Abstract: As a chartered company, the South Manchuria Railway Company, Ltd. (SMR) is regarded as a typical case of the interaction between Japanese bureaucracy and enterprises. There is a strong economic and political relationship between the Japanese government and the SMR. However, existing research seldom analyzes divergences of Japanese government‘s intervention in various periods from the perspective of business history, nor does it discuss the economic impact of such intervention on the SMR’s operation. In fact, As a chartered company, the South Manchuria Railway Company, Ltd. (SMR) is regarded as a typical case of the interaction between Japanese bureaucracy and enterprises. There is a strong economic and political relationship between the Japanese government and the SMR. However, existing research seldom analyzes divergences of Japanese government‘s intervention in various periods from the perspective of business history, nor does it discuss the economic impact of such intervention on the SMR’s operation. In fact, the distribution of internal investment among various industrial sectors can be a new historical evidence for the Japanese government’s intervention in the operation of the SMR in different historical periods. Empirical tests based on historical data prove that state intervention marked by the growth of railway investment in the SMR directly stimulates the enterprise‘s profitability. This fully confirms the historical attributes of the SMR as an instrument of Japanese militarism's economic colonization.

Key words: South Manchuria Railway Company, Ltd (SMR), state intervention, government investment, chartered company, profitability, empirical research