RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 25 Item Table 5 Xu Run's Investment in Modern Enterprises Company Amount (T) % Place China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co 480,000 33.44 Shanghai Yun Wo Insurance Co. 100,000 Shanghai Chi Wo Insurance Co. 50,000 10 45 Shanghai Kaiping Coal Mines 150,000 Tianjin Guichi Coal Mines 100,000 Anhui Sanshan Silver Mines 60,000 Rehe Pingchuan Copper Mines 60,000 Jinzhou Mines 50,000 Other Mines 10,000 29 96 Shanghai Cotton Mill 50,000 Shanghai Shang Jinglun Cotton Mill 170,000 Shanghai Craseman & Hagen's Filanda (Yantai Saosi Ju) 10,200 Yantai Paper Manufactury 20,000 Shanghai Chinese Glass Works Co. 30,000 Shanghai Shanghai Dairy Farm Co. 30,000 Shanghai Hong Kong Liyuan Sugar Refinery 30,000 Hong Kong Tianyi Land Reclamation Co 5,000 Jinzhou Taggu Cultivation Co. 30,000 2.44 Tianjin Zhongshan Tongyi Ranyuan Cultivation Co 1,000($) Guangdong Total 1,435,200 99.99 (+$1,000)* * Mexican dollars have not been added in the total or calculated in the percentage Source: Xu Run, Qing Xu Yuzhi Xiansheng Run Zixu Nianpu. but educated in Hong Kong. He first came to Shanghai as an interpreter in the Chinese Maritime Customs in 1859. It is believed that he was introduced by an officer named Horatio Nelson Lay whom Tang had met in Hong Kong. Tang was recruited as a comprador by the Jardine, Matheson & Co. in 1863 but he left in 1872. During the decade of his compradorial career, he invested, planned, organized and assisted in the sale of stocks of a number of enterprises. These enterprises were called modern because they had adopted a new form of ownership, organization and management. Moreover, some of them such as steam navigation and insurance companies were the first to take place in China. Unlike Xu Page 45 Page 46 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 32 29 The term 'comprador' in Chinese history is quite argumentative. In late Qing times it referred to a commercial broker, an agent and employee of a foreign firm. With the rise of Chinese nationalism in the Republican period, the meaning was gradually expanded beyond its original sense to include politics in a negative meaning or collaboration with foreigners of serving interest of imperialists. In Chinese Marxist scholarship, comprador has taken on a political meaning. See Jung-fang Tsai (1981), The Predicament of the Comprador Ideologists, pp. 191-7. However, economic historians such as Wang Jingyu, realizing the role of Chinese merchants in the economic development of the nineteenth century, said they included compradors who had large investment in modern enterprises, been active in huashang fugu huodong as well as buying capital in from foreign aggressive enterprises. See Wang (1965), Shijiu shiji waiguo qinhua qiye zhong de huashang fugu yundong (The Activities of Chinese Merchants to Buy Capital-Shares from the Foreign Aggressive Enterprises in China During the Late Nineteenth Century) and (1983b) Shiji xifang ziben zhuyi dui Zhongguo de jingji qinlue (The Economic Invasion of Western Capitalism on China in Nineteenth Century), pp. 483-526. 10 Xu Run, Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, pp. 4-5. 31 As Xu himself stated, the estimate value of this amount after discount should be 3,219,470 taels. See ibid, p. 68. 17 Other investments, though the amounts are uncertain, can also be ascertained from his autobiography. They are: a pier company at Guangdong, a grocery at Shanghai; also silk cloth shop, tea shop, partnership in Huya'an Insurance Co., Huaxing Insurance Co., Difeng Co., Shanghai Land Investment Co., Ltd., Shanghai Tramway Co., Xunhuan Newspaper in Hong Kong, a water works, and Tongyi cultivation company in Guangdong. See Qing Xu Yuzhi xiansheng Run zixu nianpu, preface. 33 See Liu Kwang-ching (1962), Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China, 1862-1874, p. 155. 14 See Hao (1970a), p. 100. As Xia Dongyuan found that in the Zheng's zhushu (will) written in 1914, Zheng regarded 4,088 taels the interest from share-stocks as one of his main sources of income. See Xia (1985b), p. 268. 35 See Zheng Guanying, Zhi Li Zhaomin Fangbo lun zhuang Lundun Hongyuan Gongsi (Letter addressed to Li Zhaomin in discussing the founding of Hongyuan Company in London), in Xia Dongyuan (1988a), pp. 507-3; Wu Chang-chuan (1974), pp. 86-8. 36 As Wang Shui has concluded from various sources, during 1840 to 1894 Chinese compradors had accumulated a total income of about half a billion taels, see Wang (1983), Qingdai maiban shouru de guji jiqi shiyong fangshi (An Assessment of Compradors' Income and Its Spending Ways in Qing Dynasty), pp. 298-307. 37 See Thomas G. Rawski (1970), Chinese Dominance of Treaty Port Commerce and its Implications, 1860-1875, pp. 451-73. ================================================================================