This paper focuses on a significant cluster of scientists based in the United Kingdom whose engagement with China stemmed from a mixture of socialism, scientific internationalism, and scholarly friendships. Some, like Joseph Needham and J.D. Bernal, were ‘ideological notables’ as well known for their left-wing politics as their academic achievements. They had high-level positions in international organizations, occupied prominent positions within networks of like-minded academics and activists and had public profiles extending far beyond the world of science. Others, such as Howard E. Hinton or Kurt Mendelssohn, might not have enjoyed the same fame but they were nevertheless well-established figures in their scientific fields. Their visits to China after 1949 therefore had not only scientific value, but also provided the Chinese Communist Party distinctive propaganda opportunities diffracted through the lens of scientific exchange. Yet there was also a third category that included scientists like Kathleen Lonsdale and Dorothy Hodgkin, whose interactions were not so overtly propagandistic but still benefitted both scientists and Chinese policymakers. 

In all, such scientists’ engagement lay along a spectrum of different modes, incorporating elements of propaganda and scientific exchange in varying measures. Their common features and individual attractions highlight Chinese foreign policymakers’ and scientists’ priorities and interests from the latter years of the Chinese Civil War through to the early years of rapprochement and increasing international integration in the 1970s. This indicates that such scientists ought to be treated as a distinct group with its own characteristics and motivations rather than as identikit Socialist-world sympathizers.

With the advent of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), many Chinese academic, industrial, and government scientists felt compelled to use their expertise to respond to national need and to contribute their talents to the national military and economic development efforts that were taking place in previously underdeveloped areas in western China. Their training often did not correspond well to actual need, and many Chinese scientists found it necessary to retool. To address this imbalance, scientists and bureaucrats alike sought assistance from foreign allies, and addressed proposals to foreign partners such as the United States for the creation of training programs and other scientific advising relationships with foreign partners. Still other Chinese who resided abroad but wanted to make their own contributions to the war effort facilitated these proposals and relationships by liaising with US government contacts and creating scientific/technical/cultural organizations aimed at supporting overseas Chinese and furthering the interests of the Chinese nation. After the United States joined the war in 1941, with the encouragement of overseas Chinese facilitators, the US government became increasingly invested in responding to such proposals and in providing scientific and technical training and advice, as did numerous American scientists who worked during the 1940s as advisors and trainers. Through exploration of a set of short case studies of both Chinese and American scientists and government and non-government institutions, this paper illuminates the complex web of relationships that developed amongst these scientists, bureaucrats, and facilitators.

This paper explores the founding and early development of the department of physics at Christian Yenching University in Peking (Beijing).  It shows how this small physics department evolved into a major cradle of physics researchers in China over the period of the 1920s and 1930s.  It will demonstrate the indispensable contributions from the Rockefeller Foundation and American physicists, such as William Warren Stifler (1883-1954), Charles Hodge Corbett (1881-1963), and Paul Alexander Anderson (1898-1990), to the growth of the physics department as well as the advancement physics research and education in Republican China.

This paper examines the international and political background of the creation of Chinese Association of Scientific Workers, expounded its active role in the establishment and early activities of WFSW based on archives. As a new kind of scientific group, the AScW involved political affairs with profound international characteristics of that era. The Chinese AScW united the international and inland progressive intellectuals, prompted the transformation of the scientific institution and organization of scientific activities. More than an important window for China to keep relations with western science, the WFSW laid the foundation of the Sino-British official scientific communication. Meanwhile, the Chinese role in the WFSW was subject to the Sino-Soviet relationship.

From 1949 to 1958, Chinese scientific associations, including the All-China Federation of Natural Science Societies and the All-China Association for Science Popularization, acted as one of diplomatic canal to unite potential partners and fight opponents among the isolation around the world.
There were three modes of transnational activities to resist the isolation. The first was academic communication involved with diplomatic purposes, including guiding scientists to follow Soviet scientific career and holding academic conferences of the World Federation of Scientific Workers. At the same time, these associations would intervene in international affairs related with science. For example, to facilitate Hsue-shen Tsien’s return, the All-China Federation of Natural Science Societies sent a crucial letter to the secretary general of the United Nations. Finally, when the regime was offended, these professional associations would represent Chinese scientists to deliver condemnations.