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0:00Was made in China actually made in
0:02America? And did the US help China to
0:06become its main rival?
0:08>> Today on the show, we look at the
0:09origins and evolution of made in China
0:12because it wasn't actually inevitable.
0:15>> From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redman in
0:17London.
0:18>> And I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
0:21And welcome to The Global Story on
0:23YouTube.
0:29So, Tristan, it is day four of our big
0:32series about the United States and the
0:33world at 250. And you know, all this
0:36week we have been taking a step back
0:38from our daily newsy routine to reflect
0:42on some bigger themes, reflect on
0:44America as a place and as an idea.
0:47>> Yeah, so far this week we've been mostly
0:50thinking about how the United States
0:52came to become the power that it is now.
0:55And in today's episode, we're going to
0:57be thinking about what comes next and
1:00the challenger waiting in the wings, and
1:03that's China.
1:04>> And you know, when I think about China,
1:06I will say I don't think it can be
1:07overstated just how much economically
1:11the country has transformed over the
1:13last five or six decades. You think of
1:15China going back to the 1950s and in
1:181960s, and many folks didn't really see
1:21it as an economic player. You look at it
1:23now and it is undoubtedly a global
1:26economic powerhouse.
1:27>> The figure that we often hear from the
1:29World Bank of 800 million Chinese people
1:33lifted out of poverty in the last 40
1:36years, whichever way you slice it, that
1:39is an impressive number. And you know,
1:42you could make a case that it is one of
1:44the most successful economic success
1:47stories in human history.
1:49>> And Tristan, you've been seeing signs of
1:51that economic success story in parts of
1:54China for the last several years. I went
1:55to China some back and I remember going
1:58to Shenzhen and I went to a shopping
2:01mall and you saw so many young people
2:04who were working in the factories and
2:06then they are out in the evenings uh
2:09eating, shopping at these huge shopping
2:12malls and that was something really new.
2:14Um the local journalist I was working
2:16with pointed it out to me and said like
2:17this is something that we didn't used to
2:19see. These are all these young people
2:21who've come from some cases villages,
2:23different parts of China who've come to
2:24work in these factories and have money
2:27to spend.
2:28>> Is it Chinese middle class?
2:30>> It is a Chinese middle class.
2:31>> The creation of that Chinese middle
2:34class um is something we're going to be
2:36talking about today. Where did it come
2:38from? The answer is partly through
2:40extraordinarily successful reforms
2:43instituted by the Chinese Communist
2:45Party, but arguably the United States
2:48played a role in it, too. The thinking
2:52was if we help China to become more like
2:55us economically, then maybe China will
2:58become more like us politically, too.
3:01But the question is now, did that
3:03process backfire? And that's what we're
3:05going to be getting into today.
3:07>> Right. I mean it I suppose if you put it
3:08a tad differently, the question is how
3:10big of a role did the United States
3:13actually play in helping create its own
3:16economic rival? I mean, to some degree,
3:19was made in China made in America?
3:22>> And to get into all of that today, um
3:25we're going to be joined by Elizabeth
3:27Ingleson. Elizabeth is an academic at
3:29the London School of Economics and she's
3:32the author of the book Made in China
3:34when US-China interests converged to
3:37transform global trade. Elizabeth told
3:40us a story about a very traditionally
3:43American set of products that was being
3:46mass manufactured in China and then sold
3:50back to Americans by a very big and
3:53famous American personality.
3:55>> It's summer 1976 and Don King, a major
4:00promoter
4:01in the United States.
4:02>> A boxing promoter.
4:04>> Boxing promoter, that's right. The sort
4:06of Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Rumble
4:08in the Jungle.
4:09>> The deal had been broken by an unknown
4:11black hustler called Don King.
4:21>> Ali wanted to achieve something and I
4:23gave him the opportunity. He was the
4:25biggest guy in the world, but he
4:27couldn't get George Foreman. I got
4:29George Foreman.
4:30>> He is having a party in his Manhattan
4:34apartment
4:35on the 76th floor to celebrate his new
4:40line of goods. He's moved into trade,
4:43he's moved from boxing to trade and has
4:45created a company that is importing
4:50tennis balls, basketballs,
4:53sporting goods from China into the
4:56United States. And so he names this new
4:58company the Don King Friendship Sports
5:01Clothes and Goods Corporation.
5:03>> Does it roll off your tongue?
5:05>> Does not roll off your tongue, no.
5:07But what what he was very good at doing,
5:09so perhaps not so good at naming his new
5:11trade company, but what he was very good
5:13at doing was promoting these new balls,
5:16right? So he had tennis balls,
5:17basketballs all bouncing around in his
5:20in Manhattan, his Manhattan home. You
5:23know,
5:25glasses of champagne are circulating, so
5:27too are balls being thrown across the
5:29room.
5:30And he at one point hosts this sort of
5:33moment of collaboration and and welcomes
5:36the guests.
5:37And really speaks of what he's sees
5:41these balls as providing and it was
5:44reported in newspapers afterwards that
5:46he described these Chinese
5:49hockey mitts and basketballs as having
5:51quote mystic powers, he said.
5:54>> Mystic powers?
5:56>> Yeah. Yeah, so
5:57>> Because they were made in China?
5:59>> Because they were made in China.
6:01So, you know, he said that you know,
6:03these basketballs and hockey mitts would
6:05mean that players would gain more
6:07baskets and more scores. But what was I
6:10think most
6:11interesting was that these balls they
6:14were just regular basketballs, right?
6:16And what made them significant was not
6:19at all that they had mystic powers,
6:21but instead that they were made cheaply
6:23in China.
6:25>> And that was new in the 1970s.
6:27>> It was new that they were coming from
6:29China, right? So
6:30>> Did they have mystic powers for Don
6:32King's bank account?
6:34>> [laughter]
6:35>> They you know what they they did. And
6:37this is part of what was happening was
6:39the selling of goods, regular goods, was
6:43becoming more and more appealing
6:45precisely because of the Chinese
6:47origins. And the reason for that was
6:50that for over 20 years the United States
6:52and China had no trade at all.
6:55This is in the Cold War era and China,
6:57even more than the Soviet Union, was cut
7:00off from the United States economically,
7:02diplomatically, culturally, socially. It
7:05was not dissimilar to the dynamics
7:07between the United States and Cuba or
7:09the United States and North Korea today.
7:11Almost no contact at all.
7:13So in the 70s one of the reasons it's so
7:15exciting is that you're getting contact
7:18and trade and and engagement
7:21with with a country that had been so cut
7:23off from the United States for so long.
7:26>> And Elizabeth, these days when we think
7:28about products being made in China, it
7:30seems given given global capitalism at
7:33this point. You mentioned that in the
7:351970s the idea of sports equipment being
7:38made in China was was very novel.
7:42Can you tell us of the moment
7:45when China
7:46becomes a real trading partner of the
7:48United States, when its market became
7:51open to Americans, and when Americans
7:53started importing a whole lot more from
7:55China?
7:55>> I think it's really important to not
7:57take for granted that today anything you
8:00can imagine has the label made in China
8:02on it, right? What we're talking about
8:04is the world's largest communist nation
8:07is at the beating heart of the
8:09capitalist system. It's at the beating
8:11heart of trade and manufacturing and
8:13labor today. And so your question is how
8:16did we get there? So the 1950s and 60s,
8:18Mao uh this is the Mao era, the Chinese
8:21Revolution, uh the Communist Revolution.
8:24And what Mao was doing in the 50s and
8:2660s was really experimenting with how to
8:29maintain a communist revolution and how
8:33to how to uh have that revolution be
8:36something that is sustainable globally.
8:39So Mao was very intent on um a very
8:42different form of political economy and
8:45a political economy and a world order
8:48that was not at all like what was
8:49happening in the United States and the
8:51capitalist order. So the story that is
8:53um I think so important to understanding
8:55these dynamics is a story of Nixon and
8:58Mao meeting in 1972.
9:00>> There is no reason for us to be enemies.
9:05Neither of us seeks the territory of the
9:07other.
9:10Neither of us seeks domination over the
9:12other.
9:15Neither of us seeks
9:17to stretch out our hands
9:19and rule the world.
9:21>> President [music] Nixon was to remark
9:23later in the day that he had never heard
9:24American music played better in a
9:26foreign land than he had on his first
9:28day in the People's Republic of China.
9:31>> China inviting uh the the president of
9:34the United States, the key
9:38uh, country that China's revolution had
9:40been in opposition to for the last 20
9:42years. But what's really important, uh,
9:45is that this isn't only a story of
9:48geopolitical shifts. It's also a story
9:50in which, uh, the political economy
9:52within China and experimentations of
9:55development within China begin to, uh,
9:59turn to the United States and turn to
10:02the capitalist order as a way for China
10:05to continue its efforts at at finding a
10:07way to modernize and to develop. Uh, and
10:11so the United States becomes part of an
10:13attempt at Chinese, uh, pragmatists
10:17really trying to work out how to how to
10:20feed its people and its economy. Uh, and
10:22the United States begins to become part
10:24of that picture.
10:25>> And as Peking welcomes its famous guest,
10:28who in the past so often been a target
10:31of all its fears and aroused
10:33antipathies.
10:34>> Uh, what's really, I think,
10:37uh, a sort of less known part of this
10:39story and a less known part of the Nixon
10:42shock is the second Nixon shock that
10:45happens in the summer. So it's in 1971
10:47that Nixon announces,
10:49"Hey everyone, I'm going to go to
10:50China." So it's that shock, uh, the
10:52China shock it's called. But a month
10:55later he announced that the United
10:57States was ending the dollar gold
10:59convertibility and with it, uh, moving
11:01away from the Bretton Woods system, uh,
11:04of um, of of fixed exchange rate. Why
11:07that's so important and particularly
11:09important to the opening to China is
11:12that it allowed for, uh, money, uh, and
11:15and and foreign exchange to move faster
11:18and more freely, uh, across borders. The
11:22capacity to set up, uh,
11:25manufacturing facilities and other
11:26spaces overseas is even easier.
11:30>> Okay, Elizabeth, if you could explain
11:32though, if I were
11:33opening uh, a basketball plant in China,
11:38why is Don King and why am I and why are
11:41other American business people suddenly
11:44rushing to invest in manufacturing in
11:48China? Like what's the what's the thing
11:50that sparks us to do that?
11:51>> Okay, so first and foremost, you and Don
11:54King might want to do that.
11:57>> [laughter]
11:57>> But you and Don King face a really
11:59significant
12:01challenge and that is that China didn't
12:03let you do it. China in this period
12:05wasn't allowing you to set up your own
12:07factories. What was happening instead
12:10was China was saying, we can make them
12:12for you in our factories and we can sell
12:15them to you. When Don King is buying his
12:17basketballs, they're now saying, no, you
12:19can't set up shop. But why this is
12:21significant is that the Don Kings of the
12:24world and others who are trying to sort
12:26of are so excited about trading with
12:27China are doing so even though they're
12:30not allowed to set up factories there
12:32because what they're seeing is a
12:34promise. And this promise is is a very
12:37different kind of promise to what
12:40American business people and and and
12:42Europeans and and others had seen for
12:44centuries. Because for centuries the
12:46promise in China had been a place to
12:49absorb other countries' goods. For a
12:52very long time, centuries, it was this
12:54idea of we can sell to China. The
12:56fundamental shift that was happening in
12:58the 1970s was a vision that said, we can
13:01buy from China. We can import from China
13:05and we can do so because what we're
13:06seeing in China is cheap labor. Because
13:09within China during the Mao era, those
13:12within the Politburo who had a more sort
13:14of
13:16pragmatic vision of of China's
13:18modernization were saying, we can
13:20harness our large population in order to
13:23provide this cheap labor. So there's a
13:25flip from China as market to China as
13:28manufacturing base. What was the very
13:29moment of that flip?
13:31>> You know, there was no singular moment.
13:33This is not a story of very of of a
13:35singular moment at all. It's a story
13:37instead of slow working through what
13:42China's place in the world will be, a
13:44slow working through of what will
13:45American business people be able to
13:47achieve in China. It was very very
13:49uncertain. It's really important to
13:51emphasize that Don King was able to make
13:54um a really good profit from this.
13:56>> Uh largely
13:57>> Thank goodness he Thank goodness for
13:59that, right? But largely because he was
14:00a very very good marketer. Uh but a huge
14:03number of the American business people
14:04who traded with China in the 1970s lost
14:07a lot of money, but they kept going. So,
14:09some of the companies that I look at
14:11include um you know, Coca-Cola, for
14:13example. They They were just buying
14:15things from China. They didn't sell
14:17anything. They weren't able to set open
14:19up their bottling plants until the '80s.
14:21Bank of America was buying carpets. And
14:24what they were doing
14:25>> Carpets, yeah. So, they lined the
14:27carpets to show to the Chinese traders
14:29that they were interested. To
14:31demonstrate their commitment. And so,
14:34they were willing to do this because
14:35they saw
14:36>> did Bank of America want out of China?
14:38Yeah.
14:38>> It wanted to be able to open up uh
14:41banking facilities eventually, right? Uh
14:44so, they had this real vision long-term
14:47vision, but it was very uncertain,
14:49right?
14:49>> Never mind that. What did they do with
14:50the carpets?
14:51>> They They lined them in Chicago. So, the
14:54Chicago branches I have I have the
14:57documents of this. The Chicago branches
14:59had these Chinese uh
15:02uh carpets.
15:03>> And even the basketballs that the Don
15:06King was selling, I mean, he was
15:07pitching them as being exotic with these
15:10mystic powers. But somewhere along the
15:12line, "Made in China" in the minds of
15:15many Americans did not have that exotic
15:18appeal. I mean, as I recall it growing
15:20up as a kid of the '90s in the US,
15:23um, "Made in China" to to put it bluntly
15:25was associated with products that were
15:27at times thought to be uh,
15:30shotty, cheap. People would check
15:33sometimes the labels to see in fact if
15:34it was made in China and not want to
15:36purchase it. So, when did that shift
15:38begin that that something made in China
15:40was thought to be
15:42of less quality?
15:43>> One of the reasons that this is this
15:45moment of excitement is so important in
15:47the 1970s is that it's facilitating and
15:50normalizing
15:52uh, the idea that things would have
15:55"Made in China" on them. So, this is a
15:57cultural shift accepting China not as a
16:00communist threat, not as red China, but
16:03as uh, an unthreatening
16:05uh, trading partner. And so, this
16:07accelerates from the 1980s and into the
16:101990s. I too remember uh, and grew up
16:14with sort of uh, all of the sort of
16:16fear-mongering on things made in China.
16:18Was it fear-mongering, Elizabeth?
16:20>> I mean, are there examples of of the
16:22reputation? Was it earned or or not
16:24earned?
16:24>> No, it was I I when I say
16:25fear-mongering, I I I should I should be
16:28more clear. What I mean is
16:30um,
16:30uh, it would often be tied in with this
16:32idea of China as a threat, but no, China
16:34was using sweatshop labor. And in the
16:371990s,
16:38uh, there was this real movement led by
16:40uh, Chinese activists, uh, one man in
16:43particular, Harry Wu, who really shone a
16:46spotlight on gulags within China uh, and
16:49really uh, tried to highlight the
16:52exploited labor underpinning so many
16:55things that were labeled "Made in
16:56China".
16:57>> So, Elizabeth, the "Made in China" label
16:59on a product, its significance is
17:02evolving in the period of the the '80s
17:05and '90s, but there is one company that
17:09in the popular imagination now is really
17:12inextricably linked to manufacturing in
17:15China, and that is Apple. What's the
17:18role of Apple in all of this, and how is
17:20Apple change the way that made in China
17:23has been perceived?
17:24>> I think Apple is a really, really,
17:26uh, important,
17:29uh, shift in a in the story that I'm
17:31telling. The story that I'm telling is
17:33this period in the 1970s into the '80s
17:36of of shifting manufacturing, right? And
17:38what Apple represents is an extreme
17:41version of the start of the shifts that
17:43were starting to happen in this
17:45post-Bretton Woods era, whereby
17:47something that might be, uh, considered
17:50an American company like Apple,
17:52uh, is so reliant, actually, on
17:54countries around the world, particularly
17:56China.
17:57>> In a previous episode of The Global
17:58Story, we specifically looked at Apple
18:01and its reliance on manufacturing in
18:04China, and we learned, uh, that Apple
18:07had sent thousands of engineers over the
18:09years to help train factory workers in
18:13Shenzhen. And
18:16you know, that, you could argue, was,
18:18uh, a way that fundamentally changed
18:20Apple and its production cycle, but it
18:22also, presumably, changed the local
18:25economy of China. Have you seen evidence
18:28over the years of how it shaped and has
18:31reshaped the local Chinese economy?
18:33>> I mean, I think the story of how Apple
18:36has built its infrastructure within
18:39China is
18:42such an important window into a large
18:44number of different dynamics that have
18:46been at play in China's, uh, capacity to
18:50build such a strong,
18:52uh,
18:53economy and build up a middle class. So,
18:56part of it, as you've been saying, did
18:58rely on the training of Chinese people
19:02by not just American,
19:04um,
19:05engineers and others, but Japanese and
19:08and a whole range of, um, of experts
19:10from around the world. So, China did uh
19:13benefit from um
19:16uh sort of technology transfer and a
19:18whole range of different ways in which
19:20expertise was provided. Really, it was
19:22going on uh since the 1950s itself. The
19:24Soviet Union sent experts. Uh then in
19:27the 1970s, America sent experts. Boeing
19:30experts came to China to help with the
19:32airplanes. Uh in the 1980s and 90s, as
19:36you say, you start to see
19:37uh
19:38technicians, including those from Apple.
19:41Uh so, this is a really long story. And
19:43what I think is so important is that as
19:45China did uh engage with and learn from
19:49uh and uh
19:50collaborate with foreign engineers, it
19:53was able to build not just a workforce
19:57providing cheap labor, but you also have
19:59a Chinese economy that has become so uh
20:03prosperous that there is a booming
20:05middle class that is also now starting
20:08to drive uh
20:10uh consumption. And so, China by the
20:12early 20th 1st century is not only a
20:15source of cheap labor, but it also has
20:18uh a site of um very significant numbers
20:21of middle-class consumers.
20:23>> Well, Elizabeth, gone are the days in
20:24our story when uh as Asma was describing
20:27uh the "Made in China" label was deemed
20:30to be of
20:32a kind of marker of inferior quality
20:34goods, China is making great stuff at
20:37this point in our story. So much so that
20:40in the United States, they're even being
20:42considered a threat to national security
20:44in some cases. How did that happen? How
20:47did they get so much more sophisticated
20:49in their manufacturing capacity?
20:51>> You know, I think in the 90s and um into
20:54the 2000s was this idea that Chinese
20:56goods were cheaply made partly because
20:59this was a period of cheap consumption
21:02and cutting corners. Uh and what has
21:04happened uh more recently is China
21:08itself has shifted the kinds of products
21:10it wants to make. Xi Jinping in
21:12particular since 2015 has implemented uh
21:15his Made in China 2025 vision in which
21:18Xi himself sought to shift a
21:21manufacturing and industrial policy
21:23within China to begin to move towards
21:26high-tech and high
21:29uh value manufacturing. So, at the
21:31moment what Xi in particular is
21:33cultivating is a concept that we call
21:35dual or that he calls dual circulation
21:38in in in English. This idea that you
21:40would have a fairly self-reliant
21:43uh economy within China itself, uh one
21:47that did not need or does not need uh or
21:49rely upon uh foreign uh inputs, but an
21:53additional layer that does sell to
21:57Europe and if they can to the United
21:59States depending on the news.
22:00>> [laughter]
22:01>> Uh and so that that strategy has been
22:03very deliberate. But an additional
22:05dynamic coming from Washington is to
22:07understand too uh that there is a
22:09geopolitical layer on top here, right?
22:12There's a geopolitical concern that
22:15changes happening in China's economy,
22:16the changes happening with with what Xi
22:18Jinping is doing, this dual circulation
22:20strategy itself uh uh represent a real
22:23threat to uh the United States' own
22:26capacity to maintain economic and and uh
22:29geopolitical hegemony.
22:31>> China now has a a huge uh trade deficit
22:36in its favor
22:37um with the United States. It exports a
22:40lot more uh to the United States than
22:42the other way around. And as we all
22:45know, that was a central feature of of
22:48Donald Trump's uh successful campaigns
22:51in 2016
22:52and in 2024.
22:54So, I mean we we we wanted to we were
22:56interested in the the idea that there
22:58was a through-line um um, from uh
23:01Chinese economic success to where we are
23:04in the world right now today. And and in
23:07that spirit, I wonder if you'll indulge
23:08us if we if we present you with a
23:10counterfactual.
23:12>> Yeah, great. Great.
23:14>> Imagine Richard Nixon, right, had not
23:16gone to China in 1972,
23:19and China had not then opened up and
23:22modernized economically. Would US steel
23:26mills
23:27still be pumping out steel? Would
23:29Detroit car factory still be
23:31manufacturing cars in in huge
23:33quantities?
23:34>> Can I counterfactual your
23:35counterfactual?
23:36>> Love it.
23:37>> Oh, please. I would say that an even
23:41more significant counterfactual is not
23:43whether or not Nixon went to China, met
23:46with Mao, ended the 20-year isolation,
23:49but rather that Nixon does not implement
23:52the financialization policies, the
23:55freeing up of capital to move across
23:57borders more easily, to set up
23:59manufacturing facilities abroad more
24:01easily, to have a containerized
24:04shipping. If we didn't have the
24:06facilitation of those processes, and
24:09there was significant
24:11congressional resistance to these
24:14changes happening, particularly in the
24:161970s. [music]
24:17If that hadn't happened, if those
24:19structural shifts hadn't happened, I
24:21think we would have a very different
24:22[music] world.
24:23>> Well, Elizabeth, on that note, thank you
24:25very much for joining us.
24:27>> Always a pleasure. Thank you both.
24:28>> That's it for The Global Story on
24:30YouTube. Thanks for spending some time
24:31with us. And if you appreciated our show
24:33today, then I've got to mention that The
24:35Global Story is also available as an
24:38audio podcast. That's right, you can
24:39find us every weekday on bbc.com or
24:43wherever you listen.

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This page contains the full transcript of How 'made in China' went global | The Global Story by BBC News, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 4,010 words across 628 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

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