Capitalism and Changing Forms of Political Legitimacy in Post-Imperial China

Stacie Kent, Boston College

The end of the Qing Empire in 1911 took place amidst new forms of economic nationalism, including numerous calls to undo foreign intrusions into Chinese sovereignty. At the same time, however, this project entailed the internalization of new norms of state behavior cultivated in the course of the nineteenth century, when commercial treaties institutionalized a foreign colonial presence in China. This paper examines Republican-era (1912-1949) discussions of tax policy and state-sponsored knowledge production as part of a broader shift in strategies of political legitimacy. On one hand these shifts promised to raise China’s economic and geopolitical profile; on the other they entailed the subjugation of politics to the imperatives of capital accumulation. Identifying this relationship between the Republican-era state and capital reframes the break between imperial and post-imperial rule as well as differences between Nationalist and Communist programs of development in twentieth-century China.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 126. Economic Value in the Post-Colonial State: Egypt, India, and China