China Review International

244 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 look to higher living standards as the more effective solution. This book offers a tantalizing measure of support. One ofthe few successful programs Porter found was the rural industrial cooperatives ofthe YWCA's J. B. Taylor and the Shanghai Municipal Council's Rewi Alley; diese cooperatives diffused industry to the countryside , made for a more equal distribution ofwealth between city and country, improved the conditions oflife and labor in the cities, and through the cooperative structure enabled workers to gain strength by participation in making important decisions. Steven M. Dawson University of Hawai'i Steven M. Dawson is a professor offinance specializing in studies ofinitialpublic offers in Asian security markets. N OTE S 1. Charles Hayford, To the People: James Yen and Village China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). 2.David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 3.See, for example, "Consciences and Consequences," pp. 13-14, and "Ethical Shopping," pp. 58-59, in The Economist, 3 June 1995. Kenneth Pomeranz. The Making ofa Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy in Inland North China, 1853-1937. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University ofCalifornia Press, 1993. xxiii, 336 pp. Hardcover $40.00. This is a fine study ofa region in North China, dubbed by die author "Huang-Yun" because it was centered on the intersection of the Yellow River and the Grand Canal . It included some tiiree dozen counties ofwestern Shandong, eastern Hebei, and northern Henan Provinces and had a population of some fifteen million. During the late Qing and early Republic, the region declined from its position as part of the core ofthe "North China macroregion" and became part ofthe "periphery " ofa new macroregion centered on the coast. This change reflected a shift© 1996 bv Univers't fr°m a n'Sn Qmg policy of"social reproduction," which encouraged richer areas ofHawai'iPressto subsidize poorer ones, to a late Qing and Republican policy of"quasi-mercantilism ," which favored "winners" over "losers" in a struggle to expand exports and develop industry in competition with aggressive Western and Japanese states. Reviews 245 The author develops his thesis in five tighdy argued chapters. Chapter 1 analyzes the extent ofthe region's participation in credit and currency markets centered on the coast. It shows that the more densely populated and politically connected south Huang-Yun County governments forbade the "export" ofcopper currency and the contracting of credit to outsiders, thus driving up copper/silver exchange ratios and interest rates and providing opportunities for county officials , corrupt clerks, tax farmers, and big merchants to profit at the expense oflocal producers and consumers. Soudi Huang-Yun stayed afloat by restricting its imports of commodities and exporting its laborers to the northeast, thereby keeping local prices comparable to those in the rest ofthe province and creating an illusion of market integration. Chapter 2 discusses the introduction of a new, North American strain of cotton that promised farmers higher profits due to its greater suitability for the mechanized textile mills of the treaty ports and Japan. The new variety took hold in north Huang-Yun, where old village elites had fled and state-sponsored cotton societies pressured farmers into growing the new crop. It was rejected in south Huang-Yun, where "entrenched rural bosses" regarded the potential dependency of farmers on outside seeds and fertilizers as a threat to their autonomy. Poor farmers in the south also opposed the new strain because it ripened later and thus reduced the time available for gleaning—an essential source ofwinter fuel. In this case, the north benefited more from its "permeability" than the south did from its "impermeability," although the north did suffer disproportionately from the related subsistence crises of the 1920s and the Japanese military expeditions ofthe 1940s. Chapter 3 takes up the shortage ofwood in Huang-Yun that arose in part from the long-standing pressure ofpopulation on natural resources. In this period , the problem worsened because the region, which had never imported wood from abroad (let alone exported any), was neglected in Republican reforestation projects geared primarily to reducing imports and expanding exports. What wood Huang-Yun had imported...