Biqi Yan with Professor Jeremy Paltiel
Congratulations to Biqi Yan on her recent dissertation defence. Her thesis is titled Facing the Artillery of Free Trade: How Japan and China Responded to US Trade Pressure and her supervisor is Professor Jeremy Paltiel.
Biqi’s thesis offers a comparative analysis of Japan’s and China’s responses to US trade pressures, concentrating on major trade conflicts between the US and Japan from the 1960s to the 1990s, as well as those between the US and China from the 1990s to 2018. Through an examination of these conflicts, particularly those involving Section 301 of the US Trade Act, her research highlights how trade wars were influenced by domestic political factors and shaped strategies for economic development. Drawing on Polanyi’s double movement framework, her study explores how both Japan and China, as they transitioned from embedded to disembedded economies, initially found it easier to accept US demands to stimulate growth. However, when internal or external crises disrupted the balance between markets and society, US demands became more difficult to accept. Her research highlights how both countries used US trade pressure to advance domestic political agendas, revealing the intricate relationship between state, market, and society during trade wars. More broadly, her dissertation emphasizes the relevance of concepts from non-Western contexts in understanding global trade dynamics, thereby potentially contributing to the advancement of Global IR.