Insect Control in Socialist China and the Corporate United States: The Act of Comparison, the Tendency to Forget, and the Construction of Difference in 1970s U.S.–Chinese Scientific Exchange

Abstract

In 1975, a delegation of U.S. entomologists traveled to socialist China to observe Chinese insect control science. Their overwhelmingly positive reports highlighted in relief the pernicious effects of pesticide corporations on U.S. agriculture; some entomologists hoped this would goad the United States to catch up to China in environmentally sensible insect control practices. Of course, insect control in socialist China carried its own political baggage, some of which-for example, mass mobilization and self-reliance--the state made highly visible to visitors, and some of which--for example, harsh treatment of scientists--it sought to obscure. For both the U.S. and the Chinese participants, the act of comparison itself was of primary significance in the exchange, allowing them to construct socialist Chinese science as refreshingly different from U.S. science. At the same time, however, this construction of difference meant forgetting the much longer transnational history in which U.S. and Chinese entomology had been intertwined.

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