The KMT’s Long March: Highways, War, and National Space in China’s Southwest

Abstract

In “The KMT’s Long March: Highways, War, and National Space in China’s Southwest,” Elisabeth Kaske examines how the Kuomintang (KMT) used the construction of highways as a strategic tool to assert political control over southwestern China during the Chinese Civil War. The chapter explores the KMT’s efforts to integrate this remote and ethnically diverse region into a unified national space by linking it to the central government through infrastructure. Kaske highlights the challenges faced in building these roads in difficult terrain, as well as their symbolic importance in representing national unity, modernity, and the KMT’s sovereignty. The highways played a crucial role not only in military logistics but also in the KMT’s broader efforts to counter Communist forces and reinforce its authority in the region.

Biographical Note

Elisabeth Kaske (SFB 1199 & Leipzig University, Germany)

Elisabeth Kaske has joined Leipzig University as professor of modern Chinese society and culture in April 2017, after studying and teaching in Berlin, Beijing, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Boston, Vienna, Pittsburgh, Taipei, and Princeton. As a historian of late Qing and early Republican China she is interested in China’s rugged path towards modernization. Her studies include the history of German-Chinese military exchange and technology transfer, the emergence of new concepts of language and education, the sale of rank and public office by the late imperial state, and the fiscal regime of the Qing dynasty. After having long focused on bureaucratic elites, she has recently become fascinated with how new professional elites, particularly engineers, imagined the nation and their own role in it.