page_title: Qianzhuang
section_title: Republic of China
hierarchical_section_title: Qianzhuang / History / Republic of China
caption_attribution_description: English: An image of a qianzhuang (or "Money Shop") in the city of Shanghai taken sometime before the 1930's.
context_page_description: Qianzhuang, alternatively known as qiansi, qianpu, yinhao, duihuan qianzhuang, qiandian, qianzhuo, duidian, qianju, yinju, or yinpu in Mandarin Chinese, and translated as money shops, native banks, private Chinese banks, or old-style banks in English, were a large number of small native Chinese banks that operated independently of the nationwide network of Shanxi banks, these banks first sprung up during the Ming dynasty but greatly expanded during the Qing dynasty. Unlike the Shanxi banks, the qianzhuang tended to have much more risky business practices.
  These institutions first appeared in the Yangzi Delta region, in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Shaoxing. The first qianzhuang can be traced to at least the mid-eighteenth century. In 1776, several of these banks in Shanghai organised themselves into a guild under the name of qianye gongsuo. In contrast to piaohao, most qianzhuang were local and functioned as commercial banks by conducting local money exchange, issuing cash notes, exchanging bills and notes, and discounting for the local business community. Qianzhuang maintained close relationships with Chinese merchants, and grew with the expansion of China's foreign trade.
context_section_description: The Wuchang Uprising of 1911 occurred right next to Hankou, but despite China transitioning from a monarchy into a republic, the newly formed Chinese republic inherited its passé dynasty with fairly limited changes. Very little improvements came to the monetary market of Hankou and the qianzhuang would remain to be de facto unregulated businesses. The status quo would remain largely the same during the early Republican years, but the system based on social ties started experiencing more dynamic changes. 
  By February of the year 1912 only 24 qianzhuang remained in business in Shanghai.
  In Hankou the qianzhuang were divided into four cliques which were based on their owner’s native place or county of origins, these social ties in Chinese culture were linked together in a vague concept known as "Tongxiang" (which could be translated as "hometown-folk"). This division was seen as a source of both market stability and cohesiveness, in the city of Hankou they were known as "Bang" and had a suffix attached referring to their place of origin. If a qianzhuang is facing a broken capital chain, with poor liquidity, or risks becoming stuck in a debt crisis, shareholders will take unlimited risk responsibility to ensure the interests of creditors with all their capital strength outside of the concerned qianzhuang. In fact, when necessary, many shareholders can also use their own commercial credit to mobilise capital from the clique or their social network to maintain the credit to keep their business afloat. 
  The "Bang" of Hankou during the early Republican era included:  
  In another survey of the qianzhuang of Hankou which was published in the year 1935 it confirmed that 1925 was an unprecedented year for the Hankou qianzhuang, the number of qianzhuang increased from 136, since the last survey, to 180. 
  The first mention of the four clique division being used for the Hankou qianzhuang was in 1911 by the Japanese Consul-General in Hankou, Mizuno Yukiyoshi (also written as "Midzuno"). The Japanese were the first to utilise this clique system and it was later adopted by the Chinese themselves for record keeping. He recorded there to be 65 Ben-Bang, 26 Xi-Bang (9 from Ji’an and 17 from Nanchang), 6 Hui-Bang, 8 Shao-Bang, 16 small Qianpu and Yin-Lufang with no identifiable native-places; a total of 121 qianzhuang were counted by the Japanese Consul-General in Hankou. Like the piaohao (Shanxi banks) of Hankou, the owners of the qianzhuang would usually prefer to employ people from their own hometown and other merchants who had ancestral lineages from the same regions. 
  The top position of Hankou qianzhuang would be taken by the Zhe-Bang (Shao-Bang), this clique was also the largest clique of the Shanghai qianzhuang. The Zhe-Bang qianzhuang were the last to arrive but enjoyed the fastest growth, they gained the top position during the late 1930s and would remain the dominant clique of the Hankou qianzhuang until their abolition in 1952. 
  While the term "Ben-Bang" was used to describe  qianzhuang with native others, many "Ben-Bang" also had owners from provinces (outlanders) like Hunan or Sichuan who were rejected by other cliques. For this reason the Ben-Bang served exclusively as a balancing role. Officially the Ben-Bang had the highest number of qianzhuang business, staff employed, and capital, but in reality the Ben-Bang did not have a home-court advantage among the Hankou qianzhuang like the Zhe-Bang had among the Shanghai qianzhuang. One of the reasons why this might be is because the more "native" (benren) owners were very much identified to the municipal government, as the local authorities were concerned for their political potential they might have viewed these "native" qianzhuang as a threat to their political power and thus advertently depressed them into their non-dominant position. 
  In 1918 a local police report in Hankou had counted 329 qianpu. In the year 1919 the city of Hankou filed a registry census to Beiping, in the report the city counted there to be 69 qianzhuang which had an average capital ranging from 6000 yuan to 
caption: A small local qianzhuang in the treaty port of Shanghai.
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