Morris L. Bian, Associate Professor of History, received his PhD from the University of Washington in 1998. His teaching responsibilities include courses in modern Chinese history, East Asian history, and world history. His research focuses on twentieth-century Chinese political, economic, and institutional history. Bian 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, which won the Newcomen Society Award given by Enterprise & Society for the best article published in that journal in the preceding year. His more recent articles include "Building State Structure: Guomindang Institutional Rationalization during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945," Modern China 31 (January 2005): 35-71. In his first book, The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China: The Dynamics of Institutional Change (Harvard University Press, 2005), Bian presents the argument 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 (1937-1945) and was not derived from the Soviet model as is conventionally believed. In 2006 Bian's book was recognized by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title of the Year. In 2007 the International Convention of Asian Scholars named his book one of the top ten social science books in Asian studies, an award chosen from titles published around the world during the previous two years. His current research project explores the formation of China's regional state enterprise system during the twentieth-century. Bian currently serves as Vice President of the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China, a member of the Editorial Board of Twentieth-Century China, and an associate editor of Chinese Business History, an online bulletin of the Chinese Business History Research Group.
