At the end of our previous newsletter, we told the story of Eileen Chang, who, upon observing the land reform (collectivization of agriculture launched by Mao and reversed by Deng in 1978), fled China.
But many Chinese who lived in the West (mostly in the USA) returned to China, making the reverse journey. Some of them contributed to the making of the Atomic Bomb for the regime. Lately, as Oppenheimer the movie was being shown in cinemas in China, someone proposed a Chinese version, called “1968”:
In that list of scientists, I have found Wikipedia entries for some of them:
Xiao Guangyan: a Chinese petrochemist with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He returned to China in 1951 after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. He became one of the pioneers of petrochemical research in the PRC, researching various catalysts for hydrocracking, hydroisomerization, and other petroleum processing techniques. He fell out of favour during the Cultural Revolution and committed suicide in 1968 along with his wife and daughter.
Dong Tiebao: a gifted mathematician who participated in the work of electronic computer in the USA, returned to China in 1956. He also committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution, in 1968.
Chen Shaofeng: he had a master degree from Iowa University in Chemical Engineering, he returned to China in 1950. He was accused of being a spy for the USA during the Cultural Revolution. He committed suicide in 1968.
Zhou Huazhang: he obtained a Ph.D in Economics from Chicago University in 1952 and returned to China in 1953. During the Cultural Revolution, he was also accused of being a spy and committed suicide.
Lin Hongsun: he obtained a master degree from Brown University in Applied Mathematics, in 1949, and he gave up his Ph.D. pursuit to return to China in 1950. He died during the Cultural Revolution when he was being investigated in 1968.
Cheng Shiku: He got a Ph.D from Illinois Institute Of Technology in Mechanics, returned to China in 1955. Committed suicide in 1968.
Chen Tianchi: he obtained Ph.D from Louisiana State University in Chemistry in 1948. He returned to China in 1950, and committed suicide in 1968.
Yao Tongbin: he obtained a doctorate of foundry engineering from University of Birmingham in UK in 1951, returned to China in 1957. He became one of China’s foremost missile engineers and was beaten to death during the Cultural Revolution in 1968.
That is why the movie title will be “1968”. It is a movie I would like to see, even though it will be a very gloomy one, but their stories are worth telling, so people don’t forget what a government without accountability can do to the people that were most useful to them.
Deng Jiaxian was a Chinese nuclear physicist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was a leading organizer and key contributor to the Chinese nuclear weapon programs. He was the Chinese Oppenheimer.
He went to the United States in 1948 to study at Purdue University and earned his Ph.D in physics in 1950. He returned to the newly founded People’s Republic of China just nine days after graduation.
From 1958 onward, Deng spent over 20 years working secretly with a team of young scientists under the Two Bombs, One Satellite (两弹一星) program on the development of the nuclear and hydrogen bombs for China, culminating in success in 1964 and 1967.
He died on July 29, 1986, in Beijing.
Deng is regarded as the “Father of China’s Nuclear Program”. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” Meritorious Award for his contributions to Chinese military science, along with 22 other scientists. Yao Tongbin was one of the other 22 scientists.
Deng survived the Cultural Revolution, because he was very senior. But also, according to his wife, because of his friend, Yang Chen-Ning, a theoretical physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957.
Here is the rough translation:
In 1971, when Yang was invited to visit China, he gave a list of his friends and family members that he wished to see. On top of the list was Deng, his childhood friend and with whom he went to the USA, to study together.
(left: Yang, right: Deng, in Chicago.)
By then, many people who worked at the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” project were condemned to be spies. “If you speak English, you are an American spy, if you speak Russian, you are a Soviet spy.” So, no one could be spared. According to Deng’s wife, one young explosive expert refused to admit that he was a spy, so he was beaten to death.
As you can see, in 1968, many people have committed suicide. In 1971, the prosecution of foreign-trained scientists moved up the chain, and scientists like Deng were moved to a base in Qinghai province. There, a group of soldiers and workers went to persecute Deng, claiming that he had conducted two failed experiments. The goal was to get rid of him.
But because Yang was one of the superstars of overseas Chinese scientists, the government was determined to please him. So, to make Yang happy, Deng was whiskered away to Beijing to see Yang. As a result, the prosecution movement ended, and other scientists who were suffering along with Mr. Deng were also spared. It is not an exaggeration to say that Yang saved Deng’s life.
(left: Yang, right: Deng, in Beijing)
According to State media and Deng’s wife, Deng never regretted his decision to return to China. His daughter, however, went to live in the USA for good.
I wonder if Deng’s refusal to regret is due to true blind loyalty to the regime that almost killed him, or a desire to protect his daughter out of fear of the regime. Either way, it is very sad.
Yang, on the other hand, enjoyed a stellar status in China, and helped many talented Chinese students to get trained in the USA, after the two countries normalized their relationship. He also married a 28-year-old Chinese woman when he was 82. Now 100, he is still enjoying a long life: he abandoned his US citizenship to fully return to the arms of his motherland.
The Spy thing is having a comeback in China now. In April, the government just released the “Anti-Spy Act”. Chinese people, after being confined in the country due to COVID for three years, are now told to regard any foreigner as a suspicious spy. Any information can be a national secret.
Who can withhold the temptation to predict that the Cultural Revolution will come back soon?
One example is the anti-Japanese frenzy pushed by state media, triggered by the Fukushima wastewater release. The craziness is comparable to the Cultural Revolution, when young people simply lost the ability to think for themselves.
Not only Japanese seafood is banned, but also Japanese restaurants inside Japan were receiving countless harassing phone calls from China, making it impossible for businesses to receive bookings from their customers.
The non-stop emotional manipulation that flooded Chinese social media made some social media users cry uncontrollably: Why the Japanese are so bad?. Some small kids also cried about the sea being destroyed by the Japanese.
For me, it is heartbreaking to see the manipulations of children. On Chinese social media, only anti-Japanese sentiment was allowed. Many pro-science accounts were closed down because they tried to tell the public the real data.
The Chinese seafood industry was in panic, and no one was buying seafood.
One industry stood out as a winner: Geiger Counter producers.
Many people started using the equipment to test out their environment, and to their astonishment, they discovered that their own home in China has a higher sievert number, about 900 times that of Tokyo.
China is also planning to pass a new set of amendments to “China’s Public Security Administration Punishments Law”. One proposal is “banning clothes harmful to the ‘spirit, feelings of the Chinese nation’”. When the country goes so crazy, you can imagine very bizarre things are happening: > Chinese wearing Tang clothes were denied entry at Panlongcheng Park, Wuhan, after a local guard mistook their clothes for Japanese attire.
Why this prolonged man-made animosity against Japan, if it is not to prepare an all-out war on Taiwan? I do wonder. But of course, the regime is flexing its muscles to control what the Chinese people see, hear, speak and feel. They might think they can control the country of 1.4 billion people completely.
Floods continued to rage in China. After the Beijing area, northeast China was also severely flooded, and now you might have seen these footage from Hong Kong.
Xi, after being criticized for not showing up in disaster areas in Beijing area, finally showed up in the northeast region, telling people to firm up their determination for a better life.
Export data showed that the month of August is 7.3% less compared to one year ago. But it was better than many expected: more declines are expected for the coming months, until export reaches the bottom.
Then it might bounce back, or it might settle in at the new low. Who knows.
Some gossip just showed up:
President Xi’s cabinet lineup is now resembling Agatha Christie’s novel ‘And Then There Were None’. First, Foreign Minister Qin Gang goes missing, then the Rocket Force commanders go missing, and now Defence Minister Li Shangfu hasn’t been seen in public for two weeks. Who’s going to win this unemployment race? China’s youth or Xi’s cabinet?
