Involve And Regulate:Governmentality And The Road Construction In Republican China(1912-1937)

This study attempts to explore the political dimension of modern China's transportation infrastructure construction from the perspective of Foucault's "governmentality".Different from the conventional research on modern railways,this paper focuses on the concept and practice of new highway construction in the early 20th century.The motive for road construction during this period combines traditional paradigms and modern demands,and its scale gradually spread throughout the country since the rise of the treaty port cities.The road,as a kind of flexible transportation infrastructure,is a network that connects the national territory,urban management and the daily lives of the people.Road,as a multifunctional transportation infrastructure,related closely to urban planning,territorial integration and the normalization of people's everyday life.Road construction can be seen as a microcosm of the interaction between Chinese sections and Shanghai international settlement,the state and society,the central and local,which makes the study about road and politics more suitable through"governmentality".This paper points out that road construction,in the sense of the"dispositif",offers critical insight into the goals and characteristics of governmentality in modern China.Analysis about the guiding thought of "National Salvation through Transportation" shows that the concept of transportation has two important attributes of "displacement-motion" and "connection-relationship",which compare healing disease with governing the country through two organic metaphors "blood vessels"and "nerves",and echoes two governmental goals "Act" and "Crowd" on national salvation in modern China.As the initiator and promoter of the road construction,the organization and operation of China National Road Construction Association not only reflects the complexity of the road construction intermediate between local and international,government and civil,technology and politics,but also represents the publicity which contribute to extracting legitimacy and execution of transport governance in multiple fields.Inspired by the idiom "Na Min Gui Wu",the specific task of road government can be divided into two aspects:the purpose of "Na" is to create physical space and political space for governance power,while the "Gui" focuses on the rational allocation of the various elements needed for transportation construction.Specifically,the "Na" is centered on the internal relationship between the road and the municipality,discusses how construct motives and management measures involve the "knowledge-power"required for space governance.The comparison of "walls demolition road construction”and "confine concession road construction",which are strategically complementary to each other,shows the confrontation between fixedness and liquidity.With the two elements of the wall and the road that affect traffic,this confrontation not only highlights the connection between the governance and sovereignty of international settlement,but also the issues of "boundary" "frontier" and "territory" which are inherent in space politics.The "Gui" focuses on examining the related combinations of various governance elements and their optimal allocation,emphasizing on the specific principles exercised in the process of regulation.The three themes of "Travel conveniently for people","Flow smoothly for goods"and "integrity of whole country"discuss the norms,rationalities and standards of government on people,things and territory,which are respectively related to the exploitation and education of the citizen's labor force and behavior,the promotion and control of circulation efficiency,the expansion of traffic scale and concentration of power.Governmentality combines the purpose of making full use of resources and maintaining order.The road government is primarily an issue of recognizing the power of mobility and connection included in transport phenomena intrinsically,then the issue of regulation such power."Na" inspires the basic elements and spatial basis of modern concepts of governmentality,while "Gui" pays more attention to the details and principles in specific measures.Based on "Na" and "Gui",the "Verkehr governmentality" proposed at the end of this paper should be understood as the sum of governance knowledge and governance technique generated around the transport phenomenon.Its function is to bring together all the elements that can be used,applying stimulus,control and guidance to circulation.The "Verkehr governmentality" extracted from the history of road construction during the Republic of China can be understood as a crisis response to "ruling but not governing".This concept emphasizes the extraction and control of transport phenomenon by political power,shows the intrinsic relationship between space production,displacement movement and economic rationality.The integration of these elements makes the construction of transportation infrastructure far beyond engineering field and becomes the key to understanding the building of modern states.