Circumventing the Cold War: the parallel diplomacy of economic and cultural exchanges between Western Europe and Socialist China in the 1950s and 1960s: An introduction

This article is the introduction to the Special Issue 'Circumventing the Cold War: The Parallel Diplomacy of Economic and Cultural Exchanges between Western Europe and Communist China, 1949–1964’, edited by Angela Romano and Valeria Zanier. The special issue brings together historians with expertise on China and Western Europe who have the explicit intent of bridging the existing gap between two parallel strands of scholarship, that is, Europe in the Cold War and the history of Socialist China, and combining the different perspectives and approaches of international, diplomatic, business, and cultural historiographies. The contributors’ lively interaction and close collaboration has been the key to the conceptual development of a broader view of the relations between West European countries and Socialist China in the early decades of the Cold War, as well as of China's policy towards the capitalist world before the Reform and Opening era