1/ Agricultural collectivization in E Asia is usually assumed to be a disaster specific to post-WW2 socialist regimes, leading to catastrophes such as the Ppl’s Communes and the Great Leap Fwd.

But what if it had much deeper historical roots going back to the late 19th Century? 2/ I argue here that collectivisation had its roots in fact in social reformist urges of the pre-WWI and interwar period. The fruits of these experiments were appropriated by the State Monopoly Capitalist, managerialist and total war ambitions of both Imperial Japan and KMT China

1/ In 1895-1945, Manchuria was the Balkans of the east. There in 1931 Japan created the Manchukuo state, the fastest growing economy in Asia until 1945.

This is a story about how rival post-war KMT/CCP planners were "together in electric dreams" to rebuild the devastated region. 2/ Manchukuo, being a single-party state under the Concordia Association whose cadres wore Concordia Suits; with total collectivised agriculture and industrial development guided by Five-Year Plans, was probably the most successful Soviet-styled state outside the USSR before 1945

1/ This is the strange story of a Republican Chinese warlord who revived the fortunes of his province and almost managed to implement socialism, complete with a Ten-Year Plan. It is a story of ambition and treachery.
This is the story of Yan Xishan, Governor of Shanxi (1911-49) 2/ This mid-western province today is mainly known for its collieries. Back in the Qing Dynasty however, it was the centre of indigenous finance in China, with a network of banks (yinhao) that had branches in SF, Tokyo & Singapore, financing trade that went all the way to Russia.

1/ In winter 1971-2, Beijing consumers complained about fish from Guanting Reservoir, in the capital's NW, having foul smells. Some suffered from food poisoning. The reason was industrial waste polluting the water.

A short thread on rudimentary environmentalism in Maoist China 2/ The news alarmed Premier Zhou Enlai, who immediately set up a "Leading Group" for the protection of Guanting Reservoir's water source. Its head was Wan Li, who had just been released from a gulag. 1972 saw also Nixon's visit and China was trying to re-internationalise.

1/ Last month saw the 74th anniversary of the Feb 28th Incident of 1947, a watershed in Taiwanese history. It has usually been described in terms of identity politics, as a localist uprising against mainland Chinese misrule. Whilst this was one element, economics played a part. 2/ Chen Yi, Taiwan Chief Executive in 1945-7, oversaw a corrupt govt, yet was himself an exceptional case in the KMT - with a modernist mindset and State Socialist leftwing inclinations, and belonged to the global phenomenon of "reform/renovationist technocrats" (kakushin kanryo)

1/ As 2020 draws to an end, and a new international balance of power might be on the horizon, it is worthwhile to revisit China's much-hated "Anfu Regime" toppled in 1920, the year when the Marxism Research Group, one precursor to the CCP, was founded.

The State Council, Peking 2/ President Yuan Shikai had tried to make himself Emperor in 1915. This failed, and he died in 1916. Parliament, restored by Premier Duan Qirui, was gridlocked, for both the Nationalist (KMT) and Progressive Parties had splintered. China was divided between military strongmen.

Who said the Chinese Anfu Club Regime and Duan Qirui had no economic thinking?

Club Council, 1918 - State demonstrative factories like Meiji Japan, experimental farms, subsidies to private startups, Listian tariffs, export bans on ess. goods, even inspections on unsanitary food On Feb 26, 1920 China announced the establishment of an "Economic General Staff" - the Economic Investigation Bureau based on the Postwar Econ. Investigat'n Commission.

PM would be Bureau President and Deputy Presidents Sun Baoqi and Wang Naibin were both experienced technocrats

The EF55 class locos, aka "Moomin", has mythical status in Japan. Built by Hitachi in 1936 for Tokaido expresses, they were the poster child of wartime high-tech Japan, and could be seen in a wide array of propaganda. Basis for proposed locos for Tokyo-Peking-Singapore services.

https://twitter.com/tettd489/status/1318273821846110209

2/ There were two competing proposals for the Great East Asian Transversal Railway. The 1939 proposal for a "Central Asian Transversal Railway" by S. Manchuria Rly engineer Yumoto Noboru revived themes from Nishihara Kamezo's 1918 works, for a line from Tokyo to Tehran and Europe

One day I'll compile a Maoist-Dengist version of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" booklet. A hippy-ish translation of Deng would probably be this -

"Free your mind, get it done, come together and move on." (1978-12-13)

Actually brightens up my day.

Does @JosephTorigian approve?🤣 In fact, the original title of the speech already sounded hippy-ish. Deng was smoking all the time. Perhaps he was getting stoned?

dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/ema…

1/7 Hard to imagine now, but North Korea once had a dapper cabinet - revolutionary "Mad Men" no less. Taken from a 1946 NK publication confiscated by the US Army and now kept at the National Archives, Washington DC. We start with two views of Kim Il-sung looking like a K-Pop star 2/7 Commerce Minister Chang Si-yu (商業相張時雨) needs only a pair of aviators (confiscated from a GI perhaps) to look as fly as Isaac Hayes. In fact, he already looks fly.