Coastal smuggling has been a thorny problem for successive governments in modern China. But, while smuggling might have operated on the margins of the law, it was far from marginal in driving important historical changes. Introducing his new book, Philip Thai explores how campaigns against smuggling transformed everyday economic life and amplified state power, thereby offering new insights into modern Chinese social, legal, and economic history.

Philip Thai is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Northeastern University. He received his PhD from Stanford University, and he specializes in modern Chinese, East Asian, legal, economic, and Cold War history. His book “China’s War on Smuggling: Law, Economic Life, and the Making of the Modern State, 1842–1965” was published by Columbia University Press in 2018, and his interdisciplinary research has been supported by many organizations including the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).

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