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

This talk delves into the global origins and local manifestations of socialist industrialization in China, spanning the periods before, during, and after Mao Zedong’s leadership (1949-76). Drawing upon archives and interviews from China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, and Russia, I scrutinize the evolution of twentieth-century China’s preeminent steel enterprise: Anshan Iron and Steel Works (Angang), located in Manchuria (Northeast China). While Angang is widely recognized as a crucial state-owned enterprise (SOE) during Mao’s era, its genesis can be traced to Japanese factories established in Manchuria prior to World War II. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Angang, along with other SOEs in Manchuria, underwent further expansion through Sino-Soviet economic partnership in the 1950s.
By chronicling Angang’s history under five different regimes, I argue that Chinese socialism emerged as a hybrid system, evolving through transnational negotiations and local-level dynamics. China’s socialist industrialization capitalized on the physical assets, human resources, and policy ideas imported from Nationalist China, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and other regimes. The day-to-day functioning of SOEs entailed bottom-up involvement from lower-ranking officials and ordinary people, who pursued their individual interests by reinterpreting the ideological and institutional guidelines set by the state.
This talk posits that the development of socialism and capitalism during the twentieth century involved a symbiotic process of mutual learning. Ideas, technology, and practical knowledge traversed political boundaries, with numerous socialist and capitalist nations adopting analogous strategies of state-directed industrialization. By highlighting the interconnectedness between these two systems, this work situates China within the global history of late industrialization.
About the speaker
Koji Hirata is Lecturer of Modern History at Monash University. He studied law and politics at the University of Tokyo, Japan, as an undergraduate before doing his M. Phil in history at the University of Bristol, UK. He did his Ph.D. in history at Stanford University. He was a Research Fellow (JRF) at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge before coming to Monash. His research touches on modern China, Japan, and Russia/Soviet Union with broader implications for the global history of capitalism and socialism.
"Talks in Chinese Humanities" are co-presented by the China Studies Centre, the Discipline of Chinese Studies and the Australian Society for Asian Humanities at the University of Sydney and the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at UNSW.

[@MarcDufresneosorusrex]

Excellent narration

[@DerekCoveart-dk8iz]

So important

[@chuzai2156]

Great book. There are some new foundings that Chinese Communism has deep connection with Japan and KMT's economic planning.

[@MarcDufresneosorusrex]

враждебность настенными - vrazhdebnost' nastennymi - hostility wall (random Canadian comment) 27:10 min