Smokeless Sugar: The Death of a Provincial Bureaucrat and the Construction of China's National Economy

摘要

In the annals of the economic history of the Nationalist era, the sudden arrest and execution of Feng Rui (1899-1936) has been a long-standing puzzle. Feng was an eminent and cosmopolitan public figure, a US-educated agronomist, a nationally and internationally respected agricultural reformer and director of a major provincial investment to improve China's sugarcane crop and modernize Guangdong's sugar mills. Why did a military tribunal execute him in short order? With deft analysis of a range of archival resources, Emily Hill locates Feng's execution at the crossroads of provincial rivalries, Chiang Kai-shek's efforts to break up what was seen as Guangdong's semi-autonomous government, and Nanjing's mounting tension with Japan over smuggling and tariffs. Feng's purported crime was repackaging smuggled