This book—the first English-language monograph on the Central Politics School—is a theoretically informed and original microscopic study of local governance in Republican China. It is meticulously researched and passionately argued, and its analysis is deep, nuanced, and insightful. The Chinese case the author discusses also have broader implications worldwide, in terms of seeking for an alternative political framework beyond the Wilsonian-Weberian techno-scientific paradigm.
— Xia Shi, New College of Florida
This well-researched study of the Central Politics School provides valuable information and insight on a key, yet previously overlooked, political and pedagogical institution of Republican China. But this is much more than a solid scholarly monograph on an important if neglected historical institution. The author presents a compelling case for the continued importance of traditional Chinese statecraft in a world dominated by Weberian approaches to public administration. He shows how talented grassroots officials, resisting the hegemonic allure of techno-scientific bureaucratic solutions, drew upon indigenous resources to mitigate the glaring failures of the Republican state. The message for the contemporary state is clear: good governance depends less on the latest technological advance than on the accumulated humanistic wisdom of the past.
— Elizabeth J. Perry, Harvard University
Chen-cheng Wang’s new book joins the latest generation of the scholarship on the Chinese state and governance in the modern era. By focusing on the Nationalist state’s Central Political School, a cadre-training institution, and its administrative experiments in selected counties in the 1930s, this book sheds light on two competing approaches to local governance: one based on techno-scientific models and justified by the Weberian conception of rationalization and bureaucratization, and the other rooted in the traditional heritages of Chinese statecraft and sociocultural resources. Drawing on a rich set of source materials and with in-depth analysis, this book reveals how the indigenous approach served as a correction – and indeed an alternative – to the imported model that often overlooked the realities of Chinese society. Readers who are interested in twentieth-century Chinese politics will find this book engaging and insightful.
— Huaiyin Li, University of Texas-Austin
This book is a tour de force piece of scholarship. Drawing on a range of primary materials in such different locations as Zhejiang and Guizhou, it completely upends the received view of the Guomindang as weak, corrupt and ineffective during the Sino-Japanese War years. Wang draws out the different techniques deployed by pro-active Guomindang county magistrates to meet seemingly insurmountable challenges of local governance, often by falling back on a mix of repertoires drawn from contemporary notions of scientific administration, and, more frequently, from the late imperial past. It is by far the best book on the workings of Republican era and Sino-Japanese War period local government to come out in recent memory and will deservedly find a place on many a bookshelf and many a class syllabus.
— Julia C. Strauss, SOAS University of London
This book constitutes a valuable contribution to the study of Chinese local governance, the history of rural areas in China’s modernizing project, and the global history of public administration.
— The China Quarterly