BOOK: Philip THAI, China’s war on smuggling : law, economic life, and the making of the modern state, 1842-1965 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). ISBN 9780231185844, $60.00

(Source: Columbia University Press)

Columbia University Press published a new book on the link between smuggling and the amplification of Chinese state power.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Smuggling along the Chinese coast has been a thorn in the side of many regimes. From opium and weapons concealed aboard foreign steamships in the Qing dynasty to nylon stockings and wristwatches trafficked in the People’s Republic, contests between state and smuggler have exerted a surprising but crucial influence on the political economy of modern China. Seeking to consolidate domestic authority and confront foreign challenges, states introduced tighter regulations, higher taxes, and harsher enforcement. These interventions sparked widespread defiance, triggering further coercive measures. Smuggling simultaneously threatened the state’s power while inviting repression that strengthened its authority.

Philip Thai chronicles the vicissitudes of smuggling in modern China—its practice, suppression, and significance—to demonstrate the intimate link between illicit coastal trade and the amplification of state power. China’s War on Smuggling shows that the fight against smuggling was not a simple law enforcement problem but rather an impetus to centralize authority and expand economic controls. The smuggling epidemic gave Chinese states pretext to define legal and illegal behavior, and the resulting constraints on consumption and movement remade everyday life for individuals, merchants, and communities. Drawing from varied sources such as legal cases, customs records, and popular press reports and including diverse perspectives from political leaders, frontline enforcers, organized traffickers, and petty runners, Thai uncovers how different regimes policed maritime trade and the unintended consequences their campaigns unleashed. China’s War on Smuggling traces how defiance and repression redefined state power, offering new insights into modern Chinese social, legal, and economic history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip Thai is assistant professor of history at Northeastern University.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Coastal Commerce and Imperial Legacies: Smuggling and Interdiction in the Treaty Port Legal Order
2. Tariff Autonomy and Economic Control: The Intellectual Lineage of the Smuggling Epidemic
3. State Interventions and Legal Transformations: Asserting Sovereignty in the War on Smuggling
4. Shadow Economies and Popular Anxieties: The Business of Smuggling in Operation and Imagination
5. Economic Blockades and Wartime Trafficking: Clandestine Political Economies Under Competing Sovereignties
6. State Rebuilding and New Smuggling Geographies: Restoring and Evading Economic Controls in Civil War China
7. Old Menace in New China: Symbiotic Economies in the Early People’s Republic
Conclusion
Character List
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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