Stefano Chessa Altieri

My doctoral project seeks to demonstrate how the events in Beijing forced a recalibration of U.S. priority hierarchy in its relationship with China, while also revealing the complexities of the policymaking process in Washington, where strategic decisions became progressively entangled with domestic political considerations. By drawing a multifaceted picture of both governmental and non-governmental actors involved, the study aims to provide an integrated, dual-level examination – incorporating both top-down and bottom-up perspectives – of the forces influencing U.S.-China relations during this pivotal period. These new dynamics, the research shows, exacerbated the tension between a human right driven foreign policy, growing economic interests and interdependencies, and the objective to co-opt and integrate China within the post-Cold War US-led international order. Additionally, the massacre in Beijing undermined the prevailing belief that Deng Xiaoping’s market-oriented reforms, initiated in the late 1970s, would lead to gradual political liberalization in China. It therefore exposed the limits of a problematic, triumphalist interpretation of the end of the Cold War as the definitive victory of freedom, democracy, and human rights.

Teaching

• Sciences Po, Reims Campus: "Winter School - Transatlantic Relations from 1945 to Present" (conférence de méthode, 2022)
• Sciences Po, Le Havre Campus : "History of the Modern World, XX-XXI Century" (conférence de méthode, 2022)