Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.1 | The History Cooperative

Same Bed, Different Dreams: A History of the Chinese American Bank of Commerce, 1919-1937. By Noel H. Pugach. (University of Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, 1997. xii, 376 pp. HK $160.00, isbn 962-8269-06-2.)

This book traces the interwar rise and fall of a Sino-American joint venture bank. In the tradition of parallel lives, the book documents that uncertainties are nothing new for those doing business in China. 1

Its treatment glosses over three inherent complications. The first is that Republican China in the 1920s, which period largely sealed the institution's fate, was extremely complex in historical terms. It included treaty power jockeying as prologue to the Pacific War, China's warlord period without effective central government, Sun Yat-sen's nationalist legacy including Communist cooperation, and the Communists' ultimate break with the Kuomintang leading to civil war and general economic turmoil. There is a fleeting effort to address the complex setting of the story in an introductory chapter and the footnote sources. However, most of the work follows a chronology of the joint enterprise. The nonspecialist will be lost among the references that connect Chinese managers, shareholders, and borrowers to various political factions. Nonetheless, clear understanding is critical given the author's ultimate assignment of major responsibility for the bank's failure to politicized Chinese management and loans. . . .

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