Cotton Plantations, Elite Networks, and the Territorialization of Company Power in Early Republican China, 1912–22

In early Republican China, land reclamation companies proliferated in coastal Jiangsu to establish cotton plantations for the development of China’s national textile industry. Despite their grounding in economic nationalism, these companies exercised territorialized power in localities similar to colonial enterprises of the concession companies in British India, Dutch East Indies, and Belgian Central Africa. They established company towns, administered townships, organized patrols, founded schools, constructed infrastructure, and disciplined their labor force.

This paper examines how these companies territorialized their power amidst protests from local residents and how this process was supported by the Beijing government, the national government in early Republican China. Since 1913, Zhang Jian, a pioneer of land reclamation in coastal Jiangsu, began serving as the minister overseeing agriculture, commerce, and industry in the Beijing government. During his tenure, the government issued national plans to develop land reclamation projects and encouraged initiatives in coastal Jiangsu, leading to the founding of numerous new companies and cotton plantations along the coastline by 1922. However, this expansion often sparked conflicts with local residents over land ownership.

This paper employs network analysis to examine the elite network of actors within the government and land reclamation companies, demonstrating how the close relationship between the business community and officialdom facilitated the territorialization of power by these companies in the region. In contrast to the prevailing notion of a weak Beijing government granting Chinese entrepreneurs’ relative freedom in entrepreneurial endeavors, this paper argues that in the land reclamation enterprise, the Beijing government formulated a national industrial policy that was collectively implemented by political and economic elites.