Emil S. Fischer who was for many years connected with the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank of Shanghai, addressed the students of the school of Commerce, Accounts and Finance of New York University last night on "The Commercial, and Business Methods of China."
In introducing the speaker Dean Haskins referred to the Chinese problem as one of extreme gravity and complexity. "We are scarcely able," he said, to comprehend the Oriental or Orientalism; and the situation is not yet appreciated either in the United States or in Great Britain. The dragon, which many suppose to be dead, is full of vitality and resource.'
Mr. Fischer's address was of about an hour's duration. The Portuguese, he said, were the first Europeans to engage in business in China, some of them settling in southern "hina in 1557. They were soon followed by the Dutch and British, who established branches of the East India Company in Canton in 1750. American merchants first appeared in China in 1784, and since that date, especially during the last decade, American commerce in China has steadily increased. China's foreign trade virtually dates back only to the treaties of 1842, and America's share in it is now only second to that of Great Britain. At present there are about thirty trading centres in China, distributed over the empire, where foreigners by treaties have the privilege of residing and doing business. Mr. Fischer said, however, that so far as the inland trade is concerned the privileges conferred on foreigners are mostly enjoyed by the natives exclusively.
Foreign importers confine their business mainly to the British free port of Hongkong, from which South China is supplied, and to Shanghai, which is the distributing centre for the north. Foreigners cannot. compete in the interior with native dealers, whose smaller needs and expenses and cheaper mode of living render competition by the foreign merchant impossible. According to the agreement just concluded with the powers, a strict ad valorem duty of five per cent will be collected on goods imported into China for the future. According to information obtained from Commissioner Rockhill, who recently returned from China, Mr. Fischer said that the inland toll collections, generally known as "likin," were not considered in the recent negotiations. The difficulties attending the transhipment of foreign merchandise have, therefore, not been removed, but the advantage which the Chinese have had over foreigners by the use of cheap junk transportation is overcome, because the whole junk trade passing through a treaty port is to be controlled in the future by the Imperial Maritime Custom'.
Speaking of the general business methods between natives and foreign commission houses established in the East, he produced several trade-marks, known as "chops," and so-called "indent" orders, provided for the occasion by the Flint, Eddy and American Trading Company. Mr. Fischer predicts a rapid expansion of American trade in China as a result of the laying of the Pacific cable and tne construction of an Isthmian Canal. China, he said, will build several thousand miles of railroad in the near future, and these will result in a great development of Oriental commerce. If American banking institutions could establish branches in the East, our trade with China would receive a groat stimulus.—New York Commercial Ad-dvertiser," 14th November.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.