HistoryIndustry Between Great Powers2026 Clear all
The Last Blast Furnace: Britain Takes British Steel Back from Jingye, and 290 Years of British Industry in Review
On 16 July 2026, Britain nationalised the Chinese-owned British Steel. The 28.3 million tonnes of 1970 is often taken for the high-water mark of British steel, but it was already the residue left after seventy years of relative decline — this curve begins with the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny and the steam engine, peaks around 1870, and ends in a transfer order with no price attached.
Returning to the Order That Ought to Be: One Hundred and Eighty Years of Industry Between China and Japan
The Opium War of 1840 and the Black Ships of 1853 were the same starting gun, pushing China and Japan onto the track of industrialization together. In the hundred and eighty years since, East Asia has tried three times to become a single industrial whole — by extraction, by conquest, by exchange; the first two collapsed. This is a history of how steel, railways, home appliances, and semiconductors moved between two neighbours — and an inquiry into what kind of whole East Asia ought to be.
The Reversal of Teacher and Student: Seventy-Seven Years of China-Russia Industrial Interaction (1949–2026)
From the 156 Projects to the pipelines of Siberia, China and Russia have, across seventy-seven years, completely traded their industrial places.
Symbiosis and Rebalancing: 48 Years of China–US Industrial Engagement (1979–2026)
From the 1979 thaw to the competitive rebalancing of 2026 — how China–US manufacturing went from complementary symbiosis to rivalry, and how that history built the factory landscape China has today.