Beyond Market and Hierarchy Patriotic Capitalism and the Jiuda Salt Refinery, 1914-1953

"When thinking about modern China's chemical industry, forget not Fan Xudong," declared Mao Zedong. Why would Chairman Mao praise a champion of private enterprise? As a paragon of the national bourgeoisie, did Fan's conglomerate survive on patriotism alone? What role might social and political networks play in economic development? Based on extensive archival research, Beyond Market and Hierarchy reconstructs how Fan waged modern China's war of salts. Led by his Jiuda Salt Industries, the nascent refined salt industry battled revenue farmers who, as a group, monopolized the production and distribution of evaporated salt. The struggle pitted him against the bureaucracies of the Northern warlord regimes, the Nationalists, and the 'synarchy' of the Salt Revenue Inspectorate in competing visions of state and nation-building. In the process, Fan practiced his blend of 'Chinese' capitalism: less for personal gain but for the good of the country.

Kwan Man Bun is Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Cincinnati, USA. He is the author of Tianjin jindai yansheng yu shehui (Tianjin renmin chubanshe 1999; reprinted 2010); The Salt Merchants of Tianjin (University of Hawaii Press, 2001); and articles on modern Chinese urban, economic, and business history.

Introduction
1. The Institutions
2. The Networks
3. Breaking into the Market
4. The Price of Success
5. Cartel as a Business Network
6. Relationship with the Nationalist State
7. At War
Postscript
Appendices
Glossary