The emergence of corporate forms in China, 1872--1949. An analysis on institutional transformation

Corporate forms were widely recognized as business organizational forms that were used both to consolidate capital and to disperse the investment risk. The idea of organizing the economy through companies, first spread out among European countries and America, was later on also adopted by most societies that had developed a modern industrialized economy.; This dissertation is an analysis of the emergence of corporate forms in China between the late 19th century and before the establishment of the Communist China. I seek to provide an alternative explanation of the emergence of corporate forms in China. While I do not intend to neglect political and economic factors, this dissertation suggests that, besides these factors, there were more important social dimensions determining the transformation. The critical juncture that initiated the transformation of the Chinese economic institution was the strong presence of foreign capital in the mid-19 th century. This external factor became the significant cause of the eventual break down of the traditional mode of economic organization, and the replacement of it with the modern, Western, mode of organization. The path that took off from this juncture and developed into a 'legacy,' however, was constrained and shaped by the particular historical configuration in China during that time.; I argue that, during the institutionalization of Western corporate forms in China, the Chinese merchants did not simply adopt the organizational forms and use them to engage in the modern economy. Rather, Chinese merchants, and later entrepreneurs, were using the joint-stock company as a way to bundle pre-existing social relations, traditional Chinese business practices, and the Western way of business organization into a more useful organizational format that allowed for the accumulation of capital. Company, as a form of business organization, was used by the Chinese entrepreneurs at the same time as a carrier of personal resources. The analysis offers a way to understand how continuity in Chinese social organization was maintained in the face of economic transformation, and shows how pre-existing social relationships were embedded in the adaptation of modern business rationality.