Study On Yuncheng Salt Merchant

Shanxi Merchants,as a well-known representative of "private enterprise",not only ride for hundreds of years in Chinese history by its unique business model,but also created a series of advanced management systems such as the separation of ownership,human shares,incentive system.Shanxi merchants raised in the Ming Dynasty,and declined in the Qing Dynasty.Salt Merchants were also powerful and wealthy before,but they failed to escape from the falling.The rise and decline have attracted wide attention.The current study,through transaction costs,contract theory,path dependence theory,mainly prove that the prosperity and decline relate with government-business relationship deeply.However,few scholars study prosperity and decline of Shanxi Merchants from accounting perspective.This paper selects Fan Yongdou family for the study,and creatively studies the rise and fall history of Shanxi Merchants,the representative of "private enterprises”,by the method of " History empirical studies”,from an accounting perspective.By analyzing rise and fall of Fan Yongdou family,this paper make clear the impact of political contact in the ups and downs of the Fan Family.This paper finds that: The success of Shanxi Merchants is mainly resulted from its excellent operating capacity and its leader's strategic vision.The decline of Shanxi Merchants is because of the change of extern environment and government's attitude towards them.Then they undertook less profitable business,became a source of wealth for local officials.In current period,political contact is also one of the main factor of external environment of private enterprises.So,this paper also give some implications to current private enterprise: Companies should establish an appropriate political connection and keep operation independence.Even with the establishment of political contact,businessman should pay more attention to profitability.