China's Cold War Science Diplomacy

In this revisionist history, Gordon Barrett seeks to show that, contra our impression of the People's Republic of China as a scientifically isolated country during its early decades, it was an active participant in international scientific networks. The key concept, as suggested by the book's title, is “science diplomacy,” which, Barrett explains, continues to defy definitional consensus. He does, however, offer a working one for the PRC: the close choreography by party officials and political and scientific leaders of international activities involving prominent Chinese scientists that interwove elements of propaganda, activism, and exchange (4). Two other key themes central to the book are the salience of United Front Work in guiding and, perhaps more significantly, constraining Chinese scientific internationalism, and the identification of China as an actor and shaper of the international scientific order, not merely a consumer.The book traces this history chronologically from the 1940s to the early 1970s. Following an introductory chapter where Barrett situates his work in relation to the historiographies of science diplomacy, Sino-US scientific exchange, the Cold War, and science in China, the first chapter tracks Chinese involvement in the World Federation of Scientific Workers (WFSW) from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. It shows how United Front Work was central in shaping initially the CCP's and later the PRC's approach to transnational scientific activity. As the PRC found itself excluded from international institutions like UNESCO, it focused its energies on gaining influence and prominence within the WFSW, culminating in playing host to the organization's tenth anniversary celebration in 1956.The second chapter shifts attention to Chinese participation in the early Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs during the second half of the 1950s. A key tension explored here is the ability of individual scientists—most notably the physicist Zhou Peiyuan, his onetime student Yu Guangyuan, and the geologist Li Siguang—to exert any kind of autonomy within the parameters imposed by party demands, even as there was a growing consensus on the Chinese side that the Pugwash Conferences had been hijacked by US imperialist designs.The Sino-Soviet split of 1960 transformed China's geopolitical calculus and, by extension, its science diplomacy. In the third chapter, Barrett shows that what followed was a disavowal of the Pugwash Conferences and an attempt to increase engagement within the World Federation of Scientific Workers. The latter too, however, became untenable in the face of tensions with the Soviet Union. The result was a much more radical turn of going it alone, as exemplified in chapter 4, which charts the organization of the Peking Science Symposium Conferences in 1964 and 1966. Barrett uncovers not just what happened in Beijing but the vast networks of institutions and institutional arrangements that made the conferences possible, from hosting delegates, organizing sessions, and panels to organizing tours to a variety of work units. The chronological narrative ends here, with the advent of the Cultural Revolution effectively terminating these activities.A final fifth chapter offers case studies of five British scientists—all socialist in their ideological orientation—and their engagement with China from the 1950s to the 1980s. They include luminaries such as John Desmond Bernal as well as others who are less famous. Of the five, two are women, the x-ray crystallographers Kathleen Lonsdale and Dorothy Hodgkin. Collectively, the cases point to the variety of interpersonal ties that such exchanges fostered, ties that in many cases survived the political transitions of 1978 to take on new significance in later years. The conclusion places the book's main arguments in dialogue with three themes: international science and China's place within it; the legacies of science diplomacy for the reform era, and the continuing role of United Front Work in shaping science diplomacy.Historians of PRC science will encounter many familiar names here, all éminences grises of Chinese science: Zhu Kezhen, Zhou Peiyuan, Hua Luogeng, Li Siguang, and Tu Changwang, among others. Zhou performs arguably the most important role—he is a key player in nearly every chapter—and emerges as the PRC's preeminent science diplomat. On the other side are an array of Western scientists, including such notables as J. D. Bernal, Albert Einstein (posthumously), and Bertrand Russell.Barrett's tightly argued and empirically robust chapters demonstrate compellingly that science diplomacy advanced the state's foreign policy goals. He notes at one point: “As with all the science diplomacy activities discussed in this book, geopolitical and ideological features were visibly interwoven into the fabric of these conferences” (133). The corollary—whether these initiatives advanced science in China in any meaningful way—remains less clear (45). The state's sustained emphasis on science as an arena of international action also sets up an interesting question about where science diplomacy fit within a larger matrix of diplomatic strategies that also included trade, cultural exchange, infrastructure, and even the gifting of animals.Among the most interesting arguments Barrett makes is regarding the CCP's use of person-to-person contacts to conduct science diplomacy and thus foreign policy (see, for example, 64, 105, 123). Western scientists may have believed they were corresponding privately with their Chinese colleagues, but rarely were the replies they received anything but the outcome of repeated discussion and drafting involving various leaders, ministries, and institutions. Often, someone as senior as Zhou Enlai was also involved. This sets up an interesting interpretive conundrum, for having so normalized such an approach to personal correspondence, the Chinese state and its functionaries may have struggled to account for the fact that the foreign scientists they corresponded with frequently did not share such a relationship with their own state and scientific institutions. Rather, many of those active in WFSW or Pugwash were likely viewed with suspicion by their own states.Barrett's detailed unpacking of the negotiations and preparations surrounding the hosting of events brings to light some nice details. For instance, among the perks that visiting science conference delegates could enjoy were free haircuts. And every foreign delegate at the Peking Science Symposium was placed into one of five political categories, from most sympathetic to the PRC's position to political enigmas.The geopolitically overdetermined nature of science diplomacy that emerges in these pages leaves one wondering whether a less freighted term may have given Barrett greater conceptual freedom. Early in the book and then again at the very end Barrett offers us such a contender when he describes a lot of what the Chinese were doing as scientific outreach (see, for example, 3, 4, 8, 60, 214). Treating the transnational links of Chinese scientists in largely positive terms also omits from consideration those (numerous?) instances in which Chinese scientists found such links to be a political liability. To mention but one case, the extensive contacts in India and Europe of the paleobotanist Hsü Jen 徐仁 (Xu Ren) forever rendered him suspicious in the CCP's eyes. Furthermore, although Barrett mines an impressive archive—much of it sadly no longer accessible today—there is very little discussion of science itself, whether in the form of different disciplines or in the form of specific scientific problems. Finally, for a book about scientific personalities and their encounters, the text is sorely lacking in photographs. This absence is especially noticeable given the wonderfully evocative image of Li Siguang that graces the book's cover.All in all, this is a noteworthy contribution to our understanding of the PRC's participation in international science during its first few decades. Beyond its China-specific insights, it also offers a valuable case of science diplomacy by a prominent socialist state during the first few decades of the Cold War

Ancient history · China · Cold war · Diplomacy · Economic history · Political science · Politics · History · International Science and Diplomacy · Law · Space exploration and regulation · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments

• Concluding conversation

  Open Access•G Barrett, C Edington et al.•The British Journal for the…•2024

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