The making of America's economic entanglement with China : laying the groundwork in the 1980s

Abstract

This dissertation unites two major strands of recent historical inquiry: global economic changes in the post-Bretton Woods international economic system and America’s role in the post-1978 economic reforms of the People’s Republic of China. By investigating three main actors—the U.S. government, the World Bank, and Western China “experts” working primarily for non-government organizations promoting cooperation and understanding of the PRC—this dissertation examines how these agents of the “Washington Consensus” encased and institutionalized America’s economic relationship with China through the use of diplomacy, economic statecraft, and cultural internationalism that facilitated the creation of global elite networks between the two countries. This dissertation also shows how–in contrast with prevailing narratives that depict the 1980s as the crucial decade that heralded global de-regulation, financialization, and privatization as the key pillars of the post-Bretton Woods System—the U.S. government, the World Bank, and America’s NGOs focused on China not only welcomed but actively encouraged Beijing to maintain its planned economy and to continue its pursuit of gradual, state-driven integration into the existing international economic system. This dissertation is the first archive-based research study to elucidate the origins of the distinctive features of the single most important bilateral economic relationship of the 21st century.