Transnational exchange in the socialist world: GDR Specialists in China (1953-1964)

From 1953 to 1964, more than 700 East German specialists were sent by the SED to participate in China’s economic construction. Together with their Chinese fellow engineers and workers, These specialists contributed greatly to China’s industrial modernization. Even when the Soviets withdrew their specialists from China in 1960, the East Germans chose to stay. Before China reopened itself to the world at the end of the 1970s, the East Germans became the last group of European specialists stationed in China and weathered political and economic storms such as the Great Leap Forward, Great Famine and Sino-Soviet split. Drawing on multilateral archival sources from Germany and China, this project aims to shed light on this transnational exchange between China and Germany during the Cold War.