168
Then for firms with little capital but big plans for development, raising capital through the stock market was nearly the only way to move ahead. But the perfunctory manner in which public company directors often decided on annual dividends indicated that they did not really acknowledge the right of small shareholders to lay claim on company profits. And none of the spinners I have interviewed, irrespective of whether their mills were publicly or private-owned, mentioned the existence of a profit-sharing scheme for their executives as a form of incentive.
Ethnic variations
The above analysis only provides a general picture of the ideological orientation of the spinners. There are numerous ways to explore possible internal differences, such as along the dimensions of age, educational background and employment status, etc. But the most relevant cleavage for the present study is that of ethnicity. Did the Shanghainese spinners profess attitudes that would mark them off from their non-Shanghainese competitors? An analysis of the replies by regional origins of the respondents shows that no appreciable differences existed between them on all the themes about which they had been forced to make a choice.
This absence of an ideological divergence between Shanghainese and non-Shanghainese spinners is open to at least two interpretations. It may either mean that the economic norms and attitudes held by the Shanghainese entrepreneurs were not much different from those of other ethnic groups such as the Cantonese and Chaozhou industrialists. Since the business ideology of the latter groups have not yet been studied, it is impossible to decide on the validity of this interpretation at present. The alternative interpretation, which I believe to be more likely, is that the Shanghainese spinners set the norms and standards in the industry and established 'ideological hegemony' as it were. The minority of non-Shanghainese competitors were obliged to adopt the prevailing business attitudes within the industry before they could survive. This issue, of course, cannot be settled in this case study of the Hong Kong cotton spinners. After all, our exploration of the field of Chinese business ideology has just begun.