Late Qing Mercantilist Thinking

In Late-Qing period, mercantile thought played an important role in social changes. It broke through the traditional thought of restraining commerce, triggered and brought a series of social changes, and pushed the process of modernization. The rise of mercantile thought was not only the result of impact from outside world but also rooted from the tradition utilitarianism. The both factors paved the way for transformation of tradtional society.The early form of the mercantile thought is the feudal government's plan of trying to establish cooperation between the businessman and the government. Developing modern enterprises through the model of "government supervising and businessman operating" is the typical pattern. It was proved that the pattern was not succeeding in establishing cooperation between two sides for lacking trust each other. However, the argument of the pattern's failure improved the law reforming. The rise of "commercial war thought" developed the mercantile thought into a new stage. Along with the growing of international trade, the commercial war became a defence and competition strategy for China's economy independance. Therefore, the commercial war thought connected and covered a wide range of national economic system. It indicates that the thinkers began to explores economic trasformation sysmatically, and set the goal for "rich and strong" under rational,organizational and institutional consideration. The expansion of the meaning of the commerce paved the way for the rise of industrial thought in Late-Qing period. After western countries obtained the right of opening manufacturing enterprise, developing industry brought a new change. The thinkers realized that the industry was the real foundation of one country's economy rather than the commerce. Therefore, the mercantile thought made a new leap. Zhang Jian's "cotton-iron model" created a new industry era.The change of mercantile thought in the joint of 19^th century and 20^th century showed two directions. One is the thinker was deeply concerned at national sovereignty with the loss of national economic interest. The other is the thinker was deeply concerned at individual's right through legislation demand. Obviously, the thinkers realized the political reform is the pre-condition for economy transformation . The establishment of ministry of commerce and the promulgation of commerce law make the mecantile thought institutionalized, which promoted the social position of businessman greatly. The feudal government's permission of organizing the chamber of commerce around the country is another progress of mecantile thought. All these changes indicated the greater changes would be coming in Late-Qing period. The content of mercantile in Late-Qing period has its own characters. Although it absorbed foreign economics theory such as commercialism and classical political economy, it was quite different with them. Through the comparison of Zheng Guanying and List's economic thought, the paper finds that the essence of their thoughts is to develop modern national economy system by effevtive protective and state-led measures. List's thought is more profound than that of Zheng Guanying in terms of modern economics theory. However, Zheng Guanying's view is very close to that of List, which had very important historic significance in Late-Qing period. Although the mercantile thoughts was rise in both in China and Japan at the same period in 19^th century, the different cultures and economic policies caused the different developing path.The rise and development of mercantile thought resulted from national salvation and enlightenment movements. However, the thought had more focus on national salvation along with limited idea transformation. The feudal government did not grasp the opportunity to push the social reform. And it caused the break between the traditional and modern society, which made new contradiction between the government and the economic society. Therefore the influence of mercantile thought is rather limited, and the economic modernization did not make remarkble progress.