scholarly journals Scientific ideologies on the move: Sino-British exchanges, scientific freedoms and the governance of science in Britain, 1961–1966

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Newman
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Governance Of Science ◽  
Science Diplomacy ◽  
Considerable Debate ◽  
Civil Science ◽  
Ideological Attitudes ◽  
Exchange Programmes

In the early 1960s, amidst a period of considerable debate surrounding how civil science in Britain should be governed, British scientists—especially those associated with the Royal Society—and their counterparts in the People's Republic of China (PRC) began tentative exchange programmes. Although such unusual interactions between Cold War adversaries were enabled by claims that science was a universal and apolitical phenomenon, the ways in which institutional and individual participants were embroiled in these domestic debates illuminate how their ideological outlooks shaped their views on exchange and on the science they encountered. By focusing on three interrelated exchanges during this period—an individual scientist's visit to the PRC, a Royal Society delegation to China, and a larger research programme bringing junior Chinese researchers to Britain—I argue that participating British scientists' conceptualizations of ‘scientific freedom’ framed how they judged science in China, and the value of these exchanges; their observations and actions during these interactions reflected their views on domestic British debates over the governance of science. This study thereby sheds light on how the ideological attitudes of participants of science diplomacy shape its practice.

Making It Count

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arunabh Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Statistics ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

In 1949, at the end of a long period of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People's Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world's largest nations was committed to fundamentally reengineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no reliable statistical data about their own country. This book is the history of efforts to resolve this “crisis in counting.” The book explores the choices made by political leaders, statisticians, academics, statistical workers, and even literary figures in attempts to know the nation through numbers. It shows that early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of exhaustive enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the mid-1950s. Unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then-exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), when probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an ethnographic enterprise. By acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences, the book not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes wider developments in the history of statistics and data. Anchored in debates about statistics and its relationship to state building, the book offers fresh perspectives on China's transition to socialism.

John Leighton Stuart and U.S.-Chinese Communist Rapprochement in 1949: Was There Another “Lost Chance in China”?

1982 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 74-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-ming Shaw
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
June July ◽  
The Cold War

Reverend John Leighton Stuart (1876–1962) served as U.S. ambassador to China from July 1946 until August 1949. In the many discussions of his ambassadorship the one diplomatic mission that has aroused the most speculation and debate was his abortive trip to Beijing, contemplated in June–July 1949, to meet with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Some students of Sino-American relations have claimed that had this trip been made the misunderstanding and subsequent hostility between the United States and the People's Republic of China in the post-1949 period could have been avoided; therefore, the unmaking of this trip constituted another “lost chance in China” in establishing a working relationship between the two countries. But others have thought that given the realities of the Cold War in 1949 and the internal political constraints existing in each country, no substantial result could have been gained from such a trip. Therefore, the thesis of a “lost chance in China” was more an unfounded speculation than a credible affirmation.

“Friendship First”: China's Sports Diplomacy during the Cold War

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 133-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guanhua Wang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Sports Diplomacy ◽  
Sports Policy ◽  
Ping Pong ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThe Cold War was an era of ideological conflict and hostility between socialist and capitalist countries. In this period of intense political animosity, the People's Republic of China (PRC) advocated the ideal of .friendship first. in sport. While the so-called .ping-pong diplomacy. of 1971 is well known because it contributed to détente between the PRC and the United States,1 there has been no comprehensive examination of China's Cold War sports policy as a whole. This study addresses this gap.

Overseas Chinese Commerce, Decolonization, and the Cold War in Southeast Asia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Lim
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Overseas Chinese ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Cold War

The term “overseas Chinese” refers to people who left the Qing Empire (and later on, the Republic of China or ROC) for a better life in Southeast Asia. Some of them arrived in Southeast Asia as merchants. They were either involved in retail or wholesale trade, or importing and exporting goods between the Qing Empire/ROC and Southeast Asia. With the decolonization of Southeast Asia from the end of World War II in 1945, overseas Chinese commerce was targeted by nationalists because the merchants were seen to have been working together with the colonial authorities and to have enriched themselves at the expense of locals. New nationalist regimes in Southeast Asia introduced anti-Chinese legislation in order to reduce the overseas Chinese presence in economic activities. Chinese merchants were banned from certain trades and trade monopolies were broken down. Several Southeast Asian states also attempted to assimilate the overseas Chinese by forcing them to adopt local-sounding names. However, the overseas Chinese continued to be dominant in the economies of Malaya (later Malaysia) and Singapore. Malaysia introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), which has an anti-Chinese agenda, in 1970. The decolonization process also occurred during the Cold War, and Chinese merchants sought to continue trade with China at a time when governments in Southeast Asia were suspicious of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Attempts by merchants from Malaya and Singapore to trade with the PRC in 1956 were considered to have failed, as the PRC had other political concerns. By the time Singapore had gained independence in 1965, the door to investment and trade with the PRC was shut, and the Chinese in Southeast Asia turned their backs on China by taking on citizenship in their countries of residence.

Inscriptions on the Wall

Out of War ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 237-255
Author(s):  
Mariane C. Ferme
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Competing Interests

Drawing on the image of a “Chinese Store” in the author’s photographic archive, this chapter addresses past traces of Chinese presences in remote reaches of the rural landscape of Sierra Leone—and in commodities widely circulating in the country—in contrast to the more monumental scale of present-day Chinese projects in African states. Here Cold War alliances and competing interests of two Chinas (Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China) superimpose themselves on an archaeology of Chinese presence in West Africa that reaches back to the long term.

Mass Immunization in East Asia and Global Health, 1960–80

2019 ◽  
pp. 144-165
Author(s):  
Mary Augusta Brazelton
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Rural Health ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Mass Immunization ◽  
The Republic ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter investigates the role of mass immunization in Chinese medical diplomacy programs during the 1960s and 1970s. While most scholarship has stressed the influence of barefoot doctor and other paraprofessional training programs in the emergence of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a global model for rural health services, mass immunization programs in China had measurable results—in terms of lowered incidence of disease—that helped legitimize these training efforts and the nation's program of rural health care more broadly. Ultimately, the global popularization of Chinese public health was a consequence of regional competition within East Asia. During the Cold War era, the PRC used medical aid to foreign countries to compete for power and influence with the Republic of China on Taiwan, where institutions and personnel that the Nationalist Party brought to the island after 1948 built upon practices established during the period of Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945). The involvement of Taiwan in medical diplomacy reflected the expansionist agendas of its Western allies in the Cold War as well as competition with the PRC for recognition as the legitimate government of mainland China.

Martin Folkes

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
New Science ◽  
Definition Of

In 1750, Martin Folkes became the only individual who was President of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, and he contributed to efforts to unite both organizations. Although he failed, illness forcing him to resign both offices, this chapter outlines the book’s analysis of the ensuing disciplinary boundaries between the two organizations in the early Georgian era in the context of Folkes’s life and letters. While it is normally assumed that natural philosophy and antiquarianism are disciplines that were fast becoming disconnected in this period, this work will reconsider these assumptions. The Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries were nearly reunited for good reason. Both societies incorporated techniques and affinities from antiquarianism—natural history and landscape—and the ‘new science’—engineering principles, measurement, and empiricism. Using Folkes’s life and letters, this biography will examine the disciplinary boundaries between the humanities and sciences in early Georgian Britain and reassess the extent to which the separation of these ‘two cultures’ developed in this era. It will also consider to what extent Folkes continued the Newtonian programme in mathematics, optics, and astronomy on the Continent. In this manner, the work will refine its definition of Newtonianism and its scope in the early eighteenth century, elucidating and reclaiming the vibrant research programme that Folkes promoted in the period of English science least well understood between the age of Francis Bacon and the present.

scholarly journals An ‘Exceedingly Delicate Undertaking’: Sino-American Science Diplomacy, 1966–78

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200941988827
Author(s):  
Pete Millwood
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Open Door ◽  
Open Door Policy ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Global Science ◽  
American Science ◽  
Science Diplomacy ◽  
Us Government

In the early twentieth century, Chinese science flourished, buoyed by the country’s active connections to the global scientific community. No country developed deeper ties to Chinese scientists than the United States (US) – until cooperation ceased after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. This article examines efforts by American scientists to rebuild a relationship with their Chinese colleagues and to reintegrate China into global science. It traces how a transnational American organization – the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the PRC (CSCPRC) – initially failed but ultimately succeeded in extending the frontier of their epistemic community by reopening China to American scientists. Drawing on records from this non-governmental organization, interpolated with Chinese and US government sources, this article argues that the CSCPRC’s failures and successes depended on how effectively they adapted their scholarly initiative to changing US-China diplomatic ties. Scientists were not beholden to politics, however; indeed, they made a critical contribution to the development of Sino-American diplomacy, helping reestablish official relations in 1978. This article further reveals the transnational origins of China’s opening to the world and subsequent meteoric economic development, as well as the nexus between science and America’s historic ‘Open Door’ policy.

Congress and the Cold War: U.S.-China Policy, 1955

1981 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 80-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Policy Area ◽  
China Policy ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
China Mainland ◽  
The Cold War

Perhaps no other foreign policy area brought forth the emotional anti communism characteristic of the 1950s as did American relations with the People's Republic of China. The so–called “ loss of China ”issue beginning in 1949, for which the Republicans primarily blamed the Democrats, severely strained the bipartisan approach towards foreign policy. In addition, four years before he died in 1951, Republican foreign policy leader Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg excluded China policy from the area of bipartisan agreement, while his party's loyalty to the defeated Nationalists remained strong. Senator Joseph McCarthy's“communists–in– government” charges during the Korean War, when American forces were engaged in combat with the People's Liberation Army, further exacerbated relations between the Republican and Democratic parties, and between the legislative and executive branches of government. Ominously, the possibility of a preventive strike on the China mainland also became the focus of serious consideration and possible implementation during the Formosa Strait confrontation of 1954–55.

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