Dr Shuge Wei

• Chinese propaganda history
• Chinese cable rights
• media policy and international communications
• Sino-Japanese war
• Chinese political culture
• grassroots movements in mainland China and Taiwan

Treaty-port newspapers, China's propaganda system and the Sino-Japanese War

The project reveals the power struggle between China, Japan, UK, and US in the treaty-port press from the 1920s to the 1940s, and discusses how different Chinese political groups competed to control this medium to advance thier own causes during the Sino-Japanese crisis. While little has been studied about the English-language treaty-port newspapers in China, this project demonstrates that the press played an important role in the formation of China's international proapganda system during the Sino-Japanese War. 

This project has been published as a monograph entitled News under Fire: China's Propaganda against Japan in the English-Language Press, 1928-1941 by Hong Kong University Press in 2017.

China's reclaim of submarine cables

This project draws on primary sources from mainland China, Taiwan, Denmark, US and UK to investigate various Chinese governments' efforts in reclaiming the nation's cable sovereignty from the late Qing to the end of World War II.

• “Circuits of Power: China’s Struggle for Cable Telegraph Rights from the Late Qing to the End of World War II,” Journal of Chinese History, January 2019, vol. 3, no.1.

Grassroots movements in Taiwan

Anti-nuclear power movements in Taiwan: the project explores the history of local anti-nuclear power movements in Gongliao, Taiwan, and traces the local activists relationship with the leading political parties and NGOs.

Revival of rice terrace farming in rural Taiwan: the project explores profound challenges to the market ideology of profit maximisation that underlies the revival of rice terrace farming in Gongliao village in Northeast Taiwan.

• Living Politics: Self-Help Movements in East Asia, edited with Tom Cliff and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, by Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Sino-Japanese War veterans in China

This project aims to rethink the history of the Sino-Japanese War, by researching the neglected stories of Nationalist soldiers. It will also explore the role of veterans’ support groups in reviving and shaping memory of the war, and in this way shed light on broader questions of memory and commemoration.  

Yun Zhou, “Christian women’s magazine in Republican China”, Australian Centre of China in the World, ANU (PhD project, graduated)

Rowena Ebsworth, “Forced demolitions and student protest in urban Taiwan”, Australian Centre on China in the World, ANU (PhD project, graduated)

Tess Gardner, “Australian Journalists in Republican China: G. E. Morrison, W. H. Donald, H. J. Timperley, and F. L. Pratt, 1897-1945”, College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU (PhD project, graduated)