America's China Trade in Historical Perspective

America's China Trade in Historical Perspective PDF Author: Ernest R. May
Publisher: Harvard Univ Asia Center
ISBN: 9780674030756
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
This volume explores commercial relations between the United States and China from the eighteenth century until 1949, fleshing out with facts the romantic and shadowy image of "the China trade." These nine chapters by specialists in the field have developed from papers they presented at a conference supported by the national Committee on American-East Asian Relations. The work begins with an Introduction by John K. Fairbank, then moves on to analysis of the old China trade up to the American Civil War, centering on traditional Chinese exports of tea and silk. A second section deals with American imports into China--cotton textiles and textile-related goods, cigarettes, kerosene. Finally, the impact of the trade on both countries is assessed and the operations of American-owned and multinational companies in China are examined. For both the United States and China, the economic importance of the trade proves to have been less than the legend might suggest.

America's China Trade in Historical Perspective

America's China Trade in Historical Perspective PDF Author: Ernest R. May
Publisher: Harvard Univ Asia Center
ISBN: 9780674030756
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores commercial relations between the United States and China from the eighteenth century until 1949, fleshing out with facts the romantic and shadowy image of "the China trade." These nine chapters by specialists in the field have developed from papers they presented at a conference supported by the national Committee on American-East Asian Relations. The work begins with an Introduction by John K. Fairbank, then moves on to analysis of the old China trade up to the American Civil War, centering on traditional Chinese exports of tea and silk. A second section deals with American imports into China--cotton textiles and textile-related goods, cigarettes, kerosene. Finally, the impact of the trade on both countries is assessed and the operations of American-owned and multinational companies in China are examined. For both the United States and China, the economic importance of the trade proves to have been less than the legend might suggest.

America's First Adventure in China

America's First Adventure in China PDF Author: John R Haddad
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439906912
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
In 1784, when Americans first voyaged to China, they confronted Chinese authorities who were unaware that the United States even existed. Nevertheless, a long, complicated, and fruitful trade relationship was born after American traders, missionaries, diplomats, and others sailed to China with lofty ambitions: to acquire fabulous wealth, convert China to Christianity, and even command a Chinese army. In America's First Adventure in China, John Haddad provides a colorful history of the evolving cultural exchange and interactions between these countries. He recounts how American expatriates adopted a pragmatic attitude-as well as an entrepreneurial spirit and improvisational approach-to their dealings with the Chinese. Haddad shows how opium played a potent role in the dreams of Americans who either smuggled it or opposed its importation, and he considers the missionary movement that compelled individuals to accept a hard life in an alien culture. As a result of their efforts, Americans achieved a favorable outcome—they established a unique presence in China—and cultivated a relationship whose complexities continue to grow.

Trading Freedom

Trading Freedom PDF Author: Dael A. Norwood
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226815587
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Introduction: America's Business with China -- Founding a Free, Trading Republic -- The Paradox of a Pacific Policy -- Troubled Waters -- Sovereign Rights, or America's First Opium Problem -- The Empire's New Roads -- This Slave Trade of the Nineteenth Century -- A Propped-Open Door -- Death of a Trade, Birth of a Market.

Schism

Schism PDF Author: Paul Blustein
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 1928096867
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 was heralded as historic, and for good reason: the world's most populous nation was joining the rule-based system that has governed international commerce since World War II. But the full ramifications of that event are only now becoming apparent, as the Chinese economic juggernaut has evolved in unanticipated and profoundly troublesome ways. In this book, journalist Paul Blustein chronicles the contentious process resulting in China's WTO membership and the transformative changes that followed, both good and bad - for China, for its trading partners, and for the global trading system as a whole. The book recounts how China opened its markets and underwent far-reaching reforms that fuelled its economic takeoff, but then adopted policies - a cheap currency and heavy-handed state intervention - that unfairly disadvantaged foreign competitors and circumvented WTO rules. Events took a potentially catastrophic turn in 2018 with the eruption of a trade war between China and the United States, which has brought the trading system to a breaking point. Regardless of how the latest confrontation unfolds, the world will be grappling for decades with the challenges posed by China Inc.

Fateful Ties

Fateful Ties PDF Author: Gordon H. Chang
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674426134
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Americans look to China with fascination and fear, unsure whether the rising Asian power is friend or foe but certain it will play a crucial role in America’s future. This is nothing new, Gordon Chang says. For centuries, Americans have been convinced of China’s importance to their own national destiny. Fateful Ties draws on literature, art, biography, popular culture, and politics to trace America’s long and varied preoccupation with China. China has held a special place in the American imagination from colonial times, when Jamestown settlers pursued a passage to the Pacific and Asia. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans plied a profitable trade in Chinese wares, sought Chinese laborers to build the West, and prized China’s art and decor. China was revered for its ancient culture but also drew Christian missionaries intent on saving souls in a heathen land. Its vast markets beckoned expansionists, even as its migrants were seen as a “yellow peril” that prompted the earliest immigration restrictions. A staunch ally during World War II, China was a dangerous adversary in the Cold War that followed. In the post-Mao era, Americans again embraced China as a land of inexhaustible opportunity, playing a central role in its economic rise. Through portraits of entrepreneurs, missionaries, academics, artists, diplomats, and activists, Chang demonstrates how ideas about China have long been embedded in America’s conception of itself and its own fate. Fateful Ties provides valuable perspective on this complex international and intercultural relationship as America navigates an uncertain new era.

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom PDF Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1429944129
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 705

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Book Description
A remarkable history of the two-centuries-old relationship between the United States and China, from the Revolutionary War to the present day From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China's growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America's ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier. Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.

The Wealth of a Nation

The Wealth of a Nation PDF Author: C. Donald Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190865911
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
The United States is entering a period of profound uncertainty in the world political economy--an uncertainty which is threatening the liberal economic order that its own statesmen created at the end of the Second World War. The storm surrounding this threat has been ignited by an issue that has divided Americans since the nation's founding: international trade. Is America better off under a liberal trade regime, or would protectionism be more beneficial? The issue divided Alexander Hamilton from Thomas Jefferson, the agrarian south from the industrializing north, and progressives from robber barons in the Gilded Age. In our own times, it has pitted anti-globalization activists and manufacturing workers against both multinational firms and the bulk of the economics profession. Ambassador C. Donald Johnson's The Wealth of a Nation is an authoritative history of the politics of trade in America from the Revolution to the Trump era. Johnson begins by charting the rise and fall of the U.S. protectionist system from the time of Alexander Hamilton to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. Challenges to protectionist dominance were frequent and often serious, but the protectionist regime only faded in the wake of the Great Depression. After World War II, America was the primary architect of the liberal rules-based economic order that has dominated the globe for over half a century. Recent years, however, have seen a swelling anti-free trade movement that casts the postwar liberal regime as anti-worker, pro-capital, and--in Donald Trump's view--even anti-American. In this riveting history, Johnson emphasizes the benefits of the postwar free trade regime, but focuses in particular on how it has attempted to advance workers' rights. This analysis of the evolution of American trade policy stresses the critical importance of the multilateral trading system's survival and defines the central political struggle between business and labor in measuring the wealth of a nation.

Clashing Over Commerce

Clashing Over Commerce PDF Author: Douglas A. Irwin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022639901X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 873

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Book Description
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year: “Tells the history of American trade policy . . . [A] grand narrative [that] also debunks trade-policy myths.” —Economist Should the United States be open to commerce with other countries, or should it protect domestic industries from foreign competition? This question has been the source of bitter political conflict throughout American history. Such conflict was inevitable, James Madison argued in the Federalist Papers, because trade policy involves clashing economic interests. The struggle between the winners and losers from trade has always been fierce because dollars and jobs are at stake: depending on what policy is chosen, some industries, farmers, and workers will prosper, while others will suffer. Douglas A. Irwin’s Clashing over Commerce is the most authoritative and comprehensive history of US trade policy to date, offering a clear picture of the various economic and political forces that have shaped it. From the start, trade policy divided the nation—first when Thomas Jefferson declared an embargo on all foreign trade and then when South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union over excessive taxes on imports. The Civil War saw a shift toward protectionism, which then came under constant political attack. Then, controversy over the Smoot-Hawley tariff during the Great Depression led to a policy shift toward freer trade, involving trade agreements that eventually produced the World Trade Organization. Irwin makes sense of this turbulent history by showing how different economic interests tend to be grouped geographically, meaning that every proposed policy change found ready champions and opponents in Congress. Deeply researched and rich with insight and detail, Clashing over Commerce provides valuable and enduring insights into US trade policy past and present. “Combines scholarly analysis with a historian’s eye for trends and colorful details . . . readable and illuminating, for the trade expert and for all Americans wanting a deeper understanding of America’s evolving role in the global economy.” —National Review “Magisterial.” —Foreign Affairs

China, Trade and Power

China, Trade and Power PDF Author: Stewart Paterson
Publisher: London School of Economics and Political Science
ISBN: 9781907994814
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
From a Western point of view, the policy of economic engagement with China has failed. A rapid rise in living standards in China has helped legitimize and strengthen the Chinese Communist Party's power. How did Western, market-orientated, property-owning, liberal democracies go from being in a position of complete global hegemony in the early 1990s to the current crisis of confidence and loss of moral foundation? This book tells the story of the most successful trading nation of the early twenty-first century. It looks at how the Communist Party of China has retained and cemented its monopoly on political power since China's accession to the World Trade Organization in December 2001. It is the most extraordinary economic success story of our time and it has reshaped the geopolitics not just of Asia but of the world. As China has come to dominate global manufacturing, its economic power has been translated into political power, and the West now has a global rival that is politically antithetical to liberal values. The supply-side deflation from allowing 750 million low-cost workers into the global trading system combined with the policy of inflation targeting by Western central banks has led to falling real incomes for many in the West and rising asset prices that have benefited the few. Worse still, China's mercantilist model is now held up as a viable economic alternative. To have a fighting chance of protecting the freedoms of liberal democracies, it is of the utmost importance that we understand how the policy of indulgent engagement with China has affected Western society in recent years. Only then can the global trading system be reoriented for the mutual benefit of all nations.

When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail

When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail PDF Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404338
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Traces the history of the relationship between America and China back to its earliest days, when the United States traded with China for furs, opium, and rare sea cucumbers, but left an ecological and human rights disaster that still reverberates today.