Book Review: Beijing's Economic Statecraft during the Cold War, 1949-1991

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press , 2014 xiv + 477 pp. $65.00; £42.00 ISBN 978-1-4214-1583-3 Book Reviews The study of economic statecraft, the "use [of] economic instruments to pursue foreign policy goals" has been dominated by the study of economic sanctions and foreign aid from the perspective of the sender country, and the most commonly studied sender country in the Cold War period has been the United States. The book begins with a study of China's efforts to evade the consequences of the US economic embargo on the new Communist government in 1949 which was then tightened further during the Korean War. In discussing Chinese aid to Viet Cong soldiers, Zhang details that each was to receive "...three suits of clothes and three pair of shoes, and a daily ration of 800 grams of rice, 30 grams of salt, 80 grams of meat, 30 grams of fish, 30 grams of peanuts or sesame seeds, 30 grams of beans, 30 grams of lard, 10 grams of soy sauce, and 30 grams of sugar ...