Margherita Zanasi
Biographic Data
| ID | 251055 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Margherita Zanasi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Margherita |
| FAMILY NAME | Zanasi |
| SIGNATURE | ZANASI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Louisiana State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Economic Thought in Modern China
Margherita Zanasi skilfully marshals a wide range of primary sources and secondary literature in several languages to take readers on a fascinating journey through several hundred years of Chinese economic thought
The Opium Business
Economic Thought in Modern China
In this major new study, Margherita Zanasi argues that basic notions of a free market economy emerged in China a century and half earlier than in Europe. In response to the commercial revolutions of the late 1500s, Chinese intellectuals and officials called for the end of state intervention in the market, recognizing its power to self-regulate. They also noted the elasticity of domestic demand and production, arguing in favour of ending long-stan…
R ebecca E. K arl . The Magic of Concepts
In the five closely related essays that form her most recent book, The Magic of Concepts: History and the Economic in Twentieth-Century China, Rebecca E. Karl addresses three main issues that have preoccupied scholars of modern Chinese history in the last few decades. These are the relationships between ideology and historical representation, the relationships between Chinese history and world history (including historiographical trends of univer…
Frugal Modernity
This article examines the development of the Chinese discourse on consumption and standards of living from the early twentieth century to the implementation of the New Life Movement in the mid-1930s. During this period, the idea that China's economy was characterized by scarcity rather than growth-and thus was experiencing a different level of development from the industrialized West-caused Chinese intellectuals and officials to question the wisd…
Western Utopias, Missionary Economics, and the Chinese Village
This article explores the impact of Western economics on early twentieth-century Chinese economic thought by focusing on the work of Richard Tawney and John Bernard Tayler on the modernization of Chinese agriculture. Tawney’s and Tayler’s approaches differed considerably. An established economic historian from the London School of Economics, Tawney was committed to a purely social science approach. Tayler, a Protestant missionary and professor of…
New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration
The question of moral judgment looms large over every discussion of World War II collaboration, at times clouding and distorting our understanding of this complex issue, as Timothy Brook poignantly remarks in his contribution to this journal's recent symposium. This moral question is certainly relevant and should not be dismissed, since collaboration came to be more or less directly associated with the civic and human rights infringements perpetr…
Short Notices
Globalizing Hanjian
ON APRIL 6, 1946, THE SHANGHAI-BASED NEWSPAPER SHENBAO DEVOTED most of its front page to the trial of Chen Gongbo, China’s most prominent hanjian (literally “traitor of the Chinese people,” generally translated into English as “collaborator”), which was taking place at the Jiangsu Higher Court in the nearby city of Suzhou. 1 Chen Gongbo was a well-known political personality in China, having been a longtime leader of the ruling Nationalist Party …
Disciplining the State
Exporting Development
In 1931, the Chinese minister of finance, Song Ziwen (T. V. Soong), reached an agreement with the League of Nations on a Program of Technical Cooperation with China. The program was intended to provide the Nationalist government-the republican government that ruled China from 1927 to 1949-with much-needed technological and financial aid in support of its nation-building effort. As a result, the League sent a number of experts to China. The first …
The Politics of Reconstruction
This chapter describes Song Ziwen's ideas of economic modernization and shows that Wang Jingwei's and Chen Gongbo's ideas of nation building had wide resonance among most of the Nationalist civilian leaders. It explores how the political disunity of the Nanjing government and the uncertainty caused by the struggle for its leadership prevented the modernization of the state undermining their reform effort. Song adopted a new strategy to pursue ref…
The Cotton Control Commission and the Corporativist Organization of the Nation
This chapter describes how Wang Jingwei's and Chen Gongbo's idea of minzu economy led the National Economic Council (NEC) leaders to embrace corporativism. The NEC became a corporativist organization, merging worldwide fascist trends with reform practices initiated in the Self-Strengthening period. Wang's and Chen's notion of minzu economy and their productivist approach led them to conceive the nation as a community of producers working together…
China's Minzu Economy
This chapter examines the understanding of Wang Jingwei and Chen Gongbo in China's crisis, their notion of economic modernity, and their development of the idea of minzu economy as the foundation of the nation. It also reviews the link between Wang's and Chen's political platform and worldwide fascist trends. The economic reform plan promoted by the Wang group was entrusted with the revolutionary (and evolutionary) task of changing the Chinese ec…
Conclusion
The Nanjing Decade was profoundly different from postwar Nationalist China because of the richness and diversity of ideas of political and economic modernity and because of the freedom enjoyed by intellectuals and political leaders to creatively combine elements from different trends without being afraid of going against the political line imposed by their parties. The Nanjing Decade witnessed the confrontation between Communists and Nationalists…
The Rural Question
This chapter explores the productivist policies of the GMD and how they affected its rural policies. Rural recovery was crucial for Wang Jingwei's and Chen Gongbo's vision of modern nationhood with its very specific objectives (autarky and national unity). They recognized the significance and urgency of the rural crisis and placed its solution at the center of their reform plans. A successful solution to the rural crisis would be reached only by …
Officials, Industrial Magnates, and Bureaucratic Capitalism
Implementing Rural Reforms
This chapter investigates Cotton Control Commission (CCC) reforms in rural areas: their goals, their potential to change the socioeconomic structure of the Chinese village, and the problems these reforms met. The CCC leaders tended to underestimate local market forces and the cultural trends that supported them. It is shown that CCC encountered difficulty in its work in the village. The CCC was trapped in its productivist rhetoric and often ignor…
From Nationalism to Collaboration
This chapter highlights the deep impact of the intellectual constructs of nation building on the political life of Republican China. It also explores how different visions of nation led to two dramatically different defensive strategies after the eruption of full war with Japan. Wang Jingwei was in better position to exploit the needs of the Japanese for a strong and legitimate Chinese government and thus would be able to negotiate a more favorab…
Saving the Nation
Economic modernity is so closely associated with nationhood that it is impossible to imagine a modern state without an equally modern economy. Even so, most people would have difficulty defining a modern economy and its connection to nationhood. In Saving the Nation, Margherita Zanasi explores this connection by examining the first nation-building attempt in China after the fall of the empire in 1911.Challenging the assumption that nations are pr…
Fostering the People's Livelihood
Fostering the People's Livelihood
Students of modem Chinese history are often faced with the discrepancy between Chinese and Western perceptions of Sun Vat-sen (f~~1l1J, styled f~1:f=lW, 18661925). Both in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC), historians, and the public large, consider Sun the father of the modem Chinese nation (~x:, guofu) and still regard his writings-especially the Three People's Principle's (~ ~.±~, sanmin zhuyi): Nationalism (…
Far from the Treaty Ports
This article explores how constructions of national identity took the Chinese discourse on industrialization in the 1930s beyond mere economics. During this period, Chinese intellectuals’ attempt to define China’s identity and its position among the world powers led to the creation of two competing tropes. On one hand, the treaty ports came to represent a China integrated in the world and pursuing a Western-style path toward modernization. The ru…
Exporting Development
In 1931, the Chinese minister of finance, Song Ziwen (T. V. Soong), reached an agreement with the League of Nations on a Program of Technical Cooperation with China. The program was intended to provide the Nationalist government-the republican government that ruled China from 1927 to 1949-with much-needed technological and financial aid in support of its nation-building effort. As a result, the League sent a number of experts to China. The first …
Far from the Treaty Ports
This article explores how constructions of national identity took the Chinese discourse on industrialization in the 1930s beyond mere economics. During this period, Chinese intellectuals’ attempt to define China’s identity and its position among the world powers led to the creation of two competing tropes. On one hand, the treaty ports came to represent a China integrated in the world and pursuing a Western-style path toward modernization. The ru…
Frugal Modernity
This article examines the development of the Chinese discourse on consumption and standards of living from the early twentieth century to the implementation of the New Life Movement in the mid-1930s. During this period, the idea that China's economy was characterized by scarcity rather than growth-and thus was experiencing a different level of development from the industrialized West-caused Chinese intellectuals and officials to question the wisd…
New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration
The question of moral judgment looms large over every discussion of World War II collaboration, at times clouding and distorting our understanding of this complex issue, as Timothy Brook poignantly remarks in his contribution to this journal's recent symposium. This moral question is certainly relevant and should not be dismissed, since collaboration came to be more or less directly associated with the civic and human rights infringements perpetr…
Fostering the People's Livelihood
Fostering the People's Livelihood
Students of modem Chinese history are often faced with the discrepancy between Chinese and Western perceptions of Sun Vat-sen (f~~1l1J, styled f~1:f=lW, 18661925). Both in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC), historians, and the public large, consider Sun the father of the modem Chinese nation (~x:, guofu) and still regard his writings-especially the Three People's Principle's (~ ~.±~, sanmin zhuyi): Nationalism (…
Far from the Treaty Ports
This article explores how constructions of national identity took the Chinese discourse on industrialization in the 1930s beyond mere economics. During this period, Chinese intellectuals’ attempt to define China’s identity and its position among the world powers led to the creation of two competing tropes. On one hand, the treaty ports came to represent a China integrated in the world and pursuing a Western-style path toward modernization. The ru…
The Politics of Reconstruction
This chapter describes Song Ziwen's ideas of economic modernization and shows that Wang Jingwei's and Chen Gongbo's ideas of nation building had wide resonance among most of the Nationalist civilian leaders. It explores how the political disunity of the Nanjing government and the uncertainty caused by the struggle for its leadership prevented the modernization of the state undermining their reform effort. Song adopted a new strategy to pursue ref…
The Cotton Control Commission and the Corporativist Organization of the Nation
This chapter describes how Wang Jingwei's and Chen Gongbo's idea of minzu economy led the National Economic Council (NEC) leaders to embrace corporativism. The NEC became a corporativist organization, merging worldwide fascist trends with reform practices initiated in the Self-Strengthening period. Wang's and Chen's notion of minzu economy and their productivist approach led them to conceive the nation as a community of producers working together…
China's Minzu Economy
This chapter examines the understanding of Wang Jingwei and Chen Gongbo in China's crisis, their notion of economic modernity, and their development of the idea of minzu economy as the foundation of the nation. It also reviews the link between Wang's and Chen's political platform and worldwide fascist trends. The economic reform plan promoted by the Wang group was entrusted with the revolutionary (and evolutionary) task of changing the Chinese ec…
Conclusion
The Nanjing Decade was profoundly different from postwar Nationalist China because of the richness and diversity of ideas of political and economic modernity and because of the freedom enjoyed by intellectuals and political leaders to creatively combine elements from different trends without being afraid of going against the political line imposed by their parties. The Nanjing Decade witnessed the confrontation between Communists and Nationalists…
The Rural Question
This chapter explores the productivist policies of the GMD and how they affected its rural policies. Rural recovery was crucial for Wang Jingwei's and Chen Gongbo's vision of modern nationhood with its very specific objectives (autarky and national unity). They recognized the significance and urgency of the rural crisis and placed its solution at the center of their reform plans. A successful solution to the rural crisis would be reached only by …
Officials, Industrial Magnates, and Bureaucratic Capitalism
Implementing Rural Reforms
This chapter investigates Cotton Control Commission (CCC) reforms in rural areas: their goals, their potential to change the socioeconomic structure of the Chinese village, and the problems these reforms met. The CCC leaders tended to underestimate local market forces and the cultural trends that supported them. It is shown that CCC encountered difficulty in its work in the village. The CCC was trapped in its productivist rhetoric and often ignor…
From Nationalism to Collaboration
This chapter highlights the deep impact of the intellectual constructs of nation building on the political life of Republican China. It also explores how different visions of nation led to two dramatically different defensive strategies after the eruption of full war with Japan. Wang Jingwei was in better position to exploit the needs of the Japanese for a strong and legitimate Chinese government and thus would be able to negotiate a more favorab…
Saving the Nation
Economic modernity is so closely associated with nationhood that it is impossible to imagine a modern state without an equally modern economy. Even so, most people would have difficulty defining a modern economy and its connection to nationhood. In Saving the Nation, Margherita Zanasi explores this connection by examining the first nation-building attempt in China after the fall of the empire in 1911.Challenging the assumption that nations are pr…
Exporting Development
In 1931, the Chinese minister of finance, Song Ziwen (T. V. Soong), reached an agreement with the League of Nations on a Program of Technical Cooperation with China. The program was intended to provide the Nationalist government-the republican government that ruled China from 1927 to 1949-with much-needed technological and financial aid in support of its nation-building effort. As a result, the League sent a number of experts to China. The first …
Globalizing Hanjian
ON APRIL 6, 1946, THE SHANGHAI-BASED NEWSPAPER SHENBAO DEVOTED most of its front page to the trial of Chen Gongbo, China’s most prominent hanjian (literally “traitor of the Chinese people,” generally translated into English as “collaborator”), which was taking place at the Jiangsu Higher Court in the nearby city of Suzhou. 1 Chen Gongbo was a well-known political personality in China, having been a longtime leader of the ruling Nationalist Party …
Disciplining the State
Short Notices
Western Utopias, Missionary Economics, and the Chinese Village
This article explores the impact of Western economics on early twentieth-century Chinese economic thought by focusing on the work of Richard Tawney and John Bernard Tayler on the modernization of Chinese agriculture. Tawney’s and Tayler’s approaches differed considerably. An established economic historian from the London School of Economics, Tawney was committed to a purely social science approach. Tayler, a Protestant missionary and professor of…
New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration
The question of moral judgment looms large over every discussion of World War II collaboration, at times clouding and distorting our understanding of this complex issue, as Timothy Brook poignantly remarks in his contribution to this journal's recent symposium. This moral question is certainly relevant and should not be dismissed, since collaboration came to be more or less directly associated with the civic and human rights infringements perpetr…
Frugal Modernity
This article examines the development of the Chinese discourse on consumption and standards of living from the early twentieth century to the implementation of the New Life Movement in the mid-1930s. During this period, the idea that China's economy was characterized by scarcity rather than growth-and thus was experiencing a different level of development from the industrialized West-caused Chinese intellectuals and officials to question the wisd…
R ebecca E. K arl . The Magic of Concepts
In the five closely related essays that form her most recent book, The Magic of Concepts: History and the Economic in Twentieth-Century China, Rebecca E. Karl addresses three main issues that have preoccupied scholars of modern Chinese history in the last few decades. These are the relationships between ideology and historical representation, the relationships between Chinese history and world history (including historiographical trends of univer…
Economic Thought in Modern China
In this major new study, Margherita Zanasi argues that basic notions of a free market economy emerged in China a century and half earlier than in Europe. In response to the commercial revolutions of the late 1500s, Chinese intellectuals and officials called for the end of state intervention in the market, recognizing its power to self-regulate. They also noted the elasticity of domestic demand and production, arguing in favour of ending long-stan…
The Opium Business
Economic Thought in Modern China
Margherita Zanasi skilfully marshals a wide range of primary sources and secondary literature in several languages to take readers on a fascinating journey through several hundred years of Chinese economic thought
Political science (20 works) · Law (16 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (15 works) · China (12 works) · History (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Politics (7 works) · Economy (6 works) · Modernization theory (6 works)