Thomas Chan

My proposed dissertation project examines how Chinese Communist Party leaders infused Maotai, a hard liquor from Guizhou province, with ideological and cultural meanings in order to bolster support for their new regime. I argue that Maotai's state-led development shows how globalization, violence, and market forces played prominent roles in the creation and maintenance of the Maoist regime. In doing so, I argue that in certain aspects, China's era of high socialism possessed capitalist characteristics. My research draws on the internal archives of the Maotai factory, oral histories of the workers and residents of Maotai village, government policy documents regarding the distribution and sale of Maotai, advertisements, propaganda stories, newspaper articles, and factory export records.

This interdisciplinary research challenges conventional accounts of mass campaigns in China as irrationally destructive and argues that governments used anti-narcotics campaigns to draw ordinary people into the project of building new political communities. This project demonstrates how the governments of both the Republic of China and People’s Republic of China drew on scientific expertise and techniques of population management to create new senses of political and social belonging. “From Users to Criminals” analyzes how from 1906 to 1953 both governments dehumanized drug users and traffickers to encourage collective identity formation and promote state-building.