China during the Great Depression : market, state, and the world economy, 1929-1937 /

This is the first readily accessible, comprehensive account of the impact of the 20th century's most serious economic crisis on Republican China, whose experience of the global downturn took a very singular path. Shiroyama (Hitotsubashi Univ., Tokyo) focuses on Shanghai and the Lower Yangzi region, the locus of China's modern textile industries. Because China was the only Depression-era nation adhering to a silver monetary standard, its cotton and silk producers initially continued to benefit from price inflation. On the world market, however, silver had become a commodity like any other. In the face of the mounting export of silver (abetted by measures such as the US Silver Purchase Act of 1934), deflation seriously disrupted China's urban and rural credit markets. Unlike its predecessors, the Nationalist government opted to intervene in 1935, dramatically departing from the silver standard by creating a managed currency system. The author provocatively concludes that this official policy shift not only facilitated China's rapid emergence from the Great Depression, but also heralded a decisive shift in state-market relations from traditional laissez-faire to committed intervention. A valuable addition to Chinese economic history collections. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional readers. R. P. Gardella emeritus, United States Merchant Marine Academy