‘The Book which Increases the Human Efficiency’: Taylorism and the Origins of Modern China’s Ideal of ‘Scientific’ Management

This article reframes the introduction of Taylorism in early Republican China as the origin point for an enduring social ideal of “scientific management” across modern Chinese society. Previous scholars have argued that Taylorism had a limited impact on Chinese industry before the 1920s and 1930s, but this conclusion overlooks a pervasive intellectual impact. A global phenomenon originating in the United States, Taylorism was not just methods to increase production efficiency. It was also a utopian vision to reorganize society around perfected technocratic hierarchies. Its first Chinese translators all enthusiastically embraced this universal vision, promoting this American “science” as a panacea that would both accelerate China's industrialization and improve its supposedly inefficient public. China's first advocates of scientific management spread these ideas far beyond industry through mainstream publications and urged their universal adoption. While Taylor's methods only shaped a few industrial enterprises before the 1920s, they nonetheless seeded a capacious ideal of a scientifically managed society that remains today.