THE WAR AND CHINA
AMERICAN ENTREPRENEURS IN PEKING
As the second year of the Hwai River conservancy option was about to expire, something positive had to be done in order to make an actual beginning on this work. Mr. W.F. Carey, whose various enterprises have already been referred to, had arrived in Peking in December, 1915, with his family and a large staff. He brought over his whole organization, for his firm's arrangements with the New York capitalists made him feel ready, not only to negotiate, but to start work. He had completed extensive railway construction work in Canada and the United States; his organization was ready for China. He was a man accustomed to attacking his work with full force and getting it out of the way. He knew there was plenty of work to do in China, and he was ready to start doing it without delay.
Tested and highly recommended as the conservancy undertaking had been by the engineering commission under Colonel Sibert, the financiers associated with the Siems-Carey Company yet hesitated. It was then suggested that they do part of the work and reserve an option on the entire enterprise. The negotiations with Mr. Chow Tsu-chi, Minister of Finance, developed that the only part which might be dissociated from the whole was the restoration of the Grand Canal. But it would hardly be profitable to undertake this unless at least the whole portion from the Yangtse River to Techow were to be made navigable. Enough traffic might then be counted upon to afford by means of tolls security for the loan, together with certain tracts of land which would be drained. A period of four months was given to investigate the feasibility and cost of this work, while the option on the more extensive enterprise of the Hwai River conservancy was extended.
The men representing American firms who came with Mr. Carey created in Peking the impression of an onslaught of American enterprise. The International Banking Corporation and the American International Corporation had sent a new representative. The firm of Anderson, Meyer & Company, hitherto Danish, had been acquired by American capital, and a representative had been sent to Peking. Social life in the American colony was visibly enlivened by this influx. It was amusing to see how large groups of people from St. Paul, Kansas City, Chicago, and various Eastern towns, suddenly planted in these entirely foreign surroundings, could in an incredibly short time make themselves thoroughly comfortable, and establish intimate relations with their new neighbours. The various American representatives took large houses in the city outside of the Legation Quarter, where they entertained a great deal.
But by the legal talent mustered for the negotiations the Chinese were rather taken aback. Not much given to legal refinements, nor to setting down in the written contract detailed provisions for every imaginable contingency, the meticulous care of the American legal draughtsmen impressed the Chinese as savouring of suspicion.
Their own business arrangements are more simple and general, with reliance on a mutual sense of equity; moreover, all contracts with foreigners had hitherto been made in a less technical manner. An American lawyer would not be satisfied with this. He would think of the other corporation lawyers at home, sitting in their offices on the thirty-fifth floor, to whom the ordinary Chinese way of drawing up contracts would seem criminally lax. To overcome the concealed resentment of the Chinese took time, together with much talk about how the common interest would be promoted by completely defining all responsibilities assumed. The argument which really impressed them was that other foreign nations had frequently interpreted simply drawn contracts entirely to the disadvantage of the Chinese.