ABSTRACT
Chinese economic analysts of the period believed that China’s financial troubles were affected by the forces of imperialism. Foreign intervention forced the Chinese government both before and after 1897 to allow the development of foreign competition in China’s domestic shipping. The Kaiping Coal Mines were a mature and successful Chinese-owned enterprise by 1897. In light of the Kaiping’s past economic succeses, Detring recommended that the mines should obtain foreign loans as an alternative to stagnation. A major indirect pressure was the foreign-created post-1897 scarcity of Chinese capital, both governmental and private. The capital scarcity that had hurt the other industrial enterprises after 1897 had a similar negative effect on the actual development of Rights Recovery enterprises. From 1897 on, Chinese industrialization faced severe problems resulting from the greatly increased foreign drain of Chinese capital and from growing foreign control over China’s economic and political sovereignty.
