Rethinking US-China Relations During the Cold War: Decolonization, Left Internationalism, and the “Great Convergence"
Elizabeth Ingleson,
London School of Economics
Date: 14 April 2026 (Tues)
Time: 5:45 PM (HKT)
Venue: Room 4.36, 4/F,
Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
All are welcome!
No registration required.
For decades, the story of US-China relations during the Cold War has been dominated by the twenty-odd years of diplomatic, economic, and cultural isolation that estranged both nations from 1950 until 1972. Indeed, the “before” and “after” of isolation has become the defining demarcation in US-China relations since the Second World War. This talk seeks to rethink this narrative. It considers other ways of framing US-China relations during the Cold War, focusing in particular on decolonization and left internationalism and the alternative ways of understanding the relationship that both movements reveal. In so doing, it argues that the successes—and failures—of decolonization and left internationalism helped pave the way towards the “Great Convergence” between US and Chinese economic interests from the 1970s onwards.
Elizabeth Ingleson is an Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade (Harvard University Press, 2024). She is currently writing a book under contract with Bloomsbury Academic, China and the United States Since 1949: From Cold War to Globalization.
Rethinking US-China Relations During the Cold War: Decolonization, Left Internationalism, and the “Great Convergence”
Society of Fellows in the Humanities
Department of History
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