Franz Schurmann, a sociologist and historian who was an influential scholar of modern China and a co-founder of Pacific News Service in 1970, died Friday at his San Francisco home of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, his family said. He was 84.

Mr. Schurmann taught at UC Berkeley for 38 years and headed its Center for Chinese Studies. He spoke a dozen languages and wrote more than a half dozen books on China and U.S. foreign policy. His writings early in the Cold War accurately predicted the political rift between China and the Soviet Union....