Koji Hirata has written an impressive study of industrialization in twentieth-century Northeast China (Manchuria). In Making Mao’s Steelworks, Hirata focuses on the case study of the Anshan Iron and Steel Works (Angang), a major state-owned steel manufacturer in Northeast China that during the initial decade of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was responsible for about fifty percent of Chinese steel production. On the basis of primary sources in Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and English, as well as both textual sources and oral history interviews, Hirata traces the history of Angang from its inception as a Japanese enterprise in 1915 through the Mao era and into the Chinese reform era, up to the year 2000. Hirata not only reconstructs the history of a major Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) but also uses the case study of Angang to ask important questions about state-driven late industrialization and the often-presupposed dichotomy between capitalism and socialism.

Making Mao’s Steelworks includes eight chapters (divided into three parts), an introduction and conclusion, and a useful appendix that discusses the primary sources used in the book. Following the introduction, the first chapter explores the origins of Angang before 1945 as a Japanese colonial endeavor in Northeast China, first in the form of the Anshan Ironworks and then as the Shōwa Steelworks. Hirata shows how, during this period of Japanese control, the import of German and other technologies, state-directed economic planning informed by the Soviet Union, and wartime calculations played a crucial role in Angang’s development. As Chapter 2 discusses, after World War II, Angang went through periods of control by the Soviet Union and then by the Chinese Nationalists. The chapter first focuses on the process of Soviet removal of industrial machinery, before then moving on to how the Nationalist regime transformed Angang into a Chinese SOE, making use of its wartime experience with SOE management in Western China.

In Chapter 3, the first chapter of the book’s second part, Hirata shows how, after the takeover of Angang by the Chinese Communists, the new Chinese government developed Angang and Northeast China more broadly by building on the work carried out by the Japanese and by the Chinese Nationalists in terms of industrial buildup and SOE management, including the use of human capital remaining from these two regimes. As Hirata explains, “Manchuria’s prominence as the early PRC’s industrial heartland was largely a consequence of Nationalist Chinese and Imperial Japanese policies” (p. 111). Chapter 4 centers upon the First Five-Year Plan (1953–1957) of the PRC and the important role assistance by the Soviet Union played during this period in the form of technology transfer, training of Chinese personnel, and dispatching of Soviet advisors. Hirata discusses the important place Northeast China occupied in the First Five-Year Plan and highlights, in particular, how “one of the significant achievements of Soviet technological assistance was that it allowed China to gradually achieve economic independence” (p. 161).

In the book’s fifth chapter, Hirata delves into the management and operations of Angang and uncovers tensions between directives from the central government and party institutions on the local level. Moreover, specific aspects of socialist business operations are discussed, such as financial management and sales. In Chapter 6, the concluding chapter of part two, Hirata explores the social welfare and political education provided to workers at Angang and zooms in on how ideological campaigns were used to mobilize workers. He also shows how workers, including engineers, could use Maoist rhetoric for their own benefit.

The book’s third part, comprising Chapters 7 and 8, takes the story of Angang from the last years of the 1950s to the year 2000. In Chapter 7, Hirata covers changes at Angang and the process of Chinese industrialization more broadly between 1958 and 1976, focusing on experimentation with decentralization during this period and the import of technology from capitalist countries starting in the early 1970s. In the final chapter of the book, which covers the period after 1976, we learn about Angang’s and Northeast China’s fate as China adopted market reforms and shifted its model of industrialization toward light industries. Hirata vividly shows how legacies of socialist industrialization focused on state-led heavy industry impeded the Northeast’s participation in China’s new market-driven economy, leading to the region’s economic decline.

For business historians, Making Mao’s Steelworks is interesting in several ways. First, Hirata offers a detailed analysis of a socialist business, which is still rare in business history scholarship. In particular, the chapters in part two will be of interest to scholars working on or interested in the development and operations of businesses in socialist contexts. Second, Hirata shows how industrialization in China was heavily impacted by ideas and technology from a variety of global sources, ranging from the Soviet Union to Imperial Japan, and convincingly argues that “significant commonalities and connections existed among late industrializing regimes of the twentieth century in both capitalist and socialist countries” (p. 7), thereby complicating simplistic differentiations between capitalism and socialism. Third, with Angang, Making Mao’s Steelworks offers a case study that very much fits in with and contributes to the “alternative business history” of developing economies proposed by Gareth Austin, Carlos Dávila, and Geoffrey Jones, not only because it is a case study from China and thus outside the usual geographical contexts traditionally studied by business historians, but also because it exemplifies several of the key forces that shaped business development in developing economies as identified by Austin, Dávila, and Jones, namely, instability, state intervention, and colonialism (“The Alternative Business History: Business in Emerging Markets,” Business History Review 91, no. 3 [Autumn 2017]).

Overall, Making Mao’s Steelworks is a thoroughly researched study that makes major contributions to the history of Chinese industrialization in the twentieth century. At the same time, it is not only of interest to China specialists but also to scholars more generally interested in socialist enterprise and the global history of industrialization.