"From the Coast to the Interior: China's Electrical and Electronics Industries and the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945"

When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, substantial parts of Chinese industry moved from the economically developed coastal regions to areas in Western China under Nationalist control. The involved firms and factories not only had to survive an arduous move across China, but, once they arrived, had to adapt to wartime conditions in a new environment and to economic interventions by the Nationalist state. This article focuses on China’s electrical and electronics industries, which had started to develop in the pre-war years and whose wartime trajectories have been understudied. The article probes how the two industries managed production in China’s interior; how they changed their business strategies to deal with wartime limitations and demands; and how state intervention shaped the two industries’ structure and practices. This article not only adds nuance to our understanding of the wartime development of Chinese industry but also provides an important case study for the impact of war and government intervention on the development of business outside of the West and Japan, themes highlighted in recent work by Austin, Dávila and Jones on the distinct “alternative business history” of developing countries.