As Shu Guang Zhang reminds us, many observers in 1950 thought it foolhardy for this young and underdeveloped communist nation to engage in yet another war. Coming so soon after its costly civil war with the Nationalists, the Korean crisis...

Why would one country impose economic sanctions against another in pursuit of foreign policy objectives? How effective is the use of economic weapons in attaining such objectives? To answer these questions, the author examines how and why the United States and its allies instituted economic sanctions against the People's Republic of China in the 1950s, and how the embargo affected Chinese domestic policy and the Sino-Soviet alliance.

The literature on sanctions has largely concluded that they tend to be ineffective in achieving foreign policy objectives. This study, based on...

Beijing's Economic Statecraft during the Cold War, 1949-1991, describes China's use of economic instruments in pursuit of foreign policy goals from its foundation to the end of the Cold War. Taking on China's economic diplomacy during the period of 1949-1991 as an in-depth case analysis, Shu Guang Zhang focuses on the nuts and bolts of Beijing's policymaking and aims to reconstruct China's economic statecraft behaviors, both historically and conceptually. Not only does the study assess China's foreign economic policies playing out in its relations with the U.S., U.K., and Japan,...