근대 동아시아 설탕 시장과 홍콩 제당업―상인 디아스포라는 지속 가능한가?

초록

Global expansion of the mechanized modern sugar industry in the early 19th century widely transformed the structure of production and market of sugar in Asia, which used to be a leading area in the global sugar production and export. By the 1890s, Java emerged as the world second largest producer of raw sugar, while refineries in Hong Kong processed it and sold their refined sugar to Asian market, mainly to China and Japan. Sugar industrial capital in Java and Hong Kong could develop by exploiting the so-called free markets in China and Japan, which lost tariff sovereignty under the unequal treaty system. Unlike typical vertical structure of western sugar industry connecting colony raw sugar and home refineries, Java and Hong Kong sugar capital dominated the Asian sugar market through international business partnership mainly targeting the Asian internal market. This can be said to be the most distinctive feature of sugar market in the Modern East Asia. Besides, sugar refineries of Hong Kong were built by Jardine, Matheson & Co. and Butterfield & Swire Co., representative transnational British merchants. However, once Japan regained its tariff sovereignty, Japan introduced a vertical structure of the western model to establish sugar refineries in home Japan with using raw sugar in Taiwan colony in combination with securing the protective tariff and fiscal subsides. Japanese rising sugar industry led to reduce free market of Asia to China and India. The free market in Japan has been wiped out by economic protectionism. In China, the Hong Kong sugar capital, which advocated free trade, had to compete unfairly with the Japanese sugar, which enjoyed protective domestic market and high export subsidies. With China’s nationalism erupting in the wake of 1925, the Hong Kong sugar industry suffered a decisive blow in the Chinese market.

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