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A Risky Business: The Tai Ping Insurance Company and Fire Insurance in China, 1928–1937

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2020

PHILIP THAI
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Abstract

This paper traces the history of the Chinese fire insurance industry and Tai Ping Insurance, one of the most successful Chinese insurance companies in the early twentieth century. It provides a case study on the “indigenization” of fire insurance in China by retracing how a fledgling firm mastered selling a foreign financial product and managed to win market share in an ostensibly adverse environment. This paper argues that while Tai Ping benefited from the growing embrace of insurance by the Chinese public, its success was ultimately driven by the company’s economies of scale, cross-selling synergies, and tight connections to banking. This paper also explores the broader context in which fire insurance operated by examining how the indigenization of insurance in China unfolded, with Chinese insurers like Tai Ping mediating the introduction of a new financial product, the transfer of new institutions, and the diffusion of new knowledge regarding risk. More generally, the history of Tai Ping and the Chinese fire insurance industry addresses a research lacuna in the history of insurance beyond the developed markets in Western Europe and North America, which has typically focused more on the experiences of British and American multinational enterprises and less on that of native companies. By highlighting the degree of institutional convergence and divergence between the Chinese insurance industry and its global counterparts, this paper contributes to a more inclusive history of the internationalization of insurance.

Keywords

insuranceChinaregulationbusiness-government relations
Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 239 - 276
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved

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Footnotes

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers, Ghassan Moazzin, Robin Pearson, and especially Matthew Lowenstein for their critical feedback. He is also grateful for the suggestions he received from participants at the American Society for Legal History 2017 annual conference (especially Barbara Welke) and the Association for Asian Studies 2018 annual conference (especially Elisabeth Köll and Brett Sheehan) and the Northeastern University Humanities Center. A Northeastern University College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH) Dean’s Research Development Initiative Award and Northeastern University Hong Liu Asian Studies Research Award supported the research for this article.

References

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Pearson, Robin. “Escaping from the State? Historical Paths to Public and Private Insurance.” Enterprise and Society (2020): 1–30.Google Scholar
Pearson, Robin, and Han, Yong Qiang. “Orientalist Attitudes versus Local Norms: The Diffusion and Reception of Life Insurance in China 1850–1937.” Paper presented at the Fifth Swiss Congress of Historical Sciences, Zurich, 2019.Google Scholar
Pearson, Robin, and Lönnborg, Mikael. “Regulatory Regimes and Multinational Insurers before 1914.” Business History Review, 82, no. 1 (2008): 59–86.10.1017/S000768050003751XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pons, Jerònia Pons. “Multinational Enterprises and Institutional Regulation in the Life-Insurance Market in Spain, 1880–1935.” Business History Review, 82, no. 1 (2008): 87–114.10.1017/S0007680500037521CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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