The Revolutionary Politics of Knowledge Transference: The Black Panthers in China, April 1972

• In Event: Unity in Dissent: Afro-Asian Intimacies

Abstract

The early 1970s marked a moment of profound uncertainty for the global left. Within the United States, the FBI’s counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO), which authorized intense state surveillance and infiltration to root out domestic “enemies,” deepened schisms within political groups and resulted in incarceration or death for many agitators. Once an undisputed exemplar of revolutionary values and practices, Maoist China, to the chagrin of activists in the West who romanticized the country as the model to emulate, elected to join the United Nations and receive an official diplomatic visit from Richard Nixon in 1972. The revolutionary calls of the late 1960s had culminated in the reactionary politics of détente.

For the leaders of the Black Panther Party, the willingness of the Chinese Communist Party—an original champion of Third World socialism—to seemingly capitulate to the Western capitalist order suggested the necessity of redefining “revolution.” Reeling from the death of prison activist George Jackson, Minister of Information and later Chairwoman Elaine Brown reflected, “We had to acknowledge… the blood we had shed was more than our party could continue to endure… China had been instructive. China’s recent entrance into the U.N. was neither contradictory to China’s goal of toppling U.S. imperialism nor an abnegation of revolutionary principles. It was a tactic…that offered us a great example.” The Panthers—having remade community-based service, or “survival programs,” their organizational centerpiece—dispatched an expedition to China in April 1972, where the team gleaned socialism in action.

My paper examines this particular avenue for the transference of Cold War political and technical knowledge across time, place, and political exigencies. The twenty members of the company comprised a diverse cross-section of U.S. radical activists; they included a nurse, a chaplain, college students, a lawyer and an architect. Dr. Bert Small, a physician with the George Jackson People’s Free Medical Research Health Clinic, took detailed notes on the Chinese socialist health care system. Emory Douglas, then Minister of Culture and designer of countless political cartoons, also participated in the activities. Over the course of four weeks, the delegation viewed revolutionary ballets and operas, toured elementary schools and universities, and visited with medical clinics specializing in both Western and holistic practices. Moreover, the Panther representatives engaged in extensive conversations with local Chinese artists, workers, and medical practitioners.

I contend that this visit allowed for the exchange of not only practical but also strategic knowledge concerning the mechanics of revolutionary-making in the early 1970s. I argue also that moments of technical and tactical cross-fertilization, such as this, constituted major pillars in the transcontinental imaginaries of Third Worldism and Afro-Asian solidarity. In presenting this case study in people’s diplomacy, my intention is to highlight the fluid interchange of expertise, philosophy, and political insight within and between non-state actors in the Third World.

Author

• Ruodi Duan, Harvard University