ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to suggest some continuities—and by implication, differences as well—in the matter of "doing business" in China over three centuries: toward the end of the era of the Ming-Qing "tribute system", which came to a close with the "Opium Wars" of the mid-nineteenth century; under the "unequal treaties" imposed by the foreign victors from 1842 through World War II; and since 1949 in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Foreigners doing business in China were removed from the jurisdiction of Chinese criminal law by the extraterritoriality provisions of the Opium War treaties. The chapter suggests that in doing business in China, in the late imperial past and at present, one is confronted with a remarkably conservative society. It refers to the importance of kinship as a basis for business organization and the selection of management; or of other personal relations such as a common place of origin, common schooling, or contemporary military or bureaucratic service.
