Hinton, Harold C.

Harold Clendenin Hinton (1924 – September 24, 1993) was an American sinologist and scholar of international relations. Born in France to a New York Times correspondent, he moved with his father to Washington, D.C., where he attended school. His college education at Harvard was interrupted by his service in the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he continued study at Harvard, receiving his PhD in 1946 under the direction of John King Fairbank. He began teaching at Georgetown University, and became one of the first American academics to specialize in the study of the emerging communist government of China. After brief stints at various universities in Washington and New York, he joined the Institute of Sino-Soviet Studies at George Washington University in 1964; during this period he worked as a government advisor on Sino-Soviet relations and an analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He retired in 1992, and died at Estes Park, Colorado in 1993.