Description
Book SynopsisIn Recharging China in War and Revolution, 18821955, Ying Jia Tan explores the fascinating politics of Chinese power consumption as electrical industries developed during seven decades of revolution and warfare.
Tan traces this history from the textile-factory power shortages of the late Qing, through the struggle over China''s electrical industries during its civil war, to the 1937 Japanese invasion that robbed China of 97 percent of its generative capacity. Along the way, he demonstrates that power industries became an integral part of the nation''s military-industrial complex, showing how competing regimes asserted economic sovereignty through the nationalization of electricity.
Based on a wide range of published records, engineering reports, and archival collections in China, Taiwan, Japan, and the United States, Recharging China in War and Revolution, 18821955 argues that, even in times of peace, the Chinese economy operated as tho
Trade Review
Tan's book [is] both timely and an essential new entry in the historiography on modern China.
* Asian Studies *
In Recharging China in War and Revolution, 1882–1955, Ying Jia Tan offers a timely account of China's energy history, detailing its electrical development from the late Qing to the early Mao periods.This book makes an important contribution to the larger scholarship on energy history by explicating how electricity and state power were entwined and evolved in the Chinese experience.
* Technology and Culture *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Forging Resilience
1. Spinning the Threads of Discontent
2. Defending the Public Good
3. Unleashing Fire and Fury
4. Dawning of the Copper Age
5. Turning the Tide
6. Waging Electrical Warfare
7. Manufacturing Technocracy
Conclusion: Hauntings from Past Energy Transitions
