Sino-Japanese Business in China: The Luda Company, 1921–1937

Abstract

The weakening of Japan's position in China following the Washington Conference led to the establishment of the Sino-Japanese Luda Company to run the Zichuan coal mines, operated by the Japanese army since 1915. The inability of the Chinese promoters to raise sufficient funds for the company, however, allowed the Japanese investors the major say in company policy. As a Sino-foreign company, Luda enjoyed special privileges which were zealously upheld by the Japanese consuls. Though these practices eroded Chinese sovereignty, they did not make the company a financial success. This failure resulted partly from the Japanese investors' greater concern with their country's long-term fuel supply than with Luda's short-term profits; but this paper also stresses both the ways in which the Chinese, in their attempts to reassert China's sovereignty, harrassed and restricted privileged foreign companies, and the overriding importance of locational and geological factors in determining a mining company's success.