Carl Crow, China and US Armed Forces Editions

This article popped on Atlas Obscura up recently on the history of the US Armed Forces edition paperbacks distributed to military personnel during WW2 between 1943-1946. It’s an amazing story and worth a read…

I should also mention that Carl Crow’s Four Hundred Million Customers was selected as a US Armed Forces edition and specifically issued to all the GIs and sailors that liberated Shanghai and were stationed there for several years afterwards rebuilding the city, country and running the War Crimes Tribunals.

As far as I know Crow’s was the only China-related title in the series apart Alice Tisdale Hobart’s 1933 Oil for the Lamps of China…

The Official Midnight in Peking Walking Tour is on Again….September 30th

The people at Bespoke Beijing and Penguin China have gotten together to organise another nighttime walking tour (the official one!) based on my book Midnight in Peking….contact them for tickets and to RSVP…

Instant Pictures of the war in Shanghai – 1932 style

During the Sino-Japanese conflict in Shanghai in the summer and autumn of 1932 pictures were rushed to the newsreels to be shown as fast as possible at cinemas – such as this one in Honolulu, Hawaii

They advertised the newsreels as featuring ‘real battlefield scenes’. Several different newsreels covering Shanghai were running at different cinema chains in competition.

Launch of the newly published RAS China Journal – Beijing – 26/9/17

Sadly can’t be there, but do have an article in the Journal (the Lady Chatterley banned in Shanghai one noted below)…..

Launch of the newly published RAS China Journal

WHAT: Launch of the newly published RAS China Journal
WHEN: 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM Tuesday, September 26
WHERE: The Courtyard Institute, 28 Zhonglao Hutong (see map)
RSVP: email communications.ras.bj@gmail.com and write “journal” in the header. Please state name and number of people.
COST: free

Please join us on Tuesday, 26 September to celebrate the launch of the newly published Journal of The Royal Asiatic Society China, beginning 7.30 PM at The Courtyard Institute near Jingshan Park.
This latest edition of The Journal has 300 pages and 19 articles ranging from the censorship of Lady Chatterley in Shanghai to a history of rugby football in the Far East, from British diplomatic diaries during the 1900 Boxer siege to aspects of Chinese architecture, past and present. You’ll have a chance to meet RAS Journal Editor, Richard de Grijs, and some authors, and to mingle over wine and nibbles from Red Kitchen Cabinet .

Members in good standing — including those who join on the night — will receive a Journal free; others can purchase one for RMB 70.

You’ll also learn more about our program for the coming year. If you’ve enjoyed our activities, and always meant to join the Royal Asiatic Society Beijing, this is the time! Individual membership for the year costs RMB 300. Upcoming events will focus on a diverse range of topics, from the party congress to comparing Chinese and Western music to researching American aviators in WWII China.

We  hope to see you September 26. So that we have accurate numbers for catering, kindly RSVP to communications.ras.bj@gmail.com by Sept. 23.

Crackdown in Lhasa – Tibet in Agony, 1959

A new study of the takeover of Tibet in 1959….

Last Chance to Sign Up for the Bloody Saturday Walk – 17/9

Final chance to sign up for the last few places on the Bloody Saturday walk this coming weekend…

The Day Mao Died – The Story Hits a Very Special New York Apartment

The tyrant Mao Tse-tung finally died on 9/9/76 – the US papers covered it extensively. This is the best picture i know of relating to Mao’s death…

Architect of Prosperity: Sir John Cowperthwaite and the Making of Hong Kong

Neil Monnery’s new study of a key figure in Hong Kong’s post-war recovery and rise to greatness in the 1970s….

This is a book about Sir John Cowperthwaite – the man Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman identified as being behind Hong Kong’s remarkable post-war economic transformation. Despite there being some articles about him and effusive obituaries there have, until now, been no published biographies of Cowperthwaite. At the end of the Second World War, Hong Kong lived up to its description as “the barren island.” It had few natural resources, its trade and infrastructure lay in tatters, its small manufacturing base had been destroyed and its income per capita was less than a quarter of its mother country, Britain. As a British colony it fell to a small number of civil servants to confront these difficult challenges, largely alone. But by the time of the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, it was one of the most prosperous nations on Earth. By 2015 its GDP per capita was over 40% higher than Britain’s. How did that happen? Around the world, post-war governments were turning to industrial planning, Keynesian deficits and high inflation to stimulate their economies. How much did the civil servants in Hong Kong adopt from this emerging global consensus? Virtually nothing. They rejected the idea that governments should play an active role in industrial planning – instead believing in the ability of entrepreneurs to find the best opportunities. They rejected the idea of spending more than the government raised in taxes – instead aiming to keep a year’s spending as a reserve. They rejected the idea of high taxes – instead keeping taxes low, believing that private investment would earn high returns, and expand the long-term tax base. This strategy was created and implemented by no more than a handful of men over a fifty-year period. Perhaps the most important of them all was John Cowperthwaite, who ran the trade and industry department after the war and then spent twenty years as deputy and then actual Financial Secretary before his retirement in 1971. He, more than anyone, shaped the economic policies of Hong Kong for the quarter century after the war and set the stage for a remarkable economic expansion. His resolve was tested constantly over his period in office, and it was only due to his determination, independence, and intellectual rigor that he was not diverted from the path in which he believed so strongly. This book examines the man behind the story, and the successful economic policies that he and others crafted with the people of Hong Kong.