Thammasat University students interested in China, history, business, economics, political science, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 6 December Zoom webinar on Making Mao’s Steelworks: Industrial Manchuria and the Transnational Origins of Chinese Socialism.

The event, on Friday, 6 November 2024 at 8am Bangkok time, is presented by the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong (HKU).

Students are invited to register at this link:

https://hku.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VO-LLgvDT0SwWuwCLjQGSw#/registration

The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of industry in China.  

The event announcement notes:

Chinese Business History Webinar

Making Mao’s Steelworks: Industrial Manchuria and the Transnational Origins of Chinese Socialism

Dr. Koji Hirata

Monash University

Abstract

Located in Manchuria (Northeast China), the geopolitical borderland between China, Russia, and Japan, among others, Anshan Iron and Steel Works (Angang) was Mao-era China’s most important industrial enterprise. The history of Angang from 1915 to 2000 reveals the hybrid nature of China’s accelerated industrialization, shaped by transnational interactions, domestic factors, and local dynamics. Utilizing archives in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and English, Koji Hirata provides the first comprehensive history of this enterprise before, during, and after the Mao era (1949–1976). Through this unique lens, he explores the complex interplay of transnational influences in Mao-era China. By illustrating the symbiotic relationship between socialism and capitalism during the twentieth century, this major new study situates China within the complex global history of late industrialization.

About the Speaker

Koji Hirata is Senior Lecturer/Senior Research Fellow in History at Monash University.

Dr. Hirata’s book Making Mao’s Steelworks: Industrial Manchuria and the Transnational Origins of Chinese Socialism is available to TU students through the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.

Earlier this year, Dr. Hirata published an Open Access article in Business History, Mining the informal empire: Sino-Japanese relations and ironmaking in Manchuria, 1909–1931.

The article’s abstract follows:

This article examines the history of ironmaking in Anshan in southern Manchuria (Northeast China) between 1909 and 1931, utilising Japanese and Chinese sources. I argue that the history of Anshan embodies the ambiguous statuses of Japan and China in the global economic order of the early twentieth century. Japan, despite being the only non-Western imperialist power, had a relatively underdeveloped economy and continued to import industrial technologies from the West, with heavy state intervention often driven by non-economic goals, particularly by the military. China, despite being a site of the Western and Japanese informal empires, pushed for catch-up industrialisation and resistance against foreign economic intrusions. The in-between statuses of Japan and China resulted in constant negotiations to define and redefine Japan’s informal empire in Manchuria, involving complex interplays of collaboration and resistance in business enterprises such as Anshan Ironworks.

The article’s conclusion:

The story of Anshan exemplifies the in-between positions that Japan and China occupied in the global economic hierarchy dominated by the West. Despite its status as an emerging industrial and colonial power, Japan’s economy lagged behind the more developed Western nations. Its exploitation of its informal empire still partly depended upon importing technologies from the West, often through significant state involvement and with non-economic goals. Conversely, China, being subject to Western and Japanese informal empires, embarked on its own efforts to industrialise the economy and reclaim foreign economic concessions, particularly after World War I. Japan’s informal empire in Manchuria was built upon constant negotiations with the Chinese at all ranks, from villagers to warlords, but this fragile relationship always involved tension as both the Japanese and Chinese were making efforts to change their political and economic status in their respective ways.

 

Compared with Western powers, Japanese direct investments in China were distinguishable due to pronounced state involvement and a higher concentration in mining and manufacturing. Japan’s share in foreign direct investments in China was negligible at the turn of the twentieth century, but it soon began to increase, becoming the second-largest investor on the eve of the occupation in Manchuria

While Western investments were most heavily concentrated in Shanghai and Hong Kong in the south, more than half of Japanese investments in China were focused in Manchuria, even before the 1931 occupation. In 1930, over 60% of Japanese direct investments in Manchuria were made by the SMR, which was under substantial state control. Moreover, Japan stood out among foreign powers in China due to the high ratio of mining and manufacturing in its total investment. In 1930, mining and manufacturing accounted for 28.9% of all Japanese direct investments in China, whereas the figures were 20% and 13.8% for Britain and the United States, respectively.

Japan’s state-directed investment in mining and manufacturing in China, epitomised by ironmaking in Anshan, symbolised its dual status as both a late industrializer and a coloniser. As Alexander Gerschenkron notes, late industrializers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Germany, tended to have more interventionist states compared to earlier industrializers such as Britain. Similarly, Musacchio and Lazzarini define ‘state capitalism’ as ‘the widespread influence of the government in the economy, either by owning majority or minority equity positions in companies or by providing subsidised credit and/or other privileges to private companies’. In the context of Japan and other countries in East Asia, scholars have paid attention to the visible hand of ‘developmental states’ in developing the economy. What distinguishes pre-1945 Japan from many other cases of state-directed development was the strong connection between imperial Japan’s state-initiated developmental projects and its empire building, including the state’s initiative in establishing industrial enterprises in its colonies and semi-colonies, such as Anshan. This position distinguished Japan from the major Western informal empires in China and elsewhere. For instance, Britain’s informal empire mainly consisted of policies designed to secure export markets for domestic manufacturing and financial interests, sometimes by force. Backed by their navy, British businesses exported goods and capital to Latin America, the Middle East, and China. However, they generally refrained from constructing major industrial facilities abroad. Furthermore, while the British government supported British businesses, it did not directly own them. In addition, Japan’s efforts to construct and reconstruct Anshan Ironworks also utilised technologies imported from the West. While Mark Metzler shows that modern Japan’s expansion in Asia relied on the Western-created financial system, this article demonstrates Japan’s empire-building in Asia relied on industrial technologies developed in the West. The Japanese informal empire in Manchuria, comprised of semi-state-owned mines and factories in Anshan and elsewhere, was an extension of state-directed industrialisation at home.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)