Living in a Brand-New Land: Americans in Socialist China, 1950s–70s

Abstract: This paper examines how the CCP leaders including Zhou Enlai negotiated the relationship between Socialist China and American intellectuals and how American intellectuals and students were accepted in China from the 1950s to the 1970s. Chen’s paper will explore the following issues: 1) At the level of central government and cultural policy, the interaction between CCP leaders with American intellectuals such as William Hinton; 2) At the level of everyday life, local institution and education, the lives of American intellectuals and students in Socialist China and the cultural exchanges between them and Chinese institutions and students during this time. 3) At the level of media, how American intellectuals’ lives and works such as William Hinton’s Fanshen were reported in Chinese communication system. Through investigating these topics, Chen’s paper seeks to highlight the complicated spectrum of the Sino-American relationship, its changing faces and multi-leveled layers (i.e., the apparent Sino-American conflict and the latent Sino-American Rapprochement) during China’s Socialist period.