To revive China’s withering global tea trade, Chinese merchants and officials proposed to form joint-stock corporations from the 1870s. The term, corporation, was translated into gongsi 公司, which was a financial and social organization within Chinese local communities to pool monetary and human resources. Thus, the conceptualization emphasized corporations’ social function in serving public interest. Driven by the sense of collectivism, these reformers also attempted to form business trusts –so-called “American capitalism” or “monopoly capitalism” –-to centralize tea production and sales. Moreover, most tea reformers welcomed the government into their enterprises to form the largest trust possible, thus employing joint-stock corporations to retrieve China’s liquan 利權 in the global commercial war and to combat the colonization of China. Transforming the ancient concept, liquan, from a term emphasizing “wealth and power” to a synonym of economic right, Chinese reformers integrated the business organization with the ethos of economic nationalism prevalent in China during the late nineteenth century.
Even though most of the efforts were abortive, Qing reformers’ emphasis on the collective and centralized management of joint-stock corporations facilitated the nationalization of tea companies during the Republican and Communist eras. Thus, this research is another work that portrays modern Chinese economy, including both the centrally-planned economy and the “State Capitalism” model, as not only a consequence of external influences but also a legacy of Chinese history itself.