CQH Working Paper Series

Latest preprints

• Steam Beyond the Gateways: Steamship Connectivity and Industrial Entry in China

  • PDF

  Wanda Wang

  • steamship
  • industrialization
  • technology diffusion
  • treaty ports
  • China

  Downloads: 1 - Published: 2026-10-20

• Top‑Down Monitoring or Top‑down Encroachment? How Centralized Tax Administration Undermined State Capacity in China

  • PDF

  Yu Hao; Kevin Zhengcheng Liu

  • state capacity
  • fiscal capacity
  • tax administration
  • taxation
  • China

  Downloads: 4 - Published: 2026-10-20

• The Capacity of Commerce: How the Merchants Shaped Political Resource Distribution during the Taiping Rebellion

  • PDF

  Heqi Cai

  • commerce
  • civil service exam
  • indirect taxation
  • Taiping Rebellion

  Downloads: 4 - Published: 2026-10-20

• Reason for Treason

  • PDF

  Xinyu Fan; Gary Richardson; Zhihao Xu; Sicheng Zhao

  • recognition
  • loyalty
  • career incentives
  • World War II
  • foreign influences

  Downloads: 4 - Published: 2026-10-20

• On the Origins of Modern East Asia: Knowledge and the Economic Transformation of Japan and China in the late 19^th century

  • PDF

  Debin Ma; Jared Rubin; Weiwen Yin

  • propositional knowledge
  • prescriptive knowledge
  • China
  • Japan
  • economic development
  • economic divergence
  • Meiji Reform
  • centralization
  • decentralization

  Downloads: 7 - Published: 2026-10-20

• Media and Cultural Assimilation: Evidence from NHK Radio

  • PDF

  Xinxian Li

  • media
  • culture
  • language
  • Japan

  Downloads: 3 - Published: 2026-10-20

• The More You Know, the Less You Learn: Information Monitoring and Decision-Making Bias

  • PDF

  Xiaoming Zhang; Xianqi Cao

  • bureaucracy
  • informational politics
  • decision-making
  • Qing China

  Downloads: 4 - Published: 2026-10-20

• Local Knowledge and State Building: Evidence from Chinese Gazeteers

  • PDF

  Xinxian Li; Ningxi Liu; Chicheng Ma

  Downloads: 4 - Published: 2026-10-20

• The Economics of Mobilizing Free Riders: Evidence from the Chinese Civil War 1945–1949

  • PDF

  Peiyuan Li

  • land reform
  • redistribution
  • free rider
  • war mobilization
  • China

  Downloads: 4 - Published: 2026-10-17

• The Paradox of State-Building: Tuition-Free Teachers' Schools and Communist Revolution in Republican China

  • pdf

  Ningning Ma; Wuyue You

  • state building
  • teachers’ school
  • Chinese Communist Party

  Downloads: 16 - Published: 2026-10-16

View All Papers →