Society marks 60 years of Sino-British friendship

On Saturday, May 15, 1965, Joseph Needham addressed a packed assembly hall in Church House Westminster, central London, to announce the birth of "an organization for fostering friendship and mutual understanding between the British and the Chinese people".

The renowned Cambridge University biochemist and science historian recounted his friendship with visiting Chinese scholars, his study of the Chinese language, and his scientific and technological liaison mission during World War II in Chongqing, the country's wartime capital in Southwest China.

"One must always remember that China is not simply a different country from our own … but a different civilization," he told an audience that included bishops, members of the parliament, professors, artists, writers, and trade union leaders.

At the time, the People's Republic of China was isolated — not recognized by the United States and mired in a deepening split with the Soviet Union. Although Britain had established diplomatic relations with China in 1954, it still opposed Beijing's entry into the United Nations.

"There is thus a much greater gulf of fundamental assumptions to be bridged, as well as all the fascinating differences that arise in philosophy, art, landscape, religion, customs, and so on," continued Needham, who had already published the early volumes of Science and Civilisation in China, the first comprehensive work to celebrate China's scientific achievements and their connections to global knowledge, in contrast to Eurocentric histories of science.

"This requires a real effort toward understanding, the very purpose of our new society," he said.

It was named the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, or SACU, which, in the following decades, played a vital role in people-to-people exchanges between China and the United Kingdom.