ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to apply the modern history of China as the backdrop to the derivation of an interdisciplinary study of the financial industry in China. The Chinese financial industry into four categories. They are Qianzhuang traditional financial houses, Zhangju traditional Chinese commercial finance houses, Piaohao draft banks and Yinhang banks. Through the narrative storytelling of the four different categories of the Chinese financial industry, understanding is hopefully derived which uncovers, discovers and recovers the philosophical and cultural roots of Chinese banking and finance, taking into account the countrys radically changing socio-economic and socio-political circumstances. In view of the socio-economic and socio-political changes, disturbances and turmoil of China since the outbreak of the Opium War when the traditional Chinese financial houses of Qianzhuang, Zhangju as well as Piaohao went from prosperity to collapse and, in order to postulate an easier understanding of the Chinese banking and finance in the context of such a complex social, economic and political background.