The Chinese accounting reformation of the 1930s

Abstract

This study examines the Chinese accounting reformation of the 1930s. The reformist work of Xu, the 1929 Company Law and the rapid expansion of Chinese commercial activity allowed a melding of the Westernised debit-credit model with the Chinese traditional accounting model. The fusion was complex, partly because two competing groups – reformationists and transformationists – had a different sense of scientific accounting development. What transpired, however, was a clinging by small to medium-sized entities to the Chinese traditional indigenous bookkeeping system, a preparedness by other small to medium-sized entities to take on Xu’s reformed Chinese-style method, and a willingness by large entities to engage with Western forms of accounting.