Journal paper

Issue No.	No. 66
Title	Promoting Standardization in Modern China: British and American Engineer Organisations, Local Chinese Engineers, and Their Transnational Networks, 1901–1941
Author	Ｗu, Lin-chun
Page	85-128
Abstract	Standardization is a product of the second wave of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. It is based on the convenience of interchangeable standardized parts, which has allowed modern factories to operate according to mass production methods. Standardization has changed the basic characteristics of modern production methods; it has helped to industrialize societies and affected economies throughout the world, and has had a profound impact on the global transfer of technology. This article examines how Western standardization practices were introduced, transmitted, and promoted in China during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, it looks at the critical role played by British, American and local Chinese engineers in the transmission process. As the topics covered in the present article have seldom been considered before, the present article helps to fill a current gap in our scholarship. 　　In the early twentieth century, the Engineering Society of China, led by　British engineers, promoted standardization in the Shanghai International Settlement area. After World War I, the Association of Chinese and　American Engineers, founded by engineers from China and the United　States, began to standardize China’s railway, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Transportation of the central government in Beijing. In the 1930s, thanks to the strong backing of Chinese engineers and intellectuals, the standardization movement became increasingly popular among government officials and the general public; and thus, a technocracy was put in charge of plans for development of industrial standardization nationwide. From World War I to the 1930s, the orientation and practices of American standardization strategies dominated China. With the onset of the Sino-Japanese War, however, the situation in China worsened rapidly, thus derailing the process of standardization. New ideologies and different development strategies contributed further to the decline of the standardization movement.
Keyword	standardization, the Engineering Society of Shanghai, the Engineering Society of China, Association of Chinese and American Engineers, Chinese Institute of Engineers, the Internationalization of China
Attached File	File download