Posted by “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”. How many time have we heard this? How many times have we nodded our head in agreement with its deep wisdom because hidden beneath the surface meaning, we know that the truth is that we never seem to learn from history. A more prophetic truth though is that we can learn from history but history itself is not without bias. Moreover, how we interpret history is open to our own personal biases meaning we may know the same facts, but come to very different conclusions.
Thus we are left with famous historian, Niall Ferguson, whom I like a lot and have read many of his books proclaiming in a Bloomberg article that, “America and China Are Entering the Dark Forest“. “I have argued that this new Cold War is both inevitable and desirable, not least because it has jolted the U.S. out of complacency and into an earnest effort not to be surpassed by China in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other strategically crucial technologies. Yet there remains, in academia especially, significant resistance to my view that we should stop worrying and learn to love Cold War II.” “Rather — as was true in Cold War I, when (especially after 1968) academics tended to be doves rather than hawks — today’s proponents of “rivalry-partnership” are overlooking the possibility that the Chinese aren’t interested in being frenemies. They know full well this is a Cold War, because they started it.”
In his recent interview with Japan Times, “We are in Cold War II” shows that he is not blind to the dangers. “If you start a cold war, you shouldn’t assume it will last 40 years and the U.S. will win. It could last a lot longer. China’s economy is bigger than the Soviet economy ever was, and it may well be that China’s one-party system with its high level of technological sophistication, investment and education, is actually able to win this.”
Sadly, I am increasingly of the opinion that Niall Ferguson is right, that a new cold war is increasingly inevitable although I vehemently disagree with the assertion that it is in any way desirable. Most of us who are well read know that the next decade will be a technological race in three key areas: 5G, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing. As I wrote in my recent piece, “The best laid plans of mice and Meng“, “In fact, the list of top 20 internet companies in the world is quite striking because not only do American and Chinese firms dominate, there is not a single European, Japanese or Korean firm on the list.” It is not surprising that the United States is concentrating its firepower to hobble Huawei because that telecoms giant has a commanding lead in 5G around the world meaning that the United States (and the West in general) is undoubtedly behind in that key technology. In the field of quantum computing, it is clear that the US has a commanding lead which China is unlikely to be able to match in the next decade.
That leaves artificial intelligence or AI and much as been written on this already with Scientific American musing, “Will China Overtake the U.S. in Artificial Intelligence Research?” Similarly, Forbes writes, “China Will Outpace US Artificial Intelligence Capabilities, But Will It Win The Race? Not If We Care About Freedom.” We also have the New York Times with “A U.S. Secret Weapon in A.I.: Chinese Talent.” (Since the NYT limits the amounts of free views you get, you can always use a VPN or just go incognito on your browser to read the article).
As Scientific American puts it, “A factor that will be equally important to China’s progress — and in which there seems to be more promise — is the ability to hold onto talented researchers. According to the 2018 China AI Development Report, jointly written by academics and industry, by the end of 2017, China was home to the second-largest pool of AI scientists and engineers, about 18,200 people, ranking behind the United States, which had roughly 29,000. But China was just 6th in its number of top AI researchers — the most productive and highly cited authors, based on their h-index.”
And as the New York Times noticed, “New research shows scientists educated in China help American firms and schools dominate the cutting-edge field. Now industry leaders worry that worsening political tensions will blunt that edge. More of China’s top A.I. talent ends up in the U.S. than anywhere else. Of 128 researchers with undergraduate degrees from Chinese universities whose papers were presented at the A.I. conference, more than half now work in the U.S.”
So it is a relatively unknown truth that a large part of America’s technological edge may be from its research institutions and companies but there are a lot of Chinese brains powering that research. Then we have this Forbes article, “Inside Trump’s Immigration Order To Restrict Chinese Students.” “On May 29, 2020, Donald Trump issued a presidential proclamation aimed at restricting the entry of graduate students and researchers from China. It is the latest immigration action to make it more difficult for foreign-born individuals to live, work or study in the United States. In the 2018-19 academic year, there were 272,470 undergraduate and graduate students from China enrolled at U.S. universities, 84,480 of whom were in a graduate-level science and engineering program, according to the Department of Homeland Security. China is the number one source of international students to the United States.”
Of course, if you are going to fight the new Cold War II, that original move to block Chinese students was not enough so under the auspices of the coronavirus, Trump decided on 6 July 2020 that it would not allow foreign students in who were taking courses only online. Given that most universities, including the likes of M.I.T. and Harvard have decided to go online for the time being with the fall semester, that would mean most foreign students can’t stay in America or come start their studies. As the BBC reports, “Anger over US decision on foreign students’ visas“. “The ruling applies to specific types of visa issued for academic study. US government figures show that last year, more than 373,000 of these visas were granted. The US had more than one million international students doing various graduate and undergraduate programmes in 2018-19, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). That’s about 5.5% of the total student community in the country. Out of these, nearly three-quarters were from Asia – 48% Chinese and 26% Indians.” Not surprisingly, we now see “Harvard and MIT sue Trump administration over online-only instruction for foreign students in the US.”
But as the New York Times article notes, “Sacrificing international students is killing the goose that lays the golden egg,” said Lisa Li, a Chinese engineer who recently graduated from Johns Hopkins University. “It will eventually destroy the future competitiveness of America.” Efforts that broadly block Chinese talent could undermine the American lead in A.I., said Matt Sheehan, an analyst with MacroPolo and a co-author of the study. “These are some of the brightest minds in China, and they’re choosing to work for American research labs, teach American students and help build American companies,” Mr. Sheehan said. “If the U.S. no longer welcomed these top researchers, Beijing would welcome them back with open arms.”
Which brings me to the title of this article where we have this well written SCMP article, “Chinese-American scientist’s world upended after he is swept up in US national security net.” “When six FBI agents knocked on Li Xiao-Jiang’s suburban Atlanta home last November, he knew that his life built around 23 years as a top neuroscientist at Emory University might fall completely apart. He had just flown back from China for the first time after he was fired in May 2019. “I came back because I felt I did nothing wrong,” Li said in a recent interview. “I was shocked.” Things were already dire before Li was arrested and charged with theft of federal funds. Just a few months earlier, the school’s officials fired the tenured professor, raided his lab and forced his postdoctoral students out of the US. Then, in May, prosecutors dismissed all of the charges against him, with Li pleading guilty only to filing false tax returns.”
“After then US attorney general Jeff Sessions introduced the China Initiative in November 2018, nearly 40 cases have been publicised. Among the identified defendants, more than 90 per cent are ethnically Chinese, and over half are naturalised US citizens or permanent residents.The NIH – which sent more than 18,000 letters to grant administrators urging increased scrutiny of scientists with foreign ties, according to a New York Times report – helped initiate 189 cases, 155 of which involve ethnically Asian scientists.”
Zeidenberg is more concerned about the US losing top scientists to China. “I have countless numbers of clients who have quit their research positions in the United States and gone back to China to work full time. Because that’s where they feel they have the only place to work,” he said.
“[Li Xiao-Jiang] returned to China in early June and expects to live and work primarily there, planning to travel to the US only for conferences and visits with his daughters. He hopes the relationship between the United States and China can improve. “When they are friends, people like us were encouraged to work in China,” Li said. “Now their relationship has deteriorated, and we are investigated as criminals.””
What America is doing today is not particularly new nor unique to the Trump administration. The book by Wen Ho Lee, “My Country Versus Me: The First-Hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused of Being a Spy” is a particularly good read and dates back to 2002 for events that occurred in 1999. “A riveting account about prejudice, fear, suspicion and courage, My Country Versus Me offers at last a clear and truthful look at one of the great miscarriages of justice of our time.” The difference now is that this sort of institutionalized prejudice is being pursued with a rigor and on a scale not seen since McCarthyism and the Red Scare in the 1950s.
According to Wikipedia, “During the McCarthy era, hundreds of Americans were accused of being “communists” or “communist sympathizers”; they became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private industry panels, committees, and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, academics, and labor-union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person’s real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs were sometimes exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment or destruction of their careers; some were imprisoned. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts that were later overturned, laws that were later declared unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable, or extra-legal procedures, such as informal blacklists, that would come into general disrepute.
While McCarthyism was primarily focused on Russia and the Soviet Union, with the advent of the Korean War, China and Chinese communists were not immune. The most famous of these is Qian Xuesen (or Tsien Hsue-shen in the old Wade-Giles translation of Chinese names). Almost nobody in the America or the West remembers Qian, except for maybe author Arthur C. Clarke in his 1982 novel 2010 (the sequel to 2001) where the Chinese spaceship was named the Tsien in his honour.
Qian was born in Shanghai in 1911, and attended National Chiao Tung University (now Shanghai Jiaotong University) in 1934 receiving a degree in mechanical engineering. In 1935 he left China on a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship to study mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Master of Science degree after one year. He went to CalTech in 1936 and received his PhD with a focus on rockets. During WWII, he was involved in the Manhattan Project, which ultimately led to the successful development of the first atomic bomb in America. In 1945, as an Army colonel with a security clearance, Tsien was sent to Germany to investigate laboratories and question German scientists. Von Kármán (his mentor) wrote of Tsien, “At the age of 36, he was an undisputed genius whose work was providing an enormous impetus to advances in high-speed aerodynamics and jet propulsion.” During this time, he worked on designing an intercontinental space plane, the precursor of the space shuttle. In other words, Qian was a genius who was literally both a rocket and nuclear scientist.
But with the Korean War and the Second Red Scare, Qian was accused of communist sympathies and in 1950, despite protests by his colleagues, he was stripped of his security clearance. He decided to return to China but was detained and spent five years under house arrest only to be released in 1955 in exchange for American pilots who had been captured during the Korean War. Upon his return, he helped lead the Chinese nuclear weapons program. This effort ultimately led to China’s first successful atomic bomb test “596” on 16 October 1964, and the “Test No. 6” hydrogen bomb on 17 June 1967, making China the fifth nuclear weapons state, and achieving the fastest fission-to-fusion development in history. Additionally, Qian’s work led to the development of the Dongfeng ballistic missile and the Long March rocket which is the foundation of the Chinese space program. For his contributions, he became known as the “Father of Chinese Rocketry”, nicknamed the “King of Rocketry”. He is recognized as one of the founding fathers of Two Bombs, One Satellite.
Aviation Week, which named Qian its man of the year in 2007, quoted Dan Kimball, a former under secretary of the Navy, as calling Mr. Qian’s deportation “the stupidest thing this country ever did.”
And now Trump and America as a whole are renewing McCarthyism on a scale not even seen in the 1950s. Apologies to Niall Ferguson, but hawks like you seem to be repeating the mistakes of the past even though you should know better. So if there are hundreds if not thousands of Qians now returning to China and the PRC does eventually dominate AI and other high tech industries as a result, you will have nobody to blame but yourself for your own stupidity and prejudice.
Holy ****!