Philip Thai's new book on smuggling and the origins of the modern Chinese state explains a seemingly contradictory relationship between crime and state building: smugglers, in his analysis, were ultimately responsible for the strengthening of the Chinese state's control over society. In this creatively researched and tightly argued monograph, Thai employs the rubric of “economic life” to bind together the disparate stories of intellectuals, imperialists, merchants, middlemen, politicians, police, and customs officers into a colorful and coherent narrative about the emergence of a powerful, intrusive state that was hellbent on controlling and profiting from commerce.
Thai approaches smuggling as an opportunity to learn more about how people participate in the economy and how states view and react to this economic activity. Smuggling, in this frame of analysis, is merely another name for trade that someone in power has decided is illicit, either because of an outright prohibition of the commodity...
