Extractive visions: Sweden’s quest for China’s natural resources, 1913–1917

Abstract

This article scrutinises one of the most fascinating and ambitious cases of Swedish informal empire-building in the industrial age: the skilfully orchestrated attempts by scientists, diplomats, industrial companies and financial institutions to seize control over early Republican China’s most strategic industrial sector–its iron and steel complex. Sweden’s ‘extractive vision’, as we call it, started with the recruitment of Johan Gunnar Andersson, head of the Swedish Geological Survey, as a key advisor to the Chinese government. Contrary to earlier research on Andersson’s Chinese career, which narrowly portrays Andersson as a scientist, we show that he was closely affiliated with the exploitative interests of Swedish industrial and foreign-policy actors. In the end he took the lead in seeking to secure, for Sweden, a quasi-colonial presence in Republican China, centring on large-scale extraction of Chinese iron ore, profit-maximising iron exports throughout the Pacific region and construction and operation of China’s largest steel mills and weapons factories.