Abstrakt
When China started "Learning from the Soviet Union" in 1950s, Soviet satellite regimes in Eastern Europe also offered various forms of scientific and technical assistance and, to a lesser extent, explored opportunities for their experts in China. Czechoslovakia closely followed Soviet policy and made contacts with China a priority of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences after ca. 1955.
This paper shows, using mainly Czech archival material, some of the most developed areas of subsequent cooperation as well as ideas which for various reasons did not bring the expected benefit or failed to materialize at all. China's goals in the relationship were domestic: it used Czechoslovakia as a base for training experts in engineering and applied chemistry, sometimes so directly focused on practical knowledge that it caused suspicion and stonewalling among the Czechoslovak authorities.
Czechoslovakia's goals, on the other hand, were outward-looking: Czechoslovak students and scholars hoped to tap China's unique natural and cultural resources to create knowledge marketable in the wider world, or access recent scientific developments from the West from which they were cut off by the Iron Curtain, in areas such as design of scientific instruments, chemistry of plant steroids and control theory.