| Summary/Abstract |
At the turn of the 20th century, China's pristine market looked fairly enticing to Western businesses. The Anglo-Dutch Oil and Gas Company Shell (Royal Dutch Shell) capitalized on local consumer demand to sell fuel and test development mechanisms amid a situation of permanent political instability and economic turbulence. The practices developed over the previous years helped the company promptly resume work in the region after the Second World War and neatly fit into the economic system of Hong Kong, which was experiencing radical changes from the 1950s to the 1980s. Ousted from the PRC, Shell became a key player on the fuel market of the British colony, which it used as a site to hone activity mechanisms during rapid economic development and a secure base of operations in the Asia region. The Anglo-Dutch company started to recover the position it lost in China in the mid-1900s by the start of the 1980s, steadily gaining a foothold on the promising market, which boasted a substantial resource base and increasing demand for FEC products. The conditions provided by the PRC authorities allowed Royal Dutch Shell to establish and develop multichannel interaction with local companies to prospect, extract, transport, and store fuel resources, as well as to process and sell them.
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