1015 



Obstacles to Systematic Government-Sponsored Exchange 



In a study prepared in 1970 for the Subcommittee on National 

 Security and International Operations of the Senate Committee on 

 Government OperatioDs, Professor Robert F. Byrnes, an authority 

 on exchange programs with both the Soviet Union and the PRO, 

 identified some of the poHtical difficulties which had hindered ex- 

 changes between the two countries until that time. He attributed these 

 to basic political differences and deep-seated nationalistic views.*^^ 

 Exchange programs with the People's Republic of China, Byrnes 

 continued, would be characterized — like the U.S.-Soviet programs, 

 but even more notably — by policy and ideological constraints: 



. . . The Chinese Communist style of negotiating and the Chinese sense of 

 time . . . will present Americans with even more recalcitrant and baffling diffi- 

 culties than has the Russian-Soviet system .... The impact of the past twenty- 

 five years of basic isolation from most of the world, especially of the years of the 

 Cultural Revolution, must be profound, even though we cannot evaluate it with 

 any confidence.*^* 



Bwnes foresaw that the Chinese would oppose the establishment of 

 formal exchange programs in the absence of regular diplomatic 

 recognition and relations between the two countries.*^" And again as 

 in the case of the early exchange programs between the United 

 States and the Soviet Union,*^^ he predicted that in their initial 

 exchange visits, ". . . the Chinese will ... no doubt concentrate 

 upon sending scientists and engineers to the United States in order to 

 benefit in those areas of study in which we have a clear superiority 

 and in which they have direct technical needs." ^^^ He also predicted 

 that the first American scholars to win acceptance for visits to China 

 would have both ideologically acceptable pacifist views and expertise 

 in subjects especially germane to Chinese scientific and technical 

 needs. He envisoned a two-step sequence: 



[First] invitation to individual American scholars by the Chinese Communist 

 government, which would identify and select scholars whom it considered friendly 

 or malleable or of value in fields of study it considered especially significant, such 

 as medicine and public health, computer technology, or genetics; and, [second], a 

 formal exchange of a small gioup of scholars, who would visit specific cities and 

 institutions under conditions carefully defined in advance by the two govern- 

 ments. At the same time, or probably even prior to such actions, American politi- 

 cal, religious, or pacifist groups might visit the People's Republic of China . . . 

 with the approval of the Chinese government. *^^ 



The history of recent scientific exchanges ^\dth the PRC reflects 

 many of the considerations B3'rnes described in his study for the 

 Senate. The first pre-summit U.S. scientists to \dsit China in 20 

 years were Drs. Arthur Galston and Ethan Singer, biologists who 

 strongly opposed U.S. defoliation in Vietnam. News accounts credit 

 Chinese reception of these U.S. visitors with the fact that they were 

 ideologically acceptable, reflecting the pacific stance B^Tnes predicted 

 would characterize early American scientific visitors to China. *^ It 



"8 U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on National Security 

 and International Operations, International Negotiations: When the Academic Door to Peking Opens: Memo- 

 randum, 1970, p. 3 (Committee Print)j 



<5« Ibid., p. 4. 



<«> Ibid., p. 2. 



«i See Chapter IV of this study. 



"2 Byrnes, op. cit., pp. 13-14. 



<63 Ibid., p. 10. 



<M Cohn (January 24, 1972), op. cit., p. A-1. 



