Borrowing without Banks: Deposit-Taking by Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Firms (1920s–1930s)
研究了民国时期知名企业如何通过吸收公众储蓄而非银行借贷来融资，这种创新金融工具为企业提供了廉价灵活的债务资本，并创造了大量信贷供给，推动了经济增长。
Abstract This article examines how and why renowned Republican-era Chinese firms raised debt capital to finance their businesses by accepting savings deposits from ordinary people instead of borrowing from financial institutions. The article argues that in the absence of a powerful unitary state and centralized financial institutions, Chinese firms innovated sophisticated, decentralized financial instruments capable of amassing large quantities of capital from a broad host of depositors without the involvement of financial intermediaries. Savings deposits not only provided these firms with a cheaper and more flexible source of debt capital than that on offer from banks but also they fueled the Chinese economy by creating a sizable credit supply, a phenomenon that Chinese business and financial history scholarship focusing on the role of indigenous and modern banks has hitherto largely neglected.