‘Winning the Peace’: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, foreign technocrats, and planning the rehabilitation of post-war China, 1943–1945

Through the lens of the multinational staff of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS), this article argues that a technocratic programme of reconstruction evolved in the Nationalist government's wartime efforts on post-war planning, which refashioned a cadre of foreign (semi-)colonial-era experts into technocrats serving a sovereign state. This episode, in which the weakened Customs Service reclaimed its significance for the Chinese state, occurred in China's wartime capital, Chongqing. After the abrogation of the so-called ‘unequal treaties’ with foreign powers in January 1943, China entered a post-treaty era, and the question of retaining long-serving foreign Customs Service employees perplexed Nationalist leaders. Eventually, China's huge post-war need for foreign expertise, networks, and imports led to a moderate staff reorganization of the CMCS, with foreign technocrats being kept on and other bureaucrats either shifted to advisory positions or being forced to retire. Technical expertise provided a new guise for the European and American presence in post-imperialist China. Taking the rehabilitation of coastal lighthouses as an example, this article demonstrates the significance of foreign technocrats to the Chinese state during the last phase of the Sino-Japanese War and in its immediate aftermath. In showing the ambition and preparations of the Nationalist government for a post-war era, this article corrects a narrative of an all-out collapse of the Nationalist government from the mid-1940s. The wartime evolution of the Customs Service further highlights the growing importance of technocrats in the decolonizing world.

My Perilous Girlhood

In early 1941 , Yuan-tsung’s family moved to Chongqing, the wartime capital of the Nationalist government, where she attended the prestigious Nankai Middle School and went through the trials and discoveries of adolescence, though shadowed by war and byzantine domestic politics. This was also the time of her romantic and sexual awakening, though it took place in a vicarious manner. She accompanied her wealthy best friend, Edith Shen, to the latter’s tryst at the Peach-Blossom Grove. She acted as an intermediary for Edith, the school beauty queen, and her lover, a role that earned her a place in one of Chongqing’s most elegant mansions.

Breaking Away

The Second World War ended in victory for the Nationalist government. It was a Pyrrhic victory, however, as the Nationalists would soon be defeated by the Communists in the civil war, and Yuan-tsung was at a crossroads, wondering what to do: join her rich friends and flee to Hong Kong or stay in China. Despite her mother’s insistence that she go south with her rich friends, she decided with her younger siblings’ support to stay, believing that earthshaking events were about to happen in China and that they would provide material for her literary endeavors. She decided to go north to Beijing and meanwhile began to read some radical literature, such as Gorky’s Mother.

Kaap(s) van Goeie Hoop ? Ussen trots en skuldgevoelens, oordrag en dekonstruksie: vorms van Afrikaner identiteit‑ballingskap na apartheid

Die Afrikanergemeenskap het, sedert 1994, ‘n dubbelsinnige verhouding met sy kulturele eienskappe gehandhaaf, wat deur die Christen‑nasionalistiese regering was gebruik as ‘n alibi om rasseheerskappy onder apartheid te regverdig. Hulle word nou gesien as afwykend, en ervaar as sosiale stigmas. Sommige lede van die gemeenskap lewer sterk kritiek van die verlede en vind die patriotieses raamwerke weer uit om vir hulle in lyn te bring met die nuwe liberale demokratiese waardes van vandag. From 1994, the Afrikaner community members experience an ambiguous relationship with their cultural attributes, used as alibi by the Christian‑nationalist government to justify racial supremacy under apartheid time. Today, these characteristics are seen as deviant and lived as social stigmas. Some Afrikaners vividly criticize their past and try to recreate new patriotic frames which fit today liberal and democratic values, as shown in this article. Depuis 1994, la communauté afrikaner entretient un rapport ambigu avec ses attributs culturels, utilisés comme alibi par le gouvernement nationaliste‑chrétien pour justifier la suprématie raciale sous l’apartheid. Ils sont aujourd’hui perçus comme déviants et vécus comme des stigmates sociaux. Certains membres de la communauté s’emploient à formuler de vives critiques du passé et à réinventer les cadres patriotiques pour les faire coïncider avec les nouvelles valeurs libérales démocratiques dominantes aujourd’hui.

Notaries and Basic-Level Society: A Study of the Itinerant Notary System during the Republican Period

The itinerant notary system was an important measure taken by the Nationalist government in Nanjing to enhance its control of grassroots society in rural China. There was no intent to challenge the central government’s wishes of “enlarging government revenues for the benefit of the state treasury” and safeguarding the integrity of the central government’s jurisdiction, which made smooth implementation of the itinerant notary system possible. It was against this background that the court of Linxia, Gansu province, expanded its reach to local business centers, selected superintendents of public notaries from among local gentry elites, and offered awards for notary services. The itinerant notary system thus combined a “modern” legal institution transplanted from the West with endogenous resources, and turned out to be an experiment conducive to overcoming the either/or binary of Western vs. Chinese, exploring a pluralistic and less disruptive path of institutional development.

Consolidating Power and “Building Socialism” in China

After victory in the civil war in October 1949, the Chinese communist regime followed the Soviet template, by now ideologically obvious, of dispossessing or killing the pillars of the old regime: landlords, large-scale capitalists, officials of the Nationalist government, and clergy. The new regime simultaneously started to “build socialism,” but were challenged to get the devastated economy and society back on their feet. The Communist Party of China’s early policies on this score mirrored the Soviets’ New Economic Policy of 1921–1928.

The Temporality of Identity in Planned Cities: A Case Study of Zhong Xing New Village, Taiwan

In 1957, the Kuomintang (KMT), Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalist government, planned and built Zhong Xing New Village (ZXNV), a garden city, to house the Taiwan Provincial Government. Despite the benefits of public housing, healthcare, and education, ZXNV experienced a two-third drop in population after 1985. The political liberalization and democratization of Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s led to the reclamation of Taiwanese national identity that rejected the hegemony of the KMT and the physical manifestations of this colonial history, including ZXNV. ZXNV was a utopian ideal constructed during a time of authoritarian rule for a specific political purpose and homogenous population. ZXNV’s inability to change its purpose and identity led to its ultimate depopulation. Ethnographic fieldwork reveals the changes in ZXNV’s built environment and neighborhood culture influenced by socio-political transformations over the last sixty years. Fourteen interviews were conducted with two generations of ZXNV residents, and archival research reveals the intended design and policies of the city. Key findings include the structural flaws in the city’s design, the exposure of political tensions between the national and provincial governments, and the changing national identity of Taiwan due to globalization, all of which led to the ultimate downfall of Zhong Xing New Village.

Islamic Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in India and Pakistan

India’s and Pakistan’s governments, like most of the world’s governments, responded to the spread of the COVID-19 virus with lockdowns, which in principle also affected religious institutions and rituals. However, Sunni mosques in Pakistan were not closed, as the government has no authority over autonomous religious organizations. In contrast, the Islamic organizations and institutions in India complied with government orders, and tried to present themselves as a “responsible minority” during a period when relations with the Hindu nationalist government were strained, and because a convention of the Tablīghī Jamāʿat had contributed considerably to the spread of the disease in the country and abroad. In Pakistan, the role of the “responsible minority” was played by the Shiites, who closed their mosques. On the whole, Muslim religious leaders and organizations showed little interest in taking a stand on the pandemic. Those few who make extensive use of the internet tend to address the better-educated social strata, and tend view pandemic-related restrictions more favorably.

Beyond Repression and Resistance: Worker agency and corporatism in occupied Nanjing

In the aftermath of the Nanjing Massacre, one way in which Wang Jingwei's Reorganized National Government sought to impose social order was to implement a corporatist labour strategy. Inspired by European fascist theory and building on the pre-war Nationalist-Government labour legislation, corporatism sought to prevent union autonomy, stifle class-based sentiment, and undermine the pursuit of class interests whether on the part of capitalists or of workers. It aimed to ensure government control and loyalty to the state, and promote production. An analysis of approximately 50 records of labour–capital disputes mediated by the Shehui yundong zhidao weiyuanhui (Social Movement Guidance Committee) during the early 1940s suggests that the Wang regime carved out a sphere autonomous from Japanese oversight and exerted state control over commercial associations and artisans employed in the handicraft sector. Even so, worker actions show that workers did not trust corporatism to provide social unity. Contrary to much of the Chinese historiography on occupied Nanjing that emphasizes either social repression or resistance, one finds that state authorities in most cases granted trade unions’ economic demands for higher wages. The state provided workers with a modicum of agency while pressuring commercial associations to accept worker demands. In response to inflation and to preserve their breadwinner status, male artisans actively participated in the arbitration process. Workers’ agency did not reflect an endorsement of Wang Jingwei's regime or of corporatism. It was a tacit form of consent as a means of survival.