Dr. Lucian Pye, an influential political scientist who marshaled a piercing intellect, psychoanalytic insights and plain intuition to take startling new perspectives on area studies, particularly concerning China and other Asian nations, died Sept. 5. He was 86.

The immediate cause was pneumonia, said his daughter Virginia Pye, who added that his health had deteriorated after a fall in July.

As a Sinologist, Pye advised the State Department and the National Security Council and was considered a peer of the great China experts of his generation like John Fairbank of Harvard. Pye was a leader of the National Committee on United States-China Relations when it laid the groundwork for the U.S. table tennis team to visit China in 1971, and he later served as acting chairman.