Abstract
Following the establishment of revolutionary regimes in 1948 and 1949, Czechoslovakia and China entered a period of unprecedented intensity of contacts in various branches. Prominent scientists from both countries first met at the World Peace Congress in Prague, but exchanges of students and scientific personnel only developed in the second half of the 1950s.
This paper will examine the causes of reluctance of Czechoslovak and Chinese scientists to work more closely with their revolutionary brethren, and the areas in which those contacts eventually did bring some fruit. Using material from the Czech archives, I will argue that despite proclamations of shared socialist values and political facilitation of scientific contacts, the two countries were not attractive destinations for each other, especially for most of those scientists who were politically well positioned to travel internationally.
Chinese internal upheavals and the Sino-Soviet split finally squandered most of the goodwill that was created in the heyday of scientific exchanges in 1956-59.