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The Overseas Chinese and Late Ch'ing Economic Modernization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Yen Ching-Hwang
Yen Ching-Hwang
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide
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Extract

China's early economic modernization in the Late Ch'ing period has attracted a great deal of attention from economic historians who have been trying to find out causes for the failure of this attempt, and to measure the impact of Western imperialism. What they have generally ignored is the fact that China at that time was trying to break free from the growing foreign economic control, and to find an alternative to the foreign capital. The alternative was the overseas Chinese capital which, in the belief of the Ch'ing government, was capable of taking over the role of foreign capital in the economic modernization of China. This paper seeks to examine the measures taken by the Ch'ing government to attract overseas Chinese capital, and to analyse why the policy of using overseas Chinese capital failed.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , April 1982 , pp. 217 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 For detailed discussion on this issue, seeFeuerwerker, A., China's Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan–huai (1844–1916) and Mandarin Enterprise (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958), pp. 96–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Liu, Kwang-Ching, ‘British-Chinese Steamship Rivalry 1873–1875’, in Cowan, C. D. (ed.), The Economic Development of China and Japan (George Allen & Unwin: London, 1964), pp. 49–78.Google Scholar

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5 Checking through some overseas Chinese newspapers published in the United States during this period, I found that nothing was mentioned about the project of the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company. See Chiu-chin-shan t'ang-jen hsin-wen tzu (San Francisco China News), February and April 1875 (incomplete);T'ang-fan Kung-pao (The Oriental, San Francisco), September to November 1875 (incomplete); T'ang-fan hsin-pao (San Francisco Chinese Newspaper), August and September 1876, and February and March 1877 (incomplete); Hua-jen Chi-lu (The Chinese Record, San Francisco), July 1877 to November 1878 (incomplete); Chung-wai hsin-pao (Chinese and Foreign News, San Francisco), September and October 1878 (incomplete). Most of these incomplete newspapers are deposited in the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar

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