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History China

Smokeless Sugar

The Death of a Provincial Bureaucrat and the Construction of China's National Economy

by (author) Emily M. Hill

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2010
Category
China, Japan
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774816533
    Publish Date
    Oct 2010
    List Price
    $95.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774816540
    Publish Date
    Nov 2011
    List Price
    $32.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774816557
    Publish Date
    Oct 2010
    List Price
    $32.95

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Description

Part history, part biography, and part mystery story, Smokeless Sugar reveals how the concept of a national economy took shape in China by investigating the 1936 execution of Feng Rui, a provincial official who introduced modern sugar milling in Guangdong.

Examining the circumstances of Feng Rui’s arrest on charges of corruption, Emily Hill traces the construction of a Chinese national economy through cross-border interactions between industry and agriculture and between China and Japan. She makes the case that Feng was, in fact, a scapegoat in a multi-sided power struggle in which political leaders vied with commercial players for access to China's markets and tax revenues. This illuminating study challenges conventional wisdom about the effectiveness of the Republican state in promoting national unity during the Nanjing decade and highlights continuities in official economic policies from the 1930s to the Communist era.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Emily M. Hill is an associate professor of history at Queen’s University.