Shun (David) Yan ’22

Pursuing a Passion for History

Interest in a lost Chinese economic system led Shun (David) Yan ’22 to independent research and publication.

BY DEBBIE KANE

Shun (David) Yan ’22 is intrigued by history, especially the parallels between ancient and modern China. His research about the rise of the Chinese compradors, businessmen who facilitated lucrative Chinese-Western trading relationships, led him to pen an article about them for The Concord Review, a quarterly journal showcasing academic research papers by high school students. His essay, “The Comprador System,” was published in the prestigious journal’s March 2022 issue.

In his essay, Yan posits that the emergence of China’s comprador class in the early 1800s, during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), accelerated the country’s shift to a capitalistic economic system and changed its social hierarchies. Early entrepreneurs, the compradors helped not only to open China up to modern trade but also to establish a banking and insurance system over more than a century. The comprador system faded in the mid-1940s, when Communists took over China.

Yan’s fascination with Chinese history is inspired, in part, by his childhood in Shanghai. “I always wanted to know how the city earned its nickname ‘the Pearl of the Orient’,” he says. He found the city’s evolution from sleepy fishing and textile port on the Yangtze River to a world-class city shaped by trade with Western countries like Britain and the United States a story worth exploring. “I was interested in the late Qing Dynasty, foreign colonialism and how China became industrialized,” Yan says. “The country’s early attempts at industrialization failed; compradors helped change that, establishing relationships with foreign firms to trade with China.”

During summer 2020, while home in Shanghai, Yan submitted a preliminary research proposal to The Concord Review’s online history camp; that led to nearly a year of research and writing. In addition to compiling nearly 30 primary and secondary resources — books as well as online resources — he visited Shanghai’s shipbuilding factories on the Yangtze River and pored over 19^th and 20^th century Chinese newspapers. “It was exciting to read what was written about the compradors,” he says. “I was amazed at the effort that compradors put into building a capitalistic system in China. Foreign merchants of all kinds — trading companies, banks, shipping companies and insurance systems — were in China because the capitalist system was holistic.” 

Yan joined the SPS community as a Third Former — a decidedly different environment from his life in Shanghai — after a friend left home for Groton and inspired him to research U.S. boarding schools. “I was eager to experience a new way of living and studying away from home and meet new people that would broaden my perspective,” he says. Continuing to study history in college is a given, but engineering is also an interest. Yan was a member of the SPS robotics team that earned a seventh-place finish in the FIRST Robotics New England District Championship this year — a satisfying culmination of his school robotics experience following two years of COVID-19 restricted competition. He also is a talented musician who has been a violist with the SPS orchestra since he came to school.

Fascinated with Chinese economic history, Yan continues to study books and articles on the subject more out of personal interest than as a formal research project. “I’m comparing Japanese industrial reform to Chinese reform during the 19^th and 20^th centuries,” he says. “The Japanese succeeded in industrializing their entire nation in the 20^th century. China didn’t. I don’t have a thesis in mind now but I may potentially write about what I find.”  Having taken this project on as an independent pursuit, Yan cites the friendships he’s made at SPS as key to his success in school. “My friends here have been most influential to me,” he says. “I learned a lot from them in many different aspects and their presence motivated me.”