An 'exceedingly delicate undertaking': Sino-American science diplomacy, 1966–78

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

Precursor-Like Anomalies prior to the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake: A Critical-but-Constructive Review

Results published since the last three years on the observations of the precursor-like anomalies before the May 12, 2008, Wenchuan, Ms8.0 earthquake are collected and analyzed. These retrospective case studies would have provided heuristic clues about the preparation process of this inland great earthquake and the predictability of this destructive event if the standards for the rigorous test of earthquake forecast schemes were strictly observed. At least in some of these studies, however, several issues still need to be further examined to confirm or falsify the connection of the reported observations with the Wenchuan earthquake. Some of the problems are due to the inevitable limitation of observational infrastructure at the recent time, but some of the problems are due to the lack of communication about the test of earthquake forecast schemes. For the interdisciplinary studies on earthquake forecast, reminding of the latter issue seems of special importance for promoting the works and cooperation in this field