Law, Sovereignty, and the War on Smuggling in Coastal China, 1928–1937

Thai, Philip

doi:10.1017/s0738248015000668

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 14 publications

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“…137 After Chiang Kaishek's nationalist regime took control of Nanjing in 1927 it saw the ability to police its own waters as a cornerstone of its campaign to win full sovereignty for the new China by ending foreign extraterritorial privileges in the country. 138 In the late-Qing piracy was dealt with when it threatened state interests, such as grain transport ships and tax revenues. By the late 1920s however, piracy suppression was taken seriously because it represented a threat to a new kind of sovereignty which China's leaders regarded as important: that of a nation state over its territory, including foreign citizens residing within it, and over the waters along its coastline.…”

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confidence: 99%

Maritime Raiding, International Law and the Suppression of Piracy on the South China Coast, 1842–1869

Chappell¹

2017

The International History Review

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This article explores how piracy was defined and eventually reduced in the South China seas between 1842-1869. In the early 1840s a large increase in maritime raiding led British agents to complain about the unwillingness of Qing officials to suppress disorder and drove the Hong Kong administration to propose its own solutions. British metropolitan officials nonetheless rejected many of these measures, arguing that they ran counter to established international maritime laws that made the Qing responsible for policing Chinese waters. Attempts were made to write this responsibility into the treaty which followed the Arrow War in 1860, but it was changes in the Qing state in the 1850s and 1860s which led Qing officials to treat small scale maritime raiding as seriously as that of large rebel pirate fleets. The new Imperial Maritime Customs Service created an incentive to prevent smuggling and piracy which could deter trade and hence decrease customs revenue. The case suggests, firstly, that the large reduction in maritime raiding rested on Sino-British compromise and, secondly, that Britain used international maritime laws as much to control the expansive ambitions of Hong Kong as to encourage changes in Qing practices. Acknowledgements This article was made possible by a United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council Studentship, a Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Doctoral Fellowship and a foreign scholars research grant from the Centre for Chinese Studies in Taipei. I am grateful to Robert Bickers for reading and commenting on drafts. I am also indebted to I

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maritime Raiding, International Law and the Suppression of Piracy on the South China Coast, 1842–1869

Chappell¹

2017

The International History Review

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Old Menace in New China: Coastal smuggling, illicit markets, and symbiotic economies in the early People's Republic

Thai

2017

Mod. Asian Stud.

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This article explores the ambiguous role of coastal smuggling during the first decade and a half of Communist rule (1949–65). Fearing that the illicit flow of commodities siphoned critical revenues and undermined foreign policy, Communist China repurposed and expanded Nationalist China's war on smuggling while employing novel tactics of mobilization. Yet smuggling was not just a threat; it was also a lifeline that alleviated widespread material shortages and supplied the everyday needs of individuals and firms during the tumultuous transition to central planning. Businesses from ‘underground factories’ to state-owned enterprises relied on black markets to meet ambitious production targets and circumvent bottlenecks in official supply channels. Smuggling was thus more than just ‘corruption’ practised by officials—it was also a ‘creative accommodation’ employed by broad swaths of social actors coping with the enormous changes. This article argues that the nascent command economy and the vibrant underground economy existed symbiotically rather than antagonistically. Exploration into this complex relationship reveals many cross-border connections between Communist China and the capitalist world that both complemented and undermined domestic state consolidation.

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Disobedient Children, Hybrid Filiality: Negotiating Parent–Child Relations in Local Legal System in Republican China, 1911–1949

Han,

Ren

2024

Law hist. rev.

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The principle of filial piety underpinned both parent–child relations and, more broadly, Qing legal and social order. Entering the turbulent years of the Qing–Republic transition, filial piety went through substantial changes. Drawn from the local legal archives in Jiangjin county, Sichuan, this research traces the transformation of filial piety in legal practice during the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that two overlapping processes—legal reforms and nation-state building—synergized to restructure the meaning of filial piety from a largely integrated principle in Qing, which bridged the gaps between filiality and loyalty to the emperor and between personalized morality and imperial state legitimacy, to divergent new interpretations of filial piety, including the individualist filial piety, nationalist filial piety, legal filial piety, and sentimental filial piety. Each new interpretation inherits only part of its original meaning and incorporates newly introduced legal knowledge of legal equality and property ownership. The article concludes that various, sometimes contradictory interpretations of filial piety indicate the Republican legal reforms as an in-between, dynamic spectrum of legal change with vigorous negotiations among different legal actors and knowledge regimes.

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Law, Sovereignty, and the War on Smuggling in Coastal China, 1928–1937

Cited by 7 publications

References 14 publications

Maritime Raiding, International Law and the Suppression of Piracy on the South China Coast, 1842–1869

Maritime Raiding, International Law and the Suppression of Piracy on the South China Coast, 1842–1869

Old Menace in New China: Coastal smuggling, illicit markets, and symbiotic economies in the early People's Republic

Disobedient Children, Hybrid Filiality: Negotiating Parent–Child Relations in Local Legal System in Republican China, 1911–1949

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