Review of “Smuggling, State-Building, and Political Economy in Coastal China, 1927-1949” (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2013) by Philip Thai. Dissertation Reviews (2016).

Abstract

International audienceThe history of smuggling in China offers an intriguing window through which to observe law and society. On the one hand, dynastic rulers and local governments continuously banned the import and export of certain commodities, particularly along coastal regions. On the other hand, smuggling continued to flourish, and many regional authorities even engaged in the business they were supposed to quash. During the Ming-Qing period, the rise of local powers and successive waves of commercialization expanded the network of illicit trade. Whether or not this suggests a "decline" of state authority and "lawlessness" in the local world, the state's law and institution provoked resistance, compliance, and varied strategies toward the order and market of this "informal economy." Regulations and local politics gave rise to what Michael Szonyi calls the "regulatory arbitrage"-the practice in which different individuals and groups took advantage of various regulatory systems in order to generate political resources