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

Highlighting transnational influence and the interaction of socialism and capitalism, Hirata explores China's major Mao-era industrial enterprise.

Koji Hirata (Author)

9781009382267, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 December 2024

370 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.9 cm, 0.52 kg

'Hirata's book is at the forefront of a new turn in China studies, driven by geopolitical contingencies and restrictions on access to archives in the PRC, toward research that both highlights transnational influences and illuminates Chinese dynamics from the outside in.' Shellen Wu, The China Quarterly

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.

Introduction: Industrial Manchuria and the transnational origins of Chinese socialism
Part I. Empire, War, and the Global Crisis of Capitalism, 1915–1948: 1. Blood, iron, and the Japanese empire
2. The soviets and nationalists are coming
Part II. Socialist Industrialization as a Hybrid System, 1948–1957: 3. Making Manchuria red
4. The soviet big brother is watching you
5. Who owns the state-owned enterprise?
6. Speaking Maoist
Part III. Socialisms with Chinese Characteristics, 1957–2000: 7. The three lives of the Angang constitution
8. The socialist rustbelt in the market economy
Conclusion: making Mao's steelworks
Acknowledgements
Appendix: a note on primary sources
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]