Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson‘s Made in China examines the development of the trade partnership between the US and China after the Cold War, ushered in by President Richard Nixon in the late 1960s and early ’70s. The book unpacks the economic and geopolitical shifts that integrated China into global trade at the cost of US manufacturing. It makes for a compelling and timely lens for understanding current US-China tensions, writes Joanna Rozpedowski.

Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade. Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson. Harvard University Press. 2024.

Since the inauguration of the second Trump administration, the US-China trade relationship is once again at the centre of global economic discussions. Ongoing tensions over tariffs, supply chain disruptions, the US trade deficit, reshoring, and concerns about technological and military competition compel policymakers and business leaders on both sides of the Pacific to confront the consequences of more than five decades of accelerating economic interdependence initiated by the Nixon administration’s opening to China and his “new prosperity without war” (31) agenda. Meanwhile, Kissinger’s ghosts of “strategic ambiguity” regarding Taiwan continue to obfuscate America’s defence priorities and commitments to the island.

A new post-Cold War beginning for US-China trade

The shifting dynamics of this highly complex relationship make Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson’s Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade (2024) particularly timely. Her substantial study of the early beginnings of the historically consequential bilateral trade relationship provides a perspective on how a floating dollar, structural changes within the US domestic economy, and geopolitical interests played pivotal roles in integrating China into the global economy – a process that has led to a remarkable transformation of world markets and the nature of political power itself, though not without significant costs to American manufacturing.

Nixon’s decision to end dollar-gold convertibility unleashed ambitious flows of American capital for overseas investment facilitating technology transfers and innovative compartment shipping.

Nixon’s strategic shift in foreign policy

The 1968 election of Richard Nixon came at a watershed moment in nation’s diplomatic history. The erosion of American nuclear superiority, deepening social divisions from the Vietnam War, and the recalcitrant appeal of communist ideology – from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to Latin America – forced the new president to rethink US foreign policy’s providential rhetoric. This strategic reassessment paved the way for détente with the Soviet Union, rapprochement with China, and a more pragmatic approach to Cold War conflicts. 

The Nixon administration’s bold overtures to China constitute the primary focus of Ingleson’s analysis. Her central thesis, reflected in the book’s suggestive title, contends that the foundation for a new era of economic interdependence emerged from a persistent, if at times halting, pursuit and cultivation of trade relationships between key sectors of the American industrial base, the US diplomatic corps, and opportunistic corporate players and their Chinese counterparts. This interdependence was driven by corporate ambitions, shifting labour markets, and the long-term goal of integrating China into the global economy. Nixon’s decision to end dollar-gold convertibility unleashed ambitious flows of American capital for overseas investment facilitating technology transfers and innovative compartment shipping. These developments transformed China from “a market of 400 million customers to the market of 800 million workers” and accelerated widespread US deindustrialisation, contributing to economic and social dislocation of the American worker.

In 1977, a surge in Chinese imports raised concerns over the US being ‘lulled into a false sense of security’ as it weighted impacts of the burgeoning trade relationship on the American economy with a ‘threat of more profound disruption in the future’

Opportunities and costs of US-China economic interdependence

The book offers a revealing glimpse into the corporate boardroom and US State Department thinking behind China’s rebranding – from a “communist threat” to a “capitalist profit” (5) – a shift that enticed the sophisticated cosmopolitan fashion industry as equally as it mobilised the pragmatic and consummately transactional world of American “financial missionaries” (64), including respectable American brands such as Boeing, Bloomingdale’s, Chase Manhattan Bank, Coca-Cola, Exxon, and Hewlett-Packard. 

“China was the biggest fashion news since miniskirts,” observed Bernadine Morris in the New York Times in November 1971, as Chinese Mao jackets and workers’ uniforms became bestsellers at Paris’s Galeries Lafayette and New York’s Fifth Avenue establishments, inaugurating a “Chicon chic” sensation among the middle- and upper-echelons of society. This phenomenon, which Ingleson terms “fashion diplomacy,” became emblematic of a broader effort to recast China in the American imagination, shifting perceptions from ideological enemy to lucrative trading partner. By the early 1970s, American corporate executives had grown accustomed to chopsticks at the Canton Trade Fairs, where they encountered advertisements for Chinese silks, carpets, porcelain, jewellery, antiques, radios, watches, and Great Wall vodka. Their avid participation helped transform the 1950s and ‘60s image of Red China into an “amicable trade partner” (80). 

China’s economic rise was not merely an inevitable byproduct of globalisation, but an orchestrated effort propelled by specific policy choices made in Washington’s diplomatic circles and America’s corporate boardrooms

In 1977, a surge in Chinese imports raised concerns over the US being “lulled into a false sense of security” as it weighted impacts of the burgeoning trade relationship on the American economy with a “threat of more profound disruption in the future” (219). As points of contact and convergence increased, trade for both countries became, in the minds of US political establishment, a “tool for peace and friendship” (62) enabling China to delink its twenty years of Maoist-era industrialisation from militarization. Its broadened and shifting commercial relationships with the West, led by pragmatists such as Zhou Enlai and his circle of advisors, allowed China to focus on acquiring foreign currency essential for importing industrial technology. This ultimately helped restructure and refine its increasingly sophisticated and coveted industrial output, enabling its export-oriented development.

Chinese industrialisation and US deindustrialisation

Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, the book raises important questions about the long-term consequences of this interdependence and the nexus of trade, international security, and technology. Ingleson’s study shows that China’s economic rise was not merely an inevitable byproduct of globalisation, but an orchestrated effort propelled by specific policy choices made in Washington’s diplomatic circles and America’s corporate boardrooms. This effort was aimed at accessing cheap and compliant labour rather than create a Chinese market for the absorption of US goods.   

To what extent did America’s ruling political class and corporate interests underestimate the political and strategic ramifications of integrating China into global trade networks? And why did US policymakers lack sober consideration for the long-term economic consequences of expanding Chinese trade institutions and manufacturing prowess on American workers and the nation’s once-thriving industries? 

The contemporary geopolitical landscape – with decoupling, reshoring, and a renewed emphasis on economic security – suggests that these historical decisions warrant deeper scrutiny. Ingleson’s book offers a good starting point.  

After decades of economic convergence and China’s exponential 1,400 per cent growth since joining the WTO, are US-China trade relations destined for a reset and divergence

The future of US-China trade relations

As China continues its assertive foreign policy and economic nationalism under Xi Jinping, the historical moment the book describes offers both a cautionary tale and a critical lens through which to evaluate current US-China tensions. If Nixon’s vision was to avoid a world where China remained in “angry isolation,” the pressing question today is whether hypermobility of capital and economic integration has achieved that goal—or merely postponed a more fundamental reckoning, marking, as the author forebodes, the “end of US empire and the reemergence of China’s” (268).

It remains to be seen if the Trump administration can successfully reengineer the international trade system in America’s favour

Beyond its examination of the origins of US-China trade, Made in China also invites introspective and prospective ruminations on the contours of current geopolitical arrangements. After decades of economic convergence and China’s exponential 1,400 per cent growth since joining the WTO, are US-China trade relations destined for a reset and divergence? If so, what might be the economic, political, and strategic costs of such shifts on international peace and security?  

The book pairs well with other dynamic debates amongst Washington’s political class regarding China’s waging of “a new economic world war.” Senator Tom Cotton’s Seven Things You Can’t Say About China (2005) and Rush Doshi’s The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (2021) are but two recent examples of an ongoing reckoning with China’s state-supported intellectual property theft and commercial espionage which along a panoply of aggressive strategies to undermine America’s hegemony present a formidable so-called “pacing challenge” to US national interests and ambitions.  

The spectres of Nixon and Kissinger still loom over the US foreign policy establishment’s strategic thought. It remains to be seen if the Trump administration can successfully reengineer the international trade system in America’s favour to maintain its global economic and policy clout in the 21^st century.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image: US President Richard Nixon and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai toast, February 25, 1972. Credit: Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum via Wikimedia Commons. License: Public Domain.

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