Convenient Optimists? U.S. Transnational Actors in the Eyes of the PRC Foreign Policy Establishment, 1949–66

This paper examines the topic of U.S. citizens abroad in China during the Mao Zedong era (1949-1976), prior to the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and full normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979. Recent scholarship on African-American political travel to China during this period has already played a significant, though still underappreciated, role in debunking the myth that Maoist China was “closed” to Americans. Using unexamined materials from PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive, I have begun to reconstruct a picture of the extent of U.S. citizens’ travel to China during this politically tumultuous period. Rather than reiterating the familiar refrain that U.S. visitors to Cold War socialist countries were naïve political travelers, the argument advanced here is that the agendas of U.S. visitors were not always congruent with those of the PRC foreign policy establishment.

The major empirical contribution of the paper is that it details the various pathways and institutions through which U.S. citizens’ travel to the PRC was possible. Using internal state documents, it shows how PRC foreign policy goals of using Americans as agents of influence in their home country frequently collided with the interests and worldviews of the visitors themselves. However, other Americans did work closely with the central government in Beijing, and this group formed a community of permanent and semi-permanent advisors on affairs related primarily to the United States.  The analytic contribution of the paper is thus to suggest that, based on this evidence, there were in fact a diverse, though finite, range of motivations behind the phenomenon of U.S. citizens’ travel to China during the early Cold War. In keeping with the theme of this panel, primary emphasis will be placed on the experiences and agendas of African Americans, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and William Worthy, Jr.