This article explores how constructions of national identity took the Chinese discourse on industrialization in the 1930s beyond mere economics. During this period, Chinese intellectuals’ attempt to define China’s identity and its position among the world powers led to the creation of two competing tropes. On one hand, the treaty ports came to represent a China integrated in the world and pursuing a Western-style path toward modernization. The rural village, on the other hand, came to be perceived as the locus of a pristine Chinese identity, uncontaminated by foreign imperialism. It was in this context that the prominent economist Fang Xianting—the focus here—came to devise a model for village-based industrialization that aimed at projecting China to the forefront of modernity while preserving what he believed to be its intrinsic rural nature.
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