Toby Lincoln

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used the Research Incentivisation Fund at the University of Glasgow; University of Leicester College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities Research Development Fund (RINF).

Abstract: Rural-urban relations are one of the most intractable sources of social inequality in the People’s Republic of China today. As the chief beneficiaries of rising prosperity, urban communities have grown rapidly to now hold more than half of the country’s overall population. Meanwhile, those left behind as registered residents of the countryside continue to receive dramatically lower levels of income and public services. Historians have long traced the origins of this rural-urban divide back to at least the early twentieth century, when the growing influence of global capitalism and modern state-building was disproportionately concentrated in China’s treaty ports and other urban centers. A concomitant deepening of impoverishment in rural areas helped set the stage for the Communist revolution that eventually engulfed the cities and swept Mao to power by mid-century. However, a new study by Toby Lincoln of urbanization in the first half of the twentieth century challenges this conventional narrative of divergence and dichotomization in rural-urban relations.

TL;DR: The authors explores the refugee experiences of three communities in Shanghai during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and argues that migrant identities were trans-local and that urban identity in the first half of the twentieth century in China was never wholly confined within one city.

TL;DR: This article explored the impact of the Japanese invasion of 1937 on Chinese cities, focusing on Wuxi, one hundred miles to the west of Shanghai, and argued that bombing was mainly limited.