China and the International Geophysical Year

Abstract

In the history of science during the cold war, the International Geophysical Year (IGY) 1957–58 often has been viewed as a great success story of global scientific collaboration across the Iron Curtain, with the only exception being the withdrawal of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from the endeavor when the IGY organizers admitted Taiwan in 1957. Thanks to research by Ronald Doel, we now know that the U.S. State Department played a central role in the controversy by prompting Taiwan to apply for IGY membership, but little is known about the mainland Chinese side of the story.2 In this essay we propose to examine Chinese sources to reconstruct the considerations that led China to join the IGY in the first place and the reactions to the Taiwanese issue that eventually led to its withdrawal. We will also examine the impact of the IGY on Chinese geophysical research even after its formal withdrawal from the collaboration.KeywordsScientific CollaborationForeign MinistryCentral CommissionIron CurtainInternational Geophysical YearThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.