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The jacket proclaims this to be a "meticulously researched study"; therefore, I was all the more surprised to find elementary errors. For example, Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British Government in 1842 in the Treaty of Nanking, not in 1843 (p 2). Also, South Sea Textile Manufacturing Company, Limited has never, to my knowledge, been known as "South Sea Cotton Mill" (p 55). Such unfortunate lapses, while they may be minor, tend to cast doubt about how much meticulous research went into this manuscript.
There is a tendency to report, not analyze. One might be led to believe that mill owners felt insecure as immigrants to Hong Kong (p 51). Yet, on the very next page, the Shanghainese entrepreneurs are credited with having a "long term time horizon" and that “in spinning, one has to wait before the capital will yield profit" (p 52). This contradiction is neither pointed out nor elaborated upon. Incomplete research in other places leads to trivial or misleading conclusions.
I found myself frustrated that, with all the data the author had in hand, other questions were not addressed. A Shanghainese industrialist in 1948, armed perhaps with an MBA, would, if he had done a thorough analysis, probably not have set up a spinning and weaving operation in Hong Kong. In those days, all raw materials, machinery and spare parts, down to nuts and bolts, had to be imported. There was no domestic market. And yet, not only did the Shanghainese establish themselves in Hong Kong, they, by and large, prospered. Why? And did they do as well in other Asian countries? We will have to wait for another book to find out the answers to these questions.
MARTIN TANG
Michael Y. L. Luk. The Origins of Chinese Bolshevism, and Ideology in the Making. Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1990 (East Asian Historical Monographs) viii + 366pp. Bibliography. Index.
Analysis of the incubation and early development stages of the Chinese Communist movement, lasting through the 1920s, presents historians with a difficult and complex task. For decades many of the intellectual elite of China had been convinced that only sweeping political and cultural changes could save the country from unlimited
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The jacket proclaims this to be a meticulously researched study"; therefore, I was all the more surprised to find elementary errors. For example, Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British Government in 1842 in the Treaty of Nanking, not in 1843 (p 2). Also, South Sea Textile Manufacturing Company, Limited has never, to my knowledge, been known as "South Sea Cotton Mill" (p 55). Such unfortunate lapses, while they may be minor, tend to cast doubt about how much meticulous research went into this manuscript.
There is a tendency to report, not analyze. One might be led to believe that mill owners felt insecure as immigrants to Hong Kong (p 51). Yet, on the very next page, the Shanghainese entrepreneurs are credited with having a long term time horizon" and that “in spinning, one has to wait before the capital will yield profit" (p 52). This contradiction is neither pointed out nor elaborated upon. Incomplete research in other places leads to trivial or misleading conclusions.
I found myself frustrated that, with all the data the author had in hand, other quetions were not addressed. A Shanghainese industrialist in 1948, armed perhaps with an MBA, would, if he had done a thorough analysis, probably not have set up a spinning and weaving operation in Hong Kong. In those days, all raw materials, machinery and spare parts, down to nuts and bolts, had to be imported. There was no domestic market. And yet, not only did the Shanghainese establish themselves in Hong Kong they, by and large, prospered. Why? And did they do as well in other Asian countries? We will have to wait for another book to find out the answers to these questions.
MARTIN TANG
Michael Y. L. Luk. The Origins of Chinese Bolshevism, and Ideology in the Making. Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1990 (East Asian Historical Monographs) viii + 366pp. Bibliography. Index.
Analysis of the incubation and early development stages of the Chinese Communist movement, lasting through the 1920s, presents historians with a difficult and complex task. For decades many of the intellectual elite of China had been convinced that only sweeping political and cultural changes could save the country from unlimited
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