Helleiner, Eric, and Hongying Wang

Abstract: As China’s influence in the world economy grows, scholars have become increasingly interested in distinct Chinese traditions of thought relating to the study of international political economy (IPE). While much has been written about historical Confucian ideas about tributary relations, IPE scholars have devoted little attention to another Chinese intellectual tradition that challenged those ideas in the 19th century: Chinese economic nationalism. In the wake of the two Opium Wars, early Chinese economic nationalist thinkers urged Chinese authorities to embrace a new priority of boosting the country’s wealth and power through an outward-oriented, state-led development strategy. Their ideas shared some similarities with Listian economic nationalism that became popular elsewhere in the world at this time, but they were developed without direct engagement with that Western-originated thought. The indigenous roots of 19th-century Chinese economic nationalism also gave it characteristics that distinguished it in interesting ways from the Western version of economic nationalism in that era. In addition to widening our understandings of Chinese traditions of IPE thought, this study of the distinct content and origins of early Chinese economic nationalism contributes to: recent efforts to overcome the Western-centric foundations of IPE thought, literature exploring the diversity of economic nationalist thought and its diffusion in the 19th century, and analyses of China’s post-1978 foreign economic policy. Full text available here.