Riding the Tiger: Merchant-State Alliance in a Coalmine Modernisation Scheme

This article examines state-appointed merchants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they attempted to transform a collection of pre-modern coalmines located in Pingxiang County, Jiangxi, China into a modern system conducive to Western technology. The organisers of this scheme first hired local literati and landed elites to transform their coalfields. However, these local gentry lacked the capital required for late nineteenth-century industrialisation, and made business decisions based on nepotism and parochial interests. Subsequently, outsider merchants with state funds and state power were assigned to the county to buy up the coalfields and replace them with a unified coalmining system that could utilise Western technology for dramatically increased output. In so doing, the merchants undermined the power of elite families that had previously ruled the region in the interests of the state.