ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the creation of trust companies in China in 1921–1922 in the context of a stock exchange bubble in Shanghai. Although the stock exchanges that emerged in this bubble have received some historical attention, there has been very little historical inquiry into the peculiar trust companies engendered by the bubble. Twelve trust companies emerged in tandem with the Shanghai stock exchanges, although trust companies had been virtually unknown in China. Goodman maps the first advocacy of Chinese trust companies in banking journals in 1919; the creation of vernacular knowledge and the marketing of trust companies through advertisement and public pedagogy by trust company promoters; the writings of Chinese economists who observed the trust company boom at the time; and the public concerns aroused by surging investment in the new trust companies. Of the 12 trust companies created, ten fell into bankruptcy within a year. The episode raises questions about the character of investor desires, understandings of risk, and the meaning of speculation. In answering these questions, Goodman considers the ways in which discussions of this episode and its traumatic aftermath were imprinted by contemporary practices of gambling and associated ideas of opportunity, risk, and fate.
