Abstract
Anglo-Chinese relations reached their lowest ebb immediately after the Chinese Communist Party gained control of China. The process leading up to this was much more gradual than is generally appreciated. Close examination of Guomindang China’s economic philosophy and policies during and after the Second World War reveals Nationalist China to have been in the midst of a distinct process of becoming far more self-reliant than ever before, and far less an object of imperial economic activity.
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Notes
In previous studies, attempts were made to look into the last phases of the decline of Britain’s political and economic presence in China. See A. Shai, Origins of the War in the East — Britain, China and Japan 1937–1939 (London, 1976), and Britain and China 1941–1947: Imperial Momentum (London, 1984).
See, for example, W.Y. Lin, China and Foreign Capital (Chungking, 1945). For further discussion of this theme, see Shai, Britain and China pp. 157–8.
Christopher Howe and Kenneth R. Walker, ‘Mao, the Economist’, in D. Wilson (ed.), Mao Tse-tung in the Scales of History (Cambridge, 1977), p. 179.
Theodore H. Chen (ed.), The Chinese Communist Regime — Documents and Commentary (London, 1967), pp. 39–40.
See also Zhou Enlai, ‘Characteristics of the Draft Common Programme of the People’s Political Consultative Conference’, 22 September 1949 Selected Works (Beijing, 1981)
and Douglas S. Paauw, ‘Economic Principles and State Organization’, The Annal, September 1951, pp. 101–12. For more on the form of ownership in the People’s Republic of China, see Gene T. Hsiao, ‘The Role of Economic Contracts in Communist China’, California Law Review, 53, No. 4, October 1965.
N. Barber, The Fall of Shanghai: The Communist Take-Over in 1949 (London, 1980), p. 163.
M. Lindsay, The Cold War: A Study in International Politics (Melbourne, 1955), p. 19.
For more on this question, see David Fieldhouse ‘“A new Imperial System”? — The Role of the Multinational Corporations Reconsidered’ in W.J. Mommsen and J. Osterhammel (eds), op. cit.(London, 1986).
Yeh Li-chung, ‘Tao tzu hui liu shih shih hou le’, in the Economic Weekly (Fall, 1950).
G.N. Ecklund, ‘Protracted Expropriation of Private Business in Communist China’, op. cit., and A.I., Hong Kong to A. Shai, 24 February 1985.
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© 1996 Aron Shai
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Shai, A. (1996). The Chinese Perception. In: The Fate of British and French Firms in China, 1949–54. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375628_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375628_4
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