Zhaojin Zeng (Duke Kunshan University)

Factories made China’s twentieth-century special. From Self-Strengthening arsenals and shipyards to communist ordnance workshops in the guerilla bases, from the Nationalist government’s ironworks to Soviet-aided power plants, from Third Front military-industrial complexes to mega company-towns in Guangdong, factories witnessed a century of upheaval and change in China. Not merely an economic institution or production facility, the factory serves as a foundational building block for the Chinese state. The crucial need to foster manufacturing capacities and harness industrial technology was a central concern to the successive political powers from the late Qing to the post-Mao. Constructing, operating, and controlling factories drove the convoluted process of state-building over the course of the long twentieth century. In this talk, Zeng chronicles the changing relationship between factories and the state by conducting a micro-historical analysis of the local industrial elites.