Fujian merchants: Fearless for gain, faithful for clan [Eye on Fujian series]

Past and present, it seems that every Fujian person carries the reputation of being natural masters of commerce: moving with ease through business circles, socially deft and well-connected, steadily amassing great wealth.

Indeed, constrained by its natural environment and further shaped by humanistic cultivation, Fujian had long nurtured a strong mercantile ethos. These maritime merchants had dominated the commercial networks of East and Southeast Asia during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Over the course of their long engagement in trade, Fujian merchants cultivated distinctive business practices, style of conduct and temperament. Among them was their own approach to the relationship between righteousness (义) and profit (利).

It is said that all Fujian people are capable of engaging in commerce. A considerable portion of Fujian’s early settlers originated from the Central Plains. Upon migrating to Fujian, they were confronted with a natural environment utterly unlike that of their ancestral homeland. 

Even when the land’s productive capacity was fully exhausted, it was still insufficient to sustain the population, and this proved to be the biggest challenge. Left with no choice, they gave up all hope on fertile fields and rich soil, and took to the sea as their fields. Thus, their way of life diverged sharply from the agrarian economy of the inland regions.

As a result of Fujian’s geographical conditions, maritime commerce became an important means by which its people sought fortune. During the Tang and Song periods, a steady influx of Persian merchants transformed coastal ports of Fujian, particularly Quanzhou, steeping the local populace in a strong atmosphere of trade and profit-seeking. This gave rise to early native maritime merchants.

Although these merchants were small in number, they exerted a profound influence on social mores and values. Tales of wealth attained through trade were eagerly recounted and widely circulated. The precedents of mercantile success, together with the pressures of harsh living conditions, stirred among the people of Fujian an ardent enthusiasm for commerce.

For the Fujian people, commerce was far more than a desperate refuge for the impoverished. Under the lure of commercial profit, individuals from all walks of life eagerly ventured into trade. 

People from across the social spectrum often blurred the traditional division of occupations, breaking through established conventions to join the ranks of merchants — be it officials or Confucian scholars who engaged in commerce on the side, or abandoned official careers and scholarship altogether to become merchants.

The composition of Fujian’s merchant class was therefore remarkably diverse, encompassing virtually every level of society: the wealthy and the respectable common folk, humble cultivators of the fields, and even unruly idlers and rogues. Their large numbers, the breadth of their social backgrounds and the wide regions they traversed were unmatched by any other province in the country.

The Fujian people spoke unabashedly about money and profit. In trade, the pursuit of economic gain stands foremost, and Fujian merchants have never sought to conceal this. Although merchants occupied the lowest rank among the traditional four occupations (士农工商, i.e., scholar, farmer, artisan, merchant), their real position — possessing wealth equal to that of princes, looking down even upon high ministers, and at times standing in equal contest with the ruler himself — aroused the deep envy of many.

The prevailing societal trend of valuing commerce over agriculture long provoked dissatisfaction and anxiety within the imperial court, thus distinguishing Fujian from the inland provinces of the north.

However, this prioritisation of commerce over agriculture inevitably bred societal problems amid a social climate devoted to the pursuit of profit and the worship of wealth. The merchants’ growing decadence posed a powerful shock and challenge to the long-cherished ideal of a simple and modest way of life. To profit through trade, to improve one’s circumstances, and even to indulge in extravagance proved irresistable. Thus, merchants spoke unabashedly of profit.

When doing business, the Fujian people do not shy away from risks, braving life and limb to cross the most dangerous seas in search of profit and even engaging in proscribed commerce. As the saying goes, “There are always those willing to undertake a dangerous business, but none who will engage in an unprofitable one.”

The commercial inclinations of Fujian merchants, in particular their marked preference for overseas trade, clashed with the governing principles and value system of traditional China. A stable political order was thought to require an agrarian social structure in which people remained rooted to their native soil, each content with their allotted station. Imperial China inevitably sought to restrain and suppress commercial activity.

The risky behaviour of Fujian merchants manifested itself in two respects: first, in bearing the risks in long-term overseas trade; and second, in breaching the government’s prohibitions on maritime commerce. 

In the course of maritime expansion, the Fujian merchant groups forged characteristics far more complex than that of their agrarian counterparts. They cast aside the notion of remaining rooted to their native soil, acquiring instead a spirit of resolute mobility, ready to venture into the unknown and traverse vast distances. Their constant dealings with the sea also nurtured a bold and adventurous temperament, for each voyage could be their last.

Meanwhile, their contacts with the wider world fostered an open and outward-looking disposition. Nurtured and formed within an intense commercial milieu, a mercantile character marked by mobility, risk-taking, openness and competition increasingly prevailed over the agrarian temperament of settledness, contentment with precarious ease, insularity and tolerance.

During the Ming and Qing periods, Fujian merchants had actively recruited coastal folk to expand their enterprises while also adopting armed smuggling networks — at once piratical and mercantile, linking forces within and beyond the realm — to defend their interests.

Even after reaping profits from trade, Fujian merchants placed righteousness above all else. The alliance between clan authority and merchant groups formed a crucial foundation for the growth and strengthening of Fujian’s mercantile influence.

The early development of the Fujian region was closely tied to the migration of people from the Central Plains. The processes of economic and cultural expansion directly fostered a tradition of lineage-based communal settlement within Fujian’s civil society. As a result, clan organisations evolved into highly sophisticated and cohesive structures, and the power of lineage groups grew correspondingly strong. This strong sense of clan consciousness inevitably became a cornerstone of Fujian merchants’ development. Across the region, one could find instances of clan-based merchants, traders, artisans and even pirates.

And it was around the core of clan influence that Zheng Zhilong’s maritime trading network had developed in the late Ming period, with the fusion of lineage and merchant interests strengthening the stability of the group. Fujian merchants’ strong sense of lineage identity found tangible organisational expression in institutions such as guild halls, clan associations, temples, regulatory organisations and charitable halls, with the flourishing of locality-based clan associations especially remarkable. The hardships of making a living overseas further encouraged Fujian merchants to form tight-knit groups and alliances, banding together to secure mutual support and protection.

The close integration of merchant groups with clan authority was one of the defining organisational features of Fujian mercantile networks. It fostered in Fujian merchants a conscious sense of lineage responsibility, compelling them to shoulder the weighty duty of revitalising and harmonising their clans, with righteousness ever at the forefront.

Beyond meeting their own investment and consumption needs, Fujian merchants eagerly channelled their wealth into social initiatives: aiding their fellow villagers, supporting their clans, building ancestral halls, compiling genealogies, constructing bridges and repairing roads. They unhesitatingly devoted considerable resources to such undertakings — sometimes even to the point of seriously depleting their capital.

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