The Chinese Response to Competition: Mining

Abstract

In Malaya, Siam and Burma, mining (essentially tin mining) was almost exclusively in the hands of the Chinese until the end of the nineteenth century. The companies formed by western interests in the mid-1870s and 1880s had almost all failed. They could not overcome their high production costs, their labour difficulties and their costly management. As late as 1906, western enterprise accounted for only 10–15 per cent of tin production in Malaya and only 7 per cent in Siam. But then it rose sharply. It reached 22 per cent in Malaya and 25 per cent in Siam in 1910 (see Table 5.1). Burma had remained only a very small producer.