Written by one of the most distinguished experts on China’s economic and business history, China and Capitalism provides a highly original and at the same time clear and readable approach to understanding the development of business in China from 1500 to the 1990s. David Faure then uses the picture he has assembled to shed new light on the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese business today. The book is written to be accessible to people with little background in China or Chinese business practice.
Dr Faure describes three phases in the development of Chinese business from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. In the traditional phase, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Chinese business relied on contracts as well as on ritual propriety. In the modernizing phase, from the second half of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese business had to adapt to the introduction of company law and legal standards of accounting. In the contemporary phase, from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day, China emerged from a control economy to a vibrant market by embracing once again the changes introduced in the modernizing phase.
General readers, including students and teachers in courses touching on but not primarily devoted to the Chinese experience, will find in this book the most comprehensive account of China’s business development in the last five centuries and many insights into the workings of China’s modern business scene. Specialist readers will find a highly original approach to the history of business in China.

Bringing local history to bear on major questions in Chinese social history and anthropology, this volume comprises a series of historical and ethnographic studies of the Pearl River Delta from late imperial times through the 1940's. The delta is a rich and socially complex area of south China, and the contributors - scholars from the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the United States - have long-standing ties to the region.

The contributors argue that local society in the Delta was integrated into the Chinese state through a series of changes that involved constant redefinition of lineages, territories, and ethnic identities. The emergence of lineages in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the deployment of deities in local alliances, and the shrewd use of ethnic labels provided terms for a discourse that reified the criteria for membership in Chinese local society. The ideology produced by these developments continued to serve as the norm for the legitimization of power in local society through the Republican period.

In reconstructing the 'civilizing process' in the Delta, whereby local inhabitants, both elites and commoners, used symbolic and instrumental means to become part of Chinese culture and polity, the book confronts a central question in history and anthropology: How do we conceptualize the historical development of a state agrarian society with hierarchies of power and authority, attachment to which is both unifying and diversifying?

This book summarizes twenty years of the author's work in historical anthropology and documents his argument that in China, ritual provided the social glue that law provided in the West. The book offers a readable history of the special lineage institutions for which south China has been noted and argues that these institutions fostered the mechanisms that enabled south China to be absorbed into the imperial Chinese state—first, by introducing rituals that were acceptable to the state, and second, by providing mechanisms that made group ownership of property feasible and hence made it possible to pool capital for land reclamation projects important to the state. Just as taxation, defense, and recognition came together with the emergence of powerful lineages in the sixteenth century, their disintegration in the late nineteenth century signaled the beginnings of a new Chinese state.

Bringing local history to bear on major questions in Chinese social history and anthropology, this volume comprises a series of historical and ethnographic studies of the Pearl River Delta from late imperial times through the 1940's. The delta is a rich and socially complex area of south China, and the contributors - scholars from the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the United States - have long-standing ties to the region.
The contributors argue that local society in the Delta was integrated into the Chinese state through a series of changes that involved constant redefinition of lineages, territories, and ethnic identities. The emergence of lineages in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the deployment of deities in local alliances, and the shrewd use of ethnic labels provided terms for a discourse that reified the criteria for membership in Chinese local society. The ideology produced by these developments continued to serve as the norm for the legitimization of power in local society through the Republican period.
In reconstructing the 'civilizing process' in the Delta, whereby local inhabitants, both elites and commoners, used symbolic and instrumental means to become part of Chinese culture and polity, the book confronts a central question in history and anthropology: How do we conceptualize the historical development of a state agrarian society with hierarchies of power and authority, attachment to which is both unifying and diversifying?

Contemporary scholars place the rural-urban divide at the center of individual identity in China. This interdisciplinary collection traces the development and distinctions between urban and rural life and the effect on the Chinese sense of identity from the 16th century to the present day. It provides a daunting example of the influence that political ideology may exert on an individual's sense of place.

This book is a detailed study of the social history of a portion of the New Territories of Hong Kong from the 15th the early 20th century. The author traces the rise of the the lineage as an institution in this part of south China and sets it in the context of village organization and inter-village alliances.

Acknowledgements iii
Introduction 1
Pt.I An overview
Ch.1 Is there a colonial mentality? 9
Ch.2 In Britain's footsteps: the colonial heritage 25
Ch.3 Hong Kong's lost generation 47
Ch.4 Beyond colonialism: the shift in 1967 69
Pt.II Documentary appendix
Ch.5 Social welfare, including housing, 1949-50 87
Ch.6 British government thinking on Hong Kong, 1956-1964 127
Ch.7 Sir David Trench and Constitutional reforms in Hong Kong 195

Chinese history has always been written from a centrist viewpoint. Telling the story of a quintessential Chinese culture that spread uniformly from the administrative heartland to the previously untamed periphery, official records have largely ignored the local histories of the country conquered peoples, preserved for generations in the form of oral tradition through myths, legends, and religious rituals. The history of southwestern China, a region known today for its minority character, is the subject of this volume.
In Chieftains into Ancestors, the authors describe the intersection of imperial administration and chieftain-dominated local culture. Since the acceptance of a new socio-political structure never happens overnight, they observe local rituals against the backdrop of extant written records, focusing on examples from the southwestern Hunan, Guangxi, Yunnan, and southwestern Guangdong provinces. The authors contemplate the crucial question of how one can begin to write the history of a conquered people whose past has been largely wiped out. Combining anthropological fieldwork with historical textual analysis, they dig deep for the indigenous voice as they build a new history of China southwestern region -- one that recognizes the ethnic, religious, and gendered transformations that took place in China nation-building process.

This book puts together historical documents that illustrate the lives and concerns of Hong Kong people through a century and a half of colonial rule. It describes not only the ideals of the elite, but also the harsh realities of life faced by the majority, who until recent years lived under considerable poverty. It documents changes in standards of living, housing conditions, family life, communal organization and political aspirations. This vivid account of Hong Kong’s social history as Hong Kong people lived it summarizes the predicaments of people who chose to live in Hong Kong.