Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T07:54:09.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Transfer of Technology to China in the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Direct Foreign Investment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Shannon R. Brown
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The transfer of technology to China in the nineteenth century was carried out both by Chinese and foreigners. Given the half-hearted interest of the Chinese government in such activities, however, the role of direct foreign investment was enhanced. The profitability of such investments was determined not only by comparative costs and other conventional economic variables, but also by the interaction of each project with China's traditional system of political economy. The nature and importance of this interaction is examined by means of a number of case studies. The results emphasize the importance of cultural elements in the transfer of technology.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 181 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, Henderson, W. O., Britain and Industrial Europe, 1750-1870 (Liverpool, 1954)Google Scholar; Cameron, Rondo, France and the Economic Development of Europe, 1800-1914 (Princeton, 1961; rpt. New York, 1975)Google Scholar; McKay, John P., Pioneersfor Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Indusirialization, 1885-1913 (Chicago, 1970)Google Scholar.

2 Fargue, Thomas E. La, China's First Hundred (Pullman, Wash., 1942), ch. IIIGoogle Scholar.

3 Biggerstaff, Knight, The Earliest Modern Government Schools in China (Ithaca, 1961), pp. 232–44Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., passim.

5 Lutz, Jessie C., China and the Christian Colleges, 1850-1950 (Ithaca, 1971), pp. 17–24Google Scholar.

6 Another source of knowledge about Western technology, however, were the books on Western science and technology that were translated into Chinese. While the impact of such books on Chinese intellectuals may have been significant, it is unlikely they had much immediate effect on Chinese technology. See Bennett, Adrian A., John Fryer: The Introduction of Western Science and Technology into Nineteenth-Century China (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Yu-t'ang, Sun, ed., Chung-kuo chin-tai kung-yeh shih tzu-liao, ti-i-chi, 1840-1895 (Materials on the history of modern industry in China, first collection, 1840-1895) (Peking, 1957), pp. 565–66.Google ScholarSee also Kuo, Ting-yee and Liu, K. C., “Self-Strengthening: The Pursuit of Western Technology,” in Fairbank, John K., ed., The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 10 (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar.

8 Feuerwerker, Albert, China's Early Industrialization (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 8–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Kim, K. H., Japanese Perspectives on China's Early Modernization: The Self-Strengthening Movement, 1860-1895, Michigan Abstracts of Chinese and Japanese Works on Chinese History, no. 4 (Ann Arbor, 1974), pp. 7–12Google Scholar.

10 Chan, Wellington K. K., Merchants, Mandarins and Modern Enterprise in Late Ch'ing China (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 67–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Feuerwerker, , China's Early Industrialization, ch. 2Google Scholar; Metzger, Thomas A., “The State and Commerce in Imperial China,” Asian and African Studies, 5 (1969), 23–46Google Scholar.

12 Wiles, Peter J. D., Economic Institutions Compared (Oxford, 1977), p. 35Google Scholar.

13 Morse, Hosea Ballou, The Guilds of China: With an Account of the Guild Merchants or Co-Hong of Canton (London, 1909)Google Scholar; MacGowan, D. J., “Chinese Guilds or Chambers of Commerce and Trade Unions,” Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 21 (1889), 148–86Google Scholar.

14 , Sun, Modern Industry in China, pp. 1166–69Google Scholar.

15 For a fuller discussion see Brown, Shannon R., “The Partially Opened Door: Limitations on Economic Change in China in the 1860s,” Modern Asia Studies, 12 (1978), 177–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 There were other “ports,” but as these were isolated cities in Chinese central Asia, they were insignificant in the transfer of technology. See Ch'ung-p'ing, Yen et al., eds., Chung-kuo chin-tai ching-chi shih t'ung-chi tzu-liao hsuen-chi (Collection of statistics on modern Chinese economic history) (Peking, 1955), pp. 41–53Google Scholar.

17 In 1902 British business investment in China (about half of all foreign business investment) was distributed as follows: export and import 27 percent; land 22 percent; manufacturing and public utilities 15 percent; shipping and dockyards 7 percent; others 29 percent. Remer, Carl F., Foreign Investment in China (Washington, D.C., 1933; N. Y., 1968), pp. 349-52Google Scholar. See also Imperial Maritime Customs (hereafter IMC), Decennial Report 1882-1891 (Shanghai, 1892), p. xxxGoogle Scholar.

18 Rawski, Thomas G., “Chinese Dominance of Treaty Port Commerce and its Implications, 1860-1875,” Explorations in Economic History, 7 (1970), 451–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 On coastal shipping see Liu, Kwang-ching, Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-1874 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962); and his “British-Chinese Steamship Rivalry in China, 1873-85,” inGoogle ScholarCowan, C. D., ed., The Economic Development of China and Japan (London, 1964), pp. 49–77Google Scholar.

20 , Sun, Modern Industry in China, pp. 234–41Google Scholar.

21 Feuerwerker, Albert, The Chinese Economy, ca. 1870-1911, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, no. 5 (Ann Arbor, 1969), pp. 52–53Google Scholar.

22 For some suggestive insights see Rosenberg, Nathan, Perspectives on Technology (Cambridge, 1976), chs. 6 and 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Fishlow, Albert, American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 154–55. The Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai, which became the largest and most modern in China, had its origin in the acquisition in 1864 of the machine shop and personnel of the American shipyard of Thomas Hunt and CoGoogle Scholar.

24 Gardella, Robert P., “Fukien's Tea Industry and Trade in Ch'ing and Republican China: The Developmental Consequences of a Traditional Commodity Export” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Washington, 1976), pp. 125–30Google Scholar.

25 On the role of foreigners in developing Taiwan's tea industry see Dodd, John, “Formosa,” Scottish Geographical Magazine, 11 (1895), 568–70, and Dodd's letters from Taiwan in Jardine Matheson Archive (hereafter JMA), 88/7, Cambridge University Library.Google ScholarSee also , Gardella, “Fukien's Tea Industry,” p. 142Google Scholar.

26 British Consular Report (hereafter BCR), Tamsuy 1877. All British Consular Reports cited in this article are reprinted in British Parliamentary Papers: China, 42 vols., Irish University Press Area Studies Series (Shannon, 1971).

27 BCR, Hankow 1878Google Scholar.

28 “Supplementary Report on the Russian Trade of Tien-tsin,” BCR, Tientsin 1868Google Scholar; , Sun, Modern Industry in China, pp. 43–64Google Scholar.

29 Because higher wage rates in the U.S. made such re-reeling uneconomic American silk producers imported French, Italian, and, later, Japanese raws. Mason, Frank R., The American Silk Industry and the Tariff, Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd ser., 11:4 (1910), p. 12Google Scholar.

30 For a more detailed account of this enterprise see Brown, Shannon R., “The Ewo Filature: A Study of the Transfer of Technology to China in the Nineteenth Century,” Technology and Culture, forthcomingGoogle Scholar.

31 JMA unbound correspondence, Shanghai (hereafter Un, Sh), 1570.

32 JMA, Un, Sh, 2580.

33 Brown, “Ewo Filature.”

34 JMA, B/ll, Articles of Agreement, July 11,1882.

35 Min-hsiung, Shih, The Silk Industry in Ch'ing China, trans. E-tu Zen Sun, Michigan Abstracts of Chinese and Japanese Works on Chinese History, 5 (Ann Arbor, 1976), pp. 52–53Google Scholar.

36 For a general introduction to the trade see IMC, The Soya Beans of Manchuria, II special series, (Shanghai, 1911)Google Scholar.

37 Dean, Britten, China and Great Britain: The Diplomacy of Commercial Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), ch. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Hosie, Alexander, Manchuria: Its People, Resources and Recent History (London, 1901), p. 245Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., pp. 218-23.

40 JMA, Account Book A1/61, A2/42.

41 JMA, unbound correspondence, Newchwang (hereafter, Un, New), 25 March 1868.

42 BCR, Newchwang 1873Google Scholar.

43 JMA, Un, New, 7 Aug. 1869.

44 JMA, Un, New, 8 Oct. 1869.

45 BCR, Swatow 1882; JMA B7/42, Robert Craig to JM, 8 Oct. 1881, and C29/1, JM to Robert Craig, 10 Oct. 1881Google Scholar.

46 JMA, Un, New, 10 March 1870.

47 IMC, The Soya Beans of Manchuria, p. 19Google Scholar.

48 Sturdevant, Saundra, “A Question of Sovereignty: Railways and Telegraphs in China, 1861-1878” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1975), pp. 14–18Google Scholar.

49 Public Record Office, London, FO 223/78. “Mayers, W. F., memorandum of a conversation with Li Hung-chang,” 1 09. 1865Google Scholar.

50 Report of a Meeting Held at Stafford House (London, 1873)Google Scholar.

51 F O 17/668, Richard C. Rapier to Foreign Office, 24 April 1873.

52 Robert Hart to James D. Campbell, 26 Aug. 1873, in The I.G. in Peking, Fairbank, John King et al., eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1975)Google Scholar.

53 FO 17/655, Thomas Wade to Earl of Granville, “confidential,” 4 Sept. 1873.

54 , Sturdevant, “A Question of Sovereignty,” p. 82 and chs. 3-5.Google ScholarSee also Currie, Blair C., “The Woosung Railroad (1872-1877),” Papers on China (Harvard University), 20 (1966), pp. 48–85Google Scholar.

55 Forbes Collection, Baker Library, Harvard University, F. B. Forbes Leterbook, 26 April 1873, cited in , Sturdevant, “A Question of Sovereignty,” p. 83Google Scholar.

56 Rapier, Richard C., Remunerative Railroads for New Countries (London, 1878Google Scholar), passim and Appendix IV.

57 Shih-ch'ang, Li, Ting Jih-ch'ang yü tzu-ch'iang yun-tung (Ting Jih-ch'ang and the self-strengthening movement) (Taipei, 1972), p. 306Google Scholar.

58 For a different view see Pong, David, “Confucian Patriotism and the Destruction of the Woo-sung Railway, 1877,” Modem Asian Studies, 7 (1973), 647–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Kinder, Claude W., “Railways and Collieries of North China,” Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 103 (1890-1891), p. 288CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 On the coal industry see Brown, Shannon R. and Wright, Tim, “Technology, Economics and Politics in the Modernization of China's Coal Mining Industry: The First Phase, 1850-1895,” unpub. MS., 1978Google Scholar.

61 Chia-mo, Huang, Chia-wu chart ch'ien chih Vai-wan mei-wu (The Taiwan coal industry before the Sino-Japanese war) (Taipei, 1961), p. 16Google Scholar.

62 Brown and Wright, “Technology, Economics and Politics.”

63 For a description of the traditional technology see Gray, John H., China: A History of the Laws, Manners and Customs of the People, 2 vols. (London, 1878), II, p. 139Google Scholar.

64 BCR, Swatow 1881Google Scholar; IMC, Decennial Report 1882-1891, pp. 526–27Google Scholar.

65 BCR, Swatow 1887Google Scholar.

66 For an account of Butterfield and Swire's refinery in Hong Kong, see Marriner, Sheila and Hyde, Francis E., The Senior: John Samuel Swire, 1825-98 (Liverpool, 1967), ch. 5Google Scholar.

67 Feuerwerker, Albert, “Handicraft and Manufactured Cotton Textiles in China, 1870-1910,” this JOURNAL, 30 (06 1970), 342–5Google Scholar.

68 Paulson, G. E., “Machinery for the Mills of China: 1882-1896,” Monumenta Serica, 27 (1968), 320–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 , Feuerwerker, China's Early Industrialization, p. 210Google Scholar.

70 Butterfield and Swire Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1179, John Swire to J.H. Scott, 3 Nov. 1893.