1. Loren R. Graham, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 43. Friends convinced Palchinsky not to mail this letter, but his ideas became well-known.

2. The quote is from Wen-hsin Yeh's introduction to this volume.

3. Sun Yatsen, The International Development of China (1922; reprint, Taipei: Sino-American Publishing, 1953), 191.

4. Thomas G. Rawski, Economic Growth in Prewar China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), 116.

5. On the culture of urban progressivism in the provinces, see Kristin Stapleton, Civilizing Chengdu: Chinese Urban Reform, 1895–1937 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, forthcoming).

6. Sun, International Development, 192.

7. T'ang Leangli, Reconstruction in China (Shanghai: China United Press, 1935).

8. The quote is from Sun, preface to International Development, v. Generally, see Michael R. Godley, "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: Sun Yatsen and the International Development of China," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 18 (July 1987): 109–25.

9. See ibid., 119.

10. For a review of Republican-era research on Sun's plans, see Zhong Shaohua, "Zhongshan shiye jihua yu Zhongguo xiandaihua" [Sun Yatsen's Industrial Plan and China's modernization (Sun Yatsen University, Gaoxiong)], Zhongshan shehui kexue jikan [Sun Yatsen social science quarterly] 5, no. 4 (December 1990): 134–48.

11. Richard Louis Edmonds, "The Legacy of Sun Yatsen's Railway Plans," China Quarterly 111 (September 1987): 442.

12. Sun, International Development, 66–67; Hong Qingyu, "A Review of the Work during the Early Stages of the Three Gorges Project," in Megaproject: A Case Study of China's Three Gorges Project, ed. Shiu-hung Luk and Joseph Whitney (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993). For contemporary debates see Dai Qing et al., Yangtze! Yangtze!, ed. Patricia Adams and John Thibodeau (London: Earthscan, 1994).

13. Li Peng, final lines from his "Qinyuan Chun" [Ode to a great river], presented on the occasion of the formal beginning of work on the Three Gorges Project, quoted in Xinmin wanbao (December 15, 1994).

14. Lin Jiayou, "Shilun Sun Zhongshan zhenxing Zhongguo shangyede jingji sixiang ji qi yanbian" [The evolution of Sun Yatsen's economic thought regarding the revitalization of China's commerce], Minguo yanjiu [Republican research] 1, no. 1 (1994): 37.

15. Jiang Jiwei, "Jishu yu zhengzhi" [Technology and politics], in Xuexi [Study] no. 16 (1957): 12, cited in Li Cheng and Lynn White, "Elite Transformation and Modern Change in Mainland China and Taiwan: Empirical Data and the Theory of Technocracy," China Quarterly, no. 121 (March 1990).

16. William C. Kirby, "The Nationalist Regime and the Chinese Party-State, 1928–1958," in Contemporary East Asia in Historical Perspective, ed. Merle Goldman and Andrew Gordon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).

17. The term "developmental state" is appropriated from Chalmers Johnson's study of Japanese industrial policy of the same and later periods, and is used to stress a common grounding in nineteenth-century continental European neomercantilist conceptions, which, in the Chinese case, combined with inherited traditions of state economic regulation and international models of economic intervention in the 1920s and 1930s to define very broadly the economic purposes of the Nationalist regime. See Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), 17 ff. This is not to dispute the contention of Douglas Reynolds that the institutional transformation of the Chinese state dates from the xinzheng (New Policy) reforms of

18. Glenn Babb, "Nanking—a City with a Past and a Future," Weekly Review 25, no. 11 (August 11, 1923): 36, cited in Maryruth Coleman, "Municipal Politics in Nationalist China: Nanjing, 1927–1937" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1984), 1.

19. See Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (New York: Basic Books, 1997).

20. T'ang Leangli, Reconstruction, 330.

21. Coleman, "Municipal Politics," 252.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., 18.

24. Guodu sheji jishu zhuanyuan banshichu [Office of Technical Experts for Planning the National Capital], comp., Shoudu jihua [Plan for the capital] (Nanjing: Guodu sheji jishu zhuanyuan banshichu, 1929).

25. Ibid., 25–32.

26. Ibid., passim. The quotations are from Min-Ch'ien T. Z. Tyau, ed., Two Years of Nationalist China (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1930), 389–94; see also Coleman, "Municipal Politics," 252–54. The restoration of the Ming city wall—without a highway atop it— would not begin until 1995. New China News Agency report 16 May 1995.

27. Coleman, "Municipal Politics," 254.

28. As in the case of the Chinese city in Shanghai, which quickly followed Nanjing's model, city planners and public works officials tended to be young university graduates who were "enthusiastic and generally honest." See Christian Henriot, Shanghai, 1927–1937 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 170.

29. Tyau, Two Years, 389, 396–98.

30. The quote is from Barry Till, In Search of Old Nanjing (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company, 1982), 203. Generally, on the physical state of Nanjing and its official structures in the Nanjing decade, see Xin Nanjing [New Nanjing] (Nanjing: Nanjing shi zhengfu, 1933); Chen Jimin, ed., Minguo guanfu [Republican government offices] (Hong Kong: Jinling shu chubanshe, 1992); and "Nanjing shi zhi jingji jianshe" [Economic development of Nan-jing], in Shinianlai zhi Zhongguo jingji jianshe [China's economic development in the past ten years], comp. Zhongyang dangbu guomin jingji jihua weiyuanhui [Commission on national economic planning of the Central Committee] (Nanjing, 1937).

31. Wang Shuhuai, "Jianshe weiyuanhui dui Zhongguo dianqi shiye de guihua" [The National Reconstruction Commission's planning for China's electric power industry] (paper presented to the Conference on the Centennial of Sun Yatsen's Founding of the Kuomintang for Revolution, Taipei, 1994), 5.

32. The quote is from ibid., 5.

33. V. I. Lenin, "Report of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars on the Home and Foreign Policy to the Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets," 22 December 1920, reprinted in V. I. Lenin: Selected Works in Three Volumes, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 461.

34. For a selection of Sun's comments on the topic, see Wang Shuhuai, "Jianshe weiyuanhui dui Zhongguo dianqi shiye de guihua," 3–4.

35. Yun Chen, "Dianqi wang" [Electrical power network], Jianshe yuekan, no. 9 (October 1930): 37.

36. Tyau, Two Years, 289.

37. This map unveiling took place at a party congress in 1920. See Alec Nove, An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. (New York: Penguin, 1969), 71.

38. Tyau, Two Years, 287; Wang Shuhuai, "Jianshe weiyuanhui dui Zhongguo dianqi shiye de guihua," 10–11; Jianshe weiyuanhui gongzuo jiyao [Summary of the work of the National Reconstruction Commission] (Nanjing: Jianshe weiyuanhui, 1929).

39. G. E. Hubbard, Eastern Industrialization and Its Effect on the West (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), 209.

40. See William C. Kirby, "China, Unincorporated: Company Law and Business Enterprise in Twentieth-Century China," Journal of Asian Studies 54, no. 1 (February 1995): 43–63.

41. SHA 44(2) 78, Chin Fen, "The National Economic Council" (March 1935), 1.

42. F. P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1952.

43. Cheryl Payer, "Western Economic Assistance to Nationalist China, 1927–1937" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1971), 9.

44. Generally on the League-NEC endeavors, see SHA 44(1719), "Quanguo jingji weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao" [Reports of the work of the National Economic Council], 1934–1937; Zhang Li, "Yijiusanling niandai Zhongguo yu Guolian de jishu hezuo" [China's technical cooperation with the League of Nations during the 1930s], Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo jikan [Quarterly of the Institute of Modern History of the Academia Sinica], no. 15 (December 1986): 381–414; Tzehsiun Kuo, "Technical Cooperation between China and Geneva," Information Bulletin 1, no. 6 (July 1936); Lau-King Quan, China's Relations with the League of Nations, 1919–1936 (Hong Kong: Asiatic Litho Press, 1939); Norbert Meienberger, Entwicklungshilfe under dem Völkerbund. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der internationalen Zusammenarbeit in der Zwischenkriegszeit unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der technischen Hilfe an China (Wintherthur, 1965); Jürgen Osterhammel, "‘Technical Cooperation’ between the League of Nations and China," Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 4 (1979): 661–80; Tao Siu, "L'Oeuvre du Conseil National Economique Chinois" (Ph.D. diss., L'Université de Nancy, 1936).

45. Terry M. Weidner, "Local Political Work under the Nationalists: The 1930's Silk Reform Campaign," Illinois Papers in Asian Studies, no. 2 (1983): 67. See also Lillian Li, China's Silk Trade: Traditional Industry in the Modern World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 200.

46. Weidner, "Local Political Work," 70.

47. Benito Mari, "Summary Report on an Enquiry on the Reorganization of Chinese Sericulture," annex no. 7 in Annexes to the Report to the Council of the League of Nations of Its Technical Delegate on His Mission in China from Date of Appointment until April 1, 1934 (Nanjing, 1934), 231.

48. SHA 44(1719), "Quanguo jingji weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao" [Report of the work of the National Economic Council], 1937, 33–40; SHA 44(2) 78, Chin Fen, "The National Economic Council," 67–70; Lau-King Quan, China's Relations, 219–26; Tao Siu, "L'Oeuvre," 73–77.

49. Weidner, "Local Political Work," 79.

50. See SDN, General 50/R5669–71, Reports of the Engineering Mission of the League of Nations in China, 1932–35.

51. Osterhammel, "‘Technical Cooperation,’" 667; J. L. Buck, The 1931 Floods in China (Nanking: Department of Agricultural Economics of the University of Nanking), 1932.

52. Arthur Young, China's Nation-Building Effort, 1927–1937: The Financial and Economic Record (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 347. See also 376–86.

53. On the maze of regional interests involved in water management, see David Pietz, "The Huai River and Statebuilding in 20th-Century China" (Ph.D. diss., Washington University, 1998).

54. Sun, International Development, 192.

55. See A. Viola Smith and Anselm Chuh, Motor Roads in China, U.S. Department of Commerce Trade Promotion series no. 120 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931), 2–3, 7, 20 ff.

56. Noel Miner, "Chekiang: The Nationalists' Effort in Agrarian Reform and Construction" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1973), 237. Miner disputes the economic utility of the roads in a curious argument that implies that "passenger traffic," which dominated road use, had no economic value.

57. On the economics of roads vs. railroads in China, see Smith and Chuh, Motor Roads, 3–4.

58. SDN, General 50/R5669–71, "Engineering Mission of the League of Nations in China, Report No. 7," 7 September 1932, p. 3.

59. SDN, General 50/R5669–71, "Engineering Mission of the League of Nations in China, Report No. 8," 19 October 1932, p. 4 and appendix.

60. For a review of highway building work through 1935, see SHA 44(1719), "Quanguo jingji weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao" [Report of the work of the National Economic Council], 1935.

61. SDN, General 50/R5669–71, report of 19 October 1932, p. 1; report of 10 December 1932, appendix: "Highway Inspection Trip to Hunan Province"; SHA 44(2) 78, Chin Fen, "The National Economic Council," 6–14.

62. On the position of some seven hundred Jiaotong graduates in the railway industry, see Chang Juiteh, "Technology Transfer in Modern China: The Case of Railway Enterprise (1876–1937)," Modern Asian Studies (1992).

63. SDN, General 50/R5721, "Scheme for the Establishment of an Employment Bureau for Intellectual and Technical Workers."

64. "China and International Intellectual Cooperation," Information Bulletin [Council of International Affairs, Nanking] 2, no. 1 (11 September 1936): 1–2. For a broader context see Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 60–64.

65. C. H. Becker et al., The Reorganization of Education in China (Paris: League of Nations Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, 1932).

66. Becker et al., Reorganization, 25. Becker was also an orientalist of some note. Other members of the commission were the French Communist Paul Langevin, from the Collège de France; M. Falsky, a Polish specialist in primary education; and R. H. Tawney of the London School of Economics, who used his time in China well, completing the study published as Land and Labor in China (London, 1932; reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1962).

67. Becker et al., Reorganization, passim; Ernst Neugebauer, Anfänge pädagogische Entwicklungshilfe under dem Völkerbund in China, 1931 bis 1935 (Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde, 1971); Ruth E. S. Hayhoe, "China's Higher Curricular Reform in Historical Perspective," China Quarterly, no. 110 (June 1987): 202–3.

68. Details of the official response are well set out in Stefan Knirsch, "Reformen im chinesischen Erziehungswesen in der Nanjing-Ära" (Magisterarbeit, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, 1995); Hayhoe, "China's Higher Curricular Reform," 203.

69. Chen Guofu, "Gaige jiaoyu chubu fangan" [Draft plan for the reform of education], in Chen Guofu xiansheng quanji (Taipei: Zheng Zhong shuju, 1952), 169.

70. Zhu Jiahua, Jiuge yue lai jiaoyubu zhengli quanguo jiaoyu zhi shuoming [Explanation of the Ministry of Education's reform of national education in the past nine months] (Nanjing, 1932).

71. See the excellent discussion of this process in James Reardon-Anderson, The Study of Change: Chemistry in China, 1840–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 208–29; Hayhoe, "China's Higher Curricular Reform," 402.

72. Wang Shijie, "Education," in The Chinese Yearbook, 1937 (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1937), 1032.

73. Gyzl, 3:1102–3.

74. See William M. Leafy Jr., The Dragon's Wings: The China National Aviation Corporation and the Development of Commercial Aviation in China (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1976), 13–16; Bodo Wiethoff, Luftverkehr in China, 1928–1949 (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1975), 104–31; Jack C. Young, "Joint Venture and Licensing in Civil Aviation: A Sino-American Perspective," Stanford Journal of International Studies 15 (1979): 253.

75. AH, 2–12.02.I, file, "Zhongguo hangkong qicai zhizao gongsi" [China Air Materials Construction Company] (1934–37); GYZL, 3:921.

76. SASS, Ministry of Industry file, "Gongye zhongxin" [Industrial center]: "Guoying gangtiechang" [State-run iron-and steelworks] Ministry of Industry report, August 1932; "Benbu yinianlai choushe guoying gongye gaikuang" [Overview of this ministry's preparations for state-run industry in the past year], March 1933; "Shiyebu chouban guoying gongye" [Ministry of Industry preparations for state-run industries], 1936; GYZL, 3:790–93.

77. Guoli Zhongyang yanjiuyuan shiqi niandu zong baogao [Annual report of the Academia Sinica (1928)] (Nanjing: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 1929); Lin Wenzhao, "Zhongyang yanjiuyuan de choubei jingguo" [Preparatory process of the establishment of the Academia Sinica], Zhongguo keji shiliao [Historical materials of Chinese science and technology] 9, no. 2 (1988): 70–73; Lin Wenzhao, "Zhongyang yanjiuyuan gaishu" [General description of the Academia Sinica] in Zhongguo keji shiliao [Historical materials of Chinese science and technology] 6, no. 2 (1985): 21–31. An important new study is Shiwei Chen, "Government and Academy in Republican China: History of the Academia Sinica, 1927–1949" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998).

78. On cliques, see, for example, Hungmao Tien, Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, 1927–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 45–72.

79. Zhang Ruide [Chang Juiteh], Zhongguo jindai tielu shiye guanli de yanjiu [Research on modern Chinese railway management] (Nangang: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi suo, 1991); Julia Strauss, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927–1940 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).

80. Julia Strauss, "Wenguan (‘Lettered Official’), Gongwuyuan (‘Public Servant’) and Ganbu (‘Cadre’): The Politics of Labelling State Administrators in Republican China," Indiana East Asian Working Paper Series on Language and Politics in Modern China, no. 6 (July 1995).

81. Strauss, Strong Institutions, 42.

82. Ibid.

83. Strauss, "Wenguan."

84. Strauss, Strong Institutions, 167.

85. Zhong Shaohua, "Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui jianshi" [Brief history of the Chinese Society of Engineers] (manuscript, 1987); Ralph Heunemann, The Dragon and the Iron Horse (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1984), 69–70.

86. In this, the history of Chinese engineering associations would more closely resemble European than American professional associations. On comparative methodological approaches, see Charles E. McClelland, The German Experience of Professionalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 21; Magali S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977); and Hans Hesse, Beruf und Wandel. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Professionalisierung (Stuttgart: Enke, 1968).

87. Indeed the first suborganization established by the Society was its "Committee for Carrying Out Sun Yatsen's Industrial Development Plan." See Zhong Shaohua, "Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui jianshi."

88. Zhong Shaohua, "Zhongshan shiye jihua yu Zhongguo xiandaihua" [Sun Yatsen's Industrial Plan and China's modernization], Zhongshan shehui kexue jikan [Sun Yatsen social science quarterly (Sun Yatsen University, Gaoxiong)] 5, no. 4 (1990): 134–48; Zhong Shaohua, "Sanshi zhi sishi niandai dui Zhongshan shiye jihua de zhuanmen yanjiu" [Specialized research on Sun Yatsen's industrial plan in the 1930s and 1940s], Beijing shehui kexue [Beijing social science], no. 4 (1986): 107–9.

89. See SHA 28(5965), "Zhonggongye jianshe jihua shuomingshu" [Explanation of the plan for heavy industries] (1936). On individual enterprises see Ziyuan weiyuanhui yuekan [NRC monthly] 1, no. 2 (June 1939): 85–100, 158–59, 337; 1, no. 3 (July 1939): 163–66; 2, no. 1 (January 1940): 37 ff; Lianqing zongbu [Combined Services Forces] Library, Taipei, materials on arsenal development filed as "Guofang gongye ji wuqi fazhan" [National defense industries and armaments development] (Taipei, n.d.); CASS, Ziyuan weiyuanhui zongyang jiqichang jianshi [Short history of the NRC's Central Machine Works] (NRC internal draft history, November 1940); SHA, 28(5965) 3, "Guanyu choushe Xiangtan zhongyang gangtiechang zhi bangyue" [On the agreement to establish the Central Steel Works at Xiangtan], June 1936. On the selection of sites for the "national defense center," see Wang Dezhong, "Lun Woguo kangzhang ‘guofang zhongxin’ de xuanze yu xingcheng" [On the selection and formation of the "national defense center" during the war of resistance], Minguo dang'an [Republican archives], no. 1 (1995): 62–70.

90. SASS, NRC 47 (4) 0007, Weng Wenhao, "Guofang sheji weiyuanhui zhi mudi ji shuoming" [Goals and clarification of the National Defense Planning Commission], December 1932; SASS, NRC 47 (2) 0018, Weng Wenhao, "Guofang gongye chubu jihua caoan, 1933–1934" [Draft preliminary plan for national defense industry]; SHA 47(32) "Canmo benbu Guofang sheji weiyuanhui mishuting gongzuo baogao" [Work report by the secretariat of the National Defense Planning Commission under the general staff (for 1934)].

91. The fullest documentary description is in SHA 28(5965), "Zhonggongye jianshe ji-hua shuomingshu" [Explanation of the plan for heavy industries] (1936).

92. William McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 345.

93. Hong Qingyu, "Sanxia gongcheng qianqi gongzuo" [Early stages of the Three Gorges Project], Zhongguo keji shiliao [Historical materials of Chinese science and technology]

94. See William Kirby, "Continuity and Change in Modern China: Chinese Economic Planning on the Mainland and on Taiwan, 1943–1958," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 24 (July 1990).

95. Author's interviews with Qian Changzhao, Cao Liying, Yun Zhen, Sun Yunxuan, Huang Hui, Xie Peihe, 1988–93. See, for example, Xiangtan dianjichang, 1936–1986 [Xiangtan electrical machinery plant, 1936–1986] (Xiangtan: Yiangtan dianjichang, 1986), 1–5, a fifty-year retrospective; Zheng Youkui et al., Jiu Zhongguo Ziyuan weiyuanhui [NRC of Old China] (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan, 1991), 302–15; and also Xue Yuexun, "Ziyuan weiyuanhui de rencai peixun" [NRC's nurturing of talent], Guoshiguan guankan [Journal of the Academia Historica], no. 50, 183–214.

96. See Kees Gispen, New Profession, Old Order: Engineers and German Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 49.

97. Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 15, 418. On engineering and social mobility in the U.S.S.R. (which would make an intriguing study in the Chinese case) see Harley Balzer, "Engineers: The Rise and Decline of a Social Myth," in Science and the Soviet Social Order, ed. Loren R. Graham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 141–67.

98. William Kirby, "The Chinese War Economy: Mobilization, Control, and Planning in Nationalist China," in China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937–1945, ed. Steven I. Levine and James C. Hsiung (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1992).

99. Douglas S. Paauw, "The KMT and Economic Stagnation, 1928–1937," Journal of Asian Studies 16, no. 2 (1957): 214.

100. L. L. Lorin, The Problem of Economic Planning (n.p., 1931), 31, cited in G. Chen, "Chinese Government Economic Planning and Reconstruction," in Problems of the Pacific, 1933, ed. B. Lasker and W. L. Holland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), 382.

101. For example, in the corporatist representation of professional interests in proposed provincial constitutions of the early Republic. See Marie-Claire Bergère, "The Chinese Bourgeoisie," in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 12, pt. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 779–80; Sie Ying-chow, Le fédéralisme en Chine (Paris, 1924).

102. See Kirby, "Continuity and Change." If this approach is correct, it of course questions the assumption of Vivienne Shue's stimulating discussion of the modern Chinese state, that the Republican era was "profoundly unstable and hostile to economic and political institutionalization." See Shue, The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 104.

103. Bailes, Technology, 459.

104. Space precludes an extended discussion of definitions of "technocracy" here. For one approach in a contemporary Chinese context, see Li Cheng and Lynn White, "Elite Transformation and Modern Change in Mainland China and Taiwan: Empirical Data and the Theory of Technocracy," China Quarterly 121 (March 1990): 1–35.