Tim Wright

State Capacity in Contemporary China: ‘closing the pits and reducing coal production’

This paper analyses the capacity of Chinas central state to control society and implement its policies at the local level, using as a case study the implementation from 1998 of a major policy initiative—‘closing the pits and reducing coal production’. The aims of this policy were to close down many of the TVE (township and village enterprise) mines, thereby ameliorating Chinas coal safety record, and to reduce output in order to balance supply and demand, thereby improving the situation of the SOE (state-owned enterprise) coal mines. The paper concludes that, despite some success, the state found it difficult to overcome resistance from a powerful coalition of local cadres, mine bosses, workers and farmers who depended directly or indirectly on the mines for their living. It therefore highlights continuing shortfalls in Chinas state capacity, particularly in situations where the state is trying to control or influence the distribution of economic rents as between different groups in society.

“A Method of Evading Management”—Contract Labor in Chinese Coal Mines before 1937

How far were Chinas prewar economic institutions the product of its particular history and traditions—that is, the product either of the nature of its premodern society or of its later status as a semicolony—and how far can they rather be seen as answers to problems common to the stage of economic development which the country had reached at that time?

The Performance of China's Industrial Enterprises A Coal Industry Perspective

Coal mining has been one of the biggest loss-making sectors among Chinas state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the performance of the industry might thus throw light on broader questions of enterprise performance during Chinas reform period. After outlining the overall financial performance of coal mining SOEs, the article examines the medium- and long-term influences on the performance of coal mining enterprises in four major categories—those relating to government policies, to the market, to the particular nature of coal mining as an extractive industry, and to internal enterprise operation. The article concludes that, up to the mid-1990s, the states economic priorities expressed through the fixing of prices were the most important negative influence on coal mining profits. After the incomplete deregulation of prices by 1994, while the governments role remained important, price competition in the context of more conventional economic cycles became the key influence. This article hopes to add an important industry perspective to a debate that has in the past focused either on the SOE sector as a whole or on individual enterprises or groups of enterprises.

`The Spiritual Heritage of Chinese Capitalism': Recent Trends in the Historiography of Chinese Enterprise Management

The historiography ofthe pre-1949 Chinese economy has recently begun to take a new direction, as scholars in both China and the West emphasize the successes as well as the failures of Chinas early modem economic development. Quantitative studies are revealing that very considerable growth took place, especially in the modem sector, so that the old problematic of stagnation is no longer appropriate. Chinas organizational heritage, both state and private, is now also seen as having had a favourable rather than a purely negative impact on Chinas development. One important facet of the new interpretation is the much more positive evaluation of the management practices of Chinas capitalist entrepreneurs up to 1937, and of the Western and Chinese theories that underlay those practices. This paper links the new studies of Chinas management history both to the current market-based economic reforms

Growth of the Modern Chinese Coal Industry: An Analysis of Supply and Demand, 1896-1936

Until recently most scholars have been content to characterize the prewar Chinese economy as underdeveloped and stagnant. The static concept of underdevelopment, suggesting as it does an economy unable to provide a decent standard of living for its people, certainly describes the situation of prewar China. But it need not necessarily imply that the economy was stagnant; still less does it exclude areas or sectors of growth. Recent studies highlighting such pockets of growth are important as a way not only of achieving a more balanced picture of the economy, but also of avoiding facile overgeneralizations about the forces re-

Long nuclear spin polarization decay times controlled by optical pumping in individual quantum dots

Nuclear polarization dynamics are measured in the nuclear spin bistability regime in a single optically pumped InGaAs/GaAs quantum dot. The controlling role of nuclear spin diffusion from the dot into the surrounding material is revealed in pump-probe measurements of the nonlinear nuclear spin dynamics. We measure nuclear spin polarization decay times in the range of 0.2-5 s, strongly dependent on the optical pumping time. The long nuclear spin decay arises from polarization of the material surrounding the dot by spin diffusion for long (>5s) pumping times. The time-resolved methods allow the detection of the unstable nuclear polarization state in the bistability regime otherwise undetectable in cw experiments.

Shanghai Imperialists versus Rickshaw Racketeers The Defeat of the 1934 Rickshaw Reforms

to impose their will on Chinese society, and especially on local elites, is a continuing issue that spans the history of the imperial, republican, and Communist periods. This article examines the limits of imperialist power and the success of one particular Chinese elite in resisting the attempt by the Shanghai Municipal Council to improve conditions for the city’s rickshaw pullers in 1934. The International Settlement in Shanghai was the jewel of foreign power in China. Economically, it was the headquarters of most of the major foreign firms; culturally and politically, it was the most important of the foreign concessions, and its notorious sign, &dquo;No Dogs or Chinese&dquo; (whether or not it ever actually existed), symbolized China’s loss of sovereignty. Yet, even there, the foreign authorities, in the form of the Shanghai Municipal Council, had far from absolute power, and were often forced to compromise in the face of both economic forces and resistance from local elites.

Entrepreneurs, Politicians and the Chinese Coal Industry, 1895—1937

The emergence of new groups in society willing and able to supply capital and enterprise to modern industry is one of the crucial aspects of economic development. The sources of entrepreneurship in China and the relations of those entrepreneurs with the rest of society have been insufficiently studied. Previous writers have tended to focus on outstanding individuals such as Sheng Hsuan-huai and Chang Chien, and to pay insufficient attention to their more run-of-the-mill followers. This paper surveys the changing sources of entrepreneurship in the Chinese coal industry between 1895 and 1937 and suggests reasons for the prominence or otherwise of the various groups involved. The concept of entrepreneurship used here is one much wider than the classic Schumpeterian definition, and includes the followers and adaptors who, as Redlich points out, also make a vital contribution to industrialization. Thus we take into our view all those who made a contribution to the development of modern coal mining enterprises as entrepreneurs, as managers or as stockholders—in many cases these functions overlapped. The companies covered are those owned either wholly or partly by Chinese nationals. Such companies accounted for 50–60 per cent of Chinas coal output of about 30 million tons in the 1930s.

Legitimacy and Disaster Responses to the 1932 Floods in North Manchuria

The very existence of the new state of Manchukuo was contested throughout the 1930s. Despite its colonial reality, its form as a nation-state necessitated an attempt to generate legitimacy, and its best hope lay in performance legitimacy as a modernizing and developmental state delivering public goods and offering honest and efficient government. Less than a year after its establishment, the new state faced a crisis caused by large-scale floods in the north of the region. This article examines how it attempted to build performance legitimacy even in a quasi-colonial situation by establishing institutions and raising funds to mount a relief effort, providing food, shelter, and medical care, and in the longer term restoring state capacity by maintaining order, reopening communications, and instituting flood prevention measures. At the same time, it generated a narrative that linked that effort to its broader ideological claims to legitimacy.

Control of nuclear spin in InGaAs quantum dots

Control of the dynamic nuclear polarization is achieved in individual InGaAs dots embedded in a p-i-n diode by employing the vertical electric field controlling carrier tunneling rates. Nuclear magnetic fields up to 1.7 T are observed.