ABSTRACT
During the Cultural Revolution, the People’s Republic of China championed a revolutionary approach to science in which knowledge was to be produced and applied by the laboring masses. One audience for this revolutionary science was Americans, who again began visiting China in 1971. Many were enthralled by Chinese vernacular science - some by its egalitarianism, others by its exoticism. Elite American scientists remained sceptical, however, and continued to argue that China lagged in global, teleological scientific development. This chapter traces how these two discourses on Chinese science competed through the 1970s. Further, it shows how the latter discourse ultimately won out - not only among Americans but, more consequentially, in China itself.
