Infrastucture Workshop


Saturday November 7, 2009, 9:00am - 5:00 pm

"New Linkages: Infrastructure and Entrepreneurship in Republican and Contemporary China"          

Two panels with papers by historians, political scienctists, and economic historians on transportation, communications and investment institutions/networks before and after 1949 will provide the historical context for assessing China's ongoing infrastructure development.

Organizers: Elisabeth Koll and Anne Reinhardt
Presenters: Li Dan (Fudan University, Shanghai); Eric Harwit (University of Hawi'i); Zhao Minghua (University of Greenwhich, U.K.); Anne Reinhardt (Williams College); Elisabeth Koll (Harvard Business School); Regina Abrami (Harvard Business School)

Location: CGIS South, Concourse Level, S050, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138
Open to interested scholars. For more information, please contact Elisabeth Köll at ekoll@hbs.edu.

SCHEDULE

9:00-9:10 am     Welcome

Morning Session:
Infrastucture and Entrepreneurship in the Republican Period

9:10-9:55 am
Why was the Chinese National Railroad Network So Small?
Dan Li, Fudan University, School of Economics           

During the Later Qing Dynasty and so-called “Warlord Period” (1906-1923) China suffered from numerous and violent internal conflicts or “civil wars”. These conflicts are thought to have slowed the pace of economic development and, especially, growth in infrastructure. I study these alleged impacts using a new panel data set linking archival data for Chinese National railroads to detailed information on civil wars. I show that conflict had prevented the railroad company from further investment. These effects occurred during the same period as the conflict, but also persisted after the fighting had stopped. My findings suggest that, in the absence of internal strife, China would have experienced more rapid growth during a crucial phase of its modern economic history.

10:00-10:45 am
Reclaiming Shipping Infrastructure
Anne Reinhardt, Williams College, Department of History

In the Republican period, most of the elements that made up China’s modern shipping infrastructure, such as the shape of the shipping network, the arrangement of ports, the regulation of ships and seamen, and the marking and lighting of waterways were inherited from the Qing Dynasty.  As such, these infrastructural elements reflected the conditions under which modern shipping was introduced to China during the Qing period: by Western and Japanese interests through the mechanism of the treaty system.  As Qing officials sought to minimize modern shipping’s disruption of the dynasty’s sovereignty, they tried to contain the shipping network and delegated much of its management to the “foreign experts” of the Maritime Customs.  During the Republican period, both governments and Chinese entrepreneurs sought to reclaim the shipping infrastructure as the right of an independent and sovereign nation.  This essay will examine two cases that reveal the complexities encountered during Republican attempts to recover different aspects of the shipping infrastructure: the apportioning steamship landing stages in major ports, and the development of a cadre of skilled Chinese navigators.

10:45-11:00 am  Break

11:00-11:45 am
Whose Line Is It Anyway? The Reconstruction, Reorganization, and Expansion of the Railroad Network in the late 1940s and 1950s
Elisabeth Köll, Harvard Business School

This paper will explore the reconstruction and reorganization of the Chinese railroad network after the end of WWII, the reform attempts during the ensuing civil war and the administrative changes following the establishment of the new socialist state in 1949. Railroads had played a significant role in China’s wartime economy, becoming strategic targets for military campaigns on all sides of the political spectrum. The post-1949 reorganization of the railroad network and its administration involved repairing the physical destruction of lines and equipment, the centralization of the regional railroad bureaus under the Ministry of Railroads and the establishment and integration of a separate engineering and construction corps into the PLA structure. As this paper will show, the expansion of the railroad network in the 1950s was driven by the new political and economic agenda of the Chinese state with the challenge to reform and integrate a huge bureaucracy and workforce with strong institutional and regional traditions rooted in the railroad system of the Republican period.

11:50 am -12:30 pm
Discussion of morning presentations
Discussant: William C. Kirby, Harvard University

Afternoon Session:
Infrastructure and Entrepreneurship in the People’s Republic of China

2:00 – 2:45 pm
China’s Telecommunications Development, Qing Dynasty to the Present
Eric Harwit, University of Hawai’i, Department of Political Science

The foundation of China’s telecommunications network was laid in the late 19th century, and the sector saw gradual but continued growth in the Republican Era. Slow development persisted in the Mao period, but accelerated in the three decades after the early 1980s. China built on its network foundations to today host the largest number of telephone and Internet users in the world. This paper will chronicle the historical and contemporary development of the sector, noting the key government and corporate actions that led to this transformation. It focuses on issues such as government funding, corporate competition, and foreign investment, and considers the case of China as a potential model for other developing nations seeking similar rapid growth.

2:50-3:30 pm
Linkages to the Outside World by Sea:
Ships, Seafarers and the Development of Entrepreneurship
Minghua Zhao, Greenwich Maritime Institute, University of Greenwich

In 1949, when Mao and his comrades came into power in Beijing, they found China’s merchant fleet was wrecked to 120,000gt, 10 percent of the total in its heyday. Most tonnage had been taken to Taiwan with some vessels deliberately damaged or destroyed by the Nationalists before their withdrawal from the mainland, and a considerable number of ships fled to Hong Kong and some South Pacific countries. The PRC was struggling for survival against the isolation caused by the American-led blockade which chocked the country’s linkage with the outside world. In 1961, when China, or rather the PRC established its first merchant deep-sea-going navy, four small old ships consisted of the entire fleet. The picture has totally changed half a century later. The start of the 21stC has seen China emerged as one of the world’s strongest maritime nations with one of the largest fleets ranking the 4th in the global shipping league table. This paper examines the process of the growth of the country’s shipping industry and the main social-economic issues involved with focus on the fleet and the workforce at sea. The development of the entrepreneurship in this sector will be discussed along with the analysis of the growth of the infrastructure and the workforce.

3:30 – 3:45 pm  Break

3:45- 4:30 pm
By Brick, Byte, and Buck: Chinese Infrastructure Investment in Africa
Regina M. Abrami, Harvard Business School

After decades of failed Western foreign aid and policies, Chinese-financed and Chinese-built infrastructure projects are dramatically reshaping the African continent. For some observers, this trend bodes ill for the region.  Others contend that the region is finally being given its chance.  Considerably less attention has been given to the African opportunity as a means of understanding the changing nature of government-business relations within China. Juxtaposing the role of infrastructure investment in China’s post-1949 economic transformation with trends now underway in Africa, this paper contends that the globalization of Chinese firms is not strengthening China’s economic security, but instead exposing the regime to greater degrees of moral hazard that had operated on the mainland.  These challenges have to do with the nature of deal financing, the political context in which these deals take place, and competing interests among Chinese government agencies.

4:35-5:30 pm
Discussion of afternoon presentations and summary
Discussant: Joseph Fewsmith, Boston University

 

 

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