“China during the Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Economy” (Nagoya University Press. 2011)

Tomoko Shiroyama (Professor, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University )

It is my great pleasure to receive 28th Masayoshi Ohira memorial prize. I would like to thank the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Foundation, its steering committee, and selection committee. I also feel grateful for supports to teachers and colleagues in Japan and abroad, Nagoya university press, and friends and my family.

This book investigates how the Great Depression that had started with the collapse of New York Stock Exchange in October 1929 influence China and how China reacted to the global crisis. The depth and the spread of the Depression illuminated the close integration of the global economy in the first half of the 20th century, and China could not be exceptional. For example, Shanghai financial market got panic when a large amount of foreign funds suddenly left China. As a number of countries abandoned gold-standard monetary system to inflate their own economies, the silver-standard Chinese monetary system also were destabilized.

Focusing on the spread of the external shock like the Great Depression, this book sheds light on the various linkages forming Chinese economy, including those between the Chinese economy and the world economy, banks and businesses, and cities and rural areas. It cannot be missed that contemporaries realized how they were deeply related to people in the distant places, and the complexities of the relationships embedded in their live. Aware of those global relationships, China for the first time in her long history moved to the managed currency system led by the government. This transition of the state-market relationship in terms of the monetary system holds the important implications particularly for Chinese economy under the reform era after the autarky from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The awareness of the relationship with other countries and regions as well as the search for the new global regime has been the key issues to cope with the current monetary and banking crisis since the Lehman shock in 2008. At the same, many of the recipients of Masayoshi Ohira memorial award share interests in those problems. It is such an honor that this book is added to the list of those academic accomplishments. I would like to repay to the warm encouragement to me with this award by exploring further the historical paths taken by the Chinese economy.

Thank you very much.

Profile
Education: The University of Tokyo, A.B., 1988.　The University of Tokyo, A.M., 1990. Harvard University, Ph. D., History, 1999.
Teaching Posts: Hokkaido University, Faculty of Letters, Associate Professor, 1996-2002. Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo, Japan), Graduate School of Economics, Associate Professor, 2002-May 2008. Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo, Japan), Graduate School of Economics,Professor, June 2008 to the present.
Academic interests: Modern and contemporary economic history of China, with special interests in monetary/financial history, and business history. Asian economic history since the late 18th century.