ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that 'foreign capital' originated from profits made in China and from investment and share purchases by Chinese merchants, compradors and officials. Marxist scholars, in both China and in the West, have been guided by their ideology and historical materialist analyses towards the idea that foreign investments were necessarily imperialist in nature. While offering different analyses of causes and effects, many Western non-Marxist scholars have broadly agreed that foreign investments caused the destruction of the Chinese national economy. China began her 'modern' economic life with the signing of unequal treaties and the creation of the treaty ports. Since the 1960s, a different view of the relationship between foreign enterprises and China's modernisation has begun to emerge. The foundation of the Republic of China, the government attempted to adapt Western political forms to foster economic modernisation. Economic development in Hong Kong and Shanghai had far-reaching impacts on the development of the modern Chinese economy.
