ABSTRACT
Among scholars in the People's Republic of China the connection between scholarship and current politics is particularly strong. Ironically, the dominance of class analysis in the study of Chinese business history has resulted in neglect of some of the most important factors contributing to enterprise development. Scholars have found it difficult to deal with the labor practices of firms. An obsession with class labeling has also tended to obscure the actual activities of business people and the fact that people have played many roles in their lifetimes, often simultaneously. Thus, the economic activities of compradors become "negative" factors in Chinese business history, and whole generations of twentieth century historians have wasted their time trying to determine who was and was not a member of the "national bourgeoisie". Rather than trace a genealogy of Chinese writing about business history, Man-houng Lin's article outlines a large number of themes that have been important to the study of Chinese business history in Taiwan.
