Julia C. Strauss (SOAS, University of London)

On January 7th, 2021, Professor Julia C. Strauss will give a Book Talk on her work, State Formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, Campaign, and Performance. This book is a comparative study of regime consolidation in the ‘revolutionary’ People’s Republic of China and the ‘conservative’ Republic of China (Taiwan) in the years following the communist victory against the nationalists on the Chinese mainland in 1949. Julia C. Strauss argues that accounting for these two variants of the Chinese state solely in terms of their divergent ideology and institutions fails to recognize their similarities and their relative successes. Focusing on Sunan and Taiwan, Strauss considers state personnel, the use of terror and land reform to explore the evolution of these revolutionary and conservative regimes between 1949 and 1954. Please RSVP to receive an event invitation via email.