2 - The Soviets and Nationalists Are Coming

Summary

This chapter focuses on the years 1945–1948 to examine the Soviet occupation of Manchuria and Nationalist China’s efforts to reconstruct the region’s industry. During the Second Sino–Japanese War (1937–1945), China’s Nationalist Government developed heavy industry state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the inland region. Following Japan’s defeat, Manchuria was first occupied by Soviet military forces, who removed a considerable amount of industrial equipment from Angang and other Japanese enterprises to send it to the Soviet Union. Despite all the damage done during the Soviet occupation, Manchuria still had better industrial facilities than other parts of China. After the Soviet retreat in the spring of 1946, the Nationalist government consolidated and reorganized formerly Japanese enterprises into large-scale Chinese SOEs such as Angang. The Nationalists reconstructed these SOEs by employing Japanese engineers still staying there, while building on their experience running SOEs in the inland region and sending for Chinese managers and engineers from the inland. The Japanese and Nationalists thus unintentionally provided the foundations for the Chinese Communist Party’s socialist industrialization after 1948.