The China market: East German and Bulgarian industrial facility export to the PRC in the 1950s

ABSTRACT Alongside the Soviet Union, partner countries on the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) substantially contributed to a decade of industrialization in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) during the 1950s. This article looks at East German and Bulgarian industrial projects in China in the realm of the extraction and refinement of basic materials. What was the impact of such exchanges on small CMEA economies as suppliers of industrial goods? What were the rationales of the participating institutions and protagonists in promoting industrial exports to China? All differences between the industrialized German Democratic Republic and the still mostly agrarian People’s Republic of Bulgaria (NRB) notwithstanding, economic officials in both countries saw the PRC as a crucial market for utilizing industrial capacities and increasing export opportunities. The immense significance that was ascribed to industrial exports to China also left its imprint on the structure of the economic bureaucracy, with the foundation of special bureaus and new foreign trade enterprises. Arguing that the Soviet Union’s CMEA partners had their own interests to pursue relations with China, this article aims to nuance a discussion where the alliance’s limits and eventual failure dominate the scene.