Made in China asks how China, the world’s largest communist nation, converged with global capitalism. Most scholars point to Deng Xiaoping and the reform and opening he implemented in the 1980s. But Ingleson shows that it was in the latter years of Mao’s rule that China’s convergence with capitalism began. From the early 1970s, when the United States and China re-opened trade, the interests of US capitalists and the Chinese state gradually aligned: at the expense of US labor and aided by US diplomats. Far from inevitable, she argues, China’s convergence with global capitalism hinged upon a fundamental reconfiguration of the very meaning of trade. For centuries, business people had seen in China the promise of “400 million customers”: to them China trade meant expanding exports. In the 1970s, US and Chinese traders together reframed the China market itself: to a new promise of outsourced manufacturing and 800 million workers.

How and why did China—the world’s largest communist nation—converge with global capitalism? In this new book, LSE historian Elizabeth Ingleson tells the surprising story of how the United States and China went from Cold War foes to finding common cause by transforming China’s economy into a source of cheap labor, creating the economic interdependence that characterizes our world today.

Far from inevitable, Ingleson shows that this convergence hinged upon a reconfiguration of the very meaning of trade. 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. 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.

Join us to celebrate the publication of Made in China and to think about the implications of this history for today. Ingleson will be in discussion with David Smith from the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre.