【主讲】尤怡文 (浙江大学副教授)
【主题】The Business Group for political, economic, and social networking
【时间】2018年6月4日 (周一) 13：30-15：00
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼701室
【语言】英文
【摘要】In modern China, 1935-1949, the business group can best be understood as an institutional innovation for uniting fragmented state and market instead of a response to the imperfect market as Nathaniel H. Leff stats (1978). The last dynasty in China ended in the revolution of 1911, afterward, China was not truly united. Powerful regionalism shaped China as a fragmented state in politics as well as economy until 1935. In 1935, the eve of second Sino-Japanese war, the tough situation in politics and economy drove central, regional governments and entrepreneurs to form a national-wide loose business group—China Inc. Consequently, through interlocking directorates, stock and debt, the central government was able to cross regional boundaries to incorporate all local forces into one interest body; also capitalists could penetrate intra-regional markets to integrate markets. Moreover, via interlocking stock within this business group, a new social networking which consisted of government officials, professional managers and owner-managers emerged. The birth of this top-management network somehow reached the ideal type of “modern corporate governance” theoretically, the separation of ownership from control, nevertheless, in practice; it caused the serious agency problems. Eventually, this problem pushed the China Inc. as well as the Republic of China to come to an end in mainland China in 1949. To visualize this China Inc. business group to see what is its structure and scale as well as who is in the inner circle, this research intends to collect ownership data and the list of board members of firms in this business group and employ networking analysis to sketch out the profile of China Inc. Also, based on historical archives and documents, the motivation, operation and influence of this business group will be discussed to dialogue with existing theory to answer why business groups emerge and how their influence are in less developed countries.
