American China Development Company

The American China Development Company was a company that aimed to gain railway, mining, and other industrial concessions in China. Led by former Ohio senator and railway lawyer, Calvin Brice , the company was incorporated in December 1895. Early stockholders included many well-known American businessmen, including Charles Coster of J.P. Morgan & Company, the Carnegie Steel Company, the presidents of the National City Bank of New York, and the Chase National Bank. The company played an important role in American involvement in China and in the Open Door Policy during the “battle of concessions” at the turn of the century.

A.W. Bash, of Seattle, was sent to China in the spring of 1896 as an agent for the American China Development Company, arriving with letters of recommendation from the State Department. Bash also represented a group of American businessmen who aimed to build a railway line that would cross China from north to south. By November 1896, Bash and the director general of the Chinese Railway Bureau, Sheng Hsuan-huai, had reached an initial agreement for the construction of a railway line from the Marco Polo Bridge over the Yongding near Beijing (then romanized as "Peking") to Hankou ("Hankow") in the south on the Yangtze. However, a formal agreement was not reached and Charles Denby, charge d’affaires for the American China Development Company, urged the imperial authorities to instruct Sheng to quickly agree to a contract. This resulted in the Chinese giving the concession to a Belgian group that was funded by Paris financiers and the Russo-Chinese Bank.

The American China Development Company then pursued the right to build the southern leg, from Wuchang across the river from Hankou to Guangzhou ("Canton") on the Pearl River. America, unlike the Russian, French, German, Japanese, or British empires, did not have a political stake in the Chinese economy and had significant experience building railroads, which made the American China Development Company an attractive option. In April 1898, the Chinese minister in Washington and A.W. Bash came to an agreement for a loan in which the American company had to market bonds worth 4,000,000, to oversee the construction of the railroad, and to operate it during the fifty years of the loan period. The concession also allowed the company to operate coal mines nearby. The Guangzhou–Wuchang line was the only railway project secured by an American company after 1895, but even this railway line would be lost within seven years.

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