China Merchants Steamship is the first time that the Qing Dynasty has tried to set up a company for civilian purposes, and its main business is grain transportation and various passenger and cargo transportation businesses. It is also permissible to transport military supplies under contract, but this is the form of civilian ships hired by the military. Therefore, from the perspective of the business scope of China Merchants Steamship, there is no doubt that this is a company for civilian use.
Judging from the organizational form of the steamship China Merchants Bureau, it also does not reflect the military color. In the initial establishment period, it was a form of government-business cooperation, and the management party was a private shareholder, but the policy decision was the final word of the appointed official shareholders, no matter how much the share capital of the official shareholders was, it was the official shareholders who held the company's policy decision.
However, since Sheng Xuanhuai took control of the China Merchants Bureau, it has changed from a joint operation between government and business to a form of official supervision and private management, that is, the supervision power appointed by the government is greater than that of the private shareholders who hold capital and shares, so the contradiction between the government and business has intensified.
When it came, in January 1928, China Merchants Bureau was changed to a privately owned state-run form, and in 1932, it was directly renamed the state-owned China Merchants Bureau, that is, there was no such thing as "private ownership". Then there was the War of Resistance, and China Merchants was almost torn apart by the war. After the end of the war in 1945, China Merchants obtained the right to take over all the ship assets of the enemy and counterfeit steamship companies, so China Merchants expanded rapidly, and the ships owned accounted for 40% of the total tonnage of ships in the country.
On March 20, 1949, China Merchants was put under emergency military control and forcibly transferred China Merchants ships to Taiwan and Hong Kong in a planned manner. But unexpectedly, the Hong Kong China Merchants Branch was rebelled, and all 600 employees and 13 ships that remained in Hong Kong returned to the mainland. But instead of continuing to use the name China Merchants Bureau, China established a new state-owned steamship company in April 1950, to which the people and ships who had rebelled from the Hong Kong China Merchants branch were transferred.
In 1956, the People's Republic of China reopened China Merchants in Hong Kong, but this China Merchants Bureau borrowed the brand "China Merchants" from its name, but in fact it had nothing to do with the China Merchants Bureau in the Qing Dynasty.
On December 28, 1972, ** was expelled from the United Nations, and in order to prevent the assets of China Merchants from being forcibly taken over by the People's Republic of China, Yang Ming Shipping was urgently established to transfer the ship assets of China Merchants to Yang Ming Shipping as much as possible. Since then, China Merchants has only a management agency and no ships. Finally, in June 1994, China Merchants was fully merged into Yang Ming Shipping, and there was no China Merchants in the world.
Of course, if the new China Merchants Bureau run by the Chinese ** and the State in Hong Kong in 1956 is still a continuation of the Qing Dynasty China Merchants Bureau, it is that this China Merchants brand still exists today. The most famous may be the current China Merchants Bank, which is the business opened by the Hong Kong China Merchants Bureau.