Basically they are capitalist enterprises, but they still have obvious feudal characteristics. These "government-run", "government-supervised and commercial-run" and "government-business jointly run" civilian enterprises are "seeking wealth" And established... For the purpose of making money, they adopt the method of official recruitment of commercial stocks as capital, purchase new machines, hire workers for production, and sell the products mainly as commodities in the market to make profits.
. Therefore, these civilian enterprises are different from the military industries managed by the Westernizationists in the early stage. They are already capitalist enterprises in a complete sense. However, due to the constraints of the historical conditions at that time, each enterprise was unable to resist The competition between the capitalist powers and the obstruction of the stubborn feudal forces had to seek support from outside the enterprise. Only by hiding in the hiding place of the feudal regime could the enterprise bypass many obstacles that it could not overcome, such as requesting preferential treatment for tax reductions and exemptions. , requesting government loans, obtaining patent rights and special protection, etc. Only by relying on these supports can enterprises have more protection. However, doing so will inevitably make enterprises constrained by the feudal bureaucracy and have a strong feudal character. For example: In 1872, Li Hongzhang presided over the establishment of the Steamship Investment Promotion Bureau in Shanghai. This was the first civilian enterprise founded by the Westernizationists.