Modern China’s Network Revolution: Chambers of Commerce and Sociopolitical Change in the Early Twentieth Century

Modern China’s Network Revolution

CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND SOCIOPOLITICAL

CHANGE IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Zhongping Chen

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chen, Zhongping, Ph. D., author.

Modern China’s network revolution : chambers of commerce and sociopolitical change in the early twentieth century / Zhongping Chen.

     pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8047-7409-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Boards of trade—China—History—20th century. 2. Social networks—China—History—20th century. 3. Social change—China—History—20th century. 4. China—Politics and government—1644–1912. I. Title.

HF331.C6C44     2011

381.06′0951—dc22          2011000529

Typeset by Westchester Book Composition in Bembo, 10.5/13.5

E-book ISBN: 978-0-8047-7787-2

To the memory of my parents

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface: In Search of a Broader and More Dynamic Network Approach to Chinese Studies

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 Guilds and Elites in the Face of Domestic and Foreign Challenges

2 Elite and Official Interactive Movements toward Chambers of Commerce

3 Changes in Organizational Composition and Interrelations

4 The Expansion of Associational Networks and Influences

5 Political Maneuvers in Commercial and Industrial Affairs

6 Joint Actions in the Constitutional and Revolutionary Movements

7 Nationwide Chamber Networks and the Republican Governments

Conclusion

Appendix 1. General Chambers of Commerce in the Lower Yangzi Region, 1904–1911

Appendix 2. Affiliated Chambers of Commerce in the Lower Yangzi Region, 1904–1911

Appendix 3. Branch Chambers of Commerce in the Lower Yangzi Region, 1906–1911

Notes

Character List

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Map

The Lower Yangzi region in the late Qing period

Tables

1 The development of guilds in Lower Yangzi cities and towns, 1601–1912

2 Nationalities of members of the Shanghai WGCC, 1880, 1890, and 1900

3 The formation of chambers of commerce in the Lower Yangzi region, 1904–1911

4 Members and directors in general, affiliated, and branch chambers of commerce, 1905–1911

5 New members and directors of the Shanghai, Suzhou, and Shengze chambers of commerce, 1905–1911

6 Birthplaces of members and directors of the Shanghai GCC, 1906–1911

7 Birthplaces of members and directors of the Shengze ACC, 1906–1909

8 Business backgrounds of members and directors of the Shanghai GCC, 1906–1911

9 Business backgrounds of directors in twenty-two ACCs, 1909

Preface

In Search of a Broader and More Dynamic Network Approach to Chinese Studies

When I first began the study of the more than 200 chambers of commerce that popped up from 1902 to 1912 in the Lower Yangzi region around Shanghai, I approached it as an organizational analysis. I concerned myself primarily with the chambers’ reformist, revolutionary, nationalistic, and business activities in this key economic region of modern China. However, over the course of the last decade, the analytical focus of my work broadened: the research now spans a longer historical period of late Qing and early Republican China and covers the expansion of the chamber networks and their sociopolitical influence beyond the Lower Yangzi region. From this broader perspective, the development of the Chinese chambers from this region marked not only the emergence, for the first time in China’s millennial history, of the legally sanctioned associations (faren shetuan).¹ Their network development from the local to the national level also represented revolutionary change in the sociopolitical relations of the most populous country of the world.

The inspiration for such a network analysis came initially from my reflections following an academic conference and from a personal experience during subsequent air travel in China. In July 2000 I traveled from Montreal to Hong Kong to present at the Third International Conference on Chinese Business History. The theme of the meeting was relations between chambers of commerce and business networks (wangluo) in modern China, and this naturally prompted me to consider revising my work on chambers of commerce from a similar angle. However, the network approach still seemed inapplicable to my research because of its focus on interpersonal ties in Chinese studies.

Indeed, around 2000, the major subject of such network analysis was Chinese guanxi (literally connections). This Chinese colloquialism has a negative connotation and refers primarily to the interpersonal ties based on ascribed or primordial traits such as kinship, native place, and ethnicity, as well as shared personal experiences in the same schools, working units, business deals, unusual events, and so on. Previous studies of guanxi assumed that such interpersonal ties would thrive in the absence of institutional structures like formal organizations and rational laws but decline after the establishment of the latter.² In other words, they treated formal organizations and other institutional relationships only as context rather than a component of social networks.

In rare cases, some early studies of Chinese chambers of commerce and a few papers at the Hong Kong conference also made use of the Chinese term wangluo, or network. However, such research was still limited to the scope of organizational analysis because it stressed only interorganizational links among the chambers and other organizations but skipped their interpersonal ties, the primary focus of conventional network analysis.³ Thus, during the three days of meetings, I began to think about the possibility of combining the network and organizational analyses in the study of Chinese chambers of commerce.

After my airplane took off from Hong Kong and flew northward, I put my methodological questions aside and started worrying about my travel arrangements at the destination, Lukou, the newly built international airport far away from Nanjing. Although I had lived in Nanjing a decade earlier, I did not have any knowledge of how to get from the new airport to the city, nor did I have a hotel booked for the night. However, a casual chat with another traveler made my worries disappear and led me to see the network issue in a new way.

It turned out that I and the passenger were fellow alumni; he was a vice president of the university where I had worked before. The university arranged to send a car to pick him up from the airport, and he offered me a ride to the city. Moreover, he promised to help me find a room in the campus hotel. In our conversation, the university officer further discovered that we were from the same county, and he became more excited and immediately invited me to dinner at his home. Due to his familiarity with the airport officers in Lukou, I received the most courteous treatment from the customs officers in my travel across any national borders. With his help, I also arrived at the university in Nanjing and settled at the hotel without any difficulty.

My fortuitous encounter with this university officer threw me into deep thought, and his generous help moved me profoundly. This episode reminded me of the importance of friendship among people from the same native place and same working unit as well as other interpersonal relations in Chinese society, an importance that network analysis in Chinese studies has always stressed. But it also raised doubts about the overemphasis of the analytical model on interpersonal ties and on their negative implications.

In this case, the home county that the university officer and I came from was not only our ascribed or primordial birthplace but also an administrative institution (it was later turned into a suburban district). Even though we enjoyed learning that we came from the same county, our relationship likely would have ended soon after this trip if we had not also worked for the same university. It was mainly through this university and similar institutions in China and Canada that I had maintained personal contacts with my former Chinese colleagues for our academic exchange and collaboration at the institutional level. Undoubtedly, institutional links could merge with interpersonal ties and make the latter become stronger, broader, and more socially significant. Network analysis, I then realized, might incorporate both types of relations into its analytical framework rather than separate them artificially.

A new twist from my encounter with the university officer in Nanjing alerted me to another side of Chinese social networks. Nearly one year after our unexpected meeting, one of my high school classmates in my hometown heard about it and made an international call to me in Montreal. His nephew had just taken the college entrance examinations, but the resultant grades barely reached the minimum requirements of the university in Nanjing. This former classmate hoped to take advantage of my acquaintance with the university officer and further use our local ties with the latter to secure his nephew’s admission into this university. After politely rejecting his request, I became both amazed by the globalization of Chinese personal relations and alarmed at its potential implications. If personal cliques and interpersonal ties could uninhibitedly control and corrupt institutions and institutional ties, the consequence would be more harmful to society than previous studies of personal networks suggested.

This episode reminded me of numerous encounters with Chinese social networks in different circumstances, and such practical experience led me to turn from organizational to network analysis in my book project. The network paradigm initially attracted me as a new way of examining hundreds of Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce and their numerous participants within interconnected frameworks. Even the initially abstruse jargon of network analysis—density, connectivity, centrality—fascinated me as new techniques for accurately processing relational data in historical documents.⁴

My critical reading of the existing literature in network analysis, however, also confirmed my worries about its methodological deficiencies. Although this approach promises to examine social relations from the whole to the part and from structure to individual, social network analysts often study personal networks rather than whole networks.⁵ The scholarly tendency to stress interpersonal ties at the expense of their institutional structures finds typical expression in a classic definition of personal relationships:⁶

A relationship involves a series of interactions between two individuals known to each other. Relationships involve behavioural, cognitive and affective (or emotional) aspects. Formal relationships are distinctive from personal relationships.

By contrast, institutional analysis, especially historical institutionalism, indicates that institutions include both formal organizations and informal rules and procedures that structure conduct.⁷ That is, institutional structures comprise not merely formal organizations, organizational principles, and interorganizational relations. They also include socially established rules at the personal level, ranging from formal marriage to informal customs in interpersonal relationships, which further involve the interpersonally behavioral, cognitive, and affective interactions beyond institutionalized rules. Thus, historical institutionalism confirmed my previous perception that institutional structures would not necessarily wipe out interpersonal relations like Chinese guanxi. Their formal frameworks could also incorporate, extend, and transform the latter, but such a process of relational institutionalization has not received attention from network analysis of Chinese guanxi or organizational analysis of chambers of commerce.

An examination of my documental record for this book project in its early stage also made me realize that the conventional network approach has analytical strength in describing social relations but paradigmatic weakness in explaining relational changes. As an advocate of this paradigm in Asian studies admits, social network analysis does not handle change well unless one can do repeated iterations of the net over time.⁸ Even if historical data allow such research, it is still hard to reveal dynamics for network changes. Thus, it became evident that I could not simply apply the network theory and its jargon to my research. Rather, I had to refine the preexisting theory and develop new concepts through my own network analysis of data.

Consequently, the painstaking process of research for this book project also became an exciting journey in search of a broader and more dynamic network approach. As a result, this book is fundamentally different from the preexisting organizational analyses of Chinese chambers of commerce. It also distinguishes itself from conventional network analysis by its new analytical approach. This approach not only expands network analysis to include both interpersonal and institutional relations but also emphasizes relational transformation and its dynamics in the chamber networks.

A central concept in this book is that of associational networks. I use it to distinguish my new approach from conventional network analysis and to differentiate the chamber networks of the Lower Yangzi region from the preexisting social relations in Chinese history. This key concept aligns the historical narrative in this book along a central argument: the associational networks of these Lower Yangzi chambers demonstrated strength and significance because they expanded through both personal and institutional relations, increasingly brought different individuals and organizations into interactions, and thereby provided dynamics for varied sociopolitical changes, including the general trend of social integration and long-term transformation of society-state relationship. In particular, such chamber networks exerted deep influence on reformist, revolutionary, and nationalist politics, as well as economic revitalization and modernization in late Qing and early Republican China.

To summarize the theme of the book in a single sentence, the associational networks of the Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce embodied a network revolution because they achieved unprecedented level of relational institutionalization, expansion, diversification, and interaction in the sociopolitical landscape of modern China. In terms of both its expression and influence, such a radical and structural change in Chinese sociopolitical relations was comparable to and even more comprehensive than what Eiko Ikegami calls the Tokugawa network revolution, the sudden expansion of communicative networks at a critical moment of Japanese cultural history.⁹

It is in this sense that this book suggests that the Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce were not merely pioneers and models of the chambers in the whole country and similar kinds of state-legitimized social associations in other professions but were also the vanguards and representatives in the network revolution and attendant sociopolitical change up to the national level. Certainly, the analytical focus of my book is still on the chambers of commerce within the Lower Yangzi region. In fact, it goes beyond previous studies on individual chambers in large cities or at the national level mainly through network analysis of hundreds of chambers in small cities and market towns of the region.

In such a local historical context, the Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce displayed their chief characteristics because their network development among a large number of small cities and market towns had few parallels in other regions of China during the early twentieth century.¹⁰ In view of the specific character of the Lower Yangzi chambers, this book explores and employs a wealth of local historical sources, such as archives, statistics, gazetteers, newspapers, and magazines, as well as personal diaries, memoirs, biographies, and anthologies that include previously untapped information about lower-level chamber networks. It also makes full use of quantitative analysis to process such historical data.

The combination of local historical analysis with a broad and dynamic network approach enables this book to focus on the regional characteristics of the Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce but also to shed light on their nationwide connections, influence, and significance. However, due to the primary mission of this historical research, I have tried to follow basic principles of network analysis while avoiding its technical jargon. Moreover, my network approach also abstracts new concepts from empirical research and adopts useful notions from organizational, institutional, and class analyses, as well as other research methods in disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, business studies, and political science.

It is my hope that this full and dynamic understanding of Chinese social networks may offer a key intervention into scholarly discussions about class and elites in Chinese historiography and about Chinese guanxi, informal politics, civil society, and the public sphere across the social sciences. Such historical understanding also has practical significance for China today because it points to a new way of building the public sphere, civil society, and society-state relations on the solid basis of institutionalized networks, which certainly could include institutional checks on unhealthy guanxi in Chinese society and politics. Therefore, this book is not only about China’s past but also about its present and future.

Acknowledgments

Due to the decade-long nature of my work, I have benefited from the help of too many individuals and institutions to acknowledge them all here. I would first like to thank Mark Granovetter, a pioneer in the field of social network theory. He recommended my manuscript to Stanford University Press and further encouraged me to move network analysis away from a purely interpersonal framework, into one where history, culture and institutions interact with networks in a mutually causal way (e-mail message to author, August 31, 2009). Two anonymous reviewers for the press also offered encouraging and insightful comments. Their advice helped shape the final version of the manuscript and sharpen its central theme. Two editors of the press, Stacy Robin Wagner and Jessica Walsh, showed equal enthusiasm about the book project and guided me during the final revision through their professional, efficient, and patient work.

Sincere thanks are also due to the following colleagues and friends who had read all or parts of the manuscript in its different versions: Gregory Blue, Arif Dirlik, Linda Grove, Xiaorong Han, Liam Kelley, Richard King, Elizabeth J. Perry, John Price, Mary Backus Rankin, Edward R. Slack Jr., and Robin Yates. Their advice, concern, and encouragement constantly boosted my spirit and bolstered my confidence. Dr. Rankin merits special thanks for her repeated readings of different versions of the manuscript and thought-provoking criticism. Dr. Perry’s early suggestion for conceptual clarification and Dr. Guoguang Wu’s remarks on institutional analysis also influenced the evolution of my network approach. Moreover, I appreciate Ole Heggen’s help with the map, and I am grateful for the editorial assistance of Donald Baronowski and the late Neil Burton.

Among my colleagues in China, Zhang Kaiyuan, Ma Min, and Zhu Ying of Wuhan, Yu Heping and Liu Dong of Beijing, Xu Dingxin, Tang Lixing, and Ma Xueqiang of Shanghai, Lü Zuoxie, Zhang Xianwen, and Fan Jinmin of Nanjing, Chen Xuewen of Hangzhou, and Zhang Shouguang of Chongqing deserve my deep gratitude. They had either shared with me their research on Chinese guilds and chambers of commerce or provided assistance in data collection. Two of my former students, Tao Tao of Beijing and Zhao Ji of Shanghai, were very helpful in collecting sources.

Support for my documentary work also came from the staff at the archives and libraries in Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Nantong, as well as the libraries at the University of Hawaii, McGill University, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Victoria. Special assistance with data collection was provided by Mi Chu at the Library of Congress. Financial support for the book project at its different stages came from the East–West Center, the China Times Cultural Foundation, the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaii, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Center for Asia-Pacific Initiatives of the University of Victoria.

I would like to extend sincere thanks to my longtime mentors, Harry J. Lamley, Kwang-ching Liu, Jerry H. Bentley, Sharon Minichiello, Sen-dou Chang, and Tien-yi Tao. Their sage advice and careful guidance helped me build a solid foundation for this book. My deepest gratitude goes to Professor Lamley and the late Professor Liu, who pushed me to expand my research interest from economic into sociopolitical history of China. Professor Bentley opened my eyes to different theories in the vast field of world history and inspired me to apply my newly developed network approach to the study of the global Chinese diaspora and the ecological networks across China and the Indian Ocean world.

Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Limin Huang, for her support and sacrifice for my academic pursuits during our two dozen years of common life. Our son, Victor Houwei Chen, was born right after I joined the University of Victoria in 2002, and his birth earned me half a year of parental leave, during which I began to write this book intensively. He made a special contribution to this book because his first cry after birth, frequent smiles in infancy, and boyish laugh in our house always brought me joy during what was otherwise a lonely journey. Victor also pushed me to work harder and faster after he claimed to have already produced a few Picasso-style books at the age of five. My own book is dedicated to my father, Chen Zhaojiang, and mother, Cui Wenying. My parents raised me during the hard times of the great famine and the Cultural Revolution in China, and they had to endure my wandering in the remote past and distant places thereafter. Neither of them survived to see the completion of the project, but both bequeathed me the spiritual force to do my best in any circumstances.

Parts of Chapters 1, 2, and 6 have appeared in two of my articles, The Origins of Chinese Chambers of Commerce in the Lower Yangzi Region, Modern China 27, no. 2 (2001): 155–201, and The Quest for Elite Dominance, Associational Autonomy and Public Representation: The Lower Yangzi Chambers of Commerce in the 1911 Revolution, Twentieth-Century China 27, no. 2 (2002): 41–77. Both articles have been further revised and reorganized for incorporation into this book and its new theoretical framework. I thank the two journals and their publishers, Sage Publications and the University of Michigan Press, for allowing me to reuse the two previous publications.

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chambers of commerce developed in early twentieth-century China as a key part of its sociopolitical changes. In 1902, one year after the Qing court launched the New Policy Reform (xinzheng), the first Chinese chamber of commerce appeared as the Shanghai Commercial Consultative Association (Shanghai CCA, Shanghai shangye huiyi gongsuo) and soon received official approval. In 1904, such chambers of commerce became the earliest nongovernmental organizations legitimatized by state law in Chinese history. When the Qing dynasty and two millennia of imperial rule ended with the 1911 Revolution, over 1,000 general chambers (GCCs, shangwu zonghui), affiliated chambers (ACCs, shangwu fenhui), and branch chambers (BCCs, shangwu fensuo) had been established throughout China. They achieved increasing integration, and their collective actions deeply influenced nationalistic, reformist, and revolutionary movements as well as economic modernization.¹

These chambers of commerce could bring about broad sociopolitical changes beyond their business world, not only because they achieved a significant degree of organizational integration and expansion but also because their participants included varied merchants with widespread influence and relations in both business and politics. According to the commercial law drafted by the late Qing chambers of commerce and enacted by the Republican government in 1914, merchants included those in various businesses, industries, service trades, financial activities, brokerage, and the like.² Actually, the late Qing chambers of commerce were composed of more diverse merchants, such as gentry-merchants (shenshang) who owned commercial wealth and official titles, leaders of urban guilds, merchant managers of semiofficial enterprises, and so on.³ Based on the newly developed chamber networks, these elite merchants formed interconnections and greatly expanded their influences from local business into the larger society and state politics. Thus, these chambers of commerce spearheaded relational changes among social elites and in the society as a whole. Their networks also helped transform business-government and society-state relationships permanently in early twentieth-century China. Such profound relational change constituted an initial and also an important part of the general network revolution in modern China.

The historical significance of these chambers of commerce has manifested itself in the increasing number of monographs on their organizational development and activities at the national level or in large cities like Shanghai and Suzhou. However, the overwhelming majority of the chambers in small cities and market towns as well as their networks from the local to the national level have not received much attention.⁴ This book fills this scholarly gap by examining more than 200 chambers of commerce within the Lower Yangzi region, the socioeconomic heartland of modern China, and it focuses especially on their network development and extensive influence on sociopolitical changes in the early twentieth century.

The Lower Yangzi region included Shanghai and two prosperous provinces of modern China, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, especially the highly commercialized and urbanized Yangzi delta. However, the socioeconomic conditions of the regional core in the Yangzi delta were still very different from those of the peripheral areas, and large cities like Shanghai and Suzhou also differed from smaller cities and market towns.⁵ Therefore, this study covers the chambers of commerce in the entire region not for their environmental or organizational homogeneity but for their interconnections and network expansion. Furthermore, chambers of commerce also prompted sociopolitical change from the local to the national level because their networks had already expanded beyond the region itself and influenced the larger society and state politics in the early twentieth century.

Lower Yangzi Ecology and Elite Initiative in Chambers of Commerce

The Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce and their networks developed on the basis of long-established urban and administrative systems in this region. Lying at the mouth of the Yangzi River, Shanghai had become the national center of commerce and industry from the mid-nineteenth century. Its International Settlement and French Concession attracted radical reformers and revolutionaries because of Western cultural influence and the political protection under foreign administration there. Guarding the upper reaches of the Yangzi River within this region, Jiangning (Nanjing) was the seat of the Liangjiang governor-general. This ranking official administered Jiangsu, Anhui, and Jiangxi provinces in eastern and central China, and he also held the position of imperial commissioner for treaty ports in southern China (Nanyang dachen). Linking the imperial capital of Beijing and northern China with the Lower Yangzi region, the Grand Canal cut across the Yangzi River and passed through Suzhou, a commercial center and the seat of the governor of Jiangsu Province. Standing at the southern end of the canal, Hangzhou was another commercial center and the seat of the governor of Zhejiang Province.⁶

The Lower Yangzi region in the late Qing period.

While general chambers of commerce usually appeared in Shanghai and other metropolises, their affiliated and branch chambers further developed in smaller cities and market towns in the Lower Yangzi region. Such urban centers and marketplaces comprised dozens of prefecture-level cities, more than 100 county-level cities, and thousands of market towns.⁷ By the 1910s, the population was about 1 million in Shanghai and between 170,000 and 270,000 in Jiangning, Suzhou, or Hangzhou. Within and near the Yangzi Delta, populations varied between 10,000 and 100,000 in most prefecture-level cities and between 1,000 and 10,000 in the county-level cities and large towns.⁸

The Lower Yangzi region had also been successful in producing the politically active gentry (shenshi) and wealthy merchants. The gentry included former officials and other titleholders who had earned academic degrees through civil service examinations, and all of them acted as elite leaders in local society. They became hybrid gentry-merchants because of their involvement in business, as did many rich merchants after their purchase of academic degrees and official titles from the government. This hybrid social group also developed through the division of gentry and merchant functions among the male members of a family or clan, through intermarriage between gentry and merchant families, and through their concurrent leadership in guilds and charitable institutions.⁹ These wealthy and prestigious elite merchants had long dominated commercial and community organizations before they formed the chambers of commerce in Lower Yangzi cities and towns at the beginning of the twentieth century.

By the late Qing period, a majority of such elite merchants still combined their pursuit of community leadership and even Confucian scholarship with the management of old-style businesses in the Lower Yangzi region, especially in inland cities and towns. However, in modern cities like Shanghai, it was common for them to expand their economic activities into new-style industries and businesses, enter semibureaucratic services for governmental enterprises, and serve as compradors for foreign firms. Because of their direct competition or contacts with foreign business organizations, these elite merchants made the earliest efforts to initiate Western-style chambers of commerce in China.¹⁰

One leading elite merchant promoter of chambers of commerce in the late Qing period was the well-known gentry reformer and industrialist Zhang Jian, a native of Tongzhou independent department in Jiangsu Province. Zhang spent more than twenty years to prepare for and pass the three-level civil service examinations, but he realized his dream to become the top scholar in the palace examination only in 1894 when Qing China suffered disastrous defeat in its war with Japan. In view of both the national crisis and new business opportunities in his home place, Zhang ended his official career in the Qing court and turned to the textile industry in Tongzhou. He succeeded in the industrial adventure because of his gentry connections with both officials and merchants.¹¹ Thus, Zhang decided to pursue his social and political ambitions by facilitating the government-business linkage (tong guanshang zhiyou). From the mid-1890s, he began to promote chambers of commerce as a device to unite merchants and officials for the vitalization of Chinese business.¹²

In contrast with Zhang, the major founder of the Shanghai CCA, Yan Xinhou, exemplified most elite merchants from the business world. Yan came from a poor family in Ningbo Prefecture of Zhejiang Province, but his native-place connections helped him become a Shanghai shop clerk at a young age. Through the recommendation of a Zhejiang native, he further entered the retinue of Governor-General Li Hongzhang, a major leader of military modernization and early industrialization in late Qing China. With Li’s help, Yan received the title of expectant daotai (circuit intendant) and made a fortune by managing the Changlu Salt Administration (Changlu yanyunsi) in Zhili Province after 1885. However, he soon left officialdom for Shanghai, involving himself with both old-style businesses and new industries. Yan gained high social prestige as a leader of merchant guilds, charitable institutions, and semiofficial enterprises.¹³ From 1899 he joined Zhang Jian, other elite merchants, and Qing officials in establishing the Shanghai Bureau of Commerce (Shanghai shangwuju), an unsuccessful copy of Western chambers of commerce. Eventually, in 1902, Yan received governmental encouragement to found the Shanghai CCA, and his plan for the first chamber of commerce of Qing China expressed the aspiration to end the estrangement between Chinese officials and merchants in the face of foreign economic intrusion.¹⁴

Zhang and Yan’s backgrounds illustrate the social diversity of the late Qing elite merchants in the Lower Yangzi region, but the two of them made common efforts to initiate chambers of commerce for the purpose of strengthening government-business cooperation against foreign intrusion. This fact raises questions about the class and organizational analyses of the late Qing chambers of commerce in previous studies, especially those in mainland China. This line of scholarship has usually stressed the common class interest or homogeneous identity of the merchant participants in these chambers of commerce and has focused on their hostile relationship with the state.¹⁵ In order to go beyond such rigid class and organizational analyses, the present book adopts a new network approach in its examination of the Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce and their sociopolitical influence in early twentieth-century China.

Network Dynamics and the Rise of Chinese Chambers of Commerce

The network approach has become an established paradigm in Western academia.

It conceives of social structure as the patterned organization of network members and their relationships. Analysis starts with a set of network members (sometimes called nodes) and a set of ties that connect some or all of these nodes. Ties consist of one or more specific relationships, such as kinship, frequent contact, information flows, conflict, or emotional support.¹⁶

This approach has the potential to analyze interrelations between both individuals and organizations, and it could supplement the standard social scientific research that focuses on individual attributes and behaviors or organizational structures and functions.¹⁷ In particular, an emphasis on interactive relations between both individuals and organizations can help reveal the full dynamics for the rise of the Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce, the starting point of the network revolution in modern China.

Chinese scholars such as Liang Shuming and Fei Xiaotong noticed the predominance of guanxi or interpersonal relationships in Chinese society long ago. Recently, the Western network approach has been used to analyze such relationships.¹⁸ This line of