Exporting Development: The League of Nations and Republican China

Abstract

In 1931, the Chinese minister of finance, Song Ziwen (T. V. Soong), reached an agreement with the League of Nations on a Program of Technical Cooperation with China. The program was intended to provide the Nationalist government—the republican government that ruled China from 1927 to 1949—with much-needed technological and financial aid in support of its nation-building effort. As a result, the League sent a number of experts to China. The first group focused mostly on public health, education, water conservation, and transportation (Zhang 1999). In 1933, however, the original agreement was revised and expanded to include economic development, with special emphasis on agriculture. In this context, a new group of League specialists visited China. Among them were three experts in rural cooperative societies: the Briton William Kenneth Hunter Campbell, the Italian Mario Dragoni, and the German Max Brauer.