Institute for Chinese Studies presents the "Global and Transnational Experiences" Lecture Series
“Old Menace in New China: Smuggling and Illicit Markets under Early Communist Rule’”
Flyer: Philip Thai Flyer.pdf
Abstract:
Like Nationalist China, Communist China was beset by illicit coastal trade and feared unbridled foreign commerce maintaining the country’s dependence on fickle global markets. The new regime assumed many of its predecessor’s policies, waging its own war on smuggling to control transnational connections and build a new socialist economy insulated from Western capitalism. Yet out of necessity Communist China tacitly tolerated (or actively supported) trafficking in capitalist enclaves like Hong Kong and Macau. In his talk, Dr. Thai explores the dual role of coastal smuggling challenging and bolstering Communist rule during the regime’s formative years and adds a global economic perspective to previous research focused on domestic state consolidation in the countryside and cities.
Bio:
Philip Thai is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Northeastern University. A historian of Modern China, his research and teaching interests include legal history, economic history, business history, and history of capitalism. He is currently working on his manuscript tentatively titled, "The War on Smuggling: Law, State Power, and Illicit Markets in Coastal China," which uses China’s campaigns against smuggling during the twentieth century to examine the transformation of state authority and the larger socioeconomic impact of state-building. Professor Thai received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2013 and his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000. During the 2015–16 academic year, he will be a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS China Studies Postdoctoral Fellow.
Co-sponsor: Department of History