Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China, 1927-1937

Engineering the State is an institutional history of the Huai River Conservancy Commission during the “Nanjing decade” (1927-37). Over the past several decades, research on the Nationalist era (1927-49) has embedded the period in a larger context of 20th century Chinese history. The book explores how the Nationalist Government, drawing on global models like the Tennessee Valley Authority, recruited technical expertise, promoted modern science and technology, and managed resources to bolster their state- and nation-building goals. The text examines how the Nationalist period sought to marshal the material and human resources to construct an administrative structure that could reassert effective management of the Huai River that had largely been absent since the late Qing Dynasty.