2017

Xiang Chi

  • Doctoral Student
  • University of California, Los Angeles
Picture of Xiang Chi

Project

Sovereignty, War, and Natural Resource: Northeast China’s Economic Development (1901 to 1937)

Program

Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies Predissertation-Summer Travel Grants

Department

History

Abstract

My dissertation project aims at offering a comparative analysis of the emergences, practices and values of state rationality in terms of the capacity to exert control over timber resources in Northeast China between the Japanese and Chinese forestry regime-making in the early 20th century, focusing on the state planning, the government-firm relation, Korean migration, and the forest species hierarchy change in Fengtian and Jilin provinces during 1901-1937. The interplay between Japanese merchants, Chinese huozhan leaders, and Korean migration showed the multi-layered sovereignty conceptions. The involvement of the Mitsui timber firms changed the hierarchy of the forest species and contributed to the efficiency growth in the 1930s that the PRC government inherited.