PhD Thesis

Title: Breaking 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

Her prospective Ph.D. thesis discusses China’s foreign trade from 1952 to 1965 and its impact on influencing Western multilateral export control policy. It places a special focus on the interaction between non-state actors and state actors and analyses how the Chinese Communist Party employed economic means to achieve its foreign and domestic strategy.
 

Profile
 

I am a third-year Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant from the Department of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID).My research discusses China’s foreign trade during Mao’s era, with a specific focus on China’s response to the economic sanction and embargo imposed by Western countries. 

Research Interests
 

• Chinese foreign relations
• Chinese foreign relations
• Cold War
• Foreign trade
• Non-state actors
   

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

• 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