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From the Sino-Japanese War to the Communist Revolution, the
onrushing narrative of modern China can drown out the stories of
the people who lived it. Yet a remarkable cache of letters from one
of China's most prominent and influential families, the Lius of
Shanghai, sheds new light on this tumultuous era. Sherman Cochran
and Andrew Hsieh take us inside the Lius' world to explore how the
family laid the foundation for a business dynasty before the war
and then confronted the challenges of war, civil unrest, and social
upheaval. Cochran and Hsieh gained access to a rare collection
containing a lifetime of letters exchanged by the patriarch, Liu
Hongsheng, his wife, Ye Suzhen, and their twelve children. Their
correspondence offers a fascinating look at how a powerful family
navigated the treacherous politics of the period. They discuss
sensitive issues-should the family collaborate with the Japanese
occupiers? should it flee after the communist takeover?-as well as
intimate domestic matters like marital infidelity. They also
describe the agonies of wartime separation, protracted battles for
control of the family firm, and the parents' struggle to maintain
authority in the face of swiftly changing values. Through it all,
the distinctive voices of the Lius shine through. Cochran and
Hsieh's engaging prose reveals how each member of the family felt
the ties that bound them together. More than simply a portrait of a
memorable family, The Lius of Shanghai tells the saga of modern
China from the inside out.
The contributors to this collection of seven essays (plus an
editor's introduction and a comparative afterword) have framed
debates about the construction of commercial culture in China. They
all have agreed that during the early twentieth century China's
commercial culture was centered in the private sector of Shanghai's
economy and especially in the "concession" areas under Western or
Japanese rule, but they have differed over the issue of whether
foreign influence was decisive in the creation of Shanghai's
commercial culture. Between 1900 and 1937, was Shanghai's
commercial culture imported from the West or invented locally? And
between 1937 and 1945, was the history of this commercial culture
cut short by Japanese military invasions and occupations of the
city or was it sustained throughout the war? The contributors have
proposed various and even conflicting answers to these questions,
and their interpretations bear upon wider debates in historical,
cultural, and comparative studies.
In this book, Sherman Cochran reconsiders the nature and role of
consumer culture in the spread of cultural globalization. He moves
beyond traditional debates over Western influence on non-Western
cultures to examine the points where Chinese entrepreneurs and
Chinese-owned businesses interacted with consumers. Focusing on the
marketing of medicine, he shows how Chinese constructed consumer
culture in China and Southeast Asia and extended it to local,
national, and transnational levels. Through the use of
advertisements, photographs, and maps, he illustrates the visual
forms that Chinese enterprises adopted and the far-flung markets
they reached.
Cochran brings to light enduring features of the Chinese
experience with consumer culture. Surveying the period between the
1880s and the 1950s, he observes that Chinese businesses surpassed
their Western counterparts in capturing Chinese and Southeast Asian
sales of medicine in both peacetime and wartime. He provides
revealing examples of Chinese entrepreneurs' dealings with Chinese
and Japanese political and military leaders, particularly during
the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. The history of Chinese medicine
men in pre-socialist China, he suggests, has relevance for the
twenty-first century because they achieved goals--constructing a
consumer culture, competing with Western-based corporations,
forming business-government alliances, capturing national and
transnational markets--that their successors in contemporary China
are currently seeking to attain.
How can capitalists' motivations during a Communist revolution be
reliably documented and fully understood? Up to now, the answer to
this question has generally eluded scholars who, for lack of
nonofficial sources, have fallen back on Communist governments'
official explanations. But the essays in this volume confirm that,
at least in the case of the Communist revolution in China, it is
finally possible to make new and fresh interpretations. By focusing
closely on individuals and probing deeply into their thinking and
experience, the authors of these essays have discovered a wide
range of reasons for why Chinese capitalists did or did not choose
to live and work under communism. The contributors to this volume
have all concentrated on the dilemma for capitalists in China's
Communist revolution. But their approach to their subject through
archival research and rigorous analysis may also serve as a guide
for future thinking about a variety of other historical figures.
This approach is well worth adopting to explain how any members of
society (not only capitalists) have resolved comparable dilemmas in
all revolutions-the ones in China, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba, or
anywhere else.
This is the first major study in Chinese business history based
largely on business's own records. It focuses on the battle for the
cigarette market in early twentieth-century China between the
British-American Tobacco Company, based in New York and London, and
its leading Chinese rival, Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company, whose
headquarters were in Hong Kong and Shanghai. From its founding in
1902, the British-American Tobacco Company maintained a lucrative
monopoly of the market until 1915, when Nanyang entered China and
extended tis operations into the country's major markets despite
the use of aggressive tactics against it. Both companies grew
rapidly during the 1920s, and competition between them reached its
peak, but by 1930 Nanyang weakened, bringing an end to serious
commercial rivalry. Though less competitive, both companies
continued to trade in China until their Sino-foreign rivalry ended
altogether with the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
Debate over international commercial rivalries has often been
conducted broadly in terms of imperialist exploitation and economic
nationalism. This study shows the usefulness and limitations of
these terms for historical purposes and contributes to the separate
but related debate over the significance of entrepreneurial
innovation in Chinese economic history. By analyzing the foreign
Chinese companies' business practices and by describing their
involvement in diplomatic incidents, boycotts, strikes, student
protests, relations with peasant tobacco growers, dealings with the
Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party, and a host of other
activities, the author brings to light the roles that big
businesses played not only in China's economy but also in its
politics, society, and foreign affairs.
Should modern Chinese history be approached from the center looking
out or from the margins looking in? The contributors to this book
have explored a variety of relationships between the center (or
centers) and the margins in China under the Qing dynasty, the
Republic, and the People's Republic.
Should modern Chinese history be approached from the center looking
out or from the margins looking in? The contributors to this book
have explored a variety of relationships between the center (or
centers) and the margins in China under the Qing dynasty, the
Republic, and the People's Republic.
The contributors to this collection of seven essays (plus an
editor's introduction and a comparative afterword) have framed
debates about the construction of commercial culture in China. They
all have agreed that during the early twentieth century China's
commercial culture was centered in the private sector of Shanghai's
economy and especially in the "concession" areas under Western or
Japanese rule, but they have differed over the issue of whether
foreign influence was decisive in the creation of Shanghai's
commercial culture. Between 1900 and 1937, was Shanghai's
commercial culture imported from the West or invented locally? And
between 1937 and 1945, was the history of this commercial culture
cut short by Japanese military invasions and occupations of the
city or was it sustained throughout the war? The contributors have
proposed various and even conflicting answers to these questions,
and their interpretations bear upon wider debates in historical,
cultural, and comparative studies.
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