Study Of Modern Chinese Pawnbroking

Pawn broking is an ancient financial and commercial activity aiming at mutual benefit, in the form of mortgage credit as its basic business. It is a kind of industry between the financial sector and the circulation, which fundamental function is to temporarily relieve urgent fund shortages by offering loans for mortgaged items. Pawnshops were a major player in China's traditional financial sector that played a significant role in driving economic and social development.Domestic research on the history of pawn broking lags far behind that on old financial institutions such as piaohao (draft banks) and zhangju (deposit banks). Before 1949, literature on this industry included China's Pawn Industry by Yang Zhaoyu, On Pawn by Mi Gonggan, and Pawn Industry in Henan, Hubei, Anhui and Jiangxi edited and published by the Department of Economics of the College of Agriculture, University of Nanking. Research on the pawn industry remained a fat lot even after the People's Republic was founded. During the 1970s and 1980s, Luo Bingmian, a Taiwanese scholar, published several papers on periodicals such as Shihuo and Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History Academia Sinica. But it wasn't until 1990s that the academic interest in the pawn industry began gradually growing. Qu Yanfu published successively Pawn History in China, Pawn History, Chinese Pawn Broking Manual; Liu Qiugen published Chinese History of Pawn System (1995) and Chang Mengqu wrote Pawn Industry in Modern China (1996). But it needs to be pointed out that these works of research approached history from a macro-perspective, focusing on the whole industry or regional development, while research on specific operation and management of pawn industry from a micro-perspective has so far remained weak.Currently, one of the major obstacles in China's economic and financial growth is the difficulty for small and medium-sized enterprises to raise funds and the backward conditions of the rural financial market. Pawnshops are characterized for their simple procedures, fast speed, low thresholds, flexible deadlines for redemption and a wide range of mortgage items. With the mainstream financial institutions in the banking industry unable to extend adequate support to small and medium-sized enterprises and the rural finance, it is of crucial and practical importance to leverage the pawnshops' advantages and unique traits and accelerate their growth in both urban and rural areas in order to vitalize the rural financial market, improve its structure and advance the building of a new socialist countryside.Therefore, this paper will focus on traditional pawnshopsthat once used to be an extremely powerful economic growth engine from a micro-perspective on operation and management, instead of the traditional macro-perspective, seeking historical patterns of pawnshop operation over a long period of time and exploring their philosophy of business, management wisdom and valuable experience. The research makes a comprehensive review of the modern pawn industry by discussing the boom and bust of the pawnshops, causes, features and historical status, under the modern Chinese history background, based on the economic development environment, with national region as the site, showing an inclusive picture of its modern development. The paper conducts a positive study on the organization, capital structure, business philosophy, business scope, risk control and business networks, which gives a portray of a micro-panorama of the operation and management of modern pawn industry.On this basis, the paper also summarizes the development of Chinese pawn industry history, analysis the problems of current pawn broking, learn experience and management from traditional Pawn broking. Combined with domestic economic and financial development in today's environment, the paper discusses some countermeasures to resolve the issue of Chinese pawn, such as updating social values, policies and regulations, management system, business system innovation, human resources building. That research expects to perfect environment for the development and promote self-reform in order to advance pawn broking develop sustainably and drive the socio-economic development.