Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute)

**A forceful reckoning with the relationship between energy and power through the history of what was once East Asia’s largest coal mine.** The coal-mining town of Fushun in China’s Northeast is home to a monstrous open pit. First excavated in the early twentieth century, this pit grew like a widening maw over the ensuing decades, as various Chinese and Japanese states endeavored to unearth Fushun’s purportedly “inexhaustible” carbon resources. Today, the depleted mine that remains is a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized in attempts to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality. In __Carbon Technocracy__, Victor Seow uses the remarkable story of the Fushun colliery to chart how the fossil fuel economy emerged in tandem with the rise of the modern technocratic state. Taking coal as an essential feedstock of national wealth and power, Chinese and Japanese bureaucrats, engineers, and industrialists deployed new technologies like open-pit mining and hydraulic stowage in pursuit of intensive energy extraction. But as much as these mine operators idealized the might of fossil fuel–driven machines, their extractive efforts nevertheless relied heavily on the human labor that those devices were expected to displace. Under the carbon energy regime, countless workers here and elsewhere would be subjected to invasive techniques of labor control, ever-escalating output targets, and the dangers of an increasingly exploited earth. Although Fushun is no longer the coal capital it once was, the pattern of aggressive fossil-fueled development that led to its ascent endures. As we confront a planetary crisis precipitated by our extravagant consumption of carbon, it holds urgent lessons. This is a groundbreaking exploration of how the mutual production of energy and power came to define industrial modernity and the wider world that carbon made. The coal-mining town of Fushun in China's Northeast is home to a monstrous open pit. First excavated in the early twentieth century, this pit grew like a widening maw over the ensuing decades, as various Chinese and Japanese states endeavored to unearth Fushun's purportedly "inexhaustible" carbon resources. Today, the depleted mine that remains is a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized in attempts to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality.0 In Carbon Technocracy, Victor Seow uses the remarkable story of the Fushun colliery to chart how the fossil fuel economy emerged in tandem with the rise of the modern technocratic state. Taking coal as an essential feedstock of national wealth and power, Chinese and Japanese bureaucrats, engineers, and industrialists deployed new technologies like open-pit mining and hydraulic stowage in pursuit of intensive energy extraction. But as much as these mine operators idealized the might of fossil fuel-driven machines, their extractive efforts nevertheless relied heavily on the human labor that those devices were expected to displace. Under the carbon energy regime, countless workers here and elsewhere would be subjected to invasive techniques of labor control, ever-escalating output targets, and the dangers of an increasingly exploited earth.0 Although Fushun is no longer the coal capital it once was, the pattern of aggressive fossil-fueled development that led to its ascent endures. As we confront a planetary crisis precipitated by our extravagant consumption of carbon, it holds urgent lessons. This is a groundbreaking exploration of how the mutual production of energy and power came to define industrial modernity and the wider world that carbon made "Carbon Technocracy illustrates how the rise of the fossil fuel economy in East Asia was mutually shaped by the emergence of technocratic governance in China and Japan by looking closely at the Fushun colliery in Manchuria. The colliery changed hands between the Imperial Japanese, Nationalist Chinese, and Communist Chinese governments over the first half of the twentieth century and once boasted the largest coal mining operations in East Asia. Seow examines how the Japanese and Chinese regimes became committed to large-scale, state-led energy extraction efforts even as concerns swirled over economic growth, resource scarcity, and national autarky. Pivotal to this process was the development and employment of technologies of extraction: from methods such as open-pit mining and shale oil distillation, which enabled the extraction of carbon energy, to mechanisms such as finger printing and calorie counting, which made possible a more efficient extraction of the human labor undergirding the entire enterprise. For all their differences, the regimes shared technocratic visions of industrial development based on extensive fossil fuel production and use. The reliance on carbon energy to sustain the entire system engendered a widespread tension that persists today, a tension between the fear of scarcity and a faith in finding near limitless supply, often thanks to science and technology"-- Provided by publisher This book explores how Chinese and Japanese states, in attempting to master the fossil fuels that powered their industrial aspirations, undertook large- scale technological projects of energy extraction that ultimately exactedconsiderable human and environmental costs. Nowhere is this more evident than in Fushun. Although the former Coal Capital’s fortunes may now be flagging, the pattern of fossil- fueled development that enabled its rise persists into the present. As we confront a planetary crisis precipitated by copious carbon consumption, the history of the Fushun colliery offers us a genealogy of our current predicament. Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Note on Conventions 12 Introduction: Carbon Technocracy 14 1. Vertical Natures 40 2. Technological Enterprise 82 3. Fueling Anxieties 128 4. Imperial Extraction 174 5. Nationalist Reconstruction 221 6. Socialist Industrialization 268 Epilogue: Exhausted Limits 310 Acknowledgments 338 Bibliography 346 Index 398