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Reconstructing China: Japanese technicians and industrialization in the early years of the People's Republic of China*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2015

AMY KING
AMY KING*
Affiliation:
Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, The Australian National University, Australia Email: Amy.King@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

The Chinese Communist Party was confronted with the pressing challenge of ‘reconstructing’ China's industrial economy when it came to power in 1949. Drawing on recently declassified Chinese Foreign Ministry archives, this article argues that the Party met this challenge by drawing on the expertise of Japanese technicians left behind in Northeast China at the end of the Second World War. Between 1949 and 1953, when they were eventually repatriated, thousands of Japanese technicians were used by the Chinese Communist Party to develop new technology and industrial techniques, train less skilled Chinese workers, and rebuild factories, mines, railways, and other industrial sites in the Northeast. These first four years of the People's Republic of China represent an important moment of both continuity and change in China's history. Like the Chinese Nationalist government before them, the Chinese Communist Party continued to draw on the technological and industrial legacy of the Japanese empire in Asia to rebuild China's war-torn economy. But this four-year period was also a moment of profound change. As the Cold War erupted in Asia, the Chinese Communist Party began a long-term reconceptualization of how national power was intimately connected to technology and industrial capability, and viewed Japanese technicians as a vital element in the transformation of China into a modern and powerful nation.

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Research Article
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 141 - 174
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Mariko Yamamoto for superb research assistance, and to Rana Mitter, Henrietta Harrison, Evelyn Goh, participants in the University of Leeds’ Sino-Japanese Relations Research Network, participants in the Bristol University ‘China in Transition (1945–1955)’ workshop, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. The ‘China in Transition (1945–1955)’ workshop where this article was presented was funded by the Leverhulme Trust's China's War with Japan programme at Oxford University and the British Inter-University China Centre.

References

1 The Lüshun-Dalian region was subsequently occupied by the Soviet Union from 1945–1950.

2 Renmin Ribao [People's Daily], Lüda Zhongguo gongren jishu jie de dansheng Dalian gongye zhanlanhui tongxun [Lüda the birth of a class of Chinese technical workers. Correspondence from the Dalian industrial exhibition], 13 October 1949.

3 Ibid.

4 ‘Jishu’ can also be translated as ‘skill’ or ‘technique’.

5 Renmin Ribao, Lüda Zhongguo gongren jishu jie de dansheng.

6 For different estimates of the number of Japanese nationals in China and occupied China during the War, see Ward, R. (2011). Delaying repatriation: Japanese technicians in early post-war China, Japan Forum, 23:4, p. 473CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Watt, L. (2009). When Empire Comes Homes: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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19 Yang, ‘Resurrecting the Empire?’, pp. 187–193; Gillin and Etter, Staying on, pp. 509–511.

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22 FMA File No. 105-00224-02, pp. 3–4.

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25 Ibid.

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27 It is likely that there were also technicians of Taiwanese and Korean nationality, who had been part of the Japanese empire of Manchukuo, still living in the Northeast. Unfortunately, however, available Chinese Communist Party records refer only to these technicians and skilled workers as ‘Japanese’ and do not provide any further indication of the ethnicity or race of these technicians. For more on Taiwanese and Koreans in Manchukuo, see, for example, Hsu, H. (2012). Zai ‘Manzhouguo’ de Taiwanren gaodengguan: yi datong xueyuan de biyesheng weili [Taiwanese senior officials in Manchukuo: the case of graduates from Tatung Academy], Taiwan shi yanjiu [Taiwan Historical Research], 19:3, pp. 95–150Google Scholar.

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30 FMA File No. 105-00224-02, pp. 6–7.

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32 FMA File No. 105-00224-02, p. 7.

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45 Ibid.

46 Post-war Reconstruction of the Japanese Economy, September 1946, Special Survey Committee, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, compiled by Ōkita Saburō, pp. xxvii, 39, 81–82, 91–93, 113–114, 180–181.

47 Post-war Reconstruction of the Japanese Economy, pp. 180–181.

48 For more on these ideas and debates about industrial policy, technology, and economic development in pre-war and wartime Japan, see Mimura, J. (2011). Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and LondonCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gao, B. (1997). Economic Ideology and Japanese Industrial Policy: Developmentalism from 1931 to 1965, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hein, L. (2004). Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture and Expertise in Twentieth-Century Japan, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

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56 FMA File No. 105-00089-02, Wo waijiaobu jiu duiRi heyue wenti jinxing de taolunhui jilu (1950 nian 5 yue 12 ri) [Record of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's discussion group on the question of the Peace Treaty with Japan (12 May 1950)], 12 May 1950.

57 FMA File No. 105-00090-01, DuiRi heyue youguan jiechu Riben junbei tiaokuan caoyue’ [Japan Peace Treaty draft protocol concerning the removal of arms from Japan], 21 March 1950, pp. 20, 28, 34–35.

58 Ibid., pp. 38–39.

59 See, for example, Renmin Ribao [People's Daily], Jianjue zhizhi Meiguo zhunbei yuandong xin qinlüe zhanzheng de yinmou [We are determined to stop the U.S. plot to prepare for a new war of aggression in the Far East], 7 May 1952.

60 FMA File No. 105-00090-01, p. 18.

61 Ibid., p. 24.

62 Ibid., p. 24.

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67 FMA File No. 118-00118-02, p. 13.

68 Ibid., pp. 17–19.

69 FMA File No. 105-00224-02, p. 10.

70 Ibid, p. 10.

71 FMA File No. 118-00118-02, p. 21.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

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75 FMA File No. 105-00077-01, 27 May 1950, Guanyu kaizhan dui Riben zhijie maoyi wenti de baogao [A report on the development of direct trade to Japan], pp. 3–4.

76 FMA File No. 105-00077-02, Riben ZhongRi maoyi cujinhui yaoqiu pai daibiao laihua de qingkuang [The situation regarding the request by Japan's China-Japan Trade Promotion Association representative to visit China], 1 November 1949–1 June 1950, pp. 1, 4–7.

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78 Vogel, E.F. (2005). Chen Yun: his life, Journal of Contemporary China, 14:45, pp. 748–750CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should be noted that Vogel simply refers to these technicians as ‘locals’ and does not draw a distinction between Chinese and Japanese technicians.

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80 The United States initiated unilateral controls on its trade with China in December 1950, and in May 1951 ushered in a UN resolution banning trade in ‘strategic goods’ with the People's Republic of China. Zhang, Economic Cold War, pp. 31–39.

81 Ibid.

82 FMA File No. 118-00118-02, p. 15.

83 Ibid., p. 22.

84 Kyodo, Japanese in Red China reported jailed, 2 March 1952, via Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).

85 FMA File No. 118-00086-02, p. 5.

86 Gillin and Etter, Staying on, p. 510; Westad, O.A. (2003). Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950, Stanford University Press, Stanford, p. 84Google Scholar.

87 FMA File No. 118-00118-02, p. 18.

88 FMA File No. 118-00086-02, p. 9.

89 FMA File No. 118-00118-02, pp. 11–16.

90 The decision to frame the Japanese people as victims of imperialism was approved by Premier Zhou Enlai in May 1950. FMA File No. 105-00089-03, Wo waijiaobu jiu duiRi heyue wenti jinxing de taolunhui jilu (yi jiu wu ling nian we yue shi liu ri xiawu ershi) [Records of the meeting held by the Foreign Ministry's Peace Treaty with Japan Discussion Group (2pm, 16 May 1950)], 16 May 1950, pp. 3–4.

91 It is estimated that US$900 million worth of industrial equipment was taken by the Soviets from Manchuria. Cheng, Y.K. (1956). Foreign Trade and Industrial Development of China: An Historical and Integrated Analysis Through 1948, University Press of Washington, DC, Washington, DC, p. 163Google Scholar; Kirby, ‘The Chinese War Economy’, p. 185.

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94 Marusawa, Shin-Chugoku Kensetsu, pp. 99, 115–116.

95 Kyodo, Japanese aided Manchurian metallurgy, 15 April 1953, via FBIS.

96 Zhang, Economic Cold War.

97 Marusawa, Shin-Chugoku Kensetsu, p. 139.

98 Shen and Li, After Leaning to One Side, p. 119; Kaple, Dream of a Red Factory, p. 13.

99 FMA File No. 118-00086-02, p. 8.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid., pp. 6–7, 18–22.

102 Marusawa, Shin-Chugoku Kensetsu, p. 141.

103 Yang, ‘Resurrecting the Empire?’, p. 200.

104 FMA File No. 118-00086-02, p. 21.

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid., pp. 18–22.

107 FMA File No. 118-00118-02, pp. 16–17.

108 Ibid., p. 10.

109 Ibid.

110 Liang, Jianguo chuqi waiqiao guanli gongzuo shuping, p. 52.

111 Ibid., p. 52.

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