Political Legitimacy in Post-Imperial China: Debt and Development

Stacie Kent, Boston College

This paper argues that state development projects and state legitimacy in the immediate post-imperial period were shaped by the imperatives of debt servicing, generated in the last decades of the Qing dynasty. The paper shows how Qing debt burdens fed European capital accumulation, which was then called upon to help the fledgling nation-state build its commerce and industry. Key nationalist leaders, such as Sun Yat Sen, were both critical of European capitalist imperialism in China and called for global capitalist investments in China. I argue that debt and development were paired projects that institutionalized new norms of state behavior. Identifying this relationship between the Republican-era state and capital reframes the break between imperial and post-imperial rule.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 154. Rethinking the Developmental State 1: The Roots of a Developmental State in China and Taiwan