Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade

Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson

Book

Made in China

When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade

Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2024

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About this book

The surprising story of how Cold War foes found common cause in transforming China’s economy into a source of cheap labor, creating the economic interdependence that characterizes our world today.

For centuries, the vastness of the Chinese market tempted foreign companies in search of customers. But in the 1970s, when the United States and China ended two decades of Cold War isolation, China’s trade relations veered in a very different direction. Elizabeth Ingleson shows how the interests of US business and the Chinese state aligned to reframe the China market: the old dream of plentiful customers gave way to a new vision of low-cost workers by the hundreds of millions. In the process, the world’s largest communist state became an indispensable component of global capitalism.

Drawing on Chinese- and English-language sources, including previously unexplored corporate papers, Ingleson traces this transformation to the actions of Chinese policymakers, US diplomats, maverick entrepreneurs, Chinese American traders, and executives from major US corporations including Boeing, Westinghouse, J. C. Penney, and Chase Manhattan Bank. Long before Walmart and Apple came to China, businesspeople such as Veronica Yhap, Han Fanyu, Suzanne Reynolds, and David Rockefeller instigated a trade revolution with lasting consequences. And while China’s economic reorganization was essential to these connections, Ingleson also highlights an underappreciated but crucial element of the convergence: the US corporate push for deindustrialization and its embrace by politicians.

Reexamining two of the most significant transformations of the 1970s—US-China rapprochement and deindustrialization in the United States—Made in China takes bilateral trade back to its faltering, uncertain beginnings, identifying the tectonic shifts in diplomacy, labor, business, and politics in both countries that laid the foundations of today’s globalized economy.

Reviews

Meticulously researched…Rife with interesting and fresh anecdotes, the book takes us through the early days of an unsteady trading relationship trying to find its footing…Ingleson offers keen observations about the differing ways China and the United States incentivized trade during normalization.
-- Elizabeth Van Heuvelen Finance & Development

Ingleson nicely meshes large-scale economic analysis with fine-grained accounts of how businesspeople warily navigated the new world of U.S.-China trade…a revealing overview of a critical sea change in the world economy.
-- Publishers Weekly

A beauty. [This book] demonstrates exquisitely detailed research, originality of thought, maturity of judgement and a wide-angled vision of geopolitics…The detailed argument is something any serious student of China and the global economic system should eat up over a weekend…this is a case study in globalisation, the international freeing up of capital markets, the creation of complex value chains and the way in which China boomed and America fractured. It’s thoroughly worth reading on all these levels.
-- Paul Monk The Australian

A wonderful book that should be read by every serious student of US-China relations…Beautifully and engagingly written, it is also a book that will give all readers genuine pleasure and enjoyment. It should be a fixture of libraries and syllabi for many years to come.
-- William Hurst China Quarterly

The history of the growth of Chinese exports to the United States has often been told in impersonal terms of inexorable investment flows following economic logic. Ingleson’s book sheds vivid new light on that process, showing that the reality of early imports of Chinese goods was faltering in its success, full of adaptation on both sides, with much of the ground broken by daring American entrepreneurs prepared to take a chance on selling the ‘made in China’ label and abetted by Chinese leaders interested in trade long before Deng Xiaoping became China’s paramount leader in 1979.
-- Pete Millwood American Historical Review

Persuasively links shifts in bilateral trade and American perceptions of China with domestic political developments in both countries…has critical relevance as a new US-China trade war unfolds.
-- Wendy Leutert Developing Economies

Wow, what a book. Written in academically solid yet lively prose, it is a brilliant examination of how politics transforms trade, and trade transforms politics.
-- Linda Jaivin Saturday Paper

Provides helpful insights into the changes that occurred during this decisive decade. Through extensive archival research, [Ingleson] recounts how various U.S. policy choices during the 1970s helped open the door to globalization, how Chinese government policies sought to exploit that opening for China’s own economic development, and how U.S. businesses facing this new global incentive structure began to rethink their supply chains.
-- Trevor R. Jones American Affairs

Rich in anecdotes and personality sketches of the pioneers of Sino-American trade…These are familiar debates to which [this book] makes a spirited contribution, but [Ingleson] brings fresh insight by highlighting ‘a deeply held’ political continuity that ‘persistently framed trade and manufacturing in terms of the nation state’…In the springtime of 2024, when China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping has just summoned the top executives from American business to an audience with him that is meant to reassure them that all will be set fair despite his xenophobia, his ideological commitment to state control, and his Stalinist political instincts, it is worth taking the time to read the case studies laid out in this book.
-- Michael Sheridan Engelsberg Ideas

Made in China is the best overview we have of how the United States helped make China the world’s foremost trading power. Ingleson skillfully shows how American needs and Chinese wishes combined to remake global capitalism.
-- Odd Arne Westad, author of The Cold War: A World History

In this original, well-researched book, Ingleson sheds new light on the emergence of US-China trade relations in the 1970s. With sharp analysis and effective storytelling, she shows how labor unions, textile workers, bankers, self-styled ‘China hands,’ and entrepreneurs of various stripes saw China as both an opportunity and a threat. In the process, she expands our understanding of the diverse voices and interests that shaped this pivotal trade relationship.
-- Jason M. Kelly, author of Market Maoists: The Communist Origins of China’s Capitalist Ascent

A compelling work about a period of US-China relations that is receiving increasing attention. From the lifting of the US trade embargo to the first tentative import partnerships to burgeoning manufacturing, Ingleson traces how American business’s view of China transformed from a land of ‘400 million customers’ to one of ‘800 million workers,’ a series of gradual perception shifts that added up to a sea change.
-- Joyce Mao, author of Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism

Ingleson’s sharp and illuminating study introduces key moments and figures in the 1970s transformation of Sino-US trade to explore how changes in US capitalism created the conditions for China’s economic rise. By taking us back to the early, uncertain moments of renewed Sino-US relations, [this book]…provides that shocking jolt that the best histories do, reminding us of things forgotten beneath decades of layered teleological explanations for how we got from there to here.
-- Kate Merkel-Hess Los Angeles Review of Books

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Frontmatter
i

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CONTENTS
vii

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NOTE ON LANGUAGE AND DATA
ix

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Introduction
1
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1 The Nixon Shocks
18
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2 The Canton Trade Fair
47
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3 The Changing Meanings of the China Market
81
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4 The Limits of the China Market
107
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5 Selling Chinese Textiles
145
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6 Mao’s Death and the Continuities of Trade
171
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7 The Glove Capital of America
206
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8 Normalization and the Trade Deal
228
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Conclusion
262
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NOTES
271
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
319
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ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
323
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INDEX
325

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

March 27, 2024

eBook ISBN:

9780674296800

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674296800

eBook ISBN: 9780674296800

Keywords for this book

manufacturing; imports; exports; market; 400 million customers; goods; workers; capitalism; richard nixon; mao zedong; deng xiaoping; zhou enlai; canton fair; textiles; chinatex; silk; vodka; cotton; agriculture; deal; normalization; manufacturing; imports; exports; market; 400 million customers; goods; workers; capitalism; richard nixon; mao zedong; deng xiaoping; zhou enlai; canton fair; textiles; chinatex; silk; vodka; cotton; agriculture; deal; normalization

Made in China

Overview

About this book

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

NOTE ON LANGUAGE AND DATA

Introduction

1 The Nixon Shocks

2 The Canton Trade Fair

3 The Changing Meanings of the China Market

4 The Limits of the China Market

5 Selling Chinese Textiles

6 Mao’s Death and the Continuities of Trade

7 The Glove Capital of America

8 Normalization and the Trade Deal

Conclusion

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

INDEX

Bibliographic data