ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Assembling Vehicles, Delivering China's Infrastructure, 1950s-1980s

• In Event: Technology and Management in Modern History

English Abstract

This paper presents a concise history of assembled vehicles in late-twentieth-century China to exemplify “assembling” as a radical strategy for infrastructure development in modern China. Constrained by limited vehicle production capacity, numerous users preferred assembled vehicles from retired auto parts and components rather than waiting for manufactured vehicles for transportation service. Seemingly a cost-effective and self-reliant approach to rapid mechanization, the state temporarily approved this strategy during the 1950s, only to realize that vehicle assemblers would circumvent the state plan, which was supposed to regulate production, distribution, and consumption of auto parts. Despite government prohibitions on assembled vehicles since the 1960s, they remained so popular that some legally acquired new parts were sold to assemblers as “retired” parts for vehicle assembly. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), they outnumbered manufactured vehicles in most regions and supported “unregulated” market exchanges that were otherwise infeasible, thereby paving the way for Deng’s market reform in the 1980s.
The case of assembled vehicles exemplifies a crucial yet overlooked approach to infrastructure development in Modern China. While current studies on infrastructure in modern China often overstate the significance of standard and resource-intensive infrastructure – for example, manufactured vehicles in the car industry – despite its limited expansion at the time, this research argues that assembled infrastructure more effectively addressed material scarcity and delivered industrialization in most underdeveloped regions. In a broader perspective, the history of assembled infrastructure in China complicates the narratives of infrastructure in developmental states. While recent studies emphasize state endorsement of assembling infrastructure from all available materials to enhance economic self-reliance, the innovative assemblers and their repurposed projects also hold strong subversive potential to undermine state-led industrialization.

Author

• TIANLIN WANG