Professor Tim Wright
BA, MA, PhD (Cambridge)
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Emeritus professor of Chinese Studies
- Profile
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Tim Wright was Professor of Chinese Studies in the School of East Asian Studies from 2000 to 2009. He is currently Editor in Chief of the , in which there are more than 135 articles online, with that number continually being added to.
Tim Wright currently lives in Australia, where he is Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities, University of Western Australia.
- Research interests
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Tim Wright's research interests focus on the political economy and development of China, both before the 1949 revolution and in the contemporary period.
His major project is on economic fluctuations in Republican China, especially the impact of the 1930s world depression, and he has published articles on labour, on the regional economies of south-west and north-east China and on business-government relations in that context.
He is currently working on issues of natural disasters and currency fluctuations in the economy of north-east China during the pre-war period.
A second current interest is in the political economy of economic reform in the contemporary Chinese coal industry. Most recently he has published several journal articles on the topic as well as a book on The Political Economy of Chinese Coal Industry: Black Gold and Blood Stained Coal with Routledge.
Other on-going research interests include Chinese business history (with an article on a major pre-war coal mining company) and Chinese historiography (on which he edited and introduced a book of Chinese articles on economic history).
- Publications
List of Major Publications
Books
The Political Economy of Chinese Coal Industry: Black Gold and Blood Stained Coal, (London: Routledge, 2011) For further information on sources click here.
Coal Mining in Chinaâs Economy and Society, 1895-1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)
Translated by Professor Ding Changqing of the Nankai Institute of Economics as 1895-1937 Zhongguo jingji he shehui zhong de meikuang ye (Beijing: Dongfang chuban she, 1991)Edited Books
Sow-Theng Leong, Migration and Ethnicity in Chinese History: Hakkas, Pengmin and their Neighbors, edited by Tim Wright, with an introduction by G. William Skinner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997)
The Chinese Economy in the Early Twentieth Century: Recent Chinese Studies (Macmillan, 1992)
Monograph
[with Beverley Hooper], China (Asia-Australia Briefing Papers, Vol 1, No 2, 1991) (Sydney: The Asia-Australia Institute, 1991). (A completely revised second edition of this work was published as Asia Australia Briefing Papers, Vol 2, No 7, 1993)
Articles and Book Chapters
âLegitimacy and Disaster: Responses to the 1932 Floods in North Manchuriaâ, Modern China, 43.2 (March 2017): 186-216
âRent Seeking and Surplus Seeking: Coal in China's Planned Economyâ, pp. 381-409 in Wang Yuru (ed), Jingji fazhan yu shichang bianqian â Wu Chengming xiansheng bainian danchen jinian wenji (Economic development and market change â essays in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Professor Wu Chengming). Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe, 2016
âA Economia e Politica da China desde 1949â, pp. 353-383 in Sun Lam, ed, A Herança de ConfĂșcio: Dez ensaios sobre a China (Ribeirao: EdiçiĂ”s HĂșmus, 2013).
(With Professor Ma Junya of Nanjing University), âSacrificing local interests: Water control policies of the Ming and Qing governments and the local economy of Huaibei, 1495â1949â, Modern Asian Studies, 47.4 (July 2013): 1348-1376.
ââ, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 14.1 (Winter/Spring 2013): 143â152.
ââ. In Oxford Bibliographies: Chinese Studies. Ed. Tim Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, revised 2015, 2017
ââ. In Oxford Bibliographies: Chinese Studies. Ed. Tim Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, revised 2015, 2017
ââ. In Oxford Bibliographies: Chinese Studies. Ed. Tim Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, revised 2015, 2017
(With Professor Ma Junya of Nanjing University), âIndustrialization and Handicraft Cloth: The Jiangsu Peasant Economy in the late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuriesâ, Modern Asian Studies, 44.6 (October 2010): 1337â1372.
âRents and Rent Seeking in Chinaâs Coal Industryâ, pp. 98â116 in Tak-wing Ngo and Yongping Wu (eds), Rent Seeking in China, London: Routledge: 2008
âAn Economic Cycle in Imperial China? Revisiting Robert Hartwell on Iron and Coalâ, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 50 (4) (2007): 398-423
âState Capacity in Contemporary China: âClosing the Pits and Reducing Coal Productionââ, Journal of Contemporary China, 16 (51) (2007): 173-194.
âAn Economic Cycle in Imperial China? Revisiting Robert Hartwell on Iron and Coalâ, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 50.4 (November 2007): 398-423.
âThe Manchurian Economy and the 1930s World Depressionâ, Modern Asian Studies, 41:5, (September 2007): 1073-1112.
[For a spreadsheet of statistical data on Manchurian GDP click here]âThe Performance of Chinaâs Industrial Enterprises: A Coal Industry Perspectiveâ, China Information 20.2 (July 2006): 165-199.
âChina and the 1930s World Depressionâ, pp. 370-392 in Zhang Donggang et al eds, Shijie jingji tizhi xia de minguo shiqi jingji (The Chinese Economy Within the Global Economic Framework), Beijing: Zhongguo caizheng jingji chubanshe, 2005
âAodaliya he Yingguo de Zhongguoxue bijiaoâ (Chinese Studies in Australia and the UK: A Comparison) (translated by Professor Liu Ni), Guowai shehui kexue (Social Sciences Abroad) 2004.6 (November 2004): 64-68. This article was also abstracted in the most important journal of abstracts for Chinaâs elite, Xinhua wenzhai 330 (20 March 2005): 140-142.
âThe Political Economy of Coal Mine Disasters in China: Your Rice Bowl or Your Lifeâ, China Quarterly, 179 (September 2004) 27-44.
âThe Political Economy of Prices in Chinaâs Planned and Market Economies: Competition and Control in the Coal Industryâ, Asian Studies Review 24.3 (September 2000): 349-376.
âCompetition and Complementarity: Township and Village Mines and the State Sector in Chinaâs Coal Industryâ, China Information 14.1 (2000): 113-130.
âDistant Thunder: The Regional Economies of Southwest China and the Impact of the Great Depressionâ, Modern Asian Studies 34.3 (July 2000): 697-738.
âOvercoming Risk: A Chinese Mining Company During the Nanjing Decadeâ, East Asian History 17/18 (June/December 1999): 131-168.
ââThe Spiritual Heritage of Chinese Capitalismâ - Recent Trends in the Historiography of Chinese Enterprise Managementâ, pp. 205-238 in Jon Unger, ed, âUsing the Past to Serve the Presentâ: Politics and Historiography in Contemporary China (M E Sharpe and Allen and Unwin, 1993); an earlier version of this paper appeared in Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 19/20 (January and July 1988): 185-214.
âIntroduction: Chinese Economic History in a Period of Changeâ, pp. 1-28 in Tim Wright ed, The Chinese Economy in the Early Twentieth Century: Recent Chinese Studies (Macmillan, 1992)
translated by Professor Wang Yuru of the Nankai Institute of Economics as â80 niandai Zhongguo jindai jingji shixue yanjiu de zhuyao wentiâ in Nankai jingji yanjiu 1992.6 (December 1992): 62-69; another version published as âBiandong shiqi de jindai Zhongguo jingji shixueâ in Ding Richu ed, Jindai Zhongguo, di yi ji (Modern China, no. 3) (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue chuban she, 1993), p. 193-223.
âCoping with the World Depression: The Nationalist Governmentâs Relations with Chinese Industry and Commerce, 1932-1936â, Modern Asian Studies, 25.4 (October 1991): 649-674 (an earlier version of this article was published in John Fitzgerald, ed, The Nationalists and Chinese Society, 1923-1937: A Symposium (Melbourne: History Dept, Melbourne University, 1989).
translated by Mr Ci Hongfei of the Nankai Institute of Economics as âYingdui shijie jingji xiaotiao: Guomin zhengfu tong Zhongguo gongshangye de guanxi (1982-1936)â in Ding Richu ed, Jindai Zhongguo, di yi ji (Modern China, no. 6) (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue chuban she, 1996), p. 77-106.
âElectric Power Production in Pre-1937 China: A Research Noteâ, China Quarterly 126 (June 1991): 356-363.
âShanghai Imperialists vs Rickshaw Racketeers: The Defeat of the 1934 Rickshaw Reformsâ, Modern China 17.1 (January 1991): 76-111.
âIndustrial Labour and Labour Relations in China During the 1930s World Depression: A Preliminary Studyâ, pp. 443-482 in Yung-san Lee and Tsâui-jung Liu eds, Chinaâs Market Economy in Transition (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1990).
âImperialism and the Chinese Economy: A Methodological Critique of the Debateâ, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 18.1 (January-March 1986): 36-45.
âNationalist Policies and the Regulation of Chinese Industry: Competition and Control in Coal Miningâ, in David Pong and Edmund Fung eds, Ideal and Reality: Social and Political Change in Modern China, 1860-1944 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985), pp. 127-152.
translated as âNanjing shiqi de guomindang zhengfu he dui Zhongguo gongye de guanzhi: meikuang ye zhong de jingzheng he tongzhiâ, pp. 60-84 in Ding Richu ed, Jindai Zhongguo, di yi ji (Modern China, No. 1) (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue yuan chuban she, 1991).
âA Mining Enterprise in Early Republican Chinese Society: The Chung-hsing Coal Mining Companyâ, in Chung-hua min-kuo châu-châi li-shih yen-tâao-hui lun-wen chi (Proceedings of the Conference on the Early History of the Republic of China, 1912-1927) (Taipei, 1984), pp. 531-563.
ââA Method of Evading Managementâ - Contract Labor in Chinese Coal Mines Before 1937â, Comparative Studies in Society and History 23.4 (October 1981): 656-678.
âThe Growth of the Modern Chinese Coal Industry, 1896-1936: An Analysis of Supply and Demandâ, Modern China 7.3 (July 1981): 317-350.
(Joint article with Professor Shannon Brown, then of the University of Maryland), âTechnology, Economics and Politics in the Modernisation of Chinaâs Coal Mining Industry: The First Phase, 1850-1895â, Explorations in Economic History 18.1 (January 1981): 60-83.
âEntrepreneurs, Politicians and the Chinese Coal Industry, 1895-1937â, Modern Asian Studies 14.4 (October 1980): 579-602.
ââGrasping Revolution and Promoting Productionâ: The Cultural Revolution in Chinese Coal Minesâ, Papers on Far Eastern History 22 (September 1980): 51-92.
âSino-Japanese Business in China: The Luda Company, 1921-1937â, Journal of Asian Studies 39.4 (August 1980): 711-727.