The Dasheng Cotton Mill, founded by modern Chinese patriotic industrialist Zhang Jian in 1895, was a leading enterprise in the early stage of the cotton textile industry in China and East Asia. The city of Nantong is now submitting an application for Da Sheng Archives to be inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, according to an international forum "Zhang Jian and the World Significance of Da Sheng Archives" held on November 5th.
For over 100 years, Zhang Jian and his entrepreneurial team, as well as their successors, formed a rich historical record in establishing industries, advocating education, and donating funds to public welfare, which gave rise to the archives of Zhang Jian and Da Sheng.
These archives witnessed the difficult process of the early establishment of Dasheng Yarn Factory, reflecting Zhang Jian's transformation from a traditional gentry to a leading entrepreneur. The successful establishment and joint-stock operation of Dasheng Yarn Factory have become a fruitful epitome of the combination of traditional Chinese economic management wisdom with world advanced technological equipment and enterprise organizational forms.
“The overall structure of Dasheng Archives' equity, the industry chain of equity, and the protection of equity, as well as the construction of investment platforms and trust companies, are reflected in several aspects of modernity. The modern management system refers to the joint-stock system, flat management, and differentiated management, and the incentive structure of equity includes the establishment of Jianghai Industrial Company,” said Tian Tong, Professor at the Institute of Modern Chinese History at Central China Normal University.
The Da Sheng Archives are preserved in the Nantong Archives, including 4 complete archives of characters and 23 complete archives of units, totaling nearly 10000 volumes or pieces.
Dasheng Cotton Mill produced 205 volumes of archives in the early days of its establishment. In 2002, the archives were included in the first batch of "Chinese Archives and Literature Heritage List", and in 2022, they were also selected as the "Memory of the World Register Asia Pacific List", becoming the 14th national archive document and the second shortlisted archive document in Jiangsu.
“The Nantong Archives holds 10000 volumes of Zhang Jian's Da Sheng archives, among which the archives from the early days of the establishment of Da Sheng Yarn Factory are a treasure. We are now working hard to apply for inscription on Memory of the World Register. If we succeed in making them the world register, these archives have profound significance for us to tell the story of China, promote Zhang Jian's entrepreneurial spirit, and improve the reputation of Nantong,” said Zhu Jiang, Director and Research Librarian of the Collection, Compilation and Research Department of Nantong Archives.
