Fox, Josephine, "Common Sense in Shanghai: The Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and Political Legitimacy in Republican China" (2000)

Title : "Common Sense in Shanghai: The Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and Political Legitimacy in Republican China"

Author(s) : Fox, Josephine

Year : 2000

Type : Journal article

Subject : History

Keywords : social;political

Journal : History Workshop Journal

Number : 50

Start page : 22

End page : 44

Language:Name : English

Support : Digital

Abstract : Fox explores the political thinking of Chinese businessmen in Shanghai in the treaty-port era (1910s-20s) through the public career of their most powerful independent representative association, the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce. It looks into their understanding of the relationship between Chinese and foreign capital, and at how this affected the Chamber's ordering of political priorities in its capacity as representative of Chinese business interests. It traces the necessity of `networking' in business-government relationships to historically-specific, rather than culturally-endemic, causes. It discusses the concept of political legitimacy in and outside China, and argues that the situation of 1920s Shanghai, characterized by weakness of state function and overlapping sovereignties within which individuals and short-lived organizations exercised power informally and through a generalized fear of foreign domination, made legitimacy practically impossible for the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce to contrive or afford.