China's Cold War Science Diplomacy

The first extended study of Chinese engagement in international science during the Cold War.

Gordon Barrett (Author)

9781108844574, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 August 2022

300 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.55 kg

'Gordon Barrett has probed deeply into a variety of sources in writing this interesting and suggestive book. He offers new insights into how science served China's united-front operations … the study also prompts us to think more carefully about science and international affairs in our current era of transnational science and technology.' Richard P. Suttmeier, H-Sci-Med-Tech

During the early decades of the Cold War, the People's Republic of China remained outside much of mainstream international science. Nevertheless, Chinese scientists found alternative channels through which to communicate and interact with counterparts across the world, beyond simple East/West divides. By examining the international activities of elite Chinese scientists, Gordon Barrett demonstrates that these activities were deeply embedded in the Chinese Communist Party's wider efforts to win hearts and minds from the 1940s to the 1970s. Using a wide range of archival material, including declassified documents from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive, Barrett provides fresh insights into the relationship between science and foreign relations in the People's Republic of China.

Acknowledgements
Note on the text
List of key abbreviations
Introduction
1. A Scientific United Front at Home and Abroad: Chinese Communist Party-Aligned Science Organisations and the World Federation of Scientific Workers, 1946–1956
2. Between Pugwash and the party-state: Scientists, agency, and transnational activism in the early Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, 1955–1960
3. 'Friends and comrades, we fight against imperialism': The radical evolution of China's science diplomacy, 1960–1968
4. Linking the local, national, and international: Scientific organisations and foreign affairs in the 'Peking Science Symposium' conferences, 1964–1966
5. A spectrum of propaganda and scientific exchange: British socialist scientists and 'New China'
Conclusion: Situating scientists in China's foreign relations
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]