Yasser A. Nasser

“Opening the Door” argues that the People’s Republic of China was one of the centers of economic reform during the neoliberal turn. Instead of students of economic shifts in the West, this project presents Chinese reformers as active participants in a contemporaneous process unfolding throughout the world by placing Chinese reforms within the wider context of economic crises and restructuring throughout the 1970s and 80s. Focusing on quotidian Chinese reformers—from agricultural technicians to managerial trainees—this work documents their selective learning from Japanese economic practices, the subsequent transmission of those lessons to disparate reformers throughout the Global South, and the emergence of the so-called Chinese developmental model.