Morris L. Bian

Short Biography

Morris L. Bian teaches history at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. His research focuses on twentieth-century Chinese political, economic, and institutional history. He is the author of ‘The Sino-Japanese War and the Formation of the State Enterprise System in China: A Case Study of the Dadukou Iron and Steel Works, 1938–1945’, Enterprise & Society, 3 (March 2002): 80–123 and ‘Building State Structure: Guomindang Institutional Rationalization during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945’, Modern China, 31 (January 2005): 35–71. His book The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China: The Dynamics of Institutional Change (Harvard 2005) argues that the basic institutional arrangement of China's state-owned enterprise – bureaucratic governance, distinctive management and incentive mechanisms, and the provision of social services and welfare – took shape in China during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) and was not derived from the Soviet model as is conventionally believed. His current research project explores the formation of China's regional enterprise system during the twentieth-century. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington, Seattle.