The economic relationship between the U.S. and China during the 1940s has long been neglected, with few scholarly works focusing on the period. This era was overshadowed by the political and diplomatic changes during and after the failure of the Nationalists in 1949. Without a close and insightful look into the reconstruction of China with American involvement during the late 1940s, one cannot identify the problems which led to the Nationalists' failure, nor can one answer the questions dealing with the impact of American economic policy toward China during that time.

The economic relationship between the U.S. and China during the 1940s has long been neglected, with few scholarly works focusing on the period. This era was overshadowed by the political and diplomatic changes during and after the failure of the Nationalists in 1949. Without a close and insightful look into the reconstruction of China with American involvement during the late 1940s, one cannot identify the problems which led to the Nationalists' failure, nor can one answer the questions dealing with the impact of American economic policy toward China during that time.

A rich empirical account of China's foreign economic policy towards Japan after World War Two, drawing on hundreds of recently declassified Chinese sources. Amy King offers an innovative conceptual framework for the role of ideas in shaping foreign policy, and examines how China's Communist leaders conceived of Japan after the war. The book shows how Japan became China's most important economic partner in 1971, despite the recent history of war and the ongoing Cold War divide between the two countries. It explains that China's Communist leaders saw Japan as a symbol of a modern, industrialised nation, and Japanese goods, technology and expertise as crucial in strengthening China's economy and military. For China and Japan, the years between 1949 and 1971 were not simply a moment disrupted by the Cold War, but rather an important moment of non-Western modernisation stemming from the legacy of Japanese empire, industry and war in China.

Ground-breaking new interpretation of the collapse of Chiang Kai-shek's government addressing why the Nationalists lost China's civil war in 1949.

The book is a systematic study of the China-Britain relationship during the 1942–1949 period with a particular focus on the two countries’ discussions over both the 1943 Sino-British treaty and the discarded Sino-British commercial treaty, the future of Hong Kong, and the political status of Tibet. These were dominated by two underlying themes: the elimination of the British imperialist position in China and the establishment of an equal and reciprocal bilateral relationship. The negotiations started promisingly in 1942–1943, but, by 1949, had failed to reach a satisfactory settlement. Behind the failure lay a complex set of domestic considerations and external factors, including the powerful infl uence of the United States. Even after seven decades, the failure still has a contemporary impact. Recent Sino-British disputes over the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement and incessant Indo-Chinese confl icts and skirmishes over their unsettled borders all attest to the enduring legacy of the years 1942–1949 as setting the scene for subsequent Sino-British and Sino-Indian relations. From this perspective, the history has never left us.