(State) economic planning has had a particularly important function in modern China. However, already in traditional China, the completion of extensive water engineering and transport projects required medium- and long-term planning activities of the central government, although those were not comparable to modern state economic planning. First attempts at the latter were made during the 1930s at the local level, namely in the form of the ten-year plan developed by the warlord Yan Xishan for the province of Shanxi, which was never realized because of the outbreak of the Sino-Japanes…