Re-sourcing fuels for ceramic kilns in socialist China (1950s–1980s)

This study examines resourceful creativity in fuel choices and kiln upgrades in porcelain manufacturing in postwar China (1950s–80s). Defined as frugal strategies of material substitution, equipment appropriation, and skilled labor deployment, resourceful creativity enabled factories to control costs while improving output and quality. Focusing on Jingdezhen’s state-owned factories, the research traces two major energy transitions: from wood to coal (1950s–60s) and from coal to heavy oil (1970s–80s). The study foregrounds bottom-up resourcefulness within broader East Asian contexts. Kiln builders and operators in Jingdezhen drew on historical handicraft practices, Japanese models, and European experience. The shift from wood to coal, prompted by scarcity, generated strategies such as collectivized wood supply and the creation of “kiln wood stations.” Factory workers and technicians reconstructed kilns, revised blueprints, and applied lineage-based craft knowledge. International exchanges further spurred adaptation: gas-fueled tunnel kilns imported from Czechoslovakia were “digested” and modified to burn coal, reflecting constraints in local infrastructure. The later transition to heavy oil, shaped by the expansion of China’s petroleum industry and the pursuit of higher product quality, likewise demanded hybrid fuel strategies to mitigate shortages and costs. By highlighting hands-on experience and grassroots ingenuity, this study underscores the active role of workers and technicians in shaping technological development and negotiating top-down directives. Resourceful practices of tinkering, emulation, and improvement reveal the entanglement of technological change with socialist political structuring in industrial development.