PhD Thesis

Title: Crossing the Bamboo Curtain: China’s Economic Statecraft, Trade with the West and its Influence on the Cold War

PhD supervisor: Jussi M. Hanhimäki

Expected completion date: September 2026

My prospective Ph.D. thesis examines China’s foreign trade with the West during Mao’s era. It assesses the effectiveness of COCOM’s embargo policy on Communist China’s foreign economic relations and analyzes the statecraft employed by the Chinese Communist Party to challenge Western multilateral export regulations and achieve its foreign and domestic objectives.
 

Profile
 

I am a PhD candidate working on China’s foreign relations with the West during the Cold War. I hold a bachelor degree in diplomatic studies, and a master degree in international history. I am general interested in two topics, one is economic statecraft and the other is the transnational flow of technology, industrial products, and knowledge from the West to China in the 20th century.

Research Interests
 

• Cold War
• China’s foreign relations
• Economic Sanction
• Transnational history
• History of international relations
  
   

Fellowships, Grants and Awards
 

• China Overseas PhD Scholarship  2021
• Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, full scholarship, 2019-2021
• Enlai foundation, Scholarship for Overseas Studies 2018
   

Publications and Works

• Chapter “Icebreakers and COCOM Export Regulation Policy in the 1950s” in The Palgrave Handbook of Non-State Actors in East-West Relations, Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05750-2_68-1
• Association for Asian Studies 2025 Annual Conference, March 2025, Columbus, US
  Paper Presenter: “Doing Business with Enemies: China’s Purchase of Digital Computer from UK
• Asian Studies Conference Japan (ASCJ) in July 2024, Tokyo
  Paper presenter “Technology Transcending the Bamboo Curtain: Western Origin of China’s Quest for Modernization from 1954 to 1966.”
• Modern British History Workshop, University of Cambridge, May 2024, UK
  Guest speaker: ‘The Blessed British Traders in Mao’s China: Icebreakers and the Development of COCOM Export Control Policy in the 1950s’
• Nanyang Technological University, History Postgraduate Workshop Series, Sep 2023, Singapore
  Guest speaker “Old China Hands and COCOM’s Export Regulation on China.”
• 13th Cold War History Research Center International Student Conference, June 2023, Budapest:
  paper presenter “Crossing the Bamboo Curtain: China’s Foreign Trade, British Merchants, and the End of the CHINCOM 1953–1957.”
• International History of East Asia Seminar, University of Oxford, May 2023, UK
  Guest speaker “Crossing the Bamboo Curtain: China’s Foreign Trade, British Merchants, and the End of the CHINCOM 1953-1957.”
  Incoming publication (scheduled in 2024 fall)  “Icebreakers and COCOM Export Regulation Policy in the 1950s” in The Palgrave Handbook of Non-State Actors in East-West Relations
   

Conference

• 13th Cold War History Research Center International Student Conference, June 2023: Crossing the Bamboo Curtain: China’s Foreign Trade, British Merchants, and the End of the CHINCOM 1953–1957

Workshop

• International History of East Asia Seminar, University of Oxford, May 2023
  Speaker: Crossing the Bamboo Curtain: China’s Foreign Trade, British Merchants, and the End of the CHINCOM 1953-1957
• Nanyang Technological University, History Postgraduate Workshop Series, Sep 2023: 
  Speaker: Old China Hands and COCOM’s Export Regulation on China
   

Other Work Experience
 

• China Academy of Social Science, Research Assistant, 2019 March-June
   

Links

EMAIL