It is well known that self-reliance was one of the guiding principles of the Maoist era. It had been practised by Communist base areas located in (for example) Jiangxi, northern Sichuan and Yan'an before 1949. The doctrine heavily influenced patterns of trade between China's provinces after 1949 when all were expected to strive towards the goal of self-reliance in grain production, especially after the famine of 1958–62. Perhaps more importantly, the doctrine of self-reliance was exercised at a national level after 1949. In this regard, China was following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union. Not that emulation of Stalin's “socialism in one country” was the principal driving force. Rather, the logic was both strategic and economic. A self-reliant China would be less vulnerable to attack, and economic self-reliance would insulate China from the damaging fluctuations in world demand that laid waste to the Treaty Port economy during the 1930s.

Nevertheless, the Maoist approach to self-reliance was always infused with a healthy dose of pragmatism. The communist base areas traded across their borders with Kuomintang-held territory when they could. The goal of provincial self-reliance in grain production was tempered by a recognition of agricultural realities. Thus, Sichuan and Heilongjiang were large-scale suppliers of grain to other provinces during the 1950s, and both Hebei and Liaoning were consistent net importers. In times of harvest failure, even habitual exporters were allowed to import grain; Sichuan in 1976 was a case in point. There was also a recognition that it was sensible for some regions to specialize in cash crop production and to import grain; that was true of the cotton-growing regions of Hebei, sugar cane producers in southern China and of many ethnic minority areas. More significantly, China's engagement with the world economy was considerable after 1949. Just as the Soviet Union traded extensively with Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, so did China after 1949. For example, there was much trade with the Soviet Union and its satellites during the 1950s. Grain imports were instrumental in bringing the famine to an end during 1961–62. Imports of machinery from Western Europe and Japan during the 1970s played a critical role in launching China's green revolution. And throughout the Maoist era, there was considerable trade via Hong Kong.

China's international deviations from self-reliance are the subject matters of Jason Kelly's book. His goal is to document the diplomatic efforts required to make such trade possible, and the ways in which China's leaders negotiated with their foreign counterparts. He focuses on the period between the mid-1940s and the early 1970s (there is very little in this book about the post-1972 period). What emerges from Kelly's account is the tension between political and trade objectives – in 1958, for example, the desire to trade with Japan came into direct conflict with Japan's improving relations with Taiwan and the burning of a Chinese flag in Nagasaki. Sometimes political imperatives won out, as in 1958 when trade with Japan came to a virtually complete halt. At other times, perhaps most notably when China imported grain during the early 1960s in response to famine conditions, political imperatives were sacrificed.

There is little in Kelly's book that is novel. Most scholars are familiar with the notion of communist countries seemingly flying in the face of ideological imperatives and trading with the capitalist world, and there are few surprises in the seven descriptive chapters that form the core of Kelly's narrative. Still, he makes good use of Party documentary sources and the wengao and nianpu of China's leaders to chart the evolution of trade policy from 1947 (when the Communist Party started to make preparations for the exercise of power) to the late 1970s. Kelly also makes extensive use of American and British diplomatic materials on the period. It is not entirely straightforward to identify the sources Kelly has used – there is no bibliography – but the sources are documented in the book's extensive endnotes.

Any would-be reader should also note that this is a book that falls with the discipline of diplomatic history. As a result, there is little engagement with the economics of China's international trade. There is not a single table in the book, and only two rather anodyne charts. It is not as though the data do not exist. On the contrary. Moreover, the very fact that international trade is akin to double entry bookkeeping – China's import side of the ledger is matched by a corresponding entry in the exporting country – means that we can be far more confident about the reliability of these numbers than those for every other aspect of the Chinese economy. In other words, we can ask (and answer) all manner of questions about the role of trade during the Maoist era. But Kelly makes no attempt to do this. It is simply asserted that trade and its legacies – in terms of acquired skills and knowledge – were important. Accordingly, an opportunity has been missed here to investigate whether capitalist technology was essential for Maoist survival.

This lack of quantification is matched by a lack of analytical heft. Terms like “capitalist” and “communist” proliferate, but there is no attempt to discuss what these terms might mean – was for example “communist” China so different to “capitalist” West Germany during the 1950s? We are left to work out for ourselves whether Kelly includes trade with Japan and South Korea, or trade with under-developed countries when he airily talks of China's trade with capitalist countries. As significantly, there is little discussion of the Maoist theory of self-reliance and how it evolved. Would, for example, China have pursued self-reliance in the way that it did in the absence of the US trade embargo? In other words, was it an ideological choice – or a pragmatic response to circumstance which was then given an ideological justification?

For all that, this is a useful contribution to the literature. Most sentient human beings will be glad to be spared both another trawl through international relations theory and an otiose theoretical framework. And it is all too easy for reviewers to moan about omissions. One cannot cover everything, and Kelly has – not unreasonably – chosen to focus on the diplomatic aspects of Maoist trade relations rather than either the economics of China's trade or the origins of the doctrine of self-reliance. And that which Kelly sacrifices in terms of economic analysis or theory, he atones for in his nuanced analysis of China's trade diplomacy. He writes lucidly, and there are many engaging anecdotes. For this, we are in his debt.