Commercial Competition Between Zheng Group And Dutch East India Company

In the 17th century,both China and the Netherlands saw the emergence of profit-seeking maritime business groups,namely Zheng group and Dutch East India Company.Zheng group is an economy-military complex with close organization,consanguinity and geography.Dutch East India Company was a limited liability company which depended on the state power to colonize and monopolize the east.The two have different monopolistic ways.Zheng group has become increasingly powerful by monopolizing the maritime trade in the coastal areas of Fujian,while Dutch East India Company has realized its dominant position by means of global expansion regardless of cost.The two groups engaged in fierce trade and commercial competition in the southeast Asian markets such as Manila,Tokyo(now near Vietnam),the Philippines and Japan.The raw silk trade in the Japanese market provides us with a good perspective to observe and analyze the business competition between the two.There are two reasons.First,from 1635 to 1641,the Japanese government issued five successive lockdown orders,which only allowed China and the Netherlands to trade in Nagasaki.The Zheng group and the Dutch East India Company are powerful maritime groups in both countries.In the Japanese market after the lockup,the competition strategy between the two is relatively clear,and we can calculate the trade results after the competition.Secondly,raw silk trade is particularly important in the Japanese market,and sometimes the prices of other commodities fluctuate with the price of raw silk.Therefore,we take the Japanese raw silk market as an example to study the commercial competition between the two.As for the researches on Zheng group and Dutch East India Company,Chinese and foreign scholars mostly focus on their origin,development,growth and decline,or the economic and military activities of Taiwan,such as foreign trade during Zheng Chenggong’s recovery of Taiwan and the Dutch occupation of Taiwan,and pay less attention to the trade relationship between them.However,scholars who study trade relations focus more on the trade relations between Chinese maritime merchants and Dutch East India Company,while few scholars make a systematic study on the business competition between Zheng group and Dutch East India Company.In conclusion,although the existing literature lack of system and in-depth research about the Zheng group and the Dutch East India Company business competition,the source of competitive advantage,and between the two on issues,but the existing literature provides a rich research data and inspired research clues for us to futher study the Zheng group business competition between the Dutch East India company.Not only laid a solid foundation,but also deepen our understanding.With time as the clue,this article combed the Zheng group and the Dutch East India Company business competition in the Japan raw silk market,analyzed both Japan sale market and price control for raw silk source,through the investigation to the amount of trade volume,price,clear competitive advantage and the reasons of the advantages of the two.On the basis of restoring the real face of China in Ming and Qing dynasties,the author hopes to give some enlightenment on how to strengthen the competitive advantage of China and Chinese enterprises in the context of economic globalization.This paper is divided into five parts:the first part is the introduction,which mainly introduces the research background,research motivation,Chinese and foreign scholars’ understanding of this issue,as well as the research thinking and framework of this paper.The second part is about the market trade of raw silk in Japan before the country was locked.The third part is the third,fourth,fifth chapter of the article.It mainly combs the competition between Zheng Zhilong’s four generation and Dutch East India Co in the Japanese market during the 60 years.The fourth part focuses on the analysis of the competition between Zheng and Netherlands on the basis of the basic facts of Zheng group and Dutch East India Company.Through the quantitative investigation on the trade volume and price of Zheng group and Dutch East India Company,the competitive advantages of Zheng group are clarified.In the fifth part,the author summarizes the whole text,and analyzes the trade advantage of Zheng group and the reasons for this advantage.