Scientists had a distinctive part to play in the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign relations prior to it coming to power as well as during the early decades of the People’s Republic. The Conclusion considers the significance of this sustained party and party-state interest in scientists’ international activities for subsequent developments from the 1970s through China’s rise as a science and technology power by the early twenty-first century. These relations did not just spring out of nowhere, fully formed, and ready to go with the onset of rapprochement. Nor were they simply a product of long-term Americanisation. Consequently, the Conclusion explores notable areas of continuity and others of revived relevance when it comes to the party-state and the spectrum of international activities undertaken by scientists.

Chapter 7 focuses on the economic and political reforms of General Secretary Zhao Ziyang (1919–2005) and his predecessor Hu Yaobang (1915–1989). The reforms are placed within the context of both the controversial “reform and opening” policies of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), and also the larger context of intra-Party ideological debates dating back to founding of the nation. Zhao’s early career as Party secretary in his native county before 1949 is contrasted with his later posting to Guangdong as part of an initiative to break local resistance to land reform in the 1950s. The disastrous Great Leap Forward is presented as a formative experience for Zhao, leading him to side with Mao’s critics, a decision which would in turn lead to his fall from power in 1967. His eventual rehabilitation by Zhou Enlai in 1971 is described as having led Zhao to support political and economic reform beginning with the Li Yizhe controversary of 1974 and culminating in his work in the late 1970s as Party secretary in Sichuan, where he was responsible for implementing Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the agricultural sector. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Zhao’s rapid promotion to premier by 1980, and his pragmatic approach to political reform and liberalization, which would lead to his eventual downfall for a second time on the eve of the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, and contested legacy in the PRC today.