Recent theories of state-building emphasize the role that contestation and conflict play in the way in which states develop, expand their influence, and exercise control over both a defined territory and its population. Such an interpretation of state-building challenges the view of the state as a monolithic actor that develops in a unilineal and rationally coherent manner. It reveals the dynamic struggles and historical contingencies that influence whether state-building efforts succeed or fail.

The papers in this panel all analyze processes of state-building as the result of dynamic and historically-contingent struggle. The geographic focus is greater China. The papers analyze both contemporary and historical examples of state-building in contested territories. Victoria Hui analyzes state formation in the Spring and Autumn Warring States periods. She argues that the centralized bureaucratic and coercive state apparatus established by the Qin dynasty was born out of war-making in the multi-state era. Hakan Friberg analyzes state-building in Shanxi province, 1911–1948. He argues that states result from competing attempts to enroll people, territories, texts, artifacts, and other state projects into stable political, economic, public, and coercive networks. Mark Harrison analyzes the role of national identity in state-building in contemporary Taiwan. He argues that an emerging national consciousness in Taiwan fundamentally challenges the link between ethnicity and nation at the center of Chinese nationalist ideology. Ann Frechette analyzes state-building among the Tibetan exiles. She argues that the semi-autonomy of refugee camps serves as a proxy for territorial sovereignty to enable state-building among political exiles.

Victoria Hui, Columbia University

This paper examines processes of war-making and state formation in ancient China (656–221 b.c.). In China’s Spring and Autumn Warring States periods, as in early modern Europe (1495–1815), the prevalence of war brought about the transition from feudal and decentralized forms of government to the "modern" state with centralized authority, monopolized coercion, and nationalized taxation. While such centralized bureaucratic and coercive apparatuses were checked by (quasi-)representative institutions in early modern Europe, however, they achieved total domination over society in ancient China.

With similar antecedent conditions and formative processes but diametrically opposed outcomes, the ancient Chinese trajectory forces a rethinking of established state formation theories. In fact, the logical culmination of state-make-war and war-make-state processes is the coercive state, because monopolization of coercion could tip the already asymmetrical state-society balance even more to rulers’ advantage, centralization of administration could facilitate effective control and surveillance of society, and nationalization of taxation could provide stable resources for coercion so as to allow rulers relative autonomy from resource-holders. This coercive logic was weakened in early modern Europe because no rulers could implement direct rule until the French Revolution. In ancient China, however, direct rule was first introduced at the beginning of the Spring and Autumn period and had become fully entrenched by the middle of the Warring States period. This naturally strong coercive logic was further strengthened in the state of Qin with a divide-and-rule strategy to atomize the people and to forestall resistance.

Hakan Friberg, Stockholm University

For four decades after the collapse of the Qing polity in the Revolution of 1911, no actor on the national arena was able to establish a dominant state network encompassing the entire territory of what was called the Republic of China. There were, however, a large number of smaller-scale actors claiming all or part of that territory. In their efforts to grow and establish strong political, economic, public, coercive, or other networks in domains of varying size, many of these state projects introduced new state-building strategies based on North-Atlantic or Japanese models. These strategies included the use of discourses of progress, modernization, national interest, and popular sovereignty, as well as military, industrial, financial, and monetary discourses, technologies, and organizational techniques, techniques of business and risk management, of communication and transportation, and of information distribution and public argumentation.

One contested territory was Shanxi, a province in north-central China. In this paper, I will attempt to describe the efforts undertaken in the period 1911–1948 by a state project based in Taiyuan, the provincial capital, to establish itself as the primary representative of the interests of the people of that territory. In its efforts to tie up people, territory, texts, and artifacts into discursive, monetary, economic, military, and other networks, it found itself confronting rivals of local, national and ultimately international scale, as well as with non-territorially delimited entities such as familial networks, private enterprises, banks, and religious organizations.

The Shanxi state project ultimately failed; the state in Shanxi came to be represented by other actors, but its efforts did result in the introduction, if not proliferation, of statist modes of interaction and discourse, and in the weakening of non-territorial modes of social ordering, facilitating the subsequent establishment of a CCP state.

Mark Harrison, Monash University

During the election campaign for Taipei City mayor in October 1998, President Lee Tenghui coined the term "New Taiwanese," defining a Taiwanese nationhood as being the common destiny of all people of Taiwan regardless of ethnic origin. As a popular campaign slogan, the term represents the culmination of a decades-long process of reconfiguring national identity in Taiwan. The paper outlines that process, from the liberal democracy activists of the 1960’s through the Dangwai movement of the 70’s and 80’s and into the post-martial law period. The paper distinguishes the core concept of this reconfiguration as being an explicit challenge to Sunist Chinese nationalism by separating ethnic and national identities. For "New Taiwanese," China is mere ethnicity, whereas Taiwan is nationhood.

The paper then looks at how this emergent Taiwanese national identity gradually undermined the original sinicization policies of the KMT, until in the post-Martial Law period it has informed Taiwan’s on-going efforts to reposition itself in its relationship to China. This includes abandoning the R.O.C.’s claim to be the legitimate government of China in 1991, Lee Tenghui’s Six Point response to Jiang Zemin in 1995 and his most recent statements on state-to-state relations between the R.O.C. the P.R.C.

The paper will conclude with an addendum on the most recent developments arising from the second presidential elections which will be taking place in Taiwan around the same time as this AAS annual conference.

Ann Frechette, Harvard University

State-building is comprised of processes of bureaucratization, territorial consolidation, and increasing domination over the political and economic activities of a defined and bounded population. For most states, processes of state-building proceed either concurrently with, or soon after, sovereign control over a defined territory has been secured through recognition from other states. For political exiles, processes of state-building occur in the absence of recognition. How state-building proceeds in the absence of territorial sovereignty is the question addressed in this paper.