Making Mao's Steelworks

Koji Hirata is a lecturer in history at Monash University.

• Introduction: Industrial Manchuria and the transnational origins of Chinese socialism; Part I. Empire, War, and the Global Crisis of Capitalism, 1915–1948: 1. Blood, iron, and the Japanese empire; 2. The soviets and nationalists are coming; Part II. Socialist Industrialization as a Hybrid System, 1948–1957: 3. Making Manchuria red; 4. The soviet big brother is watching you; 5. Who owns the state-owned enterprise?; 6. Speaking Maoist; Part III. Socialisms with Chinese Characteristics, 1957–2000: 7. The three lives of the Angang constitution; 8. The socialist rustbelt in the market economy; Conclusion: making Mao's steelworks; Acknowledgements; Appendix: a note on primary sources; Bibliography.

'In this meticulously researched monograph Hirata Koji weaves an integrated history of the Anshan Iron and Steel Works located in Northeastern China – the icon of Chinese heavy industrialization – through five different political regimes. In his narrative, the enterprise became a microcosm of modern China shaped by Japanese colonialism, Soviet socialism, the forces of the global, the resilience of the local and regional, the dilemma of central planning, and ultimately the contemporary market reform. An intimate portrayal of how modern China operates and adapts from ground up.' Debin Ma, Professor of Economic History, All Souls College, University of Oxford