Dr. Sunkyu Lee presented her paper titled Walls, Warfare, and Welfare: The Social and Political Dynamics of City Wall Reconstruction Along the Northern Frontier at the Living at the Fringes of the Empire: State Policies, Commercial Ventures, and Urban Life in the Frontiers of Early Modern China panel of the Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Columbus, Ohio on March 14, 2025.
The paper examines the political and social dynamics behind these material transformations, focusing on the diverse interests of social actors involved in this process and the broader implications for resource mobilization and frontier environments. While geopolitical and security threats were significant drivers of these reconstructions, the increasing influence of local social actors, in place of a weak central state, allowed them to reshape city walls to better serve their social interests. This included adding pavilions on the wall to assert power or relocating gates for improved access to a particular section of the city. By combining quantitative and spatial analysis with close readings, this research highlights how local actors engaged in masonry wall construction promoted their own agendas, and transformed city walls into their living environment. Broadly, this study aims to explore regional patterns in infrastructural construction and management of early modern China.