I have been active in bringing together scholars broadly working on Chinese Business History, meaning the historical development of business and entrepreneurship in China. Together with my colleague and fellow business historian Dr. John D. Wong, I established a business history sub-group under the research cluster “Hubs, Mobilities and the Asian Urban” at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The sub-group seeks to further research on the business history of modern China and bring together scholars from around the globe working on issues related to the historical development of Chinese business.

As part of this initiative, we have started to assemble resources of historians of Chinese business. So far, the first step in this regard has been the digitisation of the Chinese Business History Newsletter, the newsletter of the Chinese Business History Research Group published between 1990 and 2005. It contains research notes and articles, book reviews and other writings by leading business historians of China. The digitised newsletter can be found here. We also edit a new book series for Hong Kong University Press that aims to publish new research on the busines history of modern Asia.

Moreover, we also organise a monthly Chinese Business History Webinar that provides an opportunity for scholars working on the history of Chinese business to present their work. You can sign up to the Institute’s newsletter here to receive updates about upcoming talks. Our line-up for the fall semester of 2022 is as follows:

We have also started to upload selected recordings of our webinars on our YouTube channel: