions to schools and the development of modern education were not just examples and expressions of nationalism, parochial ties, and social responsibility, as they have often been framed, but were very important attempts to create a modern society and economy, and to produce people with the necessary skills, discipline, and outlook for modern industrial and mass consumer society. While acknowledging the importance of culture, family, and ethnic/national identities, moving the inquiry beyond ethnic and national frameworks, essentialistic constructions of cultures and identities, engaging with debates about modernity, industrialisation, and capitalism enables us to transcend the parameters of the older debates within Chinese business history in Southeast Asia, and situate them within wider Southeast Asian, Asian, and global histories.

Family and the emergence of Ho Hong

Family was a key component underlying Lim Peng Siang's enterprises. He gained an advantage in terms of education, expertise, and capital as compared to his peers who were less well-off by leveraging on familial ties and hometown connections through his father. Family here referred not only to his patrilineal connections to the Lim family, but also his ties through his father and wife to the peranakan Wee family, which provided the foundations for his early entrepreneurial career. These family dynamics and connections reflected the dynamics of Straits Chinese or what William Skinner called the ‘creolised’ Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, in which an established Chinese peranakan merchant family would marry their daughter to a capable new migrant from China, in this case from their home region.²⁶ It was a means of recruiting and co-opting capable newcomers to the family business and family networks.

Lim Peng Siang was the sixth son of Lim Ho Puah, who was born in 1841 at Chengnei village, Longxi county, Zhangzhou.²⁷ Upon arrival in Singapore in the mid-nineteenth century, the elder Lim was hired and trained by Wee Bin, who was also born in Longxi county.²⁸ According to Song Ong Siang, Wee's family enterprise, Chop Hong Guan, was the ‘greatest importer of products from [Bali] … traded in all kinds of earthenware [and] built up a fleet of over 20 vessels for the Chinese and Dutch Indies trade’ during this period.²⁹ Originally employed as an apprentice to assist the company's cook in purchasing raw ingredients, Lim gradually rose to the position of bookkeeper as Wee recognised his capability and integrity in accounting, book-keeping and financial management.³⁰ Impressed with his ‘industry and business intelligence’, Wee made Lim his son-in-law by persuading him to marry his sole daughter, Wee Chee Ha, although he was already a married man in China.³¹ Wee Bin was said to have told him: ‘China is China, you can always marry again in Nanyang. It is alright that you marry my only daughter as your second wife.’³² In 1868, Wee Bin passed away and left the business in the hands of his son, Wee Boon Teck, who ‘materially improved and strengthened’ the profitability and scale of Chop Hong Guan with assistance from Lim Ho Puah.³³ By 1901, with the passing of Wee Boon Teck and his son, Wee Siang Tat, Lim became the majority shareholder of Chop Hong Guan.³⁴

Lim Peng Siang was born in Chengnei village in 1872 during his father's assistantship in Chop Hong Guan.³⁵ He spent his childhood years studying Chinese classics and history at a private school.³⁶ Subsequently, the teenage Lim arrived in Singapore and learnt English at St Joseph's Institution and through private tuition under Lim Ho Puah's direction.³⁷ Armed with bilingual language skills, Lim joined Chop Hong Guan and received training from his father.³⁸ At the turn of the century, Lim took charge of managing the company's fleet with his younger brother, Lim Peng Mau.³⁹ Under the tutelage of his father, Lim obtained the necessary experience and access to social and business networks, which were instrumental in his successful petition to become a naturalised British subject in 1902, a political identity that was crucial in the expansion of his enterprises in the subsequent decades.⁴⁰ With a loan of SS$50,000 at an interest rate of 7.2 per cent per annum from Lim Ho Puah, Lim Peng Siang and Lim Peng Mau established and named their new family concern as the Ho Hong Company in 1904, one which combined the first character of Chop Hong Guan and Chop Ho Guan, another firm owned by the elder Lim.⁴¹ The Latin motto of this firm, ‘Concordia Et Copia’—which means Ho Hong in Chinese—illustrates their vision for ‘harmony and wealth’ through enterprise.⁴² The use of this motto reflects the cosmopolitan environment that Lim Peng Siang was operating in, and his aim of reaching out to a broader clientele beyond the Chinese communities.

Like other Chinese counterparts, Lim Peng Siang developed the technological base of his enterprises through partnerships with Western businessmen, as well as by employing European and American managers and engineers.⁴³ Lim's receptiveness towards Western expertise and technology might have been shaped by the English education he received in Singapore.⁴⁴ This openness may also have been due to his work experience in Lim Ho Puah's enterprises, which included an engineering concern named Central Engine Works, or Chop Hong Chang Keok, comprising Western ‘engineers, boilermakers, contractors, iron and brass founders’.⁴⁵

Expertise and technology from Europe and America were an indispensable feature of the Ho Hong conglomerate's emergence in 1904, which started off in rice processing and coconut oil manufacturing. A Scottish engineer and manager of Central Engine Works, James Alexander Hamilton, planned and organised Ho Hong's machinery and production setup.⁴⁶ Hamilton brought in two high-speed engines with 25 and 80 horsepower, respectively, that enabled the mill to produce 100 tons of white and parboiled rice daily.⁴⁷ At the same time, Lim Peng Siang employed another engineer from England, G. Frankland, to supervise the construction of the Ho Hong Oil Mill. Frankland brought in machines ‘embodying all the latest improvements’, which included a 250 horsepower ‘surface condensing engine’ that allowed the oil mills to manufacture 130 tons of coconut oil and 70 tons of oilcake weekly for domestic consumption as well as overseas markets in Europe and America. Both mills were also ‘lighted throughout with electricity (with) complete service of water pipes and fittings for coping (with) fire’.⁴⁸

After building Lim's production facilities, both Hamilton and Frankland stayed on as overall superintending engineer and manager of the Ho Hong Oil and Rice Mills, respectively.⁴⁹ Lim Peng Siang served as the managing proprietor of this newly formed family concern with his younger brothers, Lim Peng Chin and Lim Peng Mau as partners.⁵⁰ His enterprise also benefited from local expertise through the hiring of staff who were previously employed in Chop Hong Guan, such as Tay Kim Yan, who served as a bill collector in both Lim Peng Siang's and his father's companies. The profits, as Lim Kim Teck recounts, served as the basis of Lim Peng Siang's subsequent business expansion in the ensuing decade.⁵¹

Shipping, finance, and manufacturing (1911–19)

The 1910s witnessed a rapid expansion of Lim Peng Siang's business interests into the new fields of shipping, shipbuilding, cement manufacturing, banking, and insurance in Singapore, Malaya, and China. Besides astute leadership, this expansion was supported by favourable conditions such as the implementation of the new Straits Settlements currency system, the expansion of laissez-faire economies in Southeast Asia, and inflow of cheap labour from India and China.⁵²

In 1911, Lim Peng Siang started to broaden and integrate his business interests by using accumulated profits from rice processing and coconut oil manufacturing to purchase assets from Lim Ho Puah's liquidated business enterprises following the latter's retirement.⁵³ At a public auction of Chop Hong Guan's assets, Lim acquired four steamships.⁵⁴ He formed a shipping department within Ho Hong to coordinate the operations of these steamships, which sailed weekly between Singapore, Penang, Hong Kong, Shantou and Xiamen.⁵⁵ By obtaining control of the transportation for his products, it was possible for Lim to raise the overall profitability of his portfolio by lowering their logistics costs.

After purchasing another steamship two years later, Lim Peng Siang incorporated this department as a separate concern, the Ho Hong Steamship Company Ltd, under the Companies Ordinance of the Straits Settlements.⁵⁶ Along with other shipping companies, such as Heap Eng Moh and Tan Kim Tian and Company Ltd, the Ho Hong Steamship Company engaged in trade between ports in Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and Southern China, competing effectively with Western shipping concerns on these routes.⁵⁷ This company was essentially a family concern controlled and managed by himself, Lim Peng Mau, and Lim Peng Chin as the directors and majority shareholders. Lim Peng Siang hired kin, such as Lim Seow Kiew, his eldest son, as well as trusted personnel such as Tay Kim Yan and J.A. Hamilton.⁵⁸ According to Tan Keong Hee, a former employee of the Ho Hong Steamship Company, Lim delegated control over employment to his manager, with the exception of ship captains who required his personal approval.⁵⁹ In particular, he took extra care in hiring captains operating China routes, preferring Chinese nationals with networks in ports across Southern China, or the descendants of kinsmen who had helped his father in Zhangzhou. This indicates that Lim, as well as his contemporaries, did not merely hire individuals based solely on common ancestry, place of birth, or altruism. Rather, it was their connections that Lim leveraged on to expand his shipping concern in China.

The Ho Hong Steamship Company was also significant as an amalgamation of the family business structure with the British limited liability model, which limited the extent of losses to assets invested in the company. It was a means to reduce economic uncertainty and risk, particularly with the high capital outlay, by separating the concern's capital from the Lim family's personal assets. Importantly, Lim's adoption of limited liability indicates a certain degree of ‘institutional trust’ in the British colonial government and legal infrastructure as it required him to make extensive financial disclosures not only to the state, but also the general public.⁶⁰ In contrast, Chinese businesses in China only embraced limited liability during the 1950s due to a lack of trust in and relative instability of the late-Qing state and ensuing Republican governments.⁶¹ This suggests that British colonial regulations were not completely antagonistic towards Chinese businesses as Lim, like others, managed to adopt the system in the interests of their family enterprises.

Lim Peng Siang had a broader vision for Chinese-owned interests in shipping beyond the Ho Hong Steamship Company. In July 1913, as president of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce (SCCC), Lim proposed the formation of a United Eastern Steamship Company Limited (Liandong lunchuan youxian gongsi) that sought to reduce competition between Chinese steamship companies of the day.⁶² Initial plans to incorporate this company in Singapore with an initial investment of SS$2 million received the support of SCCC members across bang groups, including Leow Chia Heng, the Teochew deputy president of SCCC. Through this proposal, Lim intended to bring together the shipping interests of different Chinese bang to better compete with rival companies owned by the ‘outsiders’ (wairen) based on scale. However, there is no further evidence on the development of this proposal at the time of writing. It is plausible that the First World War disrupted plans to incorporate this company.

The First World War served as an impetus for the swift growth of the Ho Hong Steamship Company and its affiliated concerns. The retreat of Western vessels back to Europe reduced shipping services in Asia, which led to a spike in freight prices, as well as the prices of commodities such as rice and copra.⁶³ Given this opportunity, Lim expanded the Ho Hong Steamship Company's fleet by acquiring seven steamships between 1914 and 1918, and broadened its coverage in Asia by adding routes to Bombay, Rangoon, Muar, Pulau Sugi, Mersing, and Cucob.⁶⁴ During the War, he also extended his control over Ho Hong's agencies in these ports, being the sole proprietor of Ho Thong Company and Ho Chay Company in Hong Kong and Xiamen.⁶⁵

Lim Peng Siang's dominance of the region's shipping was recognised and supported by the British colonial government, with a public appeal by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs for him to maintain his shipping activities during the First World War.⁶⁶ His leading position in Asian shipping gave him a stronger negotiating position when the colonial administration issued a requisition order on local vessels to support the war effort in May 1918.⁶⁷ This order led to dissatisfaction among the Asian shipowners, who felt that the requisition of ships made by shipping companies ‘act[ed] harshly against one industry leaving other industries unaffected’.⁶⁸ Agreeing with these sentiments, Lim noted that this requisition diverged from the government's aim of supporting local shipping interests in a meeting at the SCCC on 28 May 1918.⁶⁹ In response, the colonial authorities implemented the Local Liner Requisition Scheme, in which Asian ships were ‘run on (the) government's account’.⁷⁰ This episode is indicative of the influence of Lim and his fellow shipowners in shaping colonial economic policy in Singapore during this period. In addition, this policy was crucial in enabling Lim to maintain the financial health of his steamship concern in the face of adverse economic conditions after the First World War.

In capitalising on the shipping shortage, Lim Peng Siang not only expanded his fleet of steamships and routes but also engaged in shipbuilding in the late 1910s. He collaborated with Sime Darby and Company Ltd—a Western plantation and trading company in Malacca—to form Anglo-Chinese Steamships Ltd.⁷¹ Despite being a joint partnership, this concern was run as a de facto Lim family concern with explicit rules in its articles of association which cemented his position as a majority shareholder with 37.5 per cent of shares, with the power to appoint or remove directors.⁷² With an issued capital of SS$1 million, this firm was organised to construct two wooden vessels to support the Singapore–Hong Kong trade.⁷³ Western expertise was crucial: an engineer, Graham Hutchinson, was hired to design and build both ships.⁷⁴ Hutchinson used teakwood imported from India, two 500 horsepower engines manufactured by Skandia Pacific Oil Engine Company—based in Oakland, California—as well as auxiliary boilers from Wallsend, England, at a shipyard in Tanjong Rhu, Singapore.⁷⁵ In late 1918, Anglo-Chinese Steamships launched the completed wooden steamers, Tanjong Rhu and Tanjong Kling, with ‘unprecedented success’.⁷⁶ Indeed, these were the first steamships to be built locally, an achievement which ‘mark[ed] a new era in the history of Singapore's port’ and demonstrated how ‘service to Imperial interests can profitably be done (through) shipbuilding’ during the Great War.⁷⁷

Amicable relations with the British colonial government were indeed important in the expansion of Lim Peng Siang's family enterprises during the First World War. Under war legislation, the administration had interned German residents and confiscated their properties.⁷⁸ In 1916, the acting Colonial Secretary alerted the Registrar of Companies to the nationality of Singapore Oil Mills Ltd—a German oil manufacturer with assets beyond SS$1 million —and ordered its liquidation.⁷⁹ With the assistance of Lim Boon Keng, a Queen's Scholar who was also born in Zhangzhou, Lim Peng Siang made a successful bid to procure this company in October 1917.⁸⁰ Through doing so, Lim horizontally integrated his oil production interests, which became one of ‘considerable importance’.⁸¹ This acquisition, along with Lim's enlarged shipping concern, enabled him to fully capitalise on the rise in freight and oil prices during this period.

Rather than remitting his profits back to China, Lim Peng Siang reinvested the profits accumulated from his family concerns to diversify his manufacturing interests in the Straits Settlements. In 1918, he invested more than SS$1 million to install facilities for producing cement, a product which was ‘insufficiently supplied’ by British and Dutch cement factories in Kuala Lumpur and Sumatra.⁸² As in the case of shipbuilding, Lim invested in talent and machinery from the United States, and installed British boilers.⁸³ James Cecil Muir, a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, led the design and construction of Lim's cement factory in Ulu Pandan, a crocodile-infested swampland in Singapore. Muir prepared the site for development by reclaiming land using imported portable engines and dragline excavators from New York and Pennsylvania. Subsequently, he procured rolling machines, wash-mills, and pulverising and packing equipment from Chicago, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin to process sea corals, obtained from the shores of Singapore and neighbouring islands, into Portland cement that ‘supersedes all standards for strength and fineness’ set by the British colonial government.⁸⁴ Upon completion, Muir's brainchild produced 3,000 barrels of quality cement daily.⁸⁵ With the additional support provided by Lim's other concerns, the Ho Hong Portland Cement Factory's ‘economic independence’ allowed it to ‘underbid all contractors’ in the Straits Settlements.⁸⁶

Also important in this decade was Lim Peng Siang's foray into insurance, a step which several of his contemporaries took in order to reduce the economic risk inherent in their commercial, industrial, and shipping concerns.⁸⁷ In 1913, Lim Peng Siang collaborated with leading Chinese entrepreneurs from different dialect groups to form the Eastern United Assurance Corporation Ltd. He purchased 1.82 per cent of the total shares available—divided among 138 investors—with SS$50,000, and served as one of the founding directors of this company, which sold fire, marine and life insurance policies to both individuals and businesses.⁸⁸ The establishment of this inter-dialect concern reflected the need for Chinese enterprises to extend their interests into insurance in a setting where Western insurance agents charged them higher rates relative to European firms.⁸⁹

Besides mitigating risk at lower costs, Lim Peng Siang, like other Chinese businessmen of the day, also sought to gain cheaper access to liquid capital needed for the expansion of his enterprises by establishing modern banks modelled after their Western counterparts.⁹⁰ In September 1912, he collaborated with entrepreneurs, such as Lim Boon Keng and Lee Choon Guan—who was his brother-in-law—to form the Chinese Commercial Bank Ltd, the first modern Hokkien bank formed in Malaya and Singapore.⁹¹ Both himself and Lee, out of all 138 investors, were the biggest shareholders of this bank, owning 5 and 5.5 per cent of its total shares, worth SS$100,000 and SS$110,000, respectively.⁹² This bank had an issued capital of SS$2 million, with Lee as chairman and Lim as vice-chairman-cum-managing director.⁹³ Under their leadership, the Chinese Commercial Bank introduced new banking facilities modelled upon Western banks to the Chinese communities in Singapore, such as the adoption of current accounts, which enabled firms to issue cheques and obtain bank overdrafts. These accounts occupied 50 per cent of the bank's total assets, which were valued at SS$2,550,610.50 in October 1914.⁹⁴

Despite being a boon for his business interests discussed above, the First World War adversely affected Lim Peng Siang's investments in banking. Its onset led to widespread financial panic in Singapore, particularly among Chinese account holders, who withdrew SS$260,000 from the Chinese Commercial Bank on 4 August 1914, causing a liquidity crisis.⁹⁵ Interpersonal networks and the British colonial administration were crucial in restoring public confidence, as Lim Boon Keng arranged a meeting between himself, Lim Peng Siang, Lee Choon Guan, and Governor Arthur Young to seek assistance from the colonial government.⁹⁶ Convinced that the bank's accounts were healthy, and to avoid a financial contagion in the Straits Settlements, Governor Young declared the government's confidence in the bank and agreed to ‘lend a sum of money equal to the amount it raised’ through investments and deposits.⁹⁷ With this assurance, the Chinese Commercial Bank resumed business successfully and made an overall profit of approximately SS$68,000 in 1914.⁹⁸ Due to this debacle, however, a director of the bank, Tan Cheng Seong—the father of Tan Chin Tuan—called for Lim Peng Siang's resignation.⁹⁹ Taking responsibility, Lim resigned from the Chinese Commercial Bank, which subsequently implemented a ‘Safety First’ policy that prioritised the accumulation of reserves rather than branch expansion.¹⁰⁰

Lim Peng Siang went on to establish the Ho Hong Bank Ltd (HHB) with a paid-up capital of SS$1.75 million in 1917.¹⁰¹ According to Lim Boon Keng, Lim had ‘no difficulty in (raising) the money required’ to form this bank with support from his network of friends, relatives and business acquaintances.¹⁰² These individuals, who served as the founding directors of the bank, were Lim Boon Keng himself, Lee Choon Guan, Chee Swee Cheng, Tan Cheng Lock, Chan Kang Swi, Goh Soo Pin, Teo Soon Lan, and Ng Ah Si.¹⁰³ Chee, Tan, Chan and Goh were owners of rubber plantations in Malacca, whereas Teo and Ng were general merchants and landowners in Muar.¹⁰⁴ Lim Peng Siang's collaboration with these businessmen made it possible for HHB to set up its headquarters in Singapore and branches in Malacca and Muar simultaneously.¹⁰⁵

The founding directors chose to name their bank this way in order to leverage upon the reputation of Lim's Ho Hong family concerns in manufacturing and shipping.¹⁰⁶ Despite this, they stressed the distinctiveness of this bank from other Ho Hong institutions. Without the presence of founders’ management shares, HHB was a joint stock company with limited liability rather than a private treasury of the Ho Hong conglomerate. Nonetheless, its share structure and elaborate regulations meant that it was a de facto family bank. Lim Peng Siang and his family members owned 63.7 per cent of the bank's 35,000 shares upon its founding, indicating their clout.¹⁰⁷ As a means to perpetuate their majority ownership, the bank's articles of association gave its directors the authority to block share transfers ‘without assigning any reason’.¹⁰⁸ By permitting directors to make contracts with the bank as ‘vendor purchaser or otherwise’, these articles also legitimised close dealings between HHB and Lim's other concerns.

Despite such arrangements, Lim Peng Siang, as the Chairman, ran HHB without any ‘injudicious lending’ practices that, as Rajeswary Brown noted, were often associated with Chinese banks with strong dialect and kinship ties.¹⁰⁹ According to the bank's articles of association, the management board had to appoint an external auditor with no interests in the bank.¹¹⁰ The directors were also to maintain accounts that reflected HHB's ‘true financial condition’. Adhering to these regulations, the bank hired a Western accountant, W.F. Chopard, to prepare the bank's financial records.¹¹¹ Lim also obtained the services of Seow Poh Leng, a shrewd ‘all-round[er]’ who worked previously as an assistant manager of the Chinese Commercial Bank.¹¹² Lim tasked Seow, along with Lim Peng Mau, to manage HHB's daily operations and to recommend suitable individuals for employment and promotion.¹¹³

HHB, as Victor Tan highlights, led the Chinese banking industry in Singapore and Malaya in breaking the monopoly in foreign exchange hitherto held by the Western and Japanese banks.¹¹⁴ In 1918, the bank, using profits and capital obtained through additional share offerings, formed a new branch in Penang and established agencies in Trang, Hong Kong, Xiamen, and Shanghai. Upon the expansion of its branches and networks, Lim organised a foreign exchange department, the first for a Chinese bank in Singapore and Malaya.¹¹⁵ According to Tan, Lim wanted to expand his financial interests in the lucrative Chinese remittance industry spanning Singapore, Malaya and China.¹¹⁶ Indeed, control over exchange transactions would have boosted Lim's capital liquidity, which in turn facilitated the regional and transregional expansion of his enterprises in this period.

Using acquired technical expertise, funds, as well as products and services from oil, shipping, and banking concerns discussed above, Lim Peng Siang expanded his business beyond Singapore and Malaya. In 1917, he collaborated with 27 Overseas Chinese businessmen, members of the local gentry and chamber of commerce to establish the Huatai Timber Milling and Electric Lightning Company Ltd in Shima District, the commercial and production heartland of Longxi County.¹¹⁷ This firm had an issued capital of C$50,000 which was divided into 500 shares worth C$100 each.¹¹⁸ The Overseas Chinese and local investors owned 412 and 88 shares, respectively, indicating that control was in the hands of the former. According to Lim Boon Keat, the former general manager of this concern, Lim initiated this collaboration to introduce mechanisation in his hometown.¹¹⁹ The company hired technicians from Shanghai to operate its equipment, which included a 110 horsepower gas machine and 60 kilowatt direct current locomotive.¹²⁰ These machines boosted the productivity of timber sawing—as well as other production activities in the area—and provided electrical lighting to the inhabitants of Longxi.¹²¹

Lim Peng Siang utilised such equipment to provide gas and electricity for another firm, the Kiansiang Electrical Weaving Factory. Instead of the partnership model in Shima, this factory, with a working capital of approximately C$130,000, was funded solely by Lim in 1918. Located at Xumao, it offered employment to female workers who resided in the vicinity of Lim's ancestral home.¹²² Lim hired technicians and procured yarns, dyes, and weaving machines from Hong Kong. With such expertise, technology, and materials, Lim's weaving factory produced muslin garments, socks, and medical gauze for markets in Fujian and Singapore. His steamships must have played an instrumental role in facilitating these exports by internalising and reducing transport costs. By the same token, it is highly possible that the HHB coordinated remittances and financial flows between both localities. Indeed, through expansion, diversification, vertical, and horizontal integration, Lim Peng Siang's business interests developed into an integrated industrial business empire characterised by firms with varying capital structures in colonial Singapore, Malaya, and South China during the First World War and its immediate aftermath.

Consolidation (1920–28)

The political and economic environments during the 1920s and 1930s were less favourable to private enterprise relative to the preceding decade with a general decline in global trade due to rising economic nationalism.¹²³ In this period, the family and limited liability system took central stage in Lim Peng Siang's restructuring and divestment strategies that allowed his Ho Hong group to remain financially afloat.

The post-war trade recession of the early 1920s ended the phenomenal growth of the Ho Hong conglomerate. This economic downturn occurred due to over-speculation in commodities and the Allied countries’ decision to raise interest rates in April 1920 as a means to combat inflation caused by this post-war speculation.¹²⁴ With higher interest rates, the cost of credit rose globally and caused liquidity problems for most enterprises. In 1921, interest rates reached new heights at 36 per cent in Singapore.¹²⁵ Such financial difficulties resulted in a 45 per cent reduction in the value of Singapore's imports and exports from SS$1,515 million to SS$829.6 million between 1920 and 1922.¹²⁶

In response, Lim Peng Siang consolidated his various manufacturing interests to lower their operating costs through generating economies of scale and using the limited liability system in more enterprises to reduce risk. In October 1920, he merged the previously German owned-Singapore Oil Mills and Ho Hong Oil Mills to form the Ho Hong Oil Mills Ltd.¹²⁷ This limited liability company had a paid-up capital of SS$4,276,000, which was split into 8,552 shares worth SS$500 each.¹²⁸ Lim and his brother, Lim Peng Mau owned 54.17 per cent and 40.63 per cent of shares in this firm, respectively, with the remainder going to Lim Boon Keng and other family members.¹²⁹ This majority shareholding enabled him to operate the newly formed company as a family concern with stricter control on shares with its articles of association containing clauses requiring the ‘unanimous consent’ of its directors for share transfers to individuals who were ‘desirable in the interests of the Company’.¹³⁰

This reliance on family and the modern legal notion of limited liability was also utilised for Lim Peng Siang's cement manufacturing business. In 1921, Lim Peng Siang established the Ho Hong Portland Cement Works Ltd, which had a paid-up capital of SS$3 million divided into 6,000 shares worth SS$500 each.¹³¹ In contrast to the Ho Hong Oil Mills, Lim's new cement business had 34 shareholders who were either members of the Lim and Wee clans, Hokkien entrepreneurs in Singapore, or Western engineers, or staff members of other Ho Hong companies.¹³² This arrangement might be a result of the high capital outlay of this company that was accumulated since its roots in 1918, thus necessitating outside investment. Even so, Lim and his brother, Lim Peng Mau, as majority shareholders owning 52.17 per cent and 38.88 per cent of shares, perpetuated their control of this concern through the articles of association of Ho Hong Portland Cement Works which authorised ‘holders of three-fourths of the issued capital (to) enforce the transfer of any shares’.¹³³ Indeed, the inclusion of such regulations indicate the flexibility of Lim's family concerns in enforcing control and reducing risk by adopting limited liability amid a worsening economic climate.

In a similar vein, the decline in trade during the early 1920s posed difficulties for Lim Peng Siang's Ho Hong Steamship Company, made worse with intensified competition from the Western steamships which had returned to Asia after the First World War.¹³⁴ Amicable relations with the colonial state helped this concern to maintain financial viability as Lim obtained a SS$400,000 loan from the British colonial government under the Local Liner Requisition Scheme, which included measures to maintain the financial health of local shipping firms.¹³⁵ Responding to the heightened competition, Lim changed the overall strategy of his shipping concern to one that focused on routes between Southeast Asia and China, paying relatively lesser attention to routes within Southeast Asia. Lim's revamped strategy was evident from a Chinese advertisement published in 1925, which advertised the routes between Singapore, Hong Kong, Shantou, and Xiamen without any mention of its routes within Southeast Asia, to Chinese readers.¹³⁶ In so doing, he avoided the intensified competition in the latter and capitalised on the increasing volume of Chinese immigrants travelling to Singapore and Malaya.¹³⁷ Nonetheless, competition in the maritime shipping routes between China and Southeast Asia remained high with the presence of companies such as the Ocean Steamship Company and the Blue Funnel Line.¹³⁸ Thus, Ho Hong Steamship lowered its fares to remain competitive. At the height of the price war on these routes, it reduced freight rates drastically from SS$30 to SS$6.¹³⁹ To maintain profitability by achieving high turnover rates with marginal profit levels, Lim further expanded his steamship fleet to include 14 vessels by 1926.¹⁴⁰

Compared with other firms in Lim Peng Siang's portfolio, HHB flourished during the 1920s, generating a profit of SS$3,306,216.16 between 1921 and 1927.¹⁴¹ With the improvement in economic conditions due to the Stevenson Rubber Restriction Scheme in 1922, the bank accelerated its policy to develop foreign exchange services with the establishment of branches in Hong Kong and Shanghai in 1923 and 1927, respectively.¹⁴² The creation of both branches helped to reduce transaction costs in its foreign exchange business, but also extending his branch network to two important economic and business centres in China and East Asia. It also facilitated the interaction between banking professionals from East and Southeast Asia through his branch network. Huang Hanliang—an economics doctorate holder from Columbia University who worked as a manager in the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank, as well as the China Banking Corporation's Manila Branch—was hired to manage the Shanghai and Hong Kong offices. Staff members such as Lim Bock Kee and Kwa Siew Tee were transferred to these branches from the Southeast Asian branches. They managed to obtain valuable experience in modern exchange services through their training and observations in both the Hong Kong and Shanghai branches.¹⁴³ These staff members went on to occupy key managing roles in OCBC during the 1930s.¹⁴⁴ HHB's branches in East and Southeast Asia made it ‘one of the principal (Asian) exchange banks’ that provided exchange services involving the Chinese yuan, British sterling and Straits Settlements dollar.¹⁴⁵

To fund this expansion, Lim Peng Siang raised the bank's paid-up capital to SS$4 million by offering 45,000 shares worth SS$50 each in September 1920.¹⁴⁶ These shares were mostly taken up by staff members of other Ho Hong firms and Chinese businessmen in Singapore, Malacca, Muar and Penang. As a result, the number of shareholders increased from 76 to 200, with the percentage of shareholdings of Lim and his immediate family members dwindling from 63.70 per cent to 39.81 per cent between 1917 and 1925.¹⁴⁷ This demonstrates the limits of family networks in terms of business expansion, as conceding control through their shareholding was inevitable in raising the additional capital necessary to fund the bank's transregional expansion.

The Great Depression and restructuring

The Great Depression, which started in the late 1920s, led to a drastic fall in the global prices of commodities, manufactured products, consumer confidence and spending levels, which culminated in the failure of several prominent Chinese big businesses such as Tan Kah Kee and Company.¹⁴⁸ Existing accounts on Lim Peng Siang suggest that his business career ended during this period too.¹⁴⁹ However, a close analysis of relevant documents suggests that Lim managed to save his business career by divesting his multifaceted enterprises and obtaining capital investments from his immediate family members.

Lim Peng Siang's Ho Hong Portland Cement Works was a significant casualty, with losses between SS$5 and SS$8 million.¹⁵⁰ Aside from low demand and prices of Portland cement caused by the Depression, technical difficulties took their toll on this concern since the mid-1920s, when its equipment often malfunctioned as they were originally designed to produce Portland cement from limestone instead of the coral readily found along Singapore's coast.¹⁵¹ Yeo Tiam Siew, a former staff member of the Ho Hong conglomerate, recounted that the coral was ‘too viscous, without the binding and hardening properties of cement’.¹⁵² Rather than Chinese entrepreneurs’ unwillingness to make long-term capital investments in Singapore and Malaya, as Brown argues, the case of Lim's cement factory suggests that the problem lay in difficulties in technological transfer from the West to Singapore, and the application of these technologies to the local and regional material environment. Due to these difficulties, Lim liquidated the Ho Hong Portland Cement Works in 1932.¹⁵³

Besides the global economic malaise, British economic policy was another development which worsened the prospects of Lim Peng Siang's business interests, particularly in banking. In September 1931, Britain abandoned the gold standard and devalued the Sterling pound to raise the competitiveness of British exports.¹⁵⁴ This decision was damaging for HHB, which kept large amounts of Sterling for its foreign exchange operations.¹⁵⁵ Its assets depreciated by more than SS$2 million overnight.¹⁵⁶ Despite this, HHB's balance sheet in December 1931 suggests that its accounts remained healthy with SS$9,093,953.58 and SS$1,782,021.31 worth of liquid capital and government securities, respectively.¹⁵⁷ Nonetheless, taking responsibility for this setback, Lim and his brother resigned from HHB before its amalgamation with the Chinese Commercial Bank and Overseas-Chinese Bank to form the OCBC in October 1932.¹⁵⁸

Similar to Britain's devaluation of the Sterling pound, the British colonial government's Immigration Restriction Ordinance accentuated financial losses for Lim Peng Siang's Ho Hong Steamship Company. Passed in 1930, this Ordinance reduced the number of annual Chinese male arrivals, which fell from 158,000 to 14,000 between 1930 and 1933.¹⁵⁹ In response to this development, coupled with the declining demand for passenger and freight shipping, Lim sold his shipping concern to the Straits Steamship Company for SS$900,000 in August 1932.¹⁶⁰

The sale of the Ho Hong Steamship Company enabled Lim Peng Siang to perform several transactions which ultimately saved his oil concern from collapse, thus indicating the importance and usefulness of his control over capital flow between family enterprises during the crisis. Using the cash proceeds from the sale of his shipping company, coupled with SS$350,000 obtained from mortgaging his personal properties to HHB and SS$150,000 provided by his immediate family members, Lim restructured the Ho Hong Oil Mills to form the Ho Hong Oil Mills (1931) Ltd,¹⁶¹ with a reduced paid-up capital of SS$1,125,000 as compared to the previous SS$4,276,000.¹⁶² In this process, he cleared the existing debts of this company with the Union Insurance Society of Canton and eliminated the possibility of forced liquidation.¹⁶³ In return for the investment from his family members, Lim allocated preference shares to them, which, relative to ordinary shares, had priority in the sharing of annual dividends but not voting rights.¹⁶⁴ Through so doing, Lim retained control of his restructured family firm by owning 50.42 per cent of ordinary shares.¹⁶⁵

With the insertion of family funds and firm restructuring, Ho Hong Oil Mills (1931) survived the Depression. News reports suggest that its scale of production remained large with the ‘most up-to-date’ machinery that processed the ‘biggest (imports) of copra’ into oil and soap for local, American, European and Chinese markets.¹⁶⁶ Indeed, it was likely that Lim took advantage of the Imperial Preference schemes implemented by Britain to lower tariffs for products manufactured in the Empire. Under this scheme, the Federated Malay States charged a tariff rate of 25 per cent on perfume, soap and cosmetics exported from the Straits Settlements and a rate of 50 per cent for similar goods from places outside the Empire.¹⁶⁷ Thus, by capitalising on this policy, divesting other concerns, as well as reinvesting proceeds obtained from downsizing and from his family members, Lim managed to prevent the Ho Hong group from collapse during the 1930s.

As in colonial Singapore and Malaya, the Depression and government policies adversely affected Lim Peng Siang's business interests in Fujian. In 1928, the Nanjing government pursued economic nationalist measures, such as the ‘National Goods’ (guohuo) policy, to reclaim its tariff autonomy from the Western powers.¹⁶⁸ These measures excluded firms owned by the Overseas Chinese. In addition, Lim's Huatai and Kiansiang concerns faced hostility from the military and local governments in Zhangzhou which refused to pay their electric bills to the Huatai concern.¹⁶⁹ Upon the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the government requisitioned the assets of this company to avoid leaving them to the Japanese.¹⁷⁰ Given the economic and political chaos of this period, Lim liquidated the Kiansiang Factory in the same year.¹⁷¹

Nonetheless, the closure of both concerns did not signal the end of Lim Peng Siang's business in China. In March 1936, Lim incorporated his shipping concerns, including Ho Thong Company and Ho Chay Company, to form the Ho Hong Company (China) Ltd in Hong Kong.¹⁷² The company's articles of association mention its intention to ‘purchase, charter, hire, build, acquire ships (and) to carry on business as … shipowners, shipping agents (and) warehousemen’.¹⁷³ This limited liability company was run as a partnership between Lim and his business partners in Hong Kong and Xiamen. Similar to other Ho Hong enterprises, Clause 44 of its articles of association empowered the directors to ‘refuse or suspend’ any share transfers ‘whom they do not approve’, which indicates the desire of Lim and his brother to maintain their majority stake in this company.¹⁷⁴ Indeed, such control suggests that Lim continued to have a stake in shipping outside of Singapore, which must have facilitated his oil exports to Hong Kong and China during the 1930s.

Lim Peng Siang and modern business in Singapore and Malaya

In colonial Southeast Asia, the debates over modernity and tradition intersected with notions of race and culture. Writing in the 1990s, Jack Goody showed how research on the economic and business histories of the developing and developed world was largely premised upon the dichotomous labels of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’, respectively, with the former being understood to be less adequate in economic rationality and entrepreneurship than the latter.¹⁷⁵ Similarly, in the context of colonial Southeast Asia, Asian entrepreneurs and enterprises, in general, were equated with traditional modes of business, and at best, part of an intermediate layer between the traditional indigenous economy and the modern capitalist sectors.¹⁷⁶ European and American businesses were seen as the harbingers of modern machinery, methods, and ideas in terms of agriculture, extraction, manufacturing, and business in general.

Asian business in contrast was seen as predominantly fixated with trade and economic sectors that produced the maximum returns on capital investments, rather than infrastructural change and changes in methods of doing, organising, and envisioning business. These stereotypes underlined repeated attempts to promote European, as well as American and Japanese investment in the colonial economies. The colonial states and the European business lobbies (often represented by chambers of commerce) created or lobbied for the enactment of laws for ‘modern’ business institutions, practices, and governance, so as to foster ‘modern’ business cultures, and to bring not only capital, but also technology, types of business enterprises, and cultures to colonial Southeast Asia.¹⁷⁷ In these late colonial frameworks, Chinese business, along with other Asian businesses, have often been seen as ‘traditional’ and an impediment to the colonial projects of modernisation and development.¹⁷⁸

Lim Peng Siang's entrepreneurial career and the history of the Ho Hong Group raises important questions about such representations of Chinese business in colonial Asia and the modern–traditional dichotomy. His companies were ‘modern’ in many respects, be it the economic sectors and industries they were situated in, his emphasis on manufacturing, or the business methods, institutions, organisational forms, as well as the professional managerial expertise that he adopted. Yet, family and parochial ancestral hometown ties remained important in his negotiation of the colonial Southeast Asian and Southern China environments, alongside the emerging force of Chinese nationalism. In many ways, he straddled modernity and tradition, the ethnocentric and the cosmopolitan, as well as Southeast Asia and China.

In a testament to the scale and scope of Lim's business empire, Kunio Yoshihara, in his article on the Oei Tiong Ham Concern, another big Chinese conglomerate in Southeast Asia, had noted how the Ho Hong group was the most ‘diversified’ conglomerate in Malaya that declined after the First World War.¹⁷⁹ The present study has shown that this conglomerate was not merely diversified but also highly integrated in terms of how Lim's companies were connected to each other. His investments in the Ho Hong Steamship Company and Eastern United Assurance Corporation enabled him to internalise and reduce transportation costs incurred in shipping. The Ho Hong Bank was an important vehicle that provided the capital liquidity and remittance services for Lim's myriad of businesses spanning colonial Singapore, Malaya and South China. They reflected his attempts to build and control key institutions associated with a modern economy within his business empire. Furthemore, the Ho Hong Group also did not merely go into decline after the First World War, or even after the Great Depression. Rather, Lim Peng Siang exhibited great resilience in restructuring ownership and control of his enterprises, although political developments in China with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, and later in Southeast Asia with the Japanese Occupation, dealt debilitating blows to his enterprises in Southern China.

Key to his early business expansion was his investment in Western technology and technological expertise. Following his father in Central Engine Works, Lim worked closely with European and American engineers in establishing his oil and rice mills, shipbuilding operations and cement factory. Importantly, it must be noted that the adoption of ‘modern’ technology had its limits, as seen from the failure of the imported machinery for producing cement using corals. Nonetheless, it remains clear that Lim sought to be ‘modern’ and ‘up-to-date’ in terms of long-term capital investments in machinery beyond mere ownership of property and other appreciating assets. This was not typical, according to Rajeswary Brown, for Asian businesses in Southeast Asia during the early twentieth century.¹⁸⁰

Even as he adopted different forms of the modern enterprise, ethnicity, family, and personal control remained important in organising these concerns and financing them. By incorporating his concerns as limited liability companies, he sought to utilise modern company law to reduce the risk posed by these enterprises to his personal and family fortunes. As he adopted the joint-stock model to reach a wider capital market for financing his companies, Lim ensured that ownership remained in his hands through majority shareholding and regulations in the articles of association of his incorporated companies that controlled share transfers to individuals outside his family. Indeed, Lim's family members were crucial as their capital injections helped the Ho Hong Group avoid liquidation during the 1930s. Alongside family and the adoption of limited liability, ‘Chinese’ nationalism was also important in Lim's modern enterprises. This was evident from the proposed formation of the United Eastern Steamship Company, when he evoked nationalistic sentiments to persuade his contemporaries to combine their shipping interests against the non-Chinese wairen.

Taken together, Lim Peng Siang's efforts in building up his transregional business empire suggests how the economic spaces of colonial Singapore and Southeast Asia, if not South China, were sites of experimentation, contestation and change. Taking issue with the argument put forward by ‘New Institutional Economics’ on the primacy of institutions shaping economic behaviour, several historians have highlighted the importance of individual agency, alongside institutions, in shaping ‘multiple modernities’.¹⁸¹ Nurfadzilah Yahaya and Fahad Bishara have shown how Islamic commercial groups played an active role in the development and modernisation of Islamic commercial law in Asia between the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.¹⁸² Peter Post illustrates how Oei Tiong Ham sought to be the ‘vanguard of modernity’ and construct the world's largest Chinese conglomerate not restricted to any single nation, empire, ethnic or cultural identity.¹⁸³

Lim Peng Siang's entrepreneurial vision and his business empire could indeed be positioned alongside these different ‘modernity projects’ that sought not only to amalgamate ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ business structures and dynamics to better compete with their Western rivals in the first half of the twentieth century, but also to create new societies through modern education,¹⁸⁴ a new public sphere,¹⁸⁵ and the promulgation of a new nationalism. Through these interrelated projects, Lim and his contemporaries in Southeast Asia and China, such as Aw Boon Haw, Oei Tiong Ham, and Liu Hongsheng, among others, were responding to the potential and promises of modern industrial capitalism, as seen in Europe, North America, and Japan. These technologies, cultures, and sociopolitical forces were shaping Asian societies (especially in the colonial port-cities) and economies in the first half of the twentieth century in more direct ways beyond their ‘periphery’ positions in the Wallersteinian world system.¹⁸⁶

Ultimately, Lim Peng Siang's business career provides an interesting case study for rethinking the historiography of Chinese business not only in colonial Singapore and Malaya, but also in colonial Southeast Asia more broadly. Going beyond the ethno-cultural frames of Chinese-ness and Chinese nationalism, as well as the traditional–modern and Chinese-versus-Western dichotomies, his career strongly suggests that Southeast Asian Chinese business and entrepreneurial histories should be situated within the broader nexus of modern industrial capitalism, colonialism, and globalisation during an Asian ‘Age in Motion’.