Beginning in the 19th century, Chinese agricultural, sericultural, and medical experts worked to adapt scientific knowledge and technology to local and indigenous contexts throughout Asia and the world. Using tropes of circulation, transplantation, cosmopolitanism, and networks, each of the papers of this panel explores how science was transformed as it moved across China and its environs. Peter Lavelle (Temple University) examines how sericulture technologies transplanted by Chinese experts into Chinese Central Asia embodied the claims of Chinese science about the natural world and its colonial subjects. Jongsik Christian Yi (Harvard University) discusses how the literal and metaphorical grafting of imported varieties of honey nectar trees onto local roostocks reveals the global nature of Longquanyi peach. Wayne Soon (Vassar College) shows how the Overseas Chinese and American aid organizations were instrumental in shaping medical sciences in early Chinese Communism, challenging the existing narratives of nativism and independence stressed by the Chinese Communists during the Second World War. James Lin (University of Washington) explores the centrality of the Global South in agricultural science networks in 1970s Taiwan, where Taiwanese experts leveraged its success in Green Revolution sciences for the purposes of greater political integration and international status. Together, these papers explore how a diverse set of international actors shaped East Asian sciences and their political, environmental, and cultural dynamics within a global setting.
