When, how, and why did the state enterprise system of modern China take shape? The conventional argument is that China borrowed its economic system and development strategy wholesale from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. In an important new interpretation, Morris Bian shows instead that the basic institutional arrangement of state-owned enterprise—bureaucratic governance, management and incentive mechanisms, and the provision of social services and welfare—developed in China during the war years 1937–1945.

Bian offers a new theory of institutional change that explains the formation of China’s state enterprise system as the outcome of the sustained systemic crisis triggered by the Sino–Japanese war. This groundbreaking work combines critical analysis of government policies with case studies of little-studied enterprises in heavy industries and the ordnance industry. Drawing on extensive research in previously unavailable archives, Bian adds a valuable historical perspective to the current debate on how to reform China’s sluggish and unprofitable state-owned firms.

This book is simply intended to be a guide to the subject, to enable those wishing to implement Condition Monitoring to be more aware of the nature and benefits of its practice and techniques, and so help them to get started. In fact, to date everything suggests that British industry is somewhat unaware of the potential advantages that Condition Monitoring can bring to sharpen the competitive edge - and that many producers are quite uniformed even of the method and application of Condition Monitoring itself, as an aid to reliable production and for maintaining the condition of factories at peak performance. To be totally effective in a modern manufacturing application, Condition Monitoring should be considered firstly at the design stage; as 'built-in', and then as part of an on-going Condition Based Maintenance policy. It is essentially plant Predictive Maintenance by 'health checks', conducted throughout the equipment life-cycle. So as such, this guide is deliberately not exhaustive in its coverage, but highlights the main ingredients, the various aspects being simply expressed and supported by additional reading and where to get help if desired.

The second Red Scare was a charade orchestrated by a tyrant with the express goal of undermining the New Deal—so argues Stephen M. Underhill in this hard-hitting analysis of J. Edgar Hoover’s rhetorical agency. Drawing on Classification 94, a vast trove of recently declassified records that documents the longtime FBI director’s domestic propaganda campaigns in the mid-twentieth century, Underhill shows that Hoover used the growing power of his office to subvert the presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman and redirect the trajectory of U.S. culture away from social democracy toward a toxic brand of neoliberalism. He did so with help from Republicans who opposed organized labor and Southern Democrats who supported Jim Crow in what is arguably the most culturally significant documented political conspiracy in U.S. history, a wholesale domestic propaganda program that brainwashed Americans and remade their politics. Hoover also forged ties with the powerful fascist leaders of the period to promote his own political ambitions. All the while, as a love letter to Clyde Tolson still preserved in Hoover’s papers attests, he strove to pass for straight while promoting a culture that demonized same-sex love. The erosion of democratic traditions Hoover fostered continues to haunt Americans today.