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, – Recharging China in War and Revolution, – • Ying Jia Tan Copyright © by Cornell University e text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives . International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/./. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the license, please contact Cornell University Press, Sage House, East State Street, Ithaca, New York . Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published by Cornell University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tan, Ying Jia, – author. Title: Recharging China in war and revolution, – / Ying Jia Tan. Description: Ithaca [New York]: Cornell University Press, [ ] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identi ers: LCCN (print) | LCCN (ebook) | ISBN (paperback) | ISBN (pdf) | ISBN (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Electric industries—China—History— th century. | Electric industries—China—History—th century. | Electric industries— Economic aspects—China. | Electric industries—Political aspects— China. | Electric power production—China—History— th century. | Electric power production—China—History—th century. Classi cation: LCC HD.A T (print) | LCC HD. A (ebook) | DDC ./ —dc LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ Cover illustration: Sheng, Cijun. Protect our factory: Guard against re, burglars, and agents’ activities. Poster. China: People’s Arts Publishing House, . From Poster collection, CC , Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford, California. is book is published as part of the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot. With the generous support of the Andrew W. 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We hope you will spend a few minutes answering a couple of questions at this url: https://www.longleafservices.org/shmp-survey/ More information about the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot can be found at https://www.longleafservices.org. List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations xv Note on Transliteration xvii Forging Resilience Spinning the reads of Discontent Defending the Public Good Unleashing Fire and Fury Dawning of the Copper Age Turning the Tide Waging Electrical Warfare Manufacturing Technocracy Hauntings from Past Energy Transitions List of Chinese and Japanese Terms Notes Bibliography .. Map of China .. Map of Shanghai’s main power station and major textile mills, circa .. e Final Days of the Anti-Japanese Resistance ( ) .. Products of the Central Electrical Manufacturing Works ( ) .. Artist Impression of John Lucian Savage’s Proposed Yangtze Gorges Dam .. Prole of the Tennessee River ( ) .. Map of the Yangtze Gorges site depicting the extent of Savage’s survey .. Fushun Power Plant aer the Soviet takeover, circa .. Electrical industries under Japanese and Guomindang control, circa .. Power output gures for Shanghai, – ix It has been a decade since the triple disaster of an earthquake, tsunami, and nu- clear meltdown struck Fukushima in March . is book has grown out of a series of questions arising from that massive catastrophe: Why are high-energy societies so reliant on fossil fuels and nuclear power, despite their risk to human health and political stability? Have East Asian societies experienced large-scale energy crises that can show us how governments and people cope with a cata- clysmic collapse of the energy infrastructure? I am indebted to the people and institutions that helped me on my quest to address these questions. My research into the history of electricity began at Yale in March . Aer aborting research plans that would have taken me to Japan, I had a long and serious conversation with Valerie Hansen, who suggested that I make a foray into energy history, since it was closely related to my interest in the history of cartography. Valerie guided me through the writing process by setting clear and achievable targets and reminding me to express my ideas clearly and succinctly. Peter Perdue, Frank Snowden, and Bill Rankin were always on hand to provide much-needed intervention in the early stages of this work and helped me develop a sharper thematic focus for this book. Many people at Yale provided encour- agement for this project, especially Paola Bertucci, Mary Augusta Brazelton, Ivano dal Prete, Fabian Drixler, Daniel Kevles, Leon Rocha, Naomi Rogers, Richard Sosa, Brian Turner, Courtney ompson, Jinping Wang, and John Harley Warner. My colleagues and students at Wesleyan University encouraged me to re- imagine and reshape this project. My mentor Bill Johnston repeatedly returned to Fukushima to photograph choreographer-dancer Eiko Otake performing in the area near the damaged nuclear reactor. Besides oering feedback on every dra chapter of the manuscript, Bill inspired me to think of disasters on multiple geographic and time scales, as he tirelessly read through every word of the manuscript. Mary Alice Haddad not only introduced my work to social scientists, but also oered pointed criticism that helped me reorga- nize the introduction and conclusion. My research apprentice Riyu Ling, who painstakingly assembled the data for this book, reminded me to keep in mind xi xii Acknowledgments a fundamental question: What was electricity used for? During my time as a faculty fellow at the Center for the Humanities, my colleagues Andrew Curran, Axelle Karera, Ethan Kleinberg, Stephanie Koscak, Vijay Pinch, and Gabrielle Ponce- Hegenauer pushed me to think about how the history of electri cation straddled the divide between “grand narrative” and “modest proposals.” I also thank Steven Angle, Joan Cho, Paul Erickson, Demetrius Eudell, Courtney Fullilove, Erik Grimmer-Solem, Valeria Lopez-Fadul, Bruce Masters, Jim Mc- Guire, Don Moon, Peter Rutland, Ron Schatz, Gary Shaw, Victoria Smolkin, Jennifer Tucker, Laura Ann Twagira, and Duy White for their valuable input on this project. I am grateful for the nancial support that has helped me bring this book to fruition. Funding sources include Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Charles Kao Fund and Summer Travel and Research grants adminis- tered by the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale, and the Taiwan Fellowship. A generous postdoctoral fellowship with the D. Kim Foundation in the – academic year aorded me the time to complete the manuscript. e Oce of Academic Aairs at Wesleyan University oered nancial support through the Grants in Support of Scholarship. I am also grateful to my colleagues in the History Department for approving my applications for two supplemental grants and a publication subvention from the “Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs ( – ) Fund.” is book draws on sources from archives in China, Taiwan, Japan, and the United States. e research would not have been possible without the generosity of many host institutions and archivists. I thank Zhang Baichun and Sun Lie for giving me a home at the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences in Beijing, Han Zhaoqing at Fudan, and Cao Shuji at Shanghai Jiaotong University. I am appreciative of the exibility granted by archivists at Beijing Municipal Archives and Shanghai Municipal Archives. My term as Taiwan fellow in the summer of was instrumental to the completion of this book. Wen-de Huang and Melodie Wu at the National Central Library made sure that I was well settled in Taiwan. At Academia Sinica, Mike Liu arranged for me to be hosted at the In- stitute of Taiwan History and gave me unfettered access to a special collection of sources in his research oce. I also had the pleasure of discussing my work with Chang Che-chia, Chen Chien-shou, Chiah Sing Ho, Paul Katz, Lin Lanfang, Sean Lei, and Shu-li Wang. At Academia Historica and later Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Ya-hung Hsiao not only helped me secure access to the documents but also directed me to leading scholars in the eld. Outside of Academia Sinica, Chiao-lun Cheng, Ming-sho Ho, Wen-hua Kuo, and Sao Yang Hong, Jen-shen Acknowledgments xiii Wu, spent many hours discussing my project with me and pushed me to articu- late my underlying arguments more clearly. rough the years of research and writing, members of the scholarly commu- nity have challenged me to connect electricity to political and economic issues. Members of the Civil War workshop at Yale in May , Cheow ia Chan, David Cheng Chang, Shiu-on Chu, Rob Culp, Fa-ti Fan, Joshua Freeman, James Gao, Judd Kinzley, Diana Lary, Joe Lawson, Rebecca Nedostup, Philip ai, Xian Wang, Dominic Yang, and Shirley Ye inspired me to situate electricity within multiple modes of warfare. e working group on electricity based at the University of Leeds, namely Animesh Chatterjee, Graeme Gooday, Phil Judkins,