Zhang Jian on Leadership Transition

Zhang Jian's role is documented as: founder, Dasheng Cotton Mill; late Qing industrialist, educator, and constitutionalist official Deceased August 24, 1926, per Berkshire Publishing's Encyclopedia of China biography (research date: 2026-08-23).

Resigned from a path toward further imperial office after placing first in the 1894 top-level civil service examination, and instead built the Dasheng Cotton Mill in Nantong starting in 1895.

Took an official post as Industrial and Commercial Secretary in Yuan Shikai's early Republican government in 1913, then resigned in 1915 to return to Nantong.