Chinese Military Production?

[Big Yehudah]

from 1895-1945 (or 49 if you include the Civil War, specifically Komintang) is there any good information in English, preferably free but also please name retail books, about Chinese military production in this period, most specifically the Second Sino-Japanese war. Lend Lease and imports should be included simply for completeness. Any and all "Guns and/or Butter" for wartime usage, native production of weapons, munitions, fuel, food for China's troops, all of it is of interest. I can get some academic articles since I have access to services like JSTOR from my library. I'll look on my own, but a head start would be great.

[YC Chen]

A really nice Chinese book on this topic is “Study on the Economical Mobilization of the Nationalist Government During Anti-Japanese War”(抗战期间国民政府经济动员研究), by Zhang Yanping(张燕萍), published by People's Press of Fujian in 2007. However this book is quite difficult to get even in China as only 1000 copies were printed.

[Big Yehudah]

Thank you for the suggestion Chen. Unfortunately not only am I poor, I dont know mandarin or cantonese. Do you know of any english sources. OR, any Chinese online sites which have such data. Google translate has improved significantly. Ive done this with Russian sources like Kriosheev for example.

[Stephen_Rynerson]

Big Yehudah, although it is mostly focused on the international armament trade, the book Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920-1928 by Anthony B. Chan has a chapter on domestic Chinese arms production during the "Warlord Era." I should also note that the book was originally published in 1982, but there was a revised edition published in 2010 and I've only read the revised edition, so I don't know how much coverage of the subject there was in the first edition.

[YC Chen]

Big Yehudah, although it is mostly focused on the international armament trade, the book Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920-1928 by Anthony B. Chan has a chapter on domestic Chinese arms production during the "Warlord Era." I should also note that the book was originally published in 1982, but there was a revised edition published in 2010 and I've only read the revised edition, so I don't know how much coverage of the subject there was in the first edition.

I have also read the book "Arming the Chinese"(revised edition). It seems that the author is not an expert on weapons, but the various documents quoted in that book provide some extremely interesting information. However, I think the part on domestic Chinese arms production is not very elaborate and of limited value.

It seems there isn't a good English book on Chinese military production 1911-1949, it is quite a pity. However there's a book "Arms of Kiangnan" which covers military production of Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai in late 19th century, but I don't have this book because it's much too expensive .

[Stephen_Rynerson]

YC Chen, I agree that Arming the Chinese's coverage of domestic arms production leaves much to be desired, but I figured, given the lack of other responses to Big Yehudah, that it was better than nothing.

[Big Yehudah]

This is too bad. Wikipedia gives some figures, but it often cites sources like documentaries on youtube which are in Chinese or small websites which show figures without proper sources.

[YC Chen]

If you are also interested in pre-1895 period, perhaps you should check your local library to see if they have the book Arms of Kiangnan: Modernization in the Chinese Ordnance Industry. Although I haven't read that book, but I have read some articles by the same author on similar topics and they are extremely helpful for me. So I think perhaps that book is of the same high quality. But it's extremely expensive on Amazon.

Also a friend of mine from the US is compiling a book which has a lot of information on various Chinese arsenals from 1912 to 1949 which I think is what you need, but I don't know about his progress now because we haven't been in contact for a few months. I will tell you as soon as I am informed about the progress of his work.