The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between intra-Asian sugar trade (China, Hong Kong, and Java) and Japanese imperial sugar trade (Japan and Taiwan), focusing on Japanese refined sugar export to China during the period between the 1910s and 1920s. Since the Japanese domestic market was small, export to the Chinese market was important for the Japanese (and Taiwanese) sugar industry to solve the oversupply problem. The following two points are clarified in this paper. First, until the 1910s, export of Japanese refined sugar to the Chinese market solved the domestic oversupply problem. However, with the rise in demand for the more reasonably priced Java sugar in 1920s China, Japan could no longer export its oversupply. Second, the reason why Japanese refined sugar lost its competitiveness was that Chinese merchants became fascinated with the more profitable trade in Javanese white sugar, and began to import it heavily, which they sold as falsely labeled "Japanese refined sugar". As a result, by the 1920s, sugar was produced and consumed within the intra-Asian market, thus making the stable growth of Japanese imperial sugar trade difficult.
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