China and the globalization of IPE's deep history

When textbooks in international political economy discuss the pre-1945 roots of the field, they typically focus on European and American thinkers who pioneered the three perspectives of economic liberalism (such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo), neomercantilism (such as Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List), and Marxism (Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin). Underlying this approach seems to be an assumption that people from elsewhere made no significant contributions to the study of international economic relations in the pre-1945 era. But people in many other parts of the world, including China, developed interesting analyses of this topic before 1945. This article provides examples of four distinct kinds of contributions made by pre-1945 Chinese thinkers to IPE's deep history. Calling attention to their ideas not only helps widen and globalize that history beyond its traditional Euro-American focus, but also creates a better foundation for conversations between IPE scholars within China (who are more familiar with this history) and those outside the country (who usually know less about it). More broadly, this analysis reveals the diversity of pre-1945 Chinese thought about international economic relations, mirroring the wide-ranging perspectives of today.