The Business World

The Business World is a novel co-written by Guangdong authors Qian Shichang and Ou Weixiong. It was first serialized in the magazine Dangdai in 1988, and a standalone edition was published by People's Literature Publishing House in 1994. It is regarded as China's first novel to directly portray the market economy and as a pioneering work of the "reform literature" of the new era. Set in a southern city in the early years of reform and opening up, the novel turns its lens on state-owned companies, private enterprises, and individual traders alike, depicting the struggles for profit and the warmth and coldness of human relations in the business world as the tide of the commodity economy first rose. Zhang Hanchi, general manager of the state-owned Suiguang Company, is an honest man who only wanted to run an industrial enterprise, yet under heavy pressure he takes the position of group general manager and shifts into trade; after setbacks in the computer business leave him deeply in debt, he unauthorizedly sells passenger buses as tour charters to another province and is ultimately sued for illegal operations, resigning in disgrace. Private entrepreneur Liao Zuquan dreams of building a luxury hotel but cannot secure financing because banks are wary of private capital; he can only turn to a Hong Kong businessman for loans and even ends up in court with a former friend. Individual trader Zeng Guangrong starts out through gray-area methods and, after striking it rich, neglects his fiancée, only to see his life collapse on his wedding night. There is also Luo Taikang of the credit department, who, while investigating loan problems, is torn by personal ties and struggles to hold to professional bottom lines, and ultimately takes his own life after writing a remarkably bold investigative report. The work uses an omniscient perspective to unfold multiple threads, introducing credit, taxation, companies, transactions, and lawsuits—concepts still unfamiliar to ordinary readers at the time—into fiction, capturing the pain of institutional transition, conflicts in business ethics, and individuals' bewilderment amid the flood of interests. Filled with rational spirit and a sense of crisis, it is a window onto the early stage of China's market economy. In 1989 the novel was adapted by Pearl River Film Company into a film of the same name, directed by Hu Bingliu and starring Zhang Fengyi and Chen Baoguo.