Qian is a typical opportunist, who had been contacting ccp since 1930s. He was already away from military and academia for years, while pouring huge sum of money into his immigration case. After deported from US, his job in China was mostly management.
Being raised by KMT and switching to CCP via the US matches this general narrative. But perhaps 'pragmatist' is more appropriate than 'opportunist'. After all, there were only so many countries with a missile program and resources for someone who speaks Mandarin and English and had a family who didn't want to learn Russian. In the interpretations I've been given, Taiwan at that stage was a mess. I think he was probably deeply hurt by the purge and would have stayed in the US and contributed further if it wasn't for the tide of McCarthyist nationalism. The US in the current era definitely has similar tones, which I have personally encountered. This warning piece comes late and may fall on deaf ears.
Yes it's odd how this supposed "non-communist" first planned to flee to the Maoist Mainland when his security clearance was revoked, not the ROC in Taiwan, considering he had far more connections with the nationalists.
An error rate of 0 is unachievable. Given that, it’s a question of your tolerance for error and the consequences of the opposite kind of error. Given the numbers of people involved in the exchange the comparative value must have been quite clear to both parties.
The Chinese outcome was not nearly so certain even in 1990, half a century after the events in question. The counterfactual that China could not have indigenously achieved this also seems unlikely.
After all, the thesis is that Chinese leaders were so organizationally intelligent that they recognized key players that could implement century-long organizational methodology improvements. Given that they could get that far, it seems unlikely that they could not take the next step: that of recreating/finding a Qian Xuesen within their own country; like we found Oppenheimer.
Overall, this seems like a strategic choice that played off roughly at the risk control level it was aimed at. You cannot judge decisions solely by outcomes.
> Given the numbers of people involved in the exchange the comparative value must have been quite clear to both parties.
At least on the American side, it doesn't sound at all like this was uniformly agreed upon; there seem to have been people on the American side (including at least one relatively high-ranking military/government official) who felt strongly that this was a strategic blunder. That doesn't mean your counterargument is incorrect, but I don't think it's as simple as "they knew what they were giving up".
A large part of the argument of the article seems to be that the political pressures for the US were misaligned with the long-term incentives, which is a plausible explanation for why the president (who is not a subject matter expert for most things) might override a decision from someone who is much more knowledgeable about the specific circumstances. There are plenty of places to disagree with the analysis presented (e.g. whether it's preferable to have a system that optimizes for this sort of long-term planning or if other things should take precedence), but it's not clear to me from your comment whether you're actually trying to disagree with the conclusions they draw or about the history of what happened.
To be clear, disagreeing about the history would be reasonable, given that understanding what happened is rarely straightforward from reading a single secondary source like this, but if that's what you're doing, it might help to be more explicit about it.
Definitely a famous story that gets retold and almost mythologized in China. When I taught over there, several different middle school students independently told me about this story.
The article points out that nobody made a movie about this guy. That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring.
Nobody ever made a biopic about Charles Wilson, head of defense production at General Motors during WWII, and later US Secretary of Defense. Hyman Rickover, who headed the 1950s effort to build nuclear submarines and warships, only has a low budget 2021 documentary. Malcom McLean, who converted the world to containerized shipping and made low-cost imports possible, never got a movie.
Those three people each changed the world more than any celebrity. They're well known in business history. MBAs study them. There are biographies. But no movie.
Fun fact;In 1992 ,he advised Chinese leaders to focus on new energy vehicles as they would never catch up on ice.
Looks like his counsel was taken as we can see the results today.
The US continues to repeat this mistake by adding hurdles for immigrant talent while persecuting or being generally racist against Chinese-American scientists [1]. Despite that, there's still a net influx of foreign talent coming to the US whereas relatively few people move to China.
Also Erdal Arikan. Turkish researcher denied a Green Card, so he was invited by the Chinese Govt. to capitalize on his research there instead. His work led to 5G technology.
I feel like this article is leaving some important bits out for the sake of a narrative.
From Wikipedia
By the early 1940s, U.S. Army Intelligence was already aware of allegations that Qian was a communist
This predates the red scare - at the time the US was in bed with "Uncle Joe" Stalin.
While at Caltech, Qian had secretly attended meetings with J. Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank Oppenheimer, Jack Parsons, and Frank Malina that were organized by the Russian-born Jewish chemist Sidney Weinbaum and called Professional Unit 122 of the Pasadena Communist Party.[43] Weinbaum's trial commenced on August 30 and both Frank Oppenheimer and Parsons testified against him.[44] Weinbaum was convicted of perjury and sentenced to four years.[45] Qian was taken into custody on September 6, 1950, for questioning [7] and for two weeks was detained at Terminal Island, a low-security United States federal prison near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. According to Theodore von Kármán's autobiography, when Qian refused to testify against his old friend Sidney Weinbaum, the FBI decided to launch an investigation on Qian.[46]
This seems incredibly pertinent to the story as well.
I don't think he is a communist, he just believe in people like Mao and he's party.
The other thing is,as a Chinese person, apart from a very small minority who are receptive to Western propaganda and hold anti-Han/chinese/china sentiments, the vast majority will eventually embrace their strong sense of nationalism.
Not comparable, but the story of Gerald Bull is interesting. I read Frederick Forsyth's The Fist of God in the late 90s and only came to know about Bull and Project Babylon when I chanced upon the Wikipedia article on the subject.
The article unfortunately neglects most of backstory in favor of a ‘unique genius came out of nowhere’ narrative. Qian was a member of the Caltech Suicide Squad that did things like build the WAC Corporal sounding rocket, which carried 25 lbs of scientific instrumentation to ~20 miles. That was headed by Frank Malina, under the equally remarkable Theodore von Kármán, and Qian was a prominent member.
That was only made possible by the foundation of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech (GALCIT), which got its funding from the U.S. Army Air Corps for jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) units - so it was a contract research lab. The specific funding train came from Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold of the Air Corps, who wanted to use rockets to get heavy bombers off short Pacific runways. von Kármán’s role was larger than just GALCIT (and interestingly, was a Jewish-Hungarian who settled in the USA in 1930, a bit of a mirror of Qian’s trajectory).
The intersection of von Kármán and Qian Xuesen is highlighted in this fascinating and comprehensive collection of the program’s results as pdfs:
“The resulting multi-volume report, collectively titled: "Toward New Horizons," was hugely influential, even having been credited with leading to America's postwar airpower dominance. The report is widely cited, but references are largely to the introductory/summary volume, "Science, the Key to Air Supremacy”
“Dr. Hsue-Shen Tsien [aka Qian Xuesen], principal author-editor of the entire report series, later after returning to The People's Republic of China, was the founder of China's ballistic missile programs and became known as the Father of Chinese Rocketry.”
Finally, without the Maoist government’s decision to devote massive state resources to a missile/space program, there would similarly have been no ground for Qian to cultivate in China.
Conclusion? The ‘great genius’ narratives of scientific and engineering history do contain a grain of truth (Qian published >50 papers many foundational) but are commonly oversold as examples of heroic individualism, presenting a rather distored lens on historical developments (and confusing many young students about how the world really works).
The Failure to Launch episode about Qian, the Cultural Revolution, and the brief inter-departmental war and attempted "coup" at the defense research institute where he worked... was quite something.
Besides founding JPL, Qian also co-founded the university I graduated from, USTC (University of Science and Technology 中国科学技术大学), one of the most prestigious schools in China. He headed the Department of Modern Mechanics for 20+ years and was so notoriously strict that the university had to extend its graduation track from 4 years to 5, as he refused to let students graduate without a thorough understanding of science.
Legend has his infamous, multi-hour-long finals had only one question:
With no calculators/computers allowed, calculate the trajectory of a rocket launched from Earth that will orbit the Moon.
This is a bit offtopic, but why were those Mandarin sounds transliterated to those letters? Why not "Chian Shuesen"? It's not like Q as CH is intuitive at all.
"Qian’s political allegiance remains debated. Some argue he was always a committed Communist, while others see him as a scientist caught between two superpowers. His father had served in China’s Ministry of Education, and his early mentors were affiliated with the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) rather than the opposing Communists. Qian’s wife was the daughter of Jiang Baili, a high-ranking official of the KMT and KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek’s military adviser..."
So until today, we cannot rule out if he was indeed a committed Communist or not?
By being deported, Qian Xuesen was thrust into an environment where he was able to succeed.
Had he been allowed to stay in the US, he may have had a brilliant career as a scientist, but it is very unlikely that he would have ever been given the resources and leadership responsibilities to have an equivalent impact on US aerospace and defense programs.
31 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 57.9 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons
who invented modern composite solid rockets and was also a collaborator of Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard.
How does this man not have a movie?
CCP in 30s was just some ragtags in inner Yan'an
The Chinese outcome was not nearly so certain even in 1990, half a century after the events in question. The counterfactual that China could not have indigenously achieved this also seems unlikely.
After all, the thesis is that Chinese leaders were so organizationally intelligent that they recognized key players that could implement century-long organizational methodology improvements. Given that they could get that far, it seems unlikely that they could not take the next step: that of recreating/finding a Qian Xuesen within their own country; like we found Oppenheimer.
Overall, this seems like a strategic choice that played off roughly at the risk control level it was aimed at. You cannot judge decisions solely by outcomes.
At least on the American side, it doesn't sound at all like this was uniformly agreed upon; there seem to have been people on the American side (including at least one relatively high-ranking military/government official) who felt strongly that this was a strategic blunder. That doesn't mean your counterargument is incorrect, but I don't think it's as simple as "they knew what they were giving up".
A large part of the argument of the article seems to be that the political pressures for the US were misaligned with the long-term incentives, which is a plausible explanation for why the president (who is not a subject matter expert for most things) might override a decision from someone who is much more knowledgeable about the specific circumstances. There are plenty of places to disagree with the analysis presented (e.g. whether it's preferable to have a system that optimizes for this sort of long-term planning or if other things should take precedence), but it's not clear to me from your comment whether you're actually trying to disagree with the conclusions they draw or about the history of what happened.
To be clear, disagreeing about the history would be reasonable, given that understanding what happened is rarely straightforward from reading a single secondary source like this, but if that's what you're doing, it might help to be more explicit about it.
How many geniuses are leaving the US right now due to Xenophobia?
The article points out that nobody made a movie about this guy. That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring. Nobody ever made a biopic about Charles Wilson, head of defense production at General Motors during WWII, and later US Secretary of Defense. Hyman Rickover, who headed the 1950s effort to build nuclear submarines and warships, only has a low budget 2021 documentary. Malcom McLean, who converted the world to containerized shipping and made low-cost imports possible, never got a movie.
Those three people each changed the world more than any celebrity. They're well known in business history. MBAs study them. There are biographies. But no movie.
https://player.instaread.co/player?article=the-missile-geniu...
EDIT: it's ai if anyone is curious
Qian Xuesen did and did.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment_in_the_...
• Larry Wu-tai Chin
• Peter Lee
• Chi Mak
• Katrina Leung
• Shujun Wang
• Fei Ye
• Ming Zhong
• Walter Lian-Heen Liew
• Kun Shan Chun
• Jinchao Wei
• Eileen Wang
All convicted of espionage
From Wikipedia
By the early 1940s, U.S. Army Intelligence was already aware of allegations that Qian was a communist
This predates the red scare - at the time the US was in bed with "Uncle Joe" Stalin.
While at Caltech, Qian had secretly attended meetings with J. Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank Oppenheimer, Jack Parsons, and Frank Malina that were organized by the Russian-born Jewish chemist Sidney Weinbaum and called Professional Unit 122 of the Pasadena Communist Party.[43] Weinbaum's trial commenced on August 30 and both Frank Oppenheimer and Parsons testified against him.[44] Weinbaum was convicted of perjury and sentenced to four years.[45] Qian was taken into custody on September 6, 1950, for questioning [7] and for two weeks was detained at Terminal Island, a low-security United States federal prison near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. According to Theodore von Kármán's autobiography, when Qian refused to testify against his old friend Sidney Weinbaum, the FBI decided to launch an investigation on Qian.[46]
This seems incredibly pertinent to the story as well.
The other thing is,as a Chinese person, apart from a very small minority who are receptive to Western propaganda and hold anti-Han/chinese/china sentiments, the vast majority will eventually embrace their strong sense of nationalism.
This also applies to Chen-Ning Yang.
That was only made possible by the foundation of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech (GALCIT), which got its funding from the U.S. Army Air Corps for jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) units - so it was a contract research lab. The specific funding train came from Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold of the Air Corps, who wanted to use rockets to get heavy bombers off short Pacific runways. von Kármán’s role was larger than just GALCIT (and interestingly, was a Jewish-Hungarian who settled in the USA in 1930, a bit of a mirror of Qian’s trajectory).
The intersection of von Kármán and Qian Xuesen is highlighted in this fascinating and comprehensive collection of the program’s results as pdfs:
https://www.governmentattic.org/TwardNewHorizons.html
“The resulting multi-volume report, collectively titled: "Toward New Horizons," was hugely influential, even having been credited with leading to America's postwar airpower dominance. The report is widely cited, but references are largely to the introductory/summary volume, "Science, the Key to Air Supremacy”
“Dr. Hsue-Shen Tsien [aka Qian Xuesen], principal author-editor of the entire report series, later after returning to The People's Republic of China, was the founder of China's ballistic missile programs and became known as the Father of Chinese Rocketry.”
Finally, without the Maoist government’s decision to devote massive state resources to a missile/space program, there would similarly have been no ground for Qian to cultivate in China.
Conclusion? The ‘great genius’ narratives of scientific and engineering history do contain a grain of truth (Qian published >50 papers many foundational) but are commonly oversold as examples of heroic individualism, presenting a rather distored lens on historical developments (and confusing many young students about how the world really works).
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rocket-scientist-g...
Legend has his infamous, multi-hour-long finals had only one question:
With no calculators/computers allowed, calculate the trajectory of a rocket launched from Earth that will orbit the Moon.
One gets used to pinyin really quickly.
"Qian’s political allegiance remains debated. Some argue he was always a committed Communist, while others see him as a scientist caught between two superpowers. His father had served in China’s Ministry of Education, and his early mentors were affiliated with the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) rather than the opposing Communists. Qian’s wife was the daughter of Jiang Baili, a high-ranking official of the KMT and KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek’s military adviser..."
So until today, we cannot rule out if he was indeed a committed Communist or not?
Had he been allowed to stay in the US, he may have had a brilliant career as a scientist, but it is very unlikely that he would have ever been given the resources and leadership responsibilities to have an equivalent impact on US aerospace and defense programs.