Lecture format: on site + online.
Room: 2R-EG-07 (lecture hall of the Institute for Eastern European History).
Street address: Spitalgasse 2,  Campus of the University of Vienna, Hof 3.

This seminar explores the assistance that leading American non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provided to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economic reforms during the 1980s. The talk will look at China-focused NGOs, such as the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, as well as at older philanthropic NGOs like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

During the 1970s and 1980s, an impressive number of NGOs emerged and quickly came to play an influential role in international politics. Most of them sought to facilitate dialogue between political, economic, and intellectual elites both within the advanced industrial countries and with their counterparts in developing countries in the hopes of bolstering transnational cooperation on common policy dilemmas. Within this context, this talk details American NGOs’ assistance to the PRC through the numerous exchange programs that were created, especially in those fields where Beijing sought foreign support for its modernization programs.

More broadly, the talk asserts, the longer-term significance of the programs was that they enabled Americans and Chinese at all levels—not just the elites—to meet, interact and build personal connections that transcended and enlarged those already created by the American and Chinese governments. Finally, the talk will show that knowledge about China’s economic opening up disseminated by NGOs provided Americans with a better understanding of what lay beyond their national boundaries. Such insights, in turn, allowed the American government and public to also consider the vital role expanding free market and democratic principles played in the maintenance of US global power.

Federico Pachetti is a post-doctoral fellow at Corvinus Institute of Advanced Studies (CIAS), Budapest. Previously, he held positions at New York University (NYU) Shanghai and at London School of Economics (LSE) and Political Science (NYU). Federico researches and teaches 20th century international history, with a focus on how shifting dynamics in global political economy shaped the evolution of Sino-American relations during the final decades of the century. Federico is working on a book manuscript that explores the assistance American and international economic institutions provided to the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s economic reforms during the 1980s.