The Fight for “Fairness”

Abstract

This thesis argues that China currently falls within what economic historian W.W. Rostow called the “drive to maturity” stage of economic development, and that America underwent its own drive to maturity in the decades following the end of the Civil War. It goes on to demonstrate that the anti-competitive practices used by firms in post-Civil War America are similar to those being used in contemporary China and, congruently, that policies recently enacted in China in order to curtail those practices are comparable to a number of policies that have been implemented in the United States. Finally, this thesis contends that any evaluation of Western-style anti-unfair competition policies in China today must take the peculiarities of its own economic history into consideration in order to yield an accurate analysis.