On the character of the foreign trade of the People’s republic of China in the period 1949–1969

Foreign trade was one of the first areas of the Chinese economy which passed completely under the state control after the establishment of the Communist regime in China. The Beijing government started to build a new institutional model inspired by the Soviet experience. Like in other Communist states, the PRC’s foreign economic relations were strongly influenced by political and ideological factors determining not only territorial structure of foreign trade. In general, foreign trade had a positive impact on both the development of the industrial sector and the whole economy in the 1950s, while in the 1960s the PRC’s foreign economic relations were naturally limited by political tensions in relations with the Soviet bloc and also heavily impacted by the problems of the domestic economy