Mao’s Steeltown: Industrial City, Colonial Legacies, and Local Political Economy in Early Communist China

2021 ◽  
pp. 009614422199432
Author(s):  
Koji Hirata
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
City Governments ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
Industrial Cities ◽  
Communist China ◽  
Colonial Legacies ◽  
Imperial Japan ◽  
Domestic Migrants

This article examines the construction of industrial cities in the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC; 1949-) by focusing on Anshan—a major steel city in Manchuria (Northeast China) that had been constructed by the Japanese prior to 1945. I demonstrate that the PRC industrial cities embodied the nature and limits of the new socialist regime’s vision of industrialization. The early PRC overwhelmingly focused its resources on heavy industry, which translated into the financial and bureaucratic superiority of industrial enterprises to city governments. The early PRC industrial cities drew from not only the Soviet urban-planning model but also the legacies of pre-revolutionary regimes, even including imperial Japan. The construction of industrial cities was driven by negotiations among various actors including city officials, enterprise managers, and domestic migrants. Building on the multi-layered local, national, and transnational forces, the industrial city of Anshan was a microcosm of the early PRC.

scholarly journals ‘It's springtime for science’: renewing China–UK scientific relations in the 1970s

2012 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Agar
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Communist China ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

This paper examines how links between the People's Republic of China and the UK were rebuilt in the 1970s. It not only fills a gap in the historiography but also makes three particular arguments. The first is that there were two intersecting institutional paths along which the rebuilding of links were followed: a foreign policy path, in which the most important body was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and an academy-level path in which relations between the Royal Society and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (also known in the early years as the Academia Sinica) were crucial. Especially under conditions in which access and travel to China were extremely restricted, the Royal Society acted as a ‘gatekeeper’, rationing visits to a select few researchers. The second argument is that science was a strategic pathfinder or diplomatic ‘avant garde’. The maintenance of scientific links, even during the most difficult periods of this history when they were all but severed, meant that a path was kept open to ‘further communication and exchange between peoples—and governments’, as Kathlin Smith has found in the broadly similar case of relations between China and the USA. In particular, scientific relations formed an important bridge in the negotiation and eventual agreement of the first treaty signed between the UK and communist China in 1978. It was no coincidence that this highest-level political agreement was accompanied by a parallel accord between the scientific academies. Third, I argue that, nevertheless, even this treaty was not entirely new, and that the model for the China–UK treaty was existing agreements on technology exchanges made with Eastern European countries.

Pre-1949 Development of the Communist Chinese System of Justice

1967 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shao-Chuan Leng
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Communist China ◽  
Post War ◽  
China Today ◽  
The Revolution

Before establishing the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communists through the years had instituted revolutionary laws and courts in areas under their control. Many features of “socialist legality” in Communist China today have their roots back in the early years of the revolution. In this article I shall attempt to examine the pre–1949 development of the system of “people's justice” through: the Soviet period, 1927–34, the Yenan period, 1935–45, and the post-war period 1945–49.

Gender, Catholicism, and Communism in 1950s Shanghai (1950年代上海的性别、天主教与共产主义)

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-214
Author(s):  
Paul P. Mariani
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Catholic Women ◽  
Communist Revolution ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Formed Part

In the 1950s, Shanghai witnessed a conflict between the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) and the Shanghai Catholic community. The ccp wanted this community to break ties with the pope and form an “independent” Catholic Church that would fall under the authority of the Chinese government. Many Catholics in Shanghai soon resisted what they perceived to be the unjust religious policies of the ccp. One of the “backbone elements” of Catholic resistance in Shanghai was young women. This study investigates how three young Catholic women dealt with the ccp’s encroaching religious policies. All three came from similar backgrounds and they all initially formed part of the Catholic resistance to ccp religious policies during the early 1950s. Afterward their trajectories differed dramatically due to the particular way in which the Communist revolution intervened in the life of each woman. This study thus illuminates the contested area of religious faith, state power, and gender in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. 上世纪五十年代，上海见证了中共与上海天主教会之间的冲突。中共命令上海天主教会断绝与教宗的联系，成为一个听命于中国政府的“独立”教会。上海的许多天主教徒很快就起来抵制这些他们视为不公正的宗教政策。反抗运动中的许多“骨干分子”是年轻女信徒。本文探究了三位年轻的女天主教信徒如何应对当时中共侵权的宗教政策。她们有相似的生活背景，并都在50年代初期参与了抵制中共宗教政策的运动。但是因为中共革命介入她们生命的不同方式，她们之后的人生轨迹大相径庭。这项研究因此阐述了在中华人民共和国初期，宗教信仰、国家政权与性别之间充满张力的互动。

MODELING ATMOSPHERIC AIR POLLUTION OF AN INDUSTRIAL CITY WITH FINE PARTICULATE MATTER

2021 ◽  
pp. 62-75
Author(s):  
S. V. Kakareka ◽  
◽  
S. V. Salivonchyk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Particulate Matter ◽  
Fine Particulate Matter ◽  
Urban Air Pollution ◽  
Road Transport ◽  
Monitoring Site ◽  
Atmospheric Air ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
Fine Particulate

The paper deals with the quantification of fine particulate matter (PM10) dispersion in atmospheric air of an industrial city using the AERMOD model by an example of Zhlobin (the Gomel oblast, Belarus). Model input data and procedures for the emission inventory and obtaining spatially distributed estimates are described. Emissions and dispersion of PM10 from the main categories of sources are considered, including industrial facilities, road and off-road mobile sources, domestic sector, and agriculture. It is shown that the main contribution to high PM10 concentrations in atmospheric air is made by industrial enterprises, the domestic sector, and road transport. The spatial pattern of urban air pollution is described. The simulation results are compared with the results of PM10 measurements at the monitoring site, their satisfactory consistency is demonstrated.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Arunabh Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Real World ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Statistical System ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The World ◽  
Century Science ◽  
Statistical Work

This introductory chapter introduces a “crisis of counting” during the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In its simplest form, the crisis in the PRC was understood as a problem of building a centralized statistical system. At the heart of the varied solutions attempted by Chinese statisticians was a contentious debate about the very nature of social reality and the place and efficacy of mathematical statistics—in particular, probability theory—in ascertaining that reality. This debate played out against a backdrop populated by three divergent methodological approaches to statistics and statistical work. After all, abstract ideas about the nature of the world, whether defined by chance or certainty, have real world consequences. Chinese deliberations over such questions and their engagement with the Ethnographic, Exhaustive, and Stochastic approaches during the 1950s exemplify some of those consequences. The chapter unpacks these choices and traces how statistics in its various forms—as a (social) science, as a profession, and as an activity—came to be formulated and practiced, shedding light on fundamental questions germane to the histories of the People's Republic, statistics and data, and mid-century science.

Take Back Our Future

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Ching Kwan Lee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Civic Values ◽  
Take Back ◽  
The Government

This introductory chapter provides a background of the Umbrella Movement, which emerged in the fall of 2014. The genesis of the Umbrella Movement can be traced to an intensification of popular discontent against the Hong Kong government and its principal, the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Since China's resumption of sovereignty in July of 1997, the end of British colonialism has been experienced by many Hong Kong citizens as the beginning of another round of colonization, this time by the Mainland Chinese communist regime. Such recolonization, which proceeded with fits and starts in the early years after the handover and had become more aggressive since 2003, can be broken down into three constitutive processes: political disenfranchisement, colonization of the life world, and economic subsumption. Increasing encroachment by China to turn Hong Kong into an internal colony has spurred the rise of new political actors and groups to defend Hong Kong's way of life and liberal civic values. The chapter then looks at the series of contentious mobilizations leading up to the Umbrella occupations, to trace how the contradiction constitutive of this Hong Kong regime in transition from liberalism to authoritarianism have contributed to nurturing and growing the collective capacity of at least three general categories of political actors who would converge during the Umbrella protests: the self-mobilized citizenry, the localists, and the student activists.

Building a ‘Lofty, Beloved People's Amusement Centre’: The socialist transformation of Shanghai's Great World (Dashijie) (1950–58)

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
WENMING XIAO ◽  
YAO LI
Keyword(s):  
Physical Space ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Strong State ◽  
The People ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
The One

Abstract Based on a detailed case study of the socialist transformation of the Shanghai Great World Amusement Centre (Dashijie), this article documents state-building efforts during the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Between 1950 and 1958, the Communist regime incrementally transformed the power configuration within Dashijie, promoting dramatic changes in its personnel, institutional structures, drama performances, and physical space. Over the course of this process, Dashijie seemed to become a ‘loftier’ cultural organization in accordance with the aims of its transformation. This transfigured Dashijie, however, fell out of favour with the people of Shanghai. This multifaceted transformation process reflects considerable state capacities on the one hand and illustrates the complexity of state capacities—their unevenness and the limitations of a strong state—on the other. The complexity of state capacities thus shaped and was embedded in the process and outcome of this socialist cultural transformation. Since the Chinese state is once again making strenuous efforts at culture-building, an overview of cultural transformation in the early PRC era has important contemporary implications.

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