Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T02:19:28.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Do Local Institutions Affect All Foreign Investors in the Same Way? Evidence from the Interwar Chinese Textile Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2013

Peter Zeitz
Peter Zeitz*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore Business School, Mochtar Riady Building #6-43, 15 Kent Ridge Drive, Singapore 119245. E-mail: zeitzp@gmail.com.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article analyzes the impact of employment institutions on Japanese-, British-, and Chinese-owned textile firms in China during the 1920s and 1930s. Despite Britain's domestic position as a world productivity leader, Japanese firms enjoyed a 70 percent productivity advantage over both British and Chinese competitors. The divergent performance of Japanese and British investments in China is explained by differences in management practice. Japanese firms had domestic experience with employment institutions similar to China's and applied labor management strategies that functioned well under these institutions. British firms lacked the institutional experience necessary to adapt management strategies to Chinese institutions.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 117 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barker, Aldred F., and Barker, Kenneth C.. “The Textile Industries of China: Their Present Position and Future Possibilities, A Report Presented to Chiao-Tung University.” Publisher not listed, held in Shanghai Library, 1934.Google Scholar
Bloom, Nicholas, Sadun, Raffaella, and Van Reenan, John. “The Organization of Firms Across Countries.” NBER Working Paper No. 15129, July 2009.Google Scholar
China Textile Construction Company Qingdao Branch. (Three Years of Qingdao Spinning.) China Textile Construction Company Qingdao Branch, 1949.Google Scholar
Clark, Gregory. “Can Management Develop the World? Reply to Wilkins.” The Journal of Economic History 48, no. 1 (1988): 143–48.Google Scholar
Cochran, Sherman. Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese, and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880–1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Duus, Peter. “Zaikabo: Japanese Cotton Mills in China, 1895–1937.” In The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895–1937, edited by Duus, Peter, Myers, Ramon H., and Peattie, Mark R., 65–100. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Fong, H. D.Cotton Industry and Trade in China. Tianjin, China: Nankai Institute of Economics, 1932.Google Scholar
Frazier, Mark W. “Mobilizing a Movement: Cotton Mill Foreman in the Shanghai Strikes of 1925.” Republican China 20, no. 1 (1994): 1–45.Google Scholar
Frazier, Mark W.. The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Honig, Emily. “The Contract Labor System and Women Workers: Pre-Liberation Cotton Mills of Shanghai.” Modern China 9, no. 4 (1983): 421–54.Google Scholar
Honig, Emily. Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Jacoby, Sanford. “The Origins of Internal Labor Markets in Japan.” Industrial Relations 18, no. 2 (1979): 184–96.Google Scholar
Jewkes, John, and Gray, E. M.. Wages and Labour in the Lancashire Cotton Spinning Industry.. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935.Google Scholar
Jiangsu Employment Office Third Department. (The Situation of the Jiangsu Textile Industry.) Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1920.Google Scholar
Jin, Zhihuan. 1945–1950? (Research on the China Textile Construction Company, 1945–1950.) Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Kuwahara, Tetsuya. “The Establishment of Oligopoly in the Japanese Cotton-Spinning Industry and the Business Strategies of Latecomers: The Case of Naigaiwata and Co., Ltd.” In Japanese Yearbook on Business History: 1986, edited by Keiichiro, Nakagawa and Hidemasa, Morikawa, 103–34. Tokyo: Japanese Business History Institute, 1986.Google Scholar
Kuwahara, Tetsuya. “The Local Competitiveness and Management of Japanese Cotton Spinning Mills in China in the Interwar Years.” In International Technology Transfer: Europe, Japan, and the USA, 1700–1914, edited by Jeremy, David, 147–66. Brookfield, VT: E. Elgar, 1991.Google Scholar
Lazonick, William H. “Production Relations, Labor Productivity, and Choice of Technique: British and U.S. Cotton Spinning.” The Journal of Economic History 41, no. 3 (1981): 491–516.Google Scholar
Lee, B. Y. “Real Causes Behind Japanese Mill Strikes.” China Weekly Review 31, no. 13 (February 28, 1925): 363.Google Scholar
Leunig, Timothy. “A British Industrial Success: Productivity in the Lancashire and New England Cotton Spinning Industries a Century Ago.” Economic History Review 56, no. 1 (2003): 90–117.Google Scholar
Levine, Solomon. “Labor Markets and Collective Bargaining in Japan.” In The State and Economic Enterprise in Postwar Japan, edited by Lockwood, W. W., 633–37. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Ma, Debin. “Shanghai-Based Industrialization in the Early Twentieth Century: A Quantitative and Institutional Analysis.” Working Paper 18, LSE Global Economic History Network, 2006.Google Scholar
Markusen, James R.Multinational Firms and the Theory of International Trade.. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Moriguchi, Chiaki. “Implicit Contracts, the Great Depression, and Institutional Change: A Comparative Analysis of the U.S. and Japanese Employment Relations, 1920–1940.” The Journal of Economic History 63, no. 3 (2003): 625–65.Google Scholar
Moser, Charles K.The Cotton Textile Industry of Far Eastern Countries. Boston: Pepperell, 1930.Google Scholar
Officer, Laurence H.“Exchange Rates Between the United States Dollar and Forty-One Currencies.” www.measuringworth.com (accessed September 21, 2008).Google Scholar
Pearse, Arno S.The Cotton Industry of Japan and China.. Manchester: Taylor, Garnett, Evans, & Co., 1929.Google Scholar
Qingdao Textile Factory Statistical Office. (1947 Annual Statistical Report: China Textile Construction Company Qingdao Branch.) Publisher not listed, no date.Google Scholar
Ramseyer, Mark J.“Credibly Committing to Efficiency Wages: Cotton Spinning Cartels in Imperial Japan.” John M. Ohlin Law & Economics Working Paper 13, University of Chicago, 1993.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Bruce L.“The Impact of Trade and Foreign Investment on Industrialization: Chinese Textiles, 1875–1931.” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1975.Google Scholar
Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Economics Research Institute. (Historical Materials on the Rong Family Enterprises.) Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1962.Google Scholar
Shanghai City Textile Industry Association. (Historical Statistical Materials on the Chinese Cotton Spinning Industry). Shanghai: Shanghai City Textile Industry Association, 1950.Google Scholar
Municipal Archives, Shanghai. Shenxin Company Records. Shanghai, China, 1932–1952Google Scholar
Municipal Archives, ShanghaiSixth Area Mechanized Textiles Industrial Committee. (National Textile Factory Survey.) Shanghai, China, 1947.Google Scholar
Seki, Keizo. The Cotton Industry of Japan.. Tokyo: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 1956.Google Scholar
Smith, Stephen A.Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895–1927.. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Tolliday, Steven, and Zeitlin, Jonathan. “Employers and Industrial Relations Between Theory and History.” In The Power to Manage? Employers and Industrial Relations in Comparative Historical Perspective, edited by Tolliday, Steven and Zeitlin, Jonathan, 1–34. New York: Routledge, 1991.Google Scholar
Wang, Ju. 1945–1949?(The Last Hurrah of the Modern Shanghai Cotton Spinning Industry, 1945–1949.) Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, 2004.Google Scholar
Wang, Zijian, and Wang, Zhenzhong. (A Report on the Investigation of Chinese Spinning Mills in Seven Provinces.) Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1935.Google Scholar
Wolcott, Susan, and Clark, Gregory. “Why Nations Fail: Managerial Decisions and Performance in Indian Cotton Textiles, 1890–1938.” The Journal of Economic History 59, no. 2 (1999): 397–423.Google Scholar
Wu, Leonard. “The Crisis in the Chinese Cotton Industry.” Far Eastern Survey 4, no. 1 (1935): 1–4.Google Scholar
Yan, Zhongping. (A Draft History of the Chinese Cotton Textile Industry.) Beijing: People's Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Yoshida, Youshiyuki and Hiroshi Wada. (The Investigation of Qingdao Textile Labor.) Dalian: Manchurian Railway Company Investigation Bureau, 1940.Google Scholar
Zhang, Zhongmin. (Scientific Management in Shanghai Enterprises During the 1930s.) Shanghai Economic Research 6 (2003): 72–79.Google Scholar
Zhao, Gang, and Chen, Zhongyi. (Chinese Cotton Textile History.) Beijing: Agricultural Press, 1997.Google Scholar