Philip Thai, "The War on Smuggling in Coastal China: Law, Policing, and State-Building"

Philip Thai will explore the relationship between the assertion of state authority and the policing of trade in coastal China through an examination of the Nationalists' war on smuggling during the Nanjing Decade (1927-37).

Philip Thai will explore the relationship between the assertion of state authority and the policing of trade in coastal China through an examination of the Nationalists’ war on smuggling during the Nanjing Decade (1927-37). The recovery of tariff autonomy in the late 1920s empowered the Nationalists to raise duties on foreign goods for the first time in nine decades and provided the new state critical revenues to construct a modern state, defeat domestic rivals, and meet international challenges to China’s sovereignty. The new fiscal policy, however, also made smuggling a very profitable enterprise and catalyzed a widespread smuggling epidemic that endangered both government revenue and public security. Smugglers of all nationalities exploited alluring arbitrage opportunities by trafficking commodities—ranging from consumer products to manufactured goods to strategic raw materials—between China, Japan, and other foreign colonies and concessions in Asia. To combat this threat and meet challenge to its authority, the state responded with an aggressive campaign to stamp out smuggling, created new definitions of “legal” trade, and asserted its prerogative to police borders. Using legal cases and codes, customs records, trade and crime statistics, and popular press reports, Thai will chronicle the Nationalists’ war on smuggling and show the ways the regime extended, asserted, and enforced its authority as part of the state-building process.

Philip Thai is assistant professor in the Department of History at Northeastern University. He is a historian of modern China with research and teaching interests that include legal history, economic history, state-building, business history, digital humanities, and history of capitalism. At the core of his research is the interplay between law, society, and economy, and his interdisciplinary work has been supported by a number of institutions and fellowships. He is currently working on a manuscript that uses China’s war on smuggling during the early twentieth century to examine the transformation of state authority and the larger socioeconomic impact of state-building. Thai received his PhD from Stanford University and his BA from the University of California, Berkeley. He also spent several years as a consultant and financial analyst in the private sector.