| Abstract | This China-centered study investigates political and economic factors contributing to the successful establishment and expansion of the modern Chinese flour milling industry during the first decade of the twentieth century. It examines the development of the industry from within the context of a strong, highly cultivated trade in American flour, which by the turn of the century dominated China's rapidly expanding domestic market. As the United States' second leading importer by volume of flour, China grew increasingly vital to west coast millers as an outlet for surplus flour production. Conversely, rising imports of American flour heightened nativist opposition to foreign economic aggrandizement and encouraged Chinese entrepreneurs to explore the feasibility of modern flour milling. This study examines economic factors affecting the various rivals in China's flour market--American imports, foreign mills operating in China, and native mills. It focuses on the ability of Chinese entrepreneurs to merge native raw materials and labor with advanced technology; small plot farming with economies of scale; village and kinship bonds with western management techniques; and traditional with modern business methods--producing a dynamic and highly effective hybrid industrial system. It also examines the development of the flour milling industry within a political context. It argues that the Qing's post-Boxer support of private industry under the rights recovery movement followed the most expedient policy for achieving national wealth and security. Convergence of Qing and industrialist objectives encouraged the formation of a synergistic state-capitalist relationship, which defined the contours of late imperial reforms, particularly as manifested in the 1905 anti-American boycott. |
