Industrialism and Innovation in Republican China

Abstract

Until the late nineteenth century, China had been a largely agrarian empire. Yet as other parts of the world started to industrialize, China was not far behind. It was willing to import and adapt foreign technologies during the latter part of the nineteenth century with the Qing dynasty’s (1644–1911) state-sponsored Self-Strengthening Movement (c. 1861–1895). After China’s defeat in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, the Self-Strengthening Movement approach toward technological and industrial development was suddenly deemed insufficient, less because of any inherent failure of the movement itself than the shift in political winds as a result of the war. The political situation in the following years with the fall of the empire by 1911 and a weak Republican era state in the 1910s and 1920s meant that state-sponsored industrialization weakened considerably. Yet, in the vacuum, regional elites and entrepreneurs shouldered the task of industrial and technological growth. In spite of unrelenting economic imperialism and weak state support, these private actors accomplished considerable innovation and development. With the Nationalist government consolidating national rule by 1928, the Nanjing decade (1928–1937) saw the emergence of state-led industrialization that only intensified during the wartime period, where science, technology, and industry were prioritized to meet wartime needs. Earlier studies from the 1950s to the 1970s, including the work of Albert Feuerwerker, tend to characterize modern China’s attempts at responding to the impact of the West and adapting to demands of the modern world as marked by failure. More revisionist accounts, however, have complicated the picture. Business historians publishing in the 1980s were already eschewing the question of why China failed to modernize its industry. They document how Chinese firms and enterprises were able to develop nimble organizational structures and, in turn, build China’s light manufacturing and consumer goods industries, often in ingenious ways and in the face of formidable obstacles. Building on this revisionist turn, scholars have even more recently drawn from an array of adjacent and related fields, including the history of science and technology, energy and environmental studies, as well as infrastructure studies, to explore more deeply the multifaceted nature of industry building during the Republican period. They have expanded the definition of industry to move beyond large-scale, mechanized mass production to incorporate forms of industrial activity associated with small industry, handicrafts, and other practices of “making.” They have also been more cognizant of the global connections and transnational contexts in which Republican era industrialization occurred. The result is growing recognition in the field that that Republican China witnessed considerable innovation, and that Chinese actors, despite challenges posed by political weakness and war, proved highly entrepreneurial and adept in building industry, especially light manufacturing. Finally, while recognizing the ingenuity and resourcefulness behind the process of industrialization, scholars are, at the same time, increasingly identifying the political, social, and environmental costs that came with that industrialization.