Entrepreneurship, Institutional Structures and Business Performance of the Overseas Chinese

This paper is a part of the report Business Development of the Overseas Chinese – The Case of Four East Asian Countries sponsored by the National Science Foundation of China. In past years, research on overseas Chinese business has risen all over the world. The overseas Chinese who amount to less than five per cent of the population of China’s mainland generate an estimated GDP almost equivalent to that of China’s. Although they are fewer than ten per cent of the population of South east Asia, ethnic Chinese make up 86 per cent of its billionaires. They also control much of the region’s economies. The paper enquires into two problems. One is entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs’ spirits. The other attempts to give an institutional explanation to the business experiences of the overseas Chinese. The relationship between economic development and its cultural background again attracts much attention from many scholars. On the one hand, this is partly due to the satisfactory performance and rapid economic growth on newly industrialised areas such as Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, which are influenced by traditional Chinese culture; on the other hand, it is promoted by the new institutional economics which has recently been in the limelight. The paper first makes a thorough study and investigation of the growth factors of the entrepreneurship from varied perspectives. According to the comparative analysis on the basis of different cultural backgrounds, it argues that there are four general factors in influencing the growth of entrepreneurship. The paper also draws some conclusions from the comparative analysis of the Sino-Western cultures, which may be used for reference in the process of reform of state-owned enterprises in China.