Overview

This book delivers crucial historical background in these times, as bloc-building returns to the global economy and China and Russia massively intensify their economic cooperation. It gathers global cutting-edge research on the economic exchanges in the early years of the Cold War between the newly formed People’s Republic of China and Soviet Eastern Europe. Based on multidimensional archival sources from China, Eastern Europe, and beyond, this book departs from the traditional Cold War accounts of superpowers and geopolitics and looks into economic practices: how Chinese officials tried to access foreign markets via the Leipzig trade fair, how the Soviet-modelled car industry had to be built with US-trained Chinese engineers, or how socialist bureaucrats rationalized the giant projects of factory-building in China with developing future markets for industrial products on a global scale. Such a perspective helps to understand how economic rationales and second-tier actors contributed to the forming of the short-lived but far-reaching alliance and how cooperation on the ground for a while was able to survive, while generally mutual disappointment about the quick exhaustion of the cooperation’s benefits benefitted the swift split. These insights also provide a basis for rethinking the relationship between politics and economy in socialist regime-building during the Cold War. This book will appeal to scholars and students of Cold War history, international relations, and economic history. The chapters in this book were originally published as special issue of European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire.

Full Product Details

Author:   Tao Chen ,  Jan Zofka (GWZO, Germany)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
ISBN:  

9781041060185

ISBN 10:   1041060181
Pages:   163
Publication Date:   19 June 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Economic dimensions of the Sino–Soviet alliance and split 1. Between economy and politics: China and the Leipzig Trade Fair (1950–1966) 2. Counterbalancing low expectations with high hopes: Integrating global technology and pre-1949 legacy in China’s motor vehicle industry in the 1950s 3. ‘Our Chinese comrades are determined to split and struggle’. The influence of the Sino-Soviet split on technological cooperation between Hungary and China 4. Preparing for an alliance: China’s socialist model and Albania’s economic path in the Early Cold War 5. Socialist advisers and the dilemmas of the ‘socialist world system’: Sino-Soviet exchange as a model for failure in Guinea-Conakry, 1950–64 6. The China market: East German and Bulgarian industrial facility export to the PRC in the 1950s 7. Towards a political economy of socialist international relations

Reviews

Author Information

Tao Chen is Associate Professor of German Studies at Tongji University, China. His current project explores the Sino-German/European relations and China’s industrialization since 1945. He is the author of two books and has published articles in European Review of History, Journal of Contemporary History, Cold War History, The International History Review, China Review, and other journals. Jan Zofka is a historian of Eastern Europe specializing in the transnational history of state socialist economy, with a special focus on early Cold War industrialization and commodity history. He has authored several articles in journals such as Cold War History, Journal of Global History, European Review of History, and Europe-Asia Studies and a book on post-Soviet separatisms in Crimea and Transnistria.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions