Sino-British Disputes over Collecting Debts in Shanghai Before the 1911 Revolution : An Analysis of Several Civil Cases just after "The Rubber Stock Financial Crisis" of 1910

This article is the second in a series three studies concerning the various activities of the "English-speaking Chinese" who sought to protect their private property in the period of unequal treaties in Shanghai during the years circa 1910. The main theme of this article is to reveal the position of those Chinese merchants who sought to guard their own interests immediately after the rubber stock financial crisis of 1911 in the absence of private law 私法, and how some of them responded to the situation. Immediately after the rubber stock crisis, the Shanghai Daotai 上海道臺, Cai Naihuang 蔡乃煌, accepted the proposal of Western banks for a 3, 500, 000 tael loan in order to carry out the pressing task as to stabilize Shanghai financial markets instead of collecting liabilities of Western mercantile firms from Chinese debtors. However, after receiving criticism from Qing central government officials and the local assembly of Jiangsu province, Cai and his successors changed their attitude. They tried to guarantee the liabilities to foreign firms using the confiscated property of the Chinese compradors, managers and proprietors of bankrupt native banks that had caused the financial crisis. The proceedings of six civil cases analyzed in this article were adjudicated in the above context. The analysis of the above six civil cases reveals three facts. First, although there were quite a few Chinese in addition to foreign firms who claimed liabilities from the bankrupt native banks and compradors, the claims of the foreign firms were given first priority over Chinese claims due to the lack of a Chinese bankruptcy code, which would have defined an equitable right of lien for the Chinese creditors. Secondly, the conception that guarantors had a "responsibility to press debtors to pay their debts", which had been employed by Chinese guarantors to protect their property from the claims of foreign creditors since the economic crisis of 1883, was no longer effective. Finally, for the Chinese defendants in the above civil cases, their arrests, the confiscation of their property and even the judgement against them at the Mixed Court did not mean a fatal blow on personal level. Prior to their arrest, they sought the protection of the prominent politician, Tang Shaoyi 唐紹儀, took refuge in Macao, attained Portuguese citizenship in order to protect their own property and avoid arrest. Even if they were arrested, they openly went in and out of jail in broad daylight to dispose if some of their property which was supposedly under confiscation of the Mixed Court. The typical examples of such English-speaking Chinese who were thought to have caused the financial crisis were Chen Yiqing 陳逸卿 and Tang Jingbo 唐静波 who ultimately had to rely on the corrupt Mixed Court System towards which the impotent Qing government could not respond because it had not established its own private law system