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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2021
Through the lens of the multinational staff of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS), this article argues that a technocratic programme of reconstruction evolved in the Nationalist government's wartime efforts on post-war planning, which refashioned a cadre of foreign (semi-)colonial-era experts into technocrats serving a sovereign state. This episode, in which the weakened Customs Service reclaimed its significance for the Chinese state, occurred in China's wartime capital, Chongqing. After the abrogation of the so-called ‘unequal treaties’ with foreign powers in January 1943, China entered a post-treaty era, and the question of retaining long-serving foreign Customs Service employees perplexed Nationalist leaders. Eventually, China's huge post-war need for foreign expertise, networks, and imports led to a moderate staff reorganization of the CMCS, with foreign technocrats being kept on and other bureaucrats either shifted to advisory positions or being forced to retire. Technical expertise provided a new guise for the European and American presence in post-imperialist China. Taking the rehabilitation of coastal lighthouses as an example, this article demonstrates the significance of foreign technocrats to the Chinese state during the last phase of the Sino-Japanese War and in its immediate aftermath. In showing the ambition and preparations of the Nationalist government for a post-war era, this article corrects a narrative of an all-out collapse of the Nationalist government from the mid-1940s. The wartime evolution of the Customs Service further highlights the growing importance of technocrats in the decolonizing world.
1 ‘Rehabilitation scheme for Customs post war marine affairs’, in Xu Zushan to Zuo Zhangjin, 22 January 1944, 679(1): 1058, Second Historic Archives of China, Nanjing (hereafter SHAC).
2 Robert Bickers, Out of China: how the Chinese ended the era of Western domination (UK: Allen Lane, 2017), pp. 245–288; Christine Cornet, ‘The bumpy end of the French Concession and French influence in Shanghai, 1937–1946’, in In the shadow of the rising sun: Shanghai under Japanese occupation, (eds) Christian Henriot and Wen-Hsin Yeh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 257–278; Robert Bickers, Britain in China: community, culture and colonialism, 1900–1949 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 234–244; Mary Bullock, The oil prince's legacy: Rockefeller philanthropy in China (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2011).
3 Mitter, Rana, ‘Imperialism, transnationalism, and the reconstruction of post-War China: UNRRA in China, 1944–7’, Past and Present, vol. 218, supplement 8, 2013, pp. 51–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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5 Hans van de Ven, Diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnon (eds), Negotiating China's destiny in World War II (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015); Rana Mitter, China's war with Japan, 1937–1945: the struggle for survival (London: Penguin Books, 2013).
6 For research on the Chinese Civil War, see Odd Arne Westad, Decisive encounters: the Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Diana Lary, China's civil war: a social history, 1945–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Suzanne Pepper, Civil war in China: the political struggle, 1945–1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
7 Hans van de Ven, Breaking with the past: the Maritime Customs Service and the global origins of modernity in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
8 Ibid., p. 69; Bickers, Robert, ‘Infrastructural globalization: lighting the China coast, 1860s–1930s’, The Historical Journal, vol. 56, no. 2, 2013, pp. 431–458CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robert Bickers, ‘“Good work for China in every possible direction”: the foreign Inspectorate of the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1854–1950’, in Twentieth century colonialism and China: localities, the everyday, and the world, (eds) Bryna Goodman and David Goodman (London: Routledge 2012), pp. 25–36.
9 White, Benjamin Geoffrey, ‘“A question of principle with political implications”—investigating collaboration in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1945–1946’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 44, no. 3, 2010, pp. 517–546CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Felix Boecking, No great wall: trade, tariffs, and Nationalism in Republican China, 1927–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2017), pp. 203–231.
10 Van de Ven, Breaking with the past, pp. 259–301.
11 Chihyun Chang, ‘Zhongguo Haiguan guanyuan de yiliu he jueze (中国海关关员的遗留和抉择, To stay or to leave? The choices of the CMCS staff members), 1949–1950’, in Jindai zhongguo waijiao de dalishi yu xiaolishi (近代中国外交的大历史与小历史, Macrohistory and microhistory of modern China), (eds) Wang Wenlong, Chen Liqiao and Huang Wende (Taipei: Chengchi University Press, 2016), pp. 79–109; Chihyun Chang, ‘Zhongguo Haiguan guanyuan de guanyuan shencha he zhanhou fuyuan (中国海关的关员审查和战后复员, Staff investigation of post-war rehabilitation of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service), 1943–1945’, in Guoji zhixu yu Zhongguo waijiao de xingsu (国际秩序与中国外交的形塑, International order and the shaping of China diplomacy), (ed.) Zhou Huimin (Taipei: Chengchi University Press, 2014), pp. 189–219; Bickers, Robert, ‘The Chinese Maritime Customs at war, 1941–5’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 36, no. 2, 2008, pp. 295–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 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), pp. 205–240.
13 Bickers, ‘“Good work for China in every possible direction”’, p. 26.
14 China was never formally colonized. Historians used the term ‘semi-’ to foreground the multilayered colonial structure in China: see Shu-mei Shih, The lure of the modern: writing modernism in semicolonial China, 1917–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 34.
15 Donna C. Mehos and Suzanne M. Moon, ‘The uses of portability: circulating experts in the technopolitics of Cold War and decolonization’, in Entangled geographies: empire and technopolitics in the global Cold War, (ed.) Gabrielle Hecht (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 43–74.
16 Webster, David, ‘Development advisors in a time of cold war and decolonization: the United Nations Technical Assistance Administration, 1950–59’, Journal of Global History, no. 6, 2011, pp. 249–272 (pp. 263–268)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 William C. Kirby, ‘Engineering China: birth of the developmental state, 1928–1937’, in Becoming Chinese: passages to modernity and beyond, (ed.) Wen-hsin Yeh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 137–160 (pp. 150–153).
18 Chihyun Chang, ‘Chongxin jianzhi Zhongguo Haiguan huayangyuan jian de bupingdeng daiyu (重新检视中国海关华洋员间的不平等待遇, Reassessing the unequal pay scale between Chinese and foreign employees in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service), 1927–1937’, in Jinxiandai Zhongguo Guojihezuo Mianmianguan (近现代中国国际合作面面观, International cooperation in modern Chinese History), (ed.) Wang Wenlong (Taipei: Chengchi University Press, 2019), pp. 183–211 (pp. 190–196).
19 For example, see Sara Lorenzini, Global development: a Cold War history (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); Sunil S. Armith, Decolonising international health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930–65 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
20 8 August 1943, in Chihyun Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, 1943–1954: an eyewitness account of war and revolution (London: Routledge, 2017), Vol. I, p. 9; L. K. Little was appointed acting inspector-general of the CMCS in June 1943 and was promoted to inspector-general in April 1944.
21 Little to all Foreign Commissioners, 6 September 1943, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
22 Van de Ven, Breaking with the past, p. 271.
23 Bickers, ‘The Chinese Maritime Customs at war’, p. 301.
24 For research on the appointment of an American inspector-general and American interests in the Customs Service, see Van de Ven, Breaking with the past, pp. 284–285.
25 26 August 1943, in Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. I, p. 13.
26 Bickers, ‘The Chinese Maritime Customs at war’, p. 301; 10 August 1943, in Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. I, pp. 9–10.
27 Henk Vynckier and Chihyun Chang, ‘“Imperium in imperio”: Robert Hart, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and its (self-)representations’, Biography, vol. 37, no. 1, 2014, pp. 69–92 (pp. 85–86).
28 5 February 1944, in Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. I, p. 43.
29 Boecking, No great wall, pp. 193–194, 216–217.
30 Little to Hsu, 7 February 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
31 In wartime, the Customs Service also collected the Revised Interport Duty; this was abolished in April 1942 and replaced by the Wartime Consumption Duty until December 1943. See Boecking, No great wall, pp. 190–212.
32 12 August 1943, in Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. I, p. 10; also see Kung to Little, 1 February 1944, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
33 ‘Huanying waizi zhuwo zhanhou jianshe, youpan Meiguo ziben jishu hezuo (欢迎外资助我战后建设, 尤盼美国资本技术合作, Welcome foreign capital to help China with post-war construction, especially hope for cooperation with American capital and techniques)’, Da Gong Bao (Chongqing), 6 July 1944.
34 Thai, China's war on smuggling, pp. 207–209, 239.
35 Boecking, No great wall, pp. 32–45.
36 Van de Ven, Breaking with the past, pp. 242–247.
37 Arthur Young, ‘The Customs problem’, 10 September 1942, 679(1): 31752, SHAC.
38 T. Roger Banister, The coastwise lights of China: an illustrated account of the Chinese Maritime Customs lights service (Shanghai: Inspectorate General of Customs, Statistical Department, 1932), p. 2.
39 Bickers, ‘Infrastructural globalization’; Robert Bickers, “‘Throwing light on natural laws”: meteorology on the China coast, 1869–1912’, in Treaty ports in modern China, (ed.) Robert Bickers (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 179–200.
40 Little to Tso, 22 January 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
41 Little, ‘Remarks at Customs College, Chongqing’, 21 May 1945, Ms Am 1999.2, Little Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University (hereafter Little Papers).
42 Little to all Foreign Commissioners, 6 September 1943, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
43 Bickers, ‘The Chinese Maritime Customs at war’, p. 299.
44 Mitter, ‘Imperialism, transnationalism, and the reconstruction of post-war China’, p. 68.
45 Chiang Kai-shek, China's destiny, (trans.) Wang Chonghui (New York: Macmillan, 1947), pp. 231–232; ‘Views of Dr. K. C. Wu on Sino-British relations’, 14 July 1944, F 3308/127/10, FO 371/41607, The National Archives, London.
46 Everitt Groff-Smith to A. C. H. Lay, 1943, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
47 Young, ‘The Customs problem’; on this retirement, also see 16 August 1943, in Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. I, p. 11.
48 Young, ‘The Customs problem’.
49 Kung to Little, 1 February 1944, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
50 Young, ‘The Customs problem’.
51 Little to F. Chang, 3 October 1946, Ms Am 1999.3, Little Papers; Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. I, p. xxvii.
52 Little's comments, 6 September 1944, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
53 Chihyun Chang, Government, imperialism and nationalism in China: the Maritime Customs Service and its Chinese staff (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 170–176.
54 Van de Ven, Breaking with the past, p. 221.
55 Sabel to Little, 26 June 1945, 679(1): 31728, SHAC; Pritchard, Sara B., ‘From hydroimperialism to hydrocapitalism: “French” hydraulics in France, North Africa, and beyond’, Social Studies of Science, vol. 42, no. 4, 2012, pp. 591–615 (pp. 600–602)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Little to all Foreign Commissioners, 6 September 1943, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
57 ‘Remarks and proposals re present and future organization of the Customs Service’, undated, 679(1): 31752, SHAC.
58 Jiang Tingfu, China National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration: what does it do? how does it do it? (Shanghai: International Publishers, 1946), pp. 6–7.
59 Little to Arthur Burling, 31 August 1945, 679(1): 31728, SHAC.
60 Chiang Kai-shek, ‘The Kuomintang and the nation: an address to the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang on September 6, 1943’, in The voice of China: speeches of Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek between December 7, 1941, and October 10, 1943 (London: Hutchinson and Co. Ltd, 1944), pp. 66–71.
61 Ma, Tehyun, ‘A Chinese Beveridge plan: the discourse of social security and the post-war reconstruction of China’, European Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 11, 2012, pp. 329–349 (pp. 337–338)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Sherman Cochran, The Lius of Shanghai (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 259–260.
63 Arthur Young, China and the helping hand, 1937–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 383.
64 ‘Guoji laogong dahui jianyi ge huiyuanguo zuzhi zhuanmen jigou yanjiu zhanhou jiuji ji jingji jianshe fangan (国际劳工大会建议各会员国组织专门机构研究战后救济及经济建设方案, International Labour Conference suggested member countries organise a specific institution to study post-war relief and economic reconstruction plans)’, 20 January 1943, 217: 171, SHAC.
65 ‘Program and estimated requirements for relief and rehabilitation in China’, September 1944, S-1129-0000-0095, United Nations Archives, New York (hereafter UNA), p. 7.
66 Young, ‘The Customs problem’.
67 Little, ‘Memorandum for secretaries, planning for post-war Customs rehabilitation and functions’, 18 September 1943, 679(1): 31752, SHAC.
68 28 January 1944, in Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. I, pp. 40–41.
69 ‘Minutes of the first secretarial meeting, 12 January 1944, 679(9): 486, SHAC.
70 Hsu, ‘The Marine Department of the Chinese Marine Customs: post-war requirements’, 15 June 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
71 Little to Hsu, 15 December 1943, 679 (1): 1058, SHAC.
72 ‘Original list of basic points suggested for study in connexion with rehabilitation plan’, undated, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
73 Hsu, ‘The Marine Department of the Chinese Marine Customs’.
74 Little to Tso, 22 January 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
75 Bickers, “‘Throwing light on natural laws’”, p. 181.
76 Yu Chin Pang, ‘Rehabilitation plan’, attached in Little to Hsu, 29 February 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
77 Hsu, ‘Coast Inspector's comments on rehabilitation plan’, 10 June 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC; ‘Remarks’, in Hsu to Little, 7 March 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC; ‘Rehabilitation scheme for Customs post war marine affairs’, 22 January 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
78 Customs staff believed that high tariffs and official restrictions were an incentive to smuggling: see Little to Hsu, 15 December 1943, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
79 ‘Rehabilitation scheme for Customs post war marine affairs’, 22 January 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
80 Jerome Ch'en, Yuan Shih-k'ai (California: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 29–43.
81 Liu Bensen, ‘Nanjing Guomin Zhengfu shouhui Weihaiwei de tanpan jiqi shixian (南京国民政府收回威海卫的谈判及其实现, Weihaiwei negotiation and its return to the Republic of China)’, Jiangsu Social Science, no. 4, 2015, pp. 243–250.
82 Hsu to Little, 5 May 1944, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
83 T. S. Hsu to Little, undated, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
84 Little to Sabel, 13 September 1943, 679 (1): 31741, SHAC; Little to Kung, 12 January 1945, 679 (1): 31741, SHAC.
85 Little to Nick, 29 August 1945, 679(1): 31744, SHAC; Little, 16 August 1945, 679 (1): 31744, SHAC.
86 8 March 1944, in Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. I, p. 49.
87 Little to Hsu, 21 March 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
88 Little to Sabel, 12 April 1945, 679(1): 31741, SHAC; Van de Ven, Breaking with the past, pp. 292–295.
89 R. G. Everest to Little, 7 July 1944, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
90 Carl Neprud to Little, 9 February 1945, 679(1): 31741, SHAC; Little to H. H. Kung, 12 January 1945, 679 (1): 31741, SHAC.
91 Little to Hsu, 6 May 1944, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
92 Sabel to Little, 3 March 1945, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
93 Hsu to Little, 5 May 1944, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
94 Little to Hsu, 6 May 1944, 679(1): 31741, SHAC.
95 Little to Sabel, 9 June 1946, 679(1): 31727, SHAC.
96 T. N. Harper, The end of empire and the making of Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 365–366.
97 English remained an official language until 4 February 1943; see Bickers, ‘The Chinese Maritime Customs at war’, p. 299.
98 For Little's insistence on using English and the complaints, see Little to Ding Guitang, 11 May 1946, 679(1): 32649, SHAC.
99 Little to F. Chang, 3 October 1946, Ms Am 1999.3, Little Papers.
100 Hsu to Little, 11 April 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
101 Little to Hsu, 7 February 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC; Hsu to Little, 11 April 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
102 Harper, The end of empire, pp. 56–59.
103 Robert Bickers, The scramble for China: foreign devils in the Qing Empire, 1832–1914 (London: Penguin Books, 2012), pp. 270–271; Bickers, ‘Infrastructural globalization’, pp. 448–450.
104 Hsu to Little, 11 April 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC; Hsu to Little, 2 March 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC; ‘Memorandum’, 3 March 1945, Ms Am 1999.2, Little Papers.
105 Loh Kah Seng, ‘Rupture and adaptation: British technical expertise to the Singapore Polytechnic and the transition to a nation-state’, Journal of the History of Education Society, vol. 44, no. 5, 2015, pp. 575–594; Paul Bennell, ‘Engineering technicians in Africa: a Kenyan case-study’, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 1983, pp. 273–291.
106 Chang, Government, imperialism and nationalism, p. 225.
107 Little to Hsu, 28 June 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC; Bickers, The scramble for China, pp. 271–272.
108 Sabel to Little, 12 July 1945, 679(1): 31728, SHAC; 6 April 1944, 20 April 1945, in Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. I, pp. 117–118.
109 ‘Minutes of the ninth secretaries’ conference’, 19 February 1945, 679(9): 486, SHAC.
110 Mitter, China's war with Japan, 1937–1945, pp. 351–371; also see ‘Memorandum of the negotiations leading up to the executions of the Basic Agreement between the Chinese Government and UNRRA in November, 1945’, S-1121-0000-0003, UNA, pp. 3–4.
111 Hsu to Little, 3 February 1944, 679(1): 1058, SHAC.
112 Little to S. Frandsen, 15 October 1945, 679(1): 31728, SHAC.
113 Chen Yu-jen, ‘Engineer-in-Chief's memo’, 29 October 1945, 679(1): 25847, SHAC.
114 Ding Guitang to Little, 16 September 1945, 679(1): 1059, SHAC; Everest to Little, 17 December 1946, 679(1): 21016, SHAC.
115 Several lighthouses in these places were first established in 1945 and 1946: see List of lighthouses, light-vessels, buoys, beacons, etc., on the coast and rivers of China, 1947 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1948), pp. 8–63.
116 Thai, China's war on smuggling, pp. 209–214.
117 7 March 1946, in Chang (ed.), The Chinese journals of L. K. Little, Vol. II, p. 14.
118 Ts'ai Hsioh Tuan to Little, 14 April 1947, Ms Am 1999.4, Little Papers.
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