Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China
Ohnesorge: A Hurstian View on Chinese Econonomic Development
John K.M. Ohnesorge, University of Wisconsin Law School, has posted Development is Not a Dinner Party: A Hurstian Perspective on Law and Growth in China, which is forthcoming in the Wisconsin Law Review Forward:
Much has been written, and remains to be written, about the many roles law has played in China’s economic development since 1978. Without minimizing the value of what has been written so far, this essay seeks to broaden the discussion by applying to China’s recent history certain ideas of the great historian of 19th Century American law and economic development, James Willard Hurst. The essay proceeds by providing a brief introduction to Hurst and his work on law and economic growth in the United States, then explores how those ideas might be applied to assist our understanding of what has happened in China.
--Dan Ernst
Zhu on China Suzerainty over Tibet and Mongolia
Yuan Yi Zhu, Stipendiary Lecturer in Politics at Pembroke College, Oxford, has published Suzerainty, Semi-Sovereignty, and International Legal Hierarchies on China's Borderlands, in the Asian Journal of International Law:
The concept of semi-sovereignty, a now obsolete category of international entities possessing limited sovereignty, remains hazily understood. However, the historical examination of how semi-sovereignty was defined and practised during the long nineteenth century can provide insights on the interplay between authority and control within the hierarchies of international relations. This paper examines one specific type of semi-sovereignty—namely, suzerainty—which is often used to describe China's traditional authority in Tibet and Mongolia. By examining the events that led to the acceptance of suzerainty as the legal framing for the China-Tibet and China-Mongolia relationships, I argue that suzerainty was a deliberately vague concept that could be used to create liminal international legal spaces to the advantage of Western states, and to mediate between competing claims of political authority. Finally, I point to the importance of semi-sovereignty as an arena of legal contestation between the Western and non-Western members of the “Family of Nations”.
Update: With the new link above, the article is ungated.
Du on filiality and falsity in Qing China
Last year, Yue Du (Cornell University) published "Policies and Counterstrategies: State-Sponsored Filiality and False Accusation in Qing China" in the International Journal of Asian Studies 16 (2019), 79-97. Here's the abstract:
Using court cases culled from various national and local archives in China, this article examines two strategies widely employed by Qing litigants to manipulate state-sponsored filiality to advance their perceived interests in court: “instrumental filicide to lodge a false accusation” and “false accusation of unfiliality.” While Qing subjects were willing and able to exploit the legalized inequality between parent and child for profit-seeking purposes, the Qing imperial state tolerated such maneuvering so as to co-opt local negotiations to reinforce orthodox notions of the parent–child hierarchy in its subjects’ everyday lives. Local actors, who appealed to the Qing legal promotion of parental dominance and filial obedience to empower themselves, were recruited into the Qing state's project of moral penetration and social control, with law functioning as a conduit and instrument that gave the design of “ruling the empire through the principle of filial piety” a concrete legal form in imperial governance.
Further information is available here.
--Mitra Sharafi
Japanese Invasion Of China 1931-45: RARE (LARGE) IMAGES
Everybody believes that World War II began on September 1, 1939 with the German attack on Poland. But the Chinese are convinced that the war began much earlier! Some say in 1931 - Japanese invasion of Manchuria; others put it on July 7, 1937 - when, using the armed incident in the area Lugoutsyao (incident at the Marco Polo Bridge), the Japanese army launched a war to capture all of China. China suffered huge losses in World War II, and the atrocities that the Japanese committed in the country surpassed all limits.
First some background. When the Japanese invaded China in 1931, the country itself was in turmoil. The Nationalist Chinese KMT Chiang Kai-shek's regime was fighting the Chinese communists led by Mao. So till 1945 these two Chinese forces and the Japanese were all fighting each other. In short, China was in a mess.
WHAT WAS THE "MARCO POLO BRIDGE INCIDENT" OR THE "LUGOUQIAO INCIDENT"?
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident (or the Lugouqiao Incident) was a battle between the Republic of China's National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army, often used as the marker for the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). The eleven-arch granite bridge, Lugouqiao, is an architecturally significant structure, restored by the Kangxi Emperor (1662–1722). Often signifying the opening of Japan's comprehensive invasion of mainland China, both this 7 July and 18 September (Mukden Incident) are still remembered as days of national humiliation by most Chinese.
READ MORE ON WIKIPEDIA
The Fall of Nanking
Japanese cavalryman in Manchuria. 1932
Japanese soldiers with a captured Chinese Vickers 6-Ton tank
INTERESTING SIDELIGHTS: THE VICKERS 6-TON TANK
Japanese soldiers on the march in Manchuria. 1932. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began on September 19, 1931, when Manchuria was invaded by the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan immediately following the Mukden Incident. The Japanese established a puppet state, called Manchukoku, and their occupation lasted until the end of World War II.
Japanese machine gun crew in China
Japanese soldiers storming the city of Nanking
KMT (Kuomintang) soldiers fire away with a machine gun
A Japanese tank in China. The Chinese people look on bemused at the invader.
Japanese with the captured Chinese German made Pz.Kpfw.I Ausf.A tank
MORE ON THE Pz.Kpfw.I Ausf.A
Japanese with a destroyed Chinese T-26 tank. The Chinese Chiang Kai-shek regime bought arms from many countries, it seems
Determined looking Chinese communist soldiers with a machine gun
Chinese communist soldiers in 1945
A Chinese machine-gunner with "Browning" M1928 (Polish modification of the American automatic rifle BAR) on duty in 1939. He wears a German helmet.
A Chinese soldier sits on the banks of River Salween in Burma. 1944.
A STORY....
“In a deep gorge on the upper Salween, foot-weary, battle-battered Chinese troops were finally backed up against the bridge, retreated across it while the Japs from the other side rained down fire on them. The Chinese left their dead behind them, blew up the bridge, and crawled up the winding road to the heights on the China side.
Across from them the Jap's guns bayed at the scent of tired game. The Chinese had been beaten and battered beyond human endurance. One of them broke. Before his troops a general killed himself. The men wavered, looked toward the rear.
To the front dashed Lung Yun (the Cloud Dragon), Governor of Yunnan Province. With the dead general at his feet, he called on the little soldiers for another last stand. The Jap would soon cross the Salween. His rolling stock was already massing on the bluff. He would have to be stopped. It would be hard. Every beaten soldier there knew that the Japs across the Salween were from the crack Red Dragon armored division.
As he spoke his soldiers suddenly turned away, looked at the sky. The Governor stopped talking, for he heard the noise, too —the steady, humming throb of aircraft engines. It grew into thunder. Six American P-405 whipped across the bluff. The A.V.G.s were on the job.
They bellowed across the gorge, swung into column and dived on the Jap. Their 50-caliber slugs tore into the gasoline drums on the trucks, sent them blazing. Their bombs uprooted lorries and tanks, and rolled them down the precipice. The Jap broke, dashed for the bushes, ran into patrols of cheering Chinese who had been left behind at the river crossing.
On the China side the dead general lay where he had fallen. His men, shouting their war cries, hurried down to the river and sniped at the Jap as he ran. Down the road into Burma fled the Red Dragon, broken, bereft of his trucks and equipment. Six American youngsters and the Cloud Dragon had saved a bitter day.
Source: Wikipedia
Nationalist Chinese soldiers on American made-M3 Stuart tanks
Chinese soldiers with a German made MG 08 machine gun. The nationalist Chinese soldiers wore the German Stahlhelm helmets
Nationalist Chinese soldiers ready the searchlight in anticipation of Japanese bombers in Chungking in 1939
The Japanese are in Nanjing (Nanking)
The Japanese examine captured Chinese aircraft
A Japanese soldiers talks to very young Chinese boy soldiers
Japanese soldiers with a suspected Chinese saboteur. Manchuria. early 1930s.
Japanese soldiers with a guard dog. Manchuria. early 1930s
1944.Burma. Nationalist Chinese soldiers with American made M3A3 Stuart tanks. The KMT regime got 100 such tanks from America under the lend-lease agreement
The Japanese have captured these Chinese communist fighters
In Manchuria. Japanese with captive Chinese
Nationalist Chinese soldiers with a British officer in Shanghai, 1937, as the fighting was going on.
Girl soldier in the Chinese army fighting the Japanese
Women soldiers in the Chinese army
Chinese soldiers with their gun
Chinese artillery men
Chinese soldiers in a German Sturm boat
Waiting for the Japanese. The Chinese soldier in the foreground has a Mauser pistol with a rifle butt
Chinese soldiers with a machine gun
Chinese soldier with their smart German Stahlhelm helmets.
A Japanese officer interrogates morose-looking captured Chinese soldiers
Chinese people with the conquerors. Japanese marines.
Bright looking Chinese pilots
Captured Chinese soldiers in 1937
Determined Chinese soldiers strike a defiant pose in 1930
Grinning Japanese soldiers make Chinese POW pull a broken-down motor-cycle. The Japs had a feeling that they were superior to others.
A Japanese army officer makes two Chinese men carry him. A sense of superiority? The Chinese men do not seem to mind it much. The one behind is grinning.
Japanese with captured Chinese guerrilla fighters
Japanese soldiers in a Chinese village. They seem highly amused seeing the Chinese artifact
The conquerors. Japanese soldiers in China
Defiant KMT soldiers in 1938. They are wearing British style helmets now!
Chinese POW
Chinese people made to kneel as Japanese soldiers pass. Such humiliation! The friction still remains to this day between the countries. The Japanese did not behave very nicely when it invaded China between 1932-45.
A Japanese soldier looks on sanguinely at bodies of Chinese civilians massacred by the Japanese soldiers
A Chinese KMT soldier
Chinese soldiers in 1945. The Japanese were almost close to defeat but the real threat was from the Chinese communists led by Mao |
General Chiang Kai-shek inspects his troops
A Japanese fighter aboard a aircraft carrier in 1939. The aircraft is a A5M4. The carrier is "Soryu"
Japanese soldiers kill Chinese people. In total, during the war in the Far East the Japanese deliberately killed between 15 and 20 million civilians and prisoners of war.
Late 1930s. A Japanese soldier catches up with the latest news in China.
Japanese soldiers with a broken statue of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the father of modern China.
Grinning Japanese soldiers in China. 1939. They carry guns stolen from the Chinese army. For those interested they are Czech ZB 26/30 and Belgian FN1928 (based on the American BAR)
An injured Japanese soldier in Shanghai. 1932
Japanese medics tending to the wounded soldiers. Shanghai. 1932
A Chinese soldier guards over a captured Indian soldier fighting for the Japanese.
Chinese soldiers, look like communist, douse a fire which broke out in a Chinese city after a Japanese bombardment
A Chinese soldier guards over American P 40 fighters
Chinese soldiers. July 11, 1940. Somewhere in China
Japanese soldiers in a Chinese city
Earlier in 1939, Imperial Japanese army and naval units continued to attack and push forward into China and Mongolia. Here Japanese soldiers advance inland over the beach after landing at Swatow (Shantou), one of the remaining South China coast ports still under Chinese control at that time, on July 10, 1939. After a short engagement with the Chinese defenders the Japanese entered the city without encountering much further opposition.
June 30, 1941. A Japanese tank I-Go (Type 89) crosses a wooden bridge in China. The Type 89 medium tank I-Go was a medium tank used by the Imperial Japanese Army from 1932 to 1942 in combat operations of the Second Sino-Japanese War, at Khalkhin Gol against the Soviet Union, and in the Second World War.
A Jpanese Mitsubishi K21 bomber drops bombs over the Chinese city of Chongqing