Between the Devil and the Deep Sea: C. K. Tseng, Mariculture, and the Politics of Science in Modern China

C. K. Tseng was a Chinese marine botanist trained in the United States before World War II who pioneered ocean farming and launched China as the world's largest producer of marine algae. After succeeding in supplying China with a new source of food and chemicals, Tseng survived inhuman treatment during the turbulent decade of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and resumed his work in the late 1970s to help China's drive toward modernization. Tseng's experience exemplifies that of a generation of Chinese scientists who persisted in the effort of "Saving China via Science" despite hardships under the Nationalist rule and Maoist purges. It also reveals tensions between science and state and between nationalism and internationalism. Tseng's story explores two largely uncharted territories in the history of science: the history of marine botany and of modern science in China.