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This research note draws upon secondary sources to describe the role of western shipping companies in China during the late stages of the Qing dynasty, 1840-1911. Driven by industrialisation in Europe and North America and a rapid increase in global trade, the world shipping industry expanded greatly during this period. Keen to take advantage of this growth, the British, French, German, American and Japanese governments adopted policies designed to develop and support their national shipping industries, and to help them access the new markets in China. As a result, western shipping companies quickly came to dominate both coastal and international shipping in China. This pre-eminence is outlined in an overview, and then in more detail in three chronological sections, before possible lines of research-based enquiry are identified in the conclusion.

Public finance is a social science which has a strong interdisciplinary attributes, and its study approach should not be limited on economics side. As a discipline that studies fiscal phenomena from a social perspective, fiscal sociology provides another way to study fiscal problem. Most of the previous studies on the history of fiscal thought focus on the fiscal thought，and give a little considerations on the institutional factors. This research approach will separated the political attributes of fiscal thought. Based on the perspective of fiscal sociology, this research studies the logic of the evolution of fiscal thought. The result shows that the class struggle, especially tax struggle, drives the evolution of the social system and determines the basic characteristics of the pattern of the public finance, both of them determine the basic characteristics of the fiscal thought. In addition, fiscal thought also reflects the ideology and demands of the class to some extent. Therefore, in affirming the rationality of Western fiscal theory, it is also necessary to consider the applicability.

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