Speaking about China, Learning from China: Amateur China Experts in 1970s America

Abstract

Realizing that soon the time will have passed when a twoor threeweek trip to the 'People's Republic' qualifies one as a 'China expert,' I want to seize the opportunity to join the ranks before they close.l With this droll confession, an American sociologist of science in the spring of 1981 began a short article in an academic journal. Speaking about China to the American public, he realized, was a privilege of those who had been there, not of professional China scholars. Indeed, beginning with ping-pong diplomacy in April 1971, the renewal of relations between China and the United States ushered in a brief new era of amateur China experts in America.2 While academics with decades of research behind them struggled to arrange their first visits to the place they had studied for decades, scores of Americans who could not even order a bowl of noodles in Chinese secured invitations to tour China's schools, factories, communes, and research institutions. Some were professionals eager to discover what their counterparts in China were doing. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai particularly welcomed scientists with advanced knowledge of subjects valuable to China's modemization.3 Others were members of organizations like the U.S.-China