Industrial Policy and the Sino-Soviet Alliance from Transnational Perspectives

Described as “the largest technology transfer in human history” (Rawski/Brandt/Ma, 2017), economic exchanges within the Sino-Soviet alliance played a central role in the trade and industrialization of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s and early 1960s. As one of the few existing socialist countries after 1991, China now boasts of itself as “the only country with a complete industrial system in the world,” which, if correct, could not have been achieved without its massive economic exchange with the Soviet bloc. Even before the split in the socialist bloc was widely visible in the 1960s, the Sino-Soviet alliance had shown major constraints. Soviet and Eastern European states’ economic planners and traders were obsessed with exporting their representative industrial products while preventing the Chinese from catching up. On the contrary, their Chinese comrades hoped to develop a modern and advanced industrial system by any means necessary. Soviet specialists working on the site were confronted with confusing orders from the Chinese central and local governments, which always paid little attention to the basic needs of ordinary Chinese people. Socialist industrial policy on intra-bloc cooperation and coordination led to great achievements, yet failed to bring the people and economies together, as manifested by Marx and Engels. By focusing on transnational actors, such as traders, specialists, companies, and workers, this panel will shed a new light on China’s economic exchange with the Soviet bloc and explore the origins of its industrial policy, which still affects our world today.