China, the largest fossil energy consumer today, recently vowed to decarbonize its economy. The country has announced plans to reach peak emissions in 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. These ambitious goals have once again drawn wide attention to the development trajectory of China as a carbon economy. In Recharging China in War and Revolution, 1882-1955, Ying Jia Tan offers a timely account of China's energy history, detailing its electrical development from the late Qing to the early Mao periods. Tan discusses three interrelated aspects of China's electrification: local efforts to secure electricity supply, national strategies to pursue energy independence and economic sovereignty, and, at the planetary level, China's entry through accelerated industrial growth into the Anthropocene Epoch. Framing electrical industries as a central site for power struggles and technological competition, Tan argues that the intertwined processes of infrastructure development and state-building gave rise to resilient political and economic institutions in China after war and revolution. A multilevel analysis of individuals, agencies, and regimes pioneering China's electrical growth, Tan's book sheds new insights on the complex relationship between energy, politics, and state-making in the early twentieth century.
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