> it was thinking that investment in China would equal liberalization and democratic reforms...

That's a rewriting of history and a common misconception I've seen repeated ad nauseam both on HN and (what I assume is it's origin) Reddit.

The West (primarily the US and then-West Germany) began investing in China in the 1970s to 1989 explicitly as a bulwark against the USSR [0] due to the Sino-Soviet Split. The "economic democratization" argument was a 1990s-era framing to reduce opposition to the PRC joining GATT/WTO [1] along with to reduce the sanctions enforced following the Tienanmen Square massacre [2].

George HW Bush as well as Clinton's NSC Asia Director Kenneth Lieberthal were both massive Chinaphiles, and played a major role in cementing the position China is in today.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264332

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/20/opinion/IHT-america-needs...

[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/14/opinion/forget-the-tianan...

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JumpCrisscross 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> That's a rewriting of history

You both agree.

“The ‘economic democratization’ argument was a 1990s-era framing to reduce opposition to the PRC joining GATT/WTO” is what they’re talking about. American security analysts believed that making China richer would make it more like us.

Prior to that it was principally geostrategic. But prior to that, the argument was never made.

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alephnerd 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> American security analysts believed that making China richer would make it more like us

The NSC in the first Clinton admin and the HW admin was ambivalent-to-opposed to the "endogenous democratization" approach, as was seen with Clinton 1's decisions during the China Straits Crisis under Anthony Lake (who was canned in 1997) along with Bush 1's retrenchment of sanctions in response to the Tiananmen Square Massacre under Brent Scowcroft. Much of the shift happened in Clinton 2 due to personnel changes and a significant loss of political capital due to then ongoing controversies.

> But prior to that, the argument was never made

Yep. The "endogenous democratization" argument only arose in 1997 after Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi's paper "Modernization: Theories and Facts" was published back in 1997 [0].

[0] - https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Modernization%3A-Theor...

	▲	JumpCrisscross 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Much of the shift happened in Clinton 2 That’s when the relevant argument was made and, by my reading, mistakes made per OP’s comments. Nobody is criticizing Nixon splitting China from the USSR. The criticism is in trade liberalization and technology transfer following the 1990s.

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earlyreturns 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interesting point and pardon my naïveté but I’m curious, by “the west began investing” do you mean public sector investments? Or are you including people like jim rodgers long time China bull? I think private sector investment wouldn’t be done for anything other than profit. It seems like trade liberalism is an ideological thing that people seem to believe in above and beyond geopolitical concerns. Those who believe in trade liberalization (globalization) are sort of religious in their belief that it leads to liberalism in all spheres, not just the economic. I’m thinking of classic liberals, economists, Ayn Rand fanboys, etc.

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alephnerd 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> public sector investments

Both public and private. Read my first citation - I don't feel like relinking dozens of citations on 1970s-80s US-China relationship.

Tl;dr - the Carter and Reagan administrations both heavily invested in building the PRC's R&D, military, and industrial capacity through a mix of public-private investments primarily as a bulwark against the USSR along with US Army boots on the ground in Xinjiang.

	▲	earlyreturns 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’ve read the first 4 of those links and they don’t point to financial investment per se. They do cover liberalization in the diplomatic sense, and sale (not purchase) of US military tech, all of which is obvious given their location and the time period (peak Cold War), but I am curious about specifically financial investment in China, which is what the parent was discussing. I mean we weren’t buying their planes or submarines or anything. We were cozying up to them because that’s what was demanded by the defensive realities of the Cold War. That seems like a different thing than investing in China in the sense of financial investment during the post Cold War period of the late 90s onward. Again, sorry if I’m asking stupid questions but you seem to have a lot of knowledge and I want to learn more myself.

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lenerdenator 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think that it's both a rewriting of history and a rationalization of the investment on some people's parts.

Nixon's opening of relations with China was definitely a move against the USSR, but that was nothing compared to the extent of investment that was seen after the fall of Communism in Europe. The fact that the CPC was still very much in charge while all of this investing was occurring had to be rationalized somehow in the minds of people who were less cynical, and "it'll help liberalization" was probably one of the rationalizations used. And in some ways, you can use investment as a way to leverage social changes within countries, and some people (though apparently not enough) thought that was the intention with China, but there was only a carrot, not a stick, and by the time there was a desire to use a stick, there was too much dependency on China as a market and producer for the West. That's where we're at now.

	▲	alephnerd 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> but that was nothing compared to the extent of investment that was seen after the fall of Communism in Europe Most of the capital investment and institution building that led to China Shock in the 2000s only happened due to the extreme degree of tech and capital transfer in the 1970s-80s, along with the visiting student program. Heck, Vietnam had a higher HDI [0] and GDP PPP per Capita [1] than the PRC until the early 2000s. The only difference was Vietnam was strictly in the Warsaw Bloc camp, and was negatively impacted by the collapse of the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and GDR while China was able to leverage ties with the US during that period. [0] - https://countryeconomy.com/hdi?year=2005 [1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?end=2...