The story of Wang Yongjiang tells us things about warlord China that most people have overlooked. Wang Yongjiang (1872–1927) was born into a well-to-do family near Dalian, in south Manchuria. He received a traditional education and obtained a Tribute Student (gongsheng) degree in his early 20s. His adult career began in 1917 when the warlord Zhang Zuolin, who then controlled Manchuria, appointed Wang as Director of the Fengtian Provincial Bureau of Finance. At that time Fengtian (present-day Liaoning) province was facing low revenues and had to make regular payments for the numerous loans that provincial officials had borrowed from Japanese and domestic sources. Wang set about re-organizing the police offices, because the police kept census information used for taxing the public. He restructured the tax collection system to prevent public officials from siphoning off collected monies, so that increased revenues began to flow into the provincial treasuries. Wang then stabilized the official currency of the provincial government, the Fengtian dollar (Fengpiao) by fixing its value against other currencies. He advertised that it was backed by silver reserves in the provincial treasury and also announced that provincial officials would accept the note as payment for taxes. The Fengtian dollar achieved parity against the Japanese gold yen from 1917 to 1924.

In this excellent study, Wang Fengjie outlines how Wang Yongjiang embarked on a rational plan for modernization and infrastructure building in Northeast China in the early Republican period. Wang Yongjiang used provincial funds to bolster businesses, such as a new provincial cotton mill, and then by working with the Shenyang General Chamber of Commerce invited regional businessmen to invest in the project. He pushed through building a rail line from Shenyang to the market town of Hailong as a way of challenging the hold of the Japanese-run South Manchuria Railway over rail transport in the region. He advocated the creation of Dongbei University, established in 1923 and still one of the region's top schools. He was the first to bring comprehensive fiscal, administrative and economic reform to Northeast China.

The book's author teaches at Bohai University. She received her PhD from Northeast Normal University, where her thesis advisor was Qu Xiaofan. Qu's work on the transformation and modernization of cities in the northeast is groundbreaking and well-respected, and he has also contributed an informative preface to Wang's book, which is a revision of her doctoral dissertation. As such, it is an example of the excellent quality of PhD research being done in China's universities today. Wang has made good use of newspapers from the time held in libraries in the northeast and prepared a useful literature review. She also used many archived materials held by the Fengtian Provincial Government Archives, materials which most of us did not know existed. The availability of so many detailed original documents (many Liaoning libraries also hold valuable historical materials from this period) is a tribute to the archivists and librarians in China who managed to preserve these materials through years of upheaval. Wang reveals the treasure-trove of historical materials about the Northeast in modern times that is now open to researchers.

Clearly the story's protagonist Wang Yongjiang was an unusual and accomplished man. His life trajectory shows that the traditional education and set of values rooted in the Qing Dynasty that he inherited did not prevent him from advocating the social and economic changes demanded by modernization. Although his personal interests were in Chinese herbal medicine, the Book of Changes and in writing classical poetry, he realized that reorganizing municipal administration in order to regulate traffic, tax collection and sanitation, were the building blocks for the commerce and industry that was called for in the new age. He saw to it that outstanding provincial students were sent abroad to Japan, Europe and the United States for study. He personally liked to wear the Qing long gown and skull cap, but he did not reject ideas or customs from outside of China.

Wang Yongjiang was not afraid to challenge Zhang Zuolin, and he did so again and again. Zhang was ruthless and determined to use his powerful war machine to gain national power. Wang Yongjiang resigned in 1922 and again the final time in 1926. On each occasion he told Zhang that he could not tolerate the Fengtian Army raiding the provincial treasuries in order to fight battles in China proper. Zhang promised each time to respect the line between the civil and military administrations, but even before his assassination in 1928, Zhang Zuolin had ruined the provincial economy and completely dashed the hopes of Wang Yongjiang.

This book tells the story of a remarkable civil official, and of the period of stability, economic growth and prosperity that he created in Manchuria during the early Republican period. Wang Fengjie has produced a well-researched study, presented in a thoughtful, clear and well-documented style.