The chapter recalls and summarizes the principal arguments made in the book.

During the war, American industries depended on a steady stream of Chinese hog bristles, tungsten and tin ore, alongside a whole host of other raw materials. This chapter focuses on how demand for these products prompted the US government to forge new connections to Chinese businessmen and government agencies. These connections served as the foundation for lucrative postwar trans-Pacific business networks between American and Chinese that enriched Chinese and American businessmen alike and continued throughout the 1940s. The Chinese case served as the blueprint for an idealized postwar economic order that, envisioned by Wilsonian liberals in the US government, was anchored by free trade, private business, and the circulation of American dollars.

By examining transportation, agriculture, animal husbandry, industry, and commerce, this chapter explores the regional division of labor among residents of the landscape trilogy.

This chapter delves into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) takeover and reconstruction of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Manchuria between 1948 and 1952. It was here, during the Civil War, that the CCP first experimented with Soviet-style centralized economic planning. In the early People’s Republic of China, Manchuria emerged as the largest center of socialist industrialization, owing to the heavy industry facilities built by the Japanese and the SOE system developed by the Nationalists. The CCP drew on the expertise of the remaining Japanese and Nationalist engineers, managers, and skilled workers to reconstruct Angang and other major SOEs in Manchuria. The party co-opted these knowledge workers by carefully incorporating former Nationalist Chinese as members of the new regime and segregating the Japanese from the local Chinese community. The CCP’s reliance on Japanese and Nationalist experts came to an end as Cold War tensions intensified during the Korean War.

This chapter explores Sino–Soviet cooperation in the early to mid-1950s. The People’s Republic of China’s First Five-Year Plan sought to develop heavy industry by importing advanced technology from the Soviet Union. One-third of the Sino–Soviet collaboration projects were based in Manchuria, utilizing the physical infrastructure inherited from the pre–Chinese Communist Party era. Soviet experts in China and Chinese students and trainees in the Soviet Union played key roles in transferring Soviet technology. By learning from Soviet knowledge and skills and adapting them to suit Chinese conditions, Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) such as Angang gradually reduced their technological dependence on the Soviet Union while supporting other SOEs across China.

This chapter examines the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to politically mobilize Angang employees. Angang educated workers and engineers in the official Maoist ideology through study programs and propaganda campaigns. Under the danwei system, employees relied on Angang for social welfare benefits. To improve their positions within the CCP–created system, workers and engineers negotiated with state-owned enterprise (SOE) authorities, leveraging the discourse and institutional rules established by the party-state. These negotiations were exemplified by the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1957. SOE workers and engineers participated in the CCP project of socialist industrialization by pursuing their interests within the ideological rules of the game set by the party-state.

This chapter delves into Mao’s endeavors to reconfigure socialist industrialization from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s. Amid waning Sino–Soviet relations, Mao criticized Soviet-style centralized planning and advocated decentralization during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961). This policy shift granted local officials increased horizontal control over major state-owned enterprises (SOEs), such as Angang. Following the Great Leap Forward’s collapse, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constructed new industrial SOEs within inland “Third Front” regions as a bulwark against potential American and Soviet attacks, thereby reducing resource allocation for Angang and Manchuria. Commencing in 1966, the Cultural Revolution further decentralized power from nationally-owned SOEs such as Angang to local CCP cadres and military forces. Despite these attempts to deviate from the Soviet model, these efforts still preserved essential aspects of socialist industrialization. Nevertheless, the Sino–US rapprochement of 1972 presented China with the prospect of integration into the US-led capitalist global economy.

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.

This chapter examines bureaucratic politics surrounding Angang in the early People’s Republic of China (PRC). Major state-owned enterprises (SOEs) such as Angang were subject to both vertical control from the PRC government in Beijing and horizontal control from local Chinese Communist Party organizations. The tension between these two lines of control manifested in debates over the “one-chief system” – a Soviet-style top-down management structure. This tension was also evident in Angang’s construction, production, and sales. Despite the ostensibly centralized system, the PRC planned economy operated at the grassroots level as a field of constant negotiation among various government offices and SOEs, each interpreting the state policies in their own way.

This chapter examines Sweden’s emissions trends and the evolution of climate policy in an international perspective by focusing on its role and interdependent relationship with climate action in the EU and with international climate coalitions. The chapter examines the assumption that Sweden is a front-runner and role model in setting and implementing ambitious climate policy. The emission trends across sectors suggest that Sweden has been able to swiftly reduce its emissions, in particular from industry and energy conversion, but that current reduction rates are insufficient to reach its decarbonization target. Reducing emissions in agriculture and transport poses perhaps the greatest challenges for the Swedish state. The chapter also discusses the limits and possibilities for the State to implement its decarbonization target while being dependent on the climate policies in the EU, notably the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). It also looks at Sweden’s role in international climate governance by zooming in on its role in international climate collaborations and clubs. Finally, the chapter provides three reasons for caution when it comes to Sweden’s reputation as a role model. First, that the rate of GHG reduction has declined significantly. Second, that consumption-based approaches to counting GHG emissions demonstrates that Sweden remains a high-emitting country. Third, that Sweden’s consumption-levels are far above the global average and its current consumption patterns should not be emulated by other countries.

This chapter aims to dig deeper into the source of knowledge driving innovation. What are the sources of innovation and how different sources impact innovations are other vital questions for academics, practitioners, and students. After providing historical developments, this chapter discusses sources of innovation by analyzing a typology of top-down vs. bottom-up, external vs. internal sources of innovation, and collaborative sources for innovation. For instance, while ideas emanating from employees are typically bottom-up and internal sources, ideas emanating from the prime minister are top-down and external sources of innovation. This chapter also discusses external innovations beyond the government, such as business and industry, citizens, service users, universities, and research centers, and the implications of these different sources on public sector innovation.

This chapter, looking at the Second World War, foregrounds the concerns about the post-war future that took shape in relation to people’s hopes for the next generation and with their sense of conditions locally at the front of their minds. It first uses a case study of attitudes towards urban reconstruction to probe where people’s ideas about the post-war future came from. The chapter argues that memories of the inter-war period and everyday experiences of wartime were fundamental in shaping these hopes. A second case study, about concerns surrounding post-war employment, highlights the complexity of popular assumptions about what was likely to follow the war, again signalling the importance of place in shaping people’s memories and aspirations.

Around 1500 Spain and Portugal were among the most affluent nations in the world, and had income levels that were similar to those of other Western European countries. Three hundred years later the Iberian economies had lost their economic supremacy and fell behind all the main European powers. When did the first two global empires in history lose their hegemony to become secondary actors? What were the foundations of the collapse that explains the divergence from north-western Europe? This chapter addresses these issues and describes what is now known about the long-term trends of Iberian economies between 1500 and 1800.