China–Japan Relations after World War Two


Book Description

A rich empirical account of China's foreign economic policy towards Japan after World War Two, drawing on hundreds of recently declassified Chinese sources. Amy King offers an innovative conceptual framework for the role of ideas in shaping foreign policy, and examines how China's Communist leaders conceived of Japan after the war. The book shows how Japan became China's most important economic partner in 1971, despite the recent history of war and the ongoing Cold War divide between the two countries. It explains that China's Communist leaders saw Japan as a symbol of a modern, industrialised nation, and Japanese goods, technology and expertise as crucial in strengthening China's economy and military. For China and Japan, the years between 1949 and 1971 were not simply a moment disrupted by the Cold War, but rather an important moment of non-Western modernisation stemming from the legacy of Japanese empire, industry and war in China.




State, Peasant, and Merchant in Qing Manchuria, 1644-1862


Book Description

This study seeks to lay bare the relationship between the sociopolitical structures that shaped peasant lives in Manchuria (northeast China) during the Qing dynasty and the development of that region’s economy. The book is written in three parts. It begins with an analysis of the ideological, political, and economic interests of the Qing ruling house in defending its homeland in the northeast against occupation by non-Manchus, and examines how these interests informed state policy and the reconfiguration of the region’s social landscape in the first decades of the dynasty. The book then addresses how this agrarian configuration unraveled under challenge from settler peasant communities and gives an account of the resulting property and labor regimes. The study ends with an account of how that social formation configured peasant economic behavior and in so doing established the limits of economic change and trade growth.




Paths to the Emerging State in Asia and Africa


Book Description

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This book addresses the issue of how a country, which was incorporated into the world economy as a periphery, could make a transition to the emerging state, capable of undertaking the task of economic development and industrialization. It offers historical and contemporary case studies of transition, as well as the international background under which such a transition was successfully made (or delayed), by combining the approaches of economic history and development economics. Its aim is to identify relevant historical contexts, that is, the ‘initial conditions’ and internal and external forces which governed the transition. It also aims to understand what current low-income developing countries require for their transition. Three economic driving forces for the transition are identified. They are: (1) labor-intensive industrialization, which offers ample employment opportunities for labor force; (2) international trade, which facilitates efficient international division of labor; and (3) agricultural development, which improves food security by increasing supply of staple foods. The book presents a bold account of each driver for the transition.




Development Centre Studies Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run


Book Description

The study provides a major reassessment of the scale and scope of China’s resurgence over the past half century, employing quantitative measurement techniques which are standard practice in OECD countries, but which have not hitherto been available for China.




State-Sponsored Inequality


Book Description

This book explores the social economic processes of inequality in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century rural China. Drawing on uniquely rich source materials, Shuang Chen provides a comprehensive view of the creation of a social hierarchy wherein the state classified immigrants to the Chinese county of Shuangcheng into distinct categories, each associated with different land entitlements. The resulting patterns of wealth stratification and social hierarchy were then simultaneously challenged and reinforced by local people. The tensions built into the unequal land entitlements shaped the identities of immigrant groups, and this social hierarchy persisted even after the institution of unequal state entitlements was removed. State-Sponsored Inequality offers an in-depth understanding of the key factors that contribute to social stratification in agrarian societies. Moreover, it sheds light on the many parallels between the stratification system in nineteenth-century Shuangcheng and structural inequality in contemporary China.




A Continuous Revolution


Book Description

Cultural Revolution Culture, often denigrated as nothing but propaganda, was liked not only in its heyday but continues to be enjoyed today. A Continuous Revolution sets out to explain its legacy. By considering Cultural Revolution propaganda art—music, stage works, prints and posters, comics, and literature—from the point of view of its longue durée, Barbara Mittler suggests it was able to build on a tradition of earlier art works, and this allowed for its sedimentation in cultural memory and its proliferation in contemporary China. Taking the aesthetic experience of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) as her base, Mittler juxtaposes close readings and analyses of cultural products from the period with impressions given in a series of personal interviews conducted in the early 2000s with Chinese from diverse class and generational backgrounds. By including much testimony from these original voices, Mittler illustrates the extremely multifaceted and contradictory nature of the Cultural Revolution, both in terms of artistic production and of its cultural experience.




Industrial Development in Pre-Communist China


Book Description

The Chinese economy has been the subject of substantial research in recent years in the United States and abroad. Much has been made of significant strides toward industrial development since the Communist takeover. But it is impossible to understand what has been achieved unless one measures these gains against economic events in the pre-Communist period. This book offers a record of China's industrialization, with its comprehensive statistical analysis of the industrial growth of pre-Communist China.Industrial Development in Pre-Communist China covers the period from 1912 to 1949 and deals with all of China irrespective of changes in political boundaries. For purposes of this study, ""industrial production"" includes mining, metallurgy, manufacturing, and fuel and power; the construction industry is not included. Chang finds that the average annual rate of growth of the modern industrial sector during the pre-World War I period was about 8 or 9 percent, including Manchuria. During the period from 1928 to 1936, under the Nanking Government, political unification was achieved. Peace and order were maintained and the necessary foundations for economic transformation in the post-World War II period were established.At the time of its original publication in 1969, Chang's work represented an important first step toward a comprehensive, quantitative study of the history of China's industrialization and a benchmark against which the Communist achievement can be measured, this work forces reconsideration of widely held views on China's economic and industrial development. An important reference for the study of Chinese history and economics, especially for the Republican period, Chang's work is of continuing value to all Sinologists and to specialists in economic development and economic history.




China During the Great Depression


Book Description

"The Great Depression was a global phenomenon: every economy linked to international financial and commodity markets suffered. The aim of this book is not merely to show that China could not escape the consequences of drastic declines in financial flows and trade but also to offer a new perspective for understanding modern Chinese history. The Great Depression was a watershed in modern China. China was the only country on the silver standard in an international monetary system dominated by the gold standard.Fluctuations in international silver prices undermined China’s monetary system and destabilized its economy. In response to severe deflation, the state shifted its position toward the market from laissez-faire to committed intervention. Establishing a new monetary system, with a different foreign-exchange standard, required deliberate government management; ultimately the process of economic recovery and monetary change politicized the entire Chinese economy. By analyzing the impact of the slump and the process of recovery, this book examines the transformation of state–market relations in light of the linkages between the Chinese and the world economy."




Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915-1949


Book Description

Analyzes the internal pressures and social crises that fostered the beginnings of the Chinese Revolution