THE SPATIAL LEGACY OF INFORMAL EMPIRE: OIL,THE SOVIET UNION,AND THE CONTOURS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA'S FAR WEST

Abstract

Beginning in the 1930s, Soviet geologists, engineers, and economic planners began laying the infrastructure of informal empire in China's westernmost province of Xinjiang. Seeking to gain access to its rich petroleum wealth in particular, these Soviet state agents helped create a blueprint for state investment and development in Xinjiang that continues to resonate today. Confronting the substantial Soviet investment in the province and driven by a border policy intent on minimizing capital expenditures for distant peripheries, economic planners in the Republic of China and the People's Republic alike relied heavily on Soviet reports, technology, and infrastructure in their own economic development plans. In the end, the efforts of Chinese and Soviet planners, often working in collaboration, helped create an enduring pattern of state investment in Xinjiang. Focusing on oil extraction, processing, and transport operations in Xinjiang, this work reveals the long-term resonances of informal empire in Chinese border regions.     

CONCEIVING THE “WEST”: EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY VISIONS OF KHAM

Abstract

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the Tibetan plateau in the eyes of the gentry and officials of Sichuan Province was little more than a defensive fence bolting the back door of the empire. Although a stone stele erected in 1727 proclaimed much of the Kham region of ethnographic Tibet to be under Sichuan's jurisdiction, its invested rulers were administered by a “loose rein” policy, leaving its polities effectively independent of Chinese authority, the borderland and its inhabitants being of little interest to the Qing state. Yet the turn of the nineteenth century marked the reenvisioning of the once-barren borderland as a resource-rich terrain worthy of industrial development and inhabited by a population in need of cultural transformation. This article examines the convergence of local and regional dangers and opportunities with the influence of absolutist notions of two newly globalizing norms, territoriality and sovereignty, a convergence that fostered this new vision of Kham as integral to the burgeoning Chinese state and nation. The ramifications of this transformation in perceptions of the former imperial frontier as “West” would resonate across China's western interior throughout the twentieth century.     

Studies of Republic China in Taiwan

Abstract

Historical researchers familiar with Shanghai think first of the Shanghai Municipal Library with its outstanding collections of periodicals and books from the Republican Period as well as its strong holdings of Ming and Qing rare books. A little-known gem, however, in Shanghai's next tier of research libraries is the LexicographicalPublishing House Library (Cishu chubanshe tushuguan; hereafter referred to as "Cishu"). Though primarily focused on serving as a reference library for the publishing company of which it is now a part, the library is increasingly open to outside researchers. This expanded public access provides a great opportunity for all scholars of Qing and˙ Republican period social and cultural history. The yields, however, may be greatest for those working on education and popular culture during the late Qing and the Republic.!     

The Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945: The Current Status of Research and Publication in the People’s Republic of China,and Prospects and Problems for Foreign Researchers

Zhao Erfeng (1845–1911), the Qing governor-general of Sichuan province in 1911, died immediately after the successful revolutionary uprising in Chengdu. This article examines three biographical narratives of Zhao produced during the 1910s. The three different portraits of Zhao in the biographies—Zhao as racial traitor, loyal martyr, and modernizer—reveal radically different ways in which the Qing–Republican transition was understood in the early Republic. Focused on the two major issues associated with Zhao, the Qing incorporation of the Sino-Tibetan frontier and the railway-protection movement in Sichuan, the following discussion utilizes Zhao's biographies as windows on the unsettled definitions of the 1911 Revolution, revealing how Chinese negotiated the issues of nation, territory, and modernity at the birth of a modern state.     

Cooperative Study of Sino-Western Universities Report of a Meeting at Sichuan University,March 1988

Abstract

This article examines why and how persistent political fragmentation existed alongside continued centralization in late Qing and early Republican China. By analyzing new archival material and existing scholarship, the piece argues that external intervention helped preserve the viability of a single Chinese state even as the same phenomenon also spurred ongoing fractionalization. Because major powers' governments generally saw China as an area of secondary strategic import, they tried to avoid armed conflict over the polity and seek accommodation. Since outside powers diverged in their objectives, they settled on sponsoring indigenous partners, notably various militarists as well as the Chinese Nationalists, to sustain a degree of central government rule alongside substantial regional autonomy. In re-considering the effects of foreign intervention, this article engages the discussion on political consolidation in the late Qing and early Republic, and suggests that overly stressing integration or division tends to present incomplete accounts of the issue.     

Intellectual Orthodoxy,the Economy of Knowledge and the Debate Over Zhang Jingsheng’s Sex Histories*

Abstract

Since the Guomindang (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted it as the basis of the marriage system in the early twentieth century, yifu yiqi zhi — which literally means a system of one husband, one wife—has been translated as monogamy. Yet the conflation of the Chinese characters yifu yiqi zhi with the English word monogamy resulted from contests over meaning that can be traced to Republican discussions on marriage and sex in general and on concubinage in particular, which attached the new notion of conjugal fidelity to yifu yiqi zhi. The criminalization of concubinage as adultery under GMD law and as bigamy under CCP law signaled the different meanings yifu yiqi zhi held in the early twentieth century, meanings that continue to influence contemporary usages of the term.     

Western Medical Education on Trial: The Endurance of Peking Union Medical College, 1949–1985

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, Beijing's Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) stood as a prominent symbol of Western medical science and education in China. After the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) took control of the College between 1952 and 1956.This article argues that the endurance of PUMC as an institute of scientific, Western biomedicine in China was largely contingent upon reforms that the PLA instituted there. Drawing on Chinese accounts, as well as the observations of North American and European physicians, it asserts that political campaigns under Army leadership vehemently attacked American influences on the College but avoided direct criticisms of Western medical science itself. This dynamic politically legitimized the Western medical education that the College embodied. It also permitted PUMC to contribute to the development of Chinese military medicine, suggesting a significant connection between civilian and military medical education in the early People's Republic.     

A Selected Bibliography on Occupied Beijing, 1937-1945

Abstract

This article examines the anti-French campaign triggered by the Laoxikai incident — a dispute in 1916–17 over lands bordering the French concession in Tianjin. The incident was a focal point for competing narratives of the nation, each drawing on traditions and inspirations that implied divergent futures for China. Constitutional monarchism, true monarchism, republicanism, and Christianity all played into the power struggles of the 1910s. This article also addresses the role of violent coercion in the incident, in which nationalism began to legitimate “punishment” of Chinese who continued working with the French. The nationalists felt shame on behalf of their nation, and through public humiliation they forced Chinese who appeared indifferent to the nation to share in the national shame. This development accelerated a trend of nationalistic violence and the discourse of “national humiliation”.     

The Pacific Rim

Korea: Managing the Industrial Transition, Vol. 1: The Conduct of Industrial Policy. By D.M. Leipziger and others (World Bank Country Study). Washington: World Bank, 1987. Pp.xiv + 182. US$10. ISBN 0 8312 0887 4.

Public Intervention and Industrial Restructuring in China, India and the Republic of Korea. By Amiya Kumar Bagchi. New Delhi: International Labour Organization (Asian Employment Programme, ARTEP), 1987. Pp.xii + 162. US$8. ISBN 92 2 105774 7.

Policy Options for the Singapore Economy. By Lim Chong Wan and Associates. Singapore: McGraw Hill, 1988. Pp.xv + 499. US$29.95. ISBN 0 07 099133 2.

The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism. Edited by Frederic C. Deyo. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987. Pp.252. US$32.95 + $14.25. ISBN 0 8014 9449 4.

Financing East Asia's Success: Comparative Financial Development in Eight East Asian Countries. By Michael T. Skully and George J. Viksnins. London: Macmillan Press in association with the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1987. Pp.xii + 242. £29.50. ISBN 0 333 42655 X.     

SEEKING TALENT AT THE VOTING BOOTH: ELECTIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF CAMPAIGNING IN THE LATE QING AND EARLY REPUBLIC

Abstract

Early twentieth-century Chinese governments experimented with competitive elections for legislative office. In the hundred years since these elections, historians and others have argued over whether they are best understood as “failures” for producing weak, easily manipulated government or as “successes” that heralded the potential for Chinese democracy. An examination of print media discourse from the time of these elections, however, reveals a profound discomfort with voting that was independent of, and prior to, the seating of any elected government. In particular, the repeated condemnation of election “campaigning” pointed to a series of philosophical and intellectual problems presented by elections as a form of selection. By analyzing complaints about “campaigning” as a discourse with a particular resonance within the political culture of the late Qing and early Republic, I push beyond considerations of “success” or “failure” to analyze the tensions between expectations for, and the actuality of, early twentieth-century elections.     

Flights of Fancy from a Sedan Chair: Marketing Tourism in Republican China, 1927–1937

Abstract

This article examines how the first Chinese-run travel agency, China Travel Service (Zhongguo luÈxing she) and its travel magazine (luÈxing zazhi) marketed the new idea of pleasure travel, the new roles of service industry and client, and the new location of a modern tourist site during the Republican era. Two populations were targeted: middle-class mainland Chinese and Asian overseas Chinese. The article first explores how the China Travel Service created a service industry and a network of services, and then uses magazine travelogues to examine the marketing process and site development in two sites with different characteristics: (1) Huangshan, a traditional site visited by mainland Chinese, and (2) South and Southeast Asia, places few mainland Chinese visited.     

‘SAFEGUARDING NATIONAL CREDIBILITY’: FOUNDING THE BANK OF CHINA IN 1912

Abstract

The Bank of China led China’s modern-style banks during the Republican era, supporting the Chinese state through war and peace and financing China’s industrialization in the first half of the twentieth century. This article explores the founding of this institution in 1912 in the context of building the modern Chinese nation state following the 1911 Revolution. It argues that the events that made possible the Bank of China’s founding illustrate the contingent nature of state building. Furthermore, emphasis is on the critical relationship between finance and political legitimacy in state building. The article also shows how the creation of an institution such as the Bank of China, which was originally intended to be the new Republic’s central bank, gave the fledgling state the opportunity to support the transfer of legal rights in regime change.     

The Correlates of Corruption in India: Analysis and Evidence from the States

Robert Bartley, Chan Heng Chee, Samuel P. Huntington and Shijuro Ogata, Democracy and Capitalism: Asian and American Perspectives (Singapore: Institute of South East Asian Studies, 1993), 81 pp.

Charles Hirschman, Charles F. Keyes and Karl Hutterer (eds.), with the assistance of G. Carter Bently, Southeast Asian Studies in the Balance: Reflections from America (Ann Arbor: The Association for Asian Studies, 1992), 146 pp.

S. Gordon Redding, The Spirit of Chinese Capitalism, (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), 267 pp.

Zhongguo Quanli Jigou yu Lingdaoren (Power Structure and Leadership in the People's Republic of China) (Hong Kong: Ming Pao China Study Research Unit, 1993), 277 pp.

Robert Cottrell, The End of Hong Kong: The Secret Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat (London: John Murray, 1993), xi, 244 pp.

John Andrews, The Asian Challenge ‐ Looking Beyond 2000 (Hong Kong: Longman, 1992), 218 pp.     

Between Russia and a Hard Place: Great Power Grievances and Central Asian Ambivalence

Abstract

This essay asks how Central Asian states have responded to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and salvos against the West, as a means to assess how Russia and the Central Asian states understand their national interests and exercise state power. It argues that the post-Soviet region shares a cynical and geopolitically driven view of the exercise of global power. Yet Russia has sometimes deployed its resources to advance short-term ideological objectives, whereas Central Asian foreign policy is pragmatic and opportunistic. The Ukraine crisis threatened to coerce the Central Asian states into conformity with Russia’s interests; ironically, their dependence on Russia has enabled their freedom of action in foreign policy, within limits. The essay highlights the ways that geography enables and constrains the execution of foreign policy, and considers the ambiguous role ideology plays in the formulation of national interests and the prospects for international cooperation.     

Shanghai's “Mysterious Westerner”: The Walden Affair And Soviet Military Intelligence Operations In China, 1933–1935

Abstract

During the 1930s, Shanghai was a major center of Soviet espionage. By 1935 Chinese and Japanese agents of the USSR's military intelligence service, the Razvedyvatel'noe Upravlenie or RU, had successfully penetrated key Guomindang, Japanese, and U.S. targets, providing critical intelligence for Moscow and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). These accomplishments collapsed after the detention of RU leader Yakov Bronin (commonly known as Joseph Walden) and several of his Chinese associates in May 1935, the culmination of a series of tradecraft errors and misjudgments. As attempts to establish Bronin's nationality foundered, a classic confrontation developed between Chinese authorities seeking Bronin's immediate rendition and those of the International Settlement and French Concession, both determined to uphold the principle of extra-territoriality. Once Bronin's fraudulent claim to French nationality was exposed he was duly extradited and received a 15–year jail sentence for espionage, leaving RU networks and the parallel intelligence apparatus of the CCP in a disarray from which they did not fully recover until the Sino-Japanese war.     

Writers from Anhui and provinciality in modern China

Abstract

This article discusses the problems of Chinese local and national identity in relation to Anhui province in the twentieth century. It begins with Anhui's contradictory image as both the location of some of the country's most esteemed cultural sites and a place currently perceived as backward and impoverished. After explaining the social uses of local affiliation in the Republican era, it then focuses on the attempts of aspiring young writers from Anhui to join the national literary scene in Beijing during the early 1920s, and analyzes their subsequent reception. It looks at the personal and professional choices that these writers made and, following a selective survey of developments in Anhui since the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC), concludes with a consideration of the evolving self-image and changing realities in the province today.     

The Legislative Process in Republican China: The 1930 Nationalist Family Law and the Controversy over Surnames for Married Women

Abstract

This article investigates the legislative process that produced the 1930 Nationalist Family Law Book of the Republican Civil Code, focusing in particular on the debate over married women's surnames. In the accompanying discussion, Guomindang (GMD) lawmakers, legal experts, educators, women's rights advocates, and others grappled in a remarkably open manner over how best to address the surname question in light of their concerns with Party consolidation, legal modernisation, gender equality, social stability, and individual identity. Although the outcome of the legislative process affirmed customary surname practices (albeit with progressive overtones), the process itself was uniquely radical, with participants thoroughly reevaluating one of the oldest and most fundamental patriarchal institutions in Chinese society. The legislative and post-legislative debate over surnames illuminates the Nanjing Decade as a singular transitional period in the history of Chinese law and gender during which law was subject to revision and amendment rather than orthodoxy, and GMD policy toward women was subject to deliberation rather than dictated by ideology.     

Patriotic Discourses in Russia's Penal Peripheries: Remembering the Mordovan Gulag

Using materials gathered during field work in the penal region in the southwest corner of the Republic of Mordoviya in 2007, the authors examine the official representations of the history of the Mordovan gulag from 1930 to the present day. Through an analysis of the penal authority's institutional newspaper, its museum and anniversary celebrations marking the founding of the Mordovan gulag, the authors argue that a stress in the official history on continuity and tradition of service is evidence of growing confidence of this part of the security apparatus after their loss of status in the 1990s associated with the collapse of the penal economy and negative comment by international monitors and domestic penal reformers.     

Stalin's Great Terror and the Asian Nexus

Stalin's Great Terror of 1937–1938 did not stop at the Soviet borders: under Moscow's explicit instructions, it extended to Asia, particularly to the People's Republic of Mongolia and to Xinjiang or Chinese Turkestan. More people proportionately suffered from the Terror in Mongolia than in the Soviet Union. Stalin's terror operations in the Asiatic lands were implicitly directed against Japan, the main competitor for influence in the region.