ABSTRACT

China is one of the most important players in the international order of Asia, while China's economy itself is also strongly influenced by the Asian regional economic situation. This chapter focuses on the various strategies and policies pursued to promote China's economic development from the 1930s to the 1950s. It examines their effects on China's foreign trade, and especially on China's trade with Asian countries. China followed very different development strategies at different period from the 1930s to the 1950s. Development strategies are classified into three types: the strategy of import-substitution industrialization; the strategy of export-oriented industrialization, and the strategy of munitions industrialization. Due to the differences in these strategies and the influence of the Second World War, the direction of imports, which were mainly machinery or equipment for industrialization, changed drastically. In the pre-war period, China imported such goods from the United States, Britain, Germany, and Japan.