Search

This article is a study of the so-called guild hall (huiguan) in the city of Chongqing (Chunking), China. By the time Chongqing Chamber of Commerce was established in 1905, it was said that the guild halls of Chongqing were made up of immigrant merchants from eight provinces. The author points out that these "Eight Provinces Guild Halls" had their origins in the Yongzheng period. These eight provinces were Jiangxi, Jiangnan, Hu-Guang (modern day Hubei and Hunan Provinces), Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi, and Shaanxi. The author presents a study of the interaction between local merchants and the immigrant merchants of the Eight Provinces Guild Halls in order to understand the development of regional social and political interactions.

This article draws on archival materials from the Xin County Chamber of Commerce during the time the Japanese administered Manchukuo. Since Xin County, China, lies close to the city of Taiyuan, in Shanxi Province, the archive contains rich information on the history of commerce in northeast China. The article analyzes the complex history of the Japanese occupation, public finance, and local merchants. The focus is on the formation of Xin County’s Chamber of Commerce, the business environment, policies implemented during the Japanese occupation in Manchuko, and how local merchants had to negotiate the boundaries between government and commerce.