China has a long and complex history of interacting with foreign thinkers. After Mao’s death in 1976, the Chinese leadership solicited foreign economists in order to curate China’s path towards market reforms and the economic boom that continues today.
These little-understood partnerships between foreign economists and China’s leaders are the subject of Julian Gewirtz’s new book “Unlikely Partners: Western Economists, and the Making of Global China” from Harvard University Press. This project developed out of Julian’s senior thesis here at Harvard, supervised by the Fairbank Center’s own Professor Erez Manella in 2013.
Julian is currently a Rhodes Scholar and DPhil Candidate in history at the University of Oxford.
The “Harvard on China” podcast is hosted by James Evans at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Listen to more podcasts at the Fairbank Center’s SoundCloud page.