Minding the Gap: Zhou Peiyuan, Dorothy Hodgkin, and the Durability of Sino-Pugwash Networks

Mao-era Chinese foreign policymakers were never fully sold on the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Theoretical physicist Zhou Peiyuan had their blessing to attend four conferences between 1957 and 1960, but for the following twenty-five years policymakers in Beijing articulated official positions on Pugwash ranging from ambivalence to outright hostility. Nevertheless, Pugwash networks proved remarkably durable across those two-and-a-half decades. This chapter explores the role and nature of transnational scientific networks as channels of informal cross-bloc communication during this period in which Chinese scientists had no formal involvement in the PCSWA. In particular, it highlights the singular significance of two scientists, Zhou Peiyuan and Briton Dorothy Hodgkin, whose networks, international activities, and political connections placed them at the centre of efforts within Pugwash to pursue dialogue with China and in the process that eventually brought about the PRC’s formal re-engagement with the Pugwash Conferences in 1985.