Made in China: When US‐China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade by Elizabeth O'BrienIngleson, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2024, x + 335 pp.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: This timely book provides a compelling exploration of the origins and evolution of "Made in China," the now-ubiquitous label for goods produced in the People's Republic of China.Ingleson argues that during the 1970s, American businesspeople shifted their perception of China, viewing it as a site of production rather than as a consumer market, and its people as low-cost workers instead of as plentiful customers.The volume identifies three interlinked drivers of this transformation: a cultural reimagining in the United States of China from Cold War adversary to trade partner; each side's strategic use of trade in diplomatic relations; and changes in the economies and politics of both countries.Ingleson's engaging account introduces and illuminates a cast of under-examined actors, ranging from Chinese policymakers to US diplomats to Chinese-American traders to executives of large US corporations.In the early 1970s, Chinese exports dominated the nascent trade between the two countries.As part of its diplomatic strategy, China did not initially import anything from the United States after President Richard Nixon lifted the trade embargo in 1971.Ingleson highlights the subsequent emergence in the United States of what she terms "fashion diplomacy": "a celebratory commodification of China-one in which the Chinese origins of imported goods were a central component of their desirability" (p.20).A burgeoning "advice literature" written by and for American businesspeople about doing business in China, together with "trade tourism" at the Canton Trade Fair and beyond, also extended and amplified these ideas.For the American public, however, curiosity about newly available Chinese products did not necessarily result in consumption, even if such interest may have contributed to shifting perceptions of China.In contrast to the sold-out goods imported from China by Dragon Lady Traders, Vera Scarves, and other American companies, New Jersey carpet dealer Einstein Moomjy chairman recalled that people came to the store "just to see" the carpets newly imported from Tianjin but made few purchases.Made in China persuasively links shifts in bilateral trade and American perceptions of China with domestic political developments in both countries.As the United States transitioned from a production powerhouse to a consumption-driven economy in the 1970s, the book details how American workers and organized labor pushed back, as well as how US corporations first pursued selective protectionism.In one illustrative example, it tells how American glove makers brought a case before the US International Trade Commission calling for quotas in 1977, while at the same time continuing to import Chineseproduced gloves themselves.The twin "Nixon shocks" of US-China rapprochement and the end of fixed exchange rates in 1971 enabled and facilitated the subsequent expansion
Source: The Developing Economies
DOI: 10.1111/deve.12440
Author: Wendy Leutert
Institution: Indiana University Bloomington
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4409608019