The periphery in the making of globalization: the China Lobby and the Reversal of Clinton’s China Trade Policy, 1993–1994

Many studies suggest that globalization is a process initiated by corporations and states in advanced countries that pressures or encourages developing countries to open themselves to the globalized economy. This paper illustrates, with the case of China, that developing countries have significant power to initiate and shape trade liberalization. Using sources from both the United States and China, it delineates how the Chinese state, driven by its aspiration to move China to an export-oriented economic model, mobilized and coordinated dominant US corporations to lobby for US–China trade liberalization in the critical period of 1993–1994. China’s “lobbying by proxy” efforts led to the Clinton administration’s rejection of its 1993 policy that constrained free trade with China based on human rights considerations in 1994. This research shows that the origins and evolution of trade globalization involved many contingent actions of actors in the core and periphery. We should not underestimate the agency of actors from the periphery, even though they are not always in the driver’s seat.