The Jin merchants came out of the poor and isolated small mountain villages, from small to large, and finally vigorously walked out of a business group that dominated the Chinese business community and crossed the Eurasian continent. Swaggering into the market, which had previously belonged to Jewish merchants. As a result, Westerners began to have questions, what about the business strength of Jin merchants? Do they have a business talent like no other? Continuing to study deeply, they found that the real driving force of the Jin merchants lies in his ethics, in the integrity of righteousness and benefit, it is precisely because of the adherence and maintenance of this ethics, and it is also by the blessing of this ethics that the Jin merchants, who have always been humble, gentle, generous, and thrifty, ascended to the palace of the commercial kingdom of that era and achieved the dream of Shanxi people.
This chapter will focus on the ethics of Jinshang from the following three aspects: business ethics of Jinshang, focusing on integrity, righteousness and profit; The mental literacy of Jin merchants is rooted in self-cultivation and self-righteousness; The philosophy of the Jin merchants is manifested in the way of neutralization; The ethical norms of Jinshang lie in multi-party constraints.
OneJinshang ethics: integrity, righteousness and profit
The core of Jin Shang ethics
The core of Jinshang ethics lies in "integrity, righteousness and profit".
In the Ming Dynasty, there was a famous Shanxi merchant named Wang Wenxian (1469-1523), who abandoned Confucianism and engaged in business because of his poor family in his childhood, and in more than 40 years, his footprints had been "west to Taolong, more than Zhangye, Dunhuang, poor Yusai, Lijin City, has turned into Bashu, along the Yangtze River, down Wuyue, and involved in Fenjin, practicing Jiuyuan, Maijiuhe, soaring in the domain of Changlu"[1], and finally became rich. Someone summed up his successful experience and said: "Wen Xianzhi is also a businessman, good at scheming, knowing the importance of the matter, and being able to keep the times low, so he is rich." Friendship with people, faith and autumn frost, can be analyzed in the end, so people are happy to take their axes. He is also good at judging the expansion of the situation, so he is trapped in the well for life. [2] In a few words, Wang Wenxian's knack for doing business was revealed. First, it is good at calculation and comparison, and can analyze the benefits of the millimeter; The second is to be able to treat people with generosity and honesty, strictly abide by trustworthiness, so that they can be kind and scheming and not treacherous, and take righteousness and profit without the atmosphere of the market. [3] Wang Wenxian's own teaching to his descendants was that "husbands and merchants and scholars should be of the same heart and mind." Therefore, a good businessman is in the field of wealth and goods and cultivates a wise line, so although it is profitable, it is not dirty; The good man cites the scriptures of Mr., and the way of the out-of-sale profit is that it must be famous, so the profit is based on righteousness, the name is based on pure cultivation, and each keeps its business, and the lesson of heaven is also. In this way, the descendants will be prosperous, and the family will be rich and prosperous. [4] These words clearly point out the criteria for businessmen to choose between "righteousness" and "profit" in the process of doing business, and the only way for "descendants to prosper" and "family peace and fertilizer" is to "first righteousness and then profit, and use righteousness to make profits".
Qiao Zhiyong of the Qiao family even warned his children and grandchildren to pay attention to the letter first, the second handout, and the third is the benefit. Qiao's investment firm, which is a very successful and long-lived enterprise among the Jin merchants, was reprimanded by the shopkeeper for adulterating sesame oil in order to make a profit, and ordered him to pour out and replace it with new goods. They also provided disaster relief in the famine years, donated money when the country was in military supply, took over the car when the Empress Dowager Cixi took refuge, and continued to give full silver dollars to customers when Yan Xishan's military tickets were depreciated.
It can be said that the ethics of honesty and righteousness are the soul of many Jin merchants on the road to success, and the most essential summary of their lifelong experience. In addition to most of the names of their own business names with words such as righteousness, virtue, sincerity, faith, thickness, publicity, and cooperation, the Jin merchants also did make many examples of convincing people with sincerity
Example 1: Sunrise Credit.
One day in the Guangxu years, an old woman in ragged clothes came to the counter of Rishengchang and took out a crumpled bill of exchange and asked for cash. The young man took the bill of exchange and saw that it was a huge bill of exchange of 12,000 taels issued from the Zhangjiakou branch in 1881 (the seventh year of Tongzhi). How could a poor woman have such a huge bill of exchange? The young man hurriedly reported to Liu Fen at the counter. Liu Fen didn't have an idea after seeing it, so she ran to the backyard to ask the big shopkeeper Zhang Xingbang for instructions. Zhang Xingbang immediately asked him to politely invite the old lady into the office and ask him to explain the situation in detail. It turned out that the old lady's husband was doing business in Zhangjiakou, and because he was frail and sick, he packed up his business and returned home, and remitted the wealth accumulated over the years to Pingyao through the Zhangjiakou branch of the Rishengchang ticket number, and he only brought a paper bill of exchange back. Unexpectedly, he returned to the west halfway. On the day the body arrived home, the lady cried to death, and it was known that he still had a bill of exchange on him. After the funeral, the lady had no intention of packing up her relics when she saw the things, and it was many years later. A few days ago, I rummaged through old things, and occasionally found this money exchange bill in my husband's pocket. If you can redeem it, you can redeem it, and if you can't redeem it, forget it. It's been almost 30 years, and most of my life has been poor, so the shopkeeper doesn't have to be too embarrassed. After listening to the old lady's words, Zhang Xingbang was very moved, and he judged that there would be no falsehood in this matter. But for the sake of prudence, he kept the old lady to rest and eat, and on the other hand, he asked the account room to rummage through the boxes and cabinets to find the sub-branch accounts of 30 years ago. Sure enough, the original record of Zhangjiakouhui was found. Zhang Xingbang immediately decided to redeem the old lady with the interest**, and sent a man to escort the old lady home. This incident immediately spread throughout the urban and rural areas of Pingyao, and people believed in Rishengchang's personality credit even more. There are naturally more people who come to Rishengchang to save silver!
Example 2: Rich credit.
In 1900, when the Eight-Nation Coalition invaded Beijing, the firms fled Beijing with their capital, and those with deposits demanded cash withdrawals. The practice of individual ticket numbers is to refuse to redeem them, and promise to redeem them in full when the situation is stable. However, the Weifeng Hou Beijing branch of Li Hongling as the manager still cashed cash. Therefore, when Wei Feng returned to Beijing to reopen after the Gengzi Incident, his value doubled, and he was very respected by the various commercial houses in Beijing, and even the story of Wei Feng's honesty and integrity was praised in the palace.
Example 3: Weisheng long-term credit.
Another family called Wei Shengchang's ticket number, Gengzi was robbed by bandits when he fled, and all the silver and account books he carried were lost. Cixi and Guangxu fled to Shanxi, and many ** who fled to Xi'an with the two palaces held bills of exchange and asked to withdraw money from the general number of Pingyao. Wei Sheng Chang ordered Lei Shiwei, who had served as the accountant of the Beijing branch for many years, to set up a Jingzhuang office in Pingyao, responsible for redemption and loans. It's a very difficult thing to do, so how can there be no account to follow? Lei Shiwei relied on memory to redraft the accounts, which took several months and was successful. According to the accounts to redeem the cash, so that the new and old customers were greatly moved, Qi Taiping ticket number in the face of danger, the character of abiding by the word has been praised and praised from far and near. [6]
Example 4: Jiexiu Ji Jia Qiansheng Heng credit.
Due to the frequent activities of the Boxer Rebellion in Tianjin, and Qian Shengheng (Jiexiu Jijia's ticket number) took Tianjin as the main capital, Tianjin had to go bankrupt as soon as Tianjin collapsed. At that time, Qianshengheng's debts were high, and creditors came to the door to ask for silver, and the Ji family had no choice but to ask Jia Ru, a celebrity who was on vacation, to let him clear his debts, promising to pay off his debts in 3 years. During the period of repaying the debts, the Ji family auctioned off the gold, silver, jewelry, antique jade, silk and satin, precious fur, dozens of large boxes of good tobacco in Yunnan, and houses and properties with brands (shops, pawnshops, and ticket numbers) all over the country. The total value of foreign debts repaid within three years was more than 150 thousand taels, and the Ji family, which was famous for a while, has been in a slump and has never recovered. [7]
Therefore, we can say that "integrity, righteousness and profit" is the core of the ethics of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The ethical order of integrity, righteousness and profit
The reason why we believe that "integrity, righteousness and benefit" is the core of Jin Shang ethics, not limited to "righteousness and benefit", is because righteousness and profit are several different meanings in the minds of Jin merchants, there is a problem of ordering, and there is a close relationship between them.
As China's traditional Confucian culture says, "sincerity" is the foundation of the five constants and the source of a hundred elements. That is to say, "sincerity", that is, personal honesty, firmness of belief and stable morality, is a person's personal private morality; And "faith" is the five constants (benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, and faith; It is also said that one of the five classics of fatherhood, mother's kindness, brother and friend, brother and brother, and son filial piety), "faith" is mutual trust, which is the basic code of conduct for people to base themselves on the society as a social person and handle the relationship with parents, brothers and sisters, children, friends, leaders, and organizations, emphasizing that "faith" is in building a good atmosphere of social relationship network, and the criterion for individuals to survive in such a network; "Righteousness" is the "heart of right and wrong", which is a sense of responsibility for oneself, others and society when a person is faced with a choice; And "profit" is the ultimate goal pursued by businessmen. That is to say, Jin Shang arranged his own ethics like a pyramid, and "sincerity" was the most solid foundation, which should be built for life; "Faith" is based on "sincerity", which is the criterion for people to walk in society and deal with people; "Righteousness" is a principle of making trade-offs in the face of major rights and wrongs, and it is a higher standard than "faith"; "Profit" is the reward at the top of this pyramid, and businessmen must step up to this pyramid step by step in order to have a stable foundation and future glory if they want to make a profit in a dignified manner.
Why do Jin merchants take honesty and righteousness as the core of their business ethics? This is determined by a certain social background and ideological origin.
The Historical Background of Jin Shang Ethics
Social ethics is a value norm that a social group abides by, reflecting the common interests of the group, and the purpose of forming this norm is to restrain the behavior of individuals in the society, so that they will not affect the "public interest" of group development because of their own "private interests". In fact, since social ethics involves the common interests of all people and the resolution of conflicts and contradictions between "private interests" and "utilitarian interests", then after having its own group relations, this kind of ethics will have a certain stability. In fact, China's traditional ethics and morality have long proclaimed the benevolent ideas of "establishing people as they want, reaching others as they want" and "do not do to others what they do not want to be done". Businessmen take commodity trading as their profession, take business profits as their life, and unify the idea of benevolence with the purpose of profit, which is the basic content of Chinese businessman ethics, that is, "righteousness and profit, righteousness before profit", and the society's demand for this ethics is stronger when the market economy is developed.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, China entered a period of great development of the commodity economy. **Inflow, commodity outflow, the convection of the flow of money and materials, is the true portrayal of China's entry into the world's first cycle, so the north and Russia, Mongolia, Japan, North Korea, West Asia, India and other countries, the south and some European countries of the international ** by this convection mode of rapid expansion; The domestic economy is also affected by the rapid development of the economy and finance, and the prosperity of the foreign country, and the Jin merchants are an important business travel connecting the internal and external markets, the market expands, and the trade routes are extended, which eventually triggers China's commercial revolution and financial revolution in this period. The faster the development of the market economy, the more prominent the problem of integrity is, because integrity is a social and cultural environment that saves transaction costs, ensures transaction order, and ultimately supports the continued expansion of transactions. Because of this, in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, there was also a re-understanding of the social value of merchants. The result of the realization can be said to be unexpected, almost equivalent to subverting the understanding of businessmen in traditional Chinese society.
One manifestation of the subversion is that scholars have changed the "lowly merchants" mentality that China has believed for thousands of years to be "peasants and merchants", and instead elevated merchants to the same position as the highest class of "scholars". In addition to Wang Wenxian's exposition, Wang Yangming, a famous Confucian master of the Ming Dynasty, clearly put forward the theory of "the four people are in different industries", "Scholars are governed by cultivation, agriculture is supported by tools, workers are used by sharp tools, and merchants are used for currency. It comes down to the good of the living." [8] In the Qing Dynasty's "Hequ County Chronicles", it is mentioned that the Hequ merchant Chang Huaili said: "Confucianism from the beginning, filial piety and friendship; Then he obeyed Jia, and the people of Xinyi Fu. Uncle Bao's Hongtong, Mu Honggao's open-mindedness, ** is rare. [9] The respect and praise for a businessman with Confucian and Taoist cultivation in the county annals is overflowing. In the Qing Dynasty, in Shanxi, which is the most economically developed and prosperous, there was a general concept and social trend of "valuing business and ignoring Confucianism", "learning and excellence is business", and Jin merchants held the banner of Confucian integrity, righteousness and profit, maintaining and expanding the market at that time.
More than 100 years ago, the Japanese scholar Ando Fujio made an in-depth investigation of China's social economy and wrote a book "Wanderings in China". In the book, he directly expresses his astonishing discovery that the Chinese have special qualities that are superior to other people in terms of business, and one of these qualities is that "the Chinese are good at dealing with the world." It is precisely with this quality that China has not fallen under strong pressure from outside the country and in dire straits; It is precisely this quality that makes Westerners daunted. Guo Songtao, the first British minister of the Qing Dynasty, said: "Chinese businessmen are called Shanxi, and the wisdom of the people of Shanxi cannot look at Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and their calculations cannot be as wide as Jiangxi Huguang. ”[10]
These expositions show that the ethics of the Jin merchants are needed by the society from another aspect, and the society also fully rewards the merchants who hold this ethical view, that is, the achievements of the Jin merchants again and again.
The ideological origin of Jin Shang ethics
Since ancient times, Shanxi has been infiltrated by Confucian culture and gathered the strengths of other families, so the roots of Jin Shang ethics are naturally influenced by these cultures. For the thought of Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, Mencius explained that "benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, and faithfulness" are the standards of life. "The Art of War" emphasizes that as a "general", we must achieve "wisdom, faith, benevolence and courage", and "Liutao Wentao" is said to have been written by Jiang Taigong, emphasizing that the criteria for selecting talents are "benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, and courage"; Fan Zhongyan believes that "if you don't deceive, you can do it for life." [11] Sima Guang explained: "The sincerity is the way of heaven, the way of the sincere is the way of man, and the way of perfection is the same." The way of "sincerity" must start from "not lying to people", that is, "not deceiving", after a long period of cultivation, a person can achieve the realm of "words and deeds, corresponding to the outside and inside, and having room for calmness". "Sincerity" and "non-deception" lead to the "way of heaven". It can be seen that "sincerity", "benevolence", "faith", "righteousness" and so on are the first values advocated by various ancient theories, and under the infiltration of these cultures, the ethics of Jin merchants who have been studying Confucianism naturally inherit these ideas.
Jin merchants required businessmen to "value faithfulness, eliminate hypocrisy, moderation, good conduct, noble loyalty, despise self-interest, fraternity, jealousy, hard work, and abstain from luxury", oppose the use of any despicable means to defraud money, and ensure the reputation of the enterprise at the expense of losses. In the trade-off between righteousness and profit, it is emphasized to see the meaning of profit and not to make ill-gotten gains. "Benevolence takes advantage of the true gentleman, and righteousness seeks wealth and wealth", righteousness and benefit are interconnected. Under the influence of the concept of righteousness and benefit, righteousness before profit, and righteousness for profit, became the core of the ethical philosophy of Jin merchants. Honesty and anti-fraud, attaching importance to goodwill is the business ethics of Shanxi businessmen.
The concentrated expression of Jin Shang ethics
The ethics of Jin Shang are concentrated in the worship of Guan Gong.
Shanxi merchants in the Ming and Qing dynasties paid attention to the meaning of seeing profit and thinking, and did not make ill-gotten gains. They believe that "we sincerely call all the guests from all over the world and accept wealth from all directions". For example, Fan Yongdou, a famous Shanxi Jiexiu merchant in the Qing Dynasty, was favored by the Qing Dynasty because of "currency with Liaozuo and long-term faithfulness", and later became an imperial businessman, and thus obtained huge profits. His son Fan Yubin, who attaches great importance to righteousness, has a government-run copper and lead, and has a loss of 830,000 silver taels for Wang, and when he is dead, Fan will "increase the amount of compensation on time" on behalf of Wang; In the early years of Guangxu, Shanxi suffered disasters year after year, and the hungry people fed their stomachs with bark and grass roots, and it was once circulated: "Guangxu three years, half of the dead people" said. Qiao Zhiyong is not proud of being a rich family, but on the one hand, he asked his family to "ban meat and wear rough clothes", and on the other hand, he set up porridge shacks and donated silver for disaster relief. Affected by it, the rich families in all parts of the county have followed suit, so at that time Qi County had the least number of dead people and the least number of escapes, for this reason, the "Qi County Chronicles" specifically recorded the righteousness of the Qiao family, and Guangxu also asked Zeng Guoquan to inscribe the plaque of "Ren Zhou Yi Bo", which was given to the Qiao family to hang on the door of his old house; In this case, in 1930, Jiang Yanfeng ended the Central Plains War, and the Jin banknotes depreciated sharply, and several pieces of waste paper and 25 yuan Jin banknotes could be worth one new dollar. Qiao's ticket number Dadetong thought about it again and again, and still took out the accumulation of provident funds over the years to exchange customer deposits in accordance with the pre-war regulations of one yuan for one silver dollar. made the original struggle in the predicament of Dade Tong worse, and finally caused a deficit of 300,000 taels, and was forced to close down two years later. Afterwards, people learned that Da Detong made this decision to sacrifice his life and righteousness, not on the spur of the moment, and they seriously calculated a conscience account. Qiao Yingxia, the owner of Dadetong, said that even if Dadetong goes bankrupt for this, such a large consortium will not let its own people fall to the point of having no food and clothing, but for depositors, if we don't do this, the threat to them will be their lives. It is said that Qiao Yingxia's expression was solemn and righteous when she said this! There are countless similar examples in the Jin merchants.
Guan Gong practiced the word "loyalty" all his life, was loyal to the liver and courage, honest and honest, so that all the people admired, and was named "Guan Sheng Emperor", and the people regarded him as the god of war and the god of wealth. After the Ming Dynasty, the cult of Guan Gong reached its peak. Shanxi merchants worship Guan Gong because Guan Gong is the embodiment of sincerity, faith, loyalty and righteousness, and vividly embodies the business ethics of Jin merchants. Coupled with the geographical kinship between Jin Merchants and Guan Gong, the extreme worship of Guan Gong by the public made Guan Gong naturally become the "image spokesperson" of Jin Merchants. When Jin merchants were outside, as soon as they made money, the first thing they thought of was to build the Guandi Temple, educate their peers with their faithfulness, and protect their commercial interests with their martial arts.