USA: They made a terrible mistake when they expelled this scientist
In 1950, though he did not know yet, the US government held one of the keys to winning the Cold war: Qian Xuesen, a brilliant Chinese rocket scientist who had already transformed the fields of aerospace and weapons.
In the halls of the California and MIT Technology Institute, he had helped to resolve the jetting of the jet propulsion and had developed America’s first directed ballistic missiles.
He was a Colonel in the US Air Force, worked on the highly confidential Manhattan project and was sent to Germany to interrogate Nazi scientists. Dr. Qian wanted the first person in space to be American – and he was planning a rocket to succeed.
Then they stopped him abruptly. At the height of his career, a knock was heard at the door and handcuffed in front of his wife and young son.
The prosecutors eventually liberated Dr. Qian from the categories for rebellion and espionage, but the United States They exposed him anyway – they exchanged him back to the Communist Beijing with an exchange of about twelve American prisoners of war in 1955.
Shocking the consequences of the expulsion of the scientist
Dr.qian returned to China and immediately persuaded Mao Che Tong to assign him to the development of a modern weapons program.
By the end of the decade, China tried its first rocket. Until 1980, it could rain them in California or Moscow with the same ease.
Dr. Qian with his family
Dr.qian was not simply baptized by the father of China’s missile and space programs, put in motion the technological revolution that turned China into a superpower.
The particular case of deportation, brought to the forefront of the New York Times as we watch the Trump government targeting ruthlessly foreign students and researchers.
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Marko Rubio increased the pressure, announcing that the government would work to « aggressively revoke » the visas of Chinese students, including those who have links to the Chinese Communist Party or studying « critical ».
There are about one million foreign students in the United States – more than 250,000 of them are Chinese. The expulsion of Dr. Chian should serve as an important warning story. It turned out to be an American wrong step, powered by xenophobia, that would forever change the world’s balance of power.
Expensive price
Dr. Qian became the target of hysteria around the « red terror » of senator Joseph McCarthy because he was a Chinese national and scientist. He was humiliated when his security license was revoked. But the price paid was expensive.
The United States not only missed the opportunity to overcome the Soviet Union on manned space flights, but gave China the only Poros that lacked it to challenge American domination in Asia: important scientific ability.
In addition to closing this gap, his return to China inaugurated generations of domestic Chinese scientific discoveries. To date, Washington spends billions of dollars on a nuclear umbrella that protects our allies in the Pacific from its technical achievements.
When asked about the deportation of Dr. Qian from America, former Navy secretary Dan Kimball said: « It was the most stupid thing this country has ever done. »
The story of Dr. Qian
Dr. Qian came to the United States at a young age, 23 years old. He benefited from a scholarship that now seems to represent an extinct mentality: the idea that the international educational exchange would promote American values and reinforce world peace.
Edmund James, a US spokesman in Beijing, founded the fund that brought Dr. Qian and other students like him in the United States.
« The nation that will be able to train the young Chinese of today’s generation, » wrote Dr. James to President Teddy Roosevelt, « it will be the nation that for a given cost of effort will reap the greatest possible benefits of moral, spiritual and commercial influence. »
Until the 1960s, three -quarters of China’s most distinguished scientists, including future Nobel Prize winners, had been trained in America, thanks to Dr. James.
In California, Dr. Qian was united with a group of other promising young scientists who called themselves a suicide group, after at least one of their first experiments blasted a laboratory on the campus. At an annual meeting of engineers, two of the team members announced that they had found a way to create a rocket capable of flying 1,000 miles perpendicular to the surface of the Earth. Soon they acquired a more formal name: A gas laboratory.
In 1949, Dr. Qian was chosen to lead the workshop, which until then was NASA’s precursor. He not only wanted to help the United States to win the space race, but also revealed plans to use air trips so that passengers could reach New York to Los Angeles in less than an hour.
When he was asking China aid to escape
It was Dr. Qian spy? Was he a communist? There was no convincing evidence of either of them, but it is not clear if the US government ever cared. Protests by top defense and academic officials, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, who worked with Dr. Qian in Manhattan work, they were not heard.
Dr. Qian during listening to its deportation, 1950. Source PHOTO: Wikipedia
After five years of home restraint, Dr. Qian begged the Chinese government to help him escape from the United States.
Documents by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which have now been declassified, suggest that Dr. Qian had become an extremely undervalued pawn in the eyes of the Aisenhower government, exchanging his contribution to China with US aviators. Chinese prime minister, Chu Alai, triumphantly speaking of the negotiations, said: « We had regained Qian. That alone made the conversations worthwhile. «
Never returned to the US
Dr. Qian never returned to the United States and served the rest of his life as one of the most famous leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. He is also considered a national hero, with a museum built in honor of his achievements.
Most of his comments in his last years were either technical documents or party propaganda against America. In 1966, however, one of his former colleagues at Caltech received a postcard decorated with a traditional Chinese design with flowers and a postcard in Beijing. On her, Dr. Chian had simply written: « This is a flower that blooms in adversity. »
Dr. Qian, died in 2009 at the age of 97.
The substance that America has lost
Mr Rubio’s announcement, although not providing many details, has certainly caused waves of concern between international students and their colleagues at research universities, as schools and laboratories are preparing for further turmoil.
But something bigger is lost: America once saw the education of the world’s struggling as a way to strengthen and empower the nation. It was a strategic advantage that so many of the best and brightest thinkers, scientists and leaders wanted to study here and expose to the American Republic and culture.
The achievements of Dr. Chian on behalf of China show the risk of abandoning this advantage and the possible dark side of alienation – instead of welcoming – the talent of the world. There is always the possibility that one day will be used against us.
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