Latest news with #Qian
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Brain Drain: How Trump's Policies Could Wreck American Innovation for Generations
70 years ago, at the height of the Red Scare, the United States deported Qian Xuesen, a pioneering Chinese-born aerospace engineer. The government accused Qian of being a communist, which he denied. Back in China, Qian continued his work, becoming known as the father of Chinese rocketry and laying the foundations for the nation's missile and space programs. Former US Under Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball called Qian's deportation 'the stupidest thing this country ever did.' Now, the Tr
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Business Standard
4 days ago
- Politics
- Business Standard
US made a terrible mistake when it deported this Chinese rocket scientist
In 1950, though it didn't know it yet, the American 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 weaponry. In the halls of the California Institute of Technology and MIT, he had helped solve the riddle of jet propulsion and developed America's first guided ballistic missiles. He was made a colonel in the US Air Force, worked on the top-secret Manhattan Project and was sent to Germany to interrogate Nazi scientists. Dr Qian wanted the first man in space to be American — and was designing a rocket to make it happen. Then he was stopped short. At the height of his career, there came a knock at the door, and he was handcuffed in front of his wife and young son. Prosecutors would eventually clear Dr Qian of charges of sedition and espionage, but the United States deported him anyway — traded back to Communist Beijing in a swap for about a dozen American prisoners of war in 1955. The implications of that single deportation are staggering: Dr Qian returned to China and immediately persuaded Mao Zedong to put him to work building a modern weapons program. By the decade's end, China tested its first missile. By 1980, it could rain them down on California or Moscow with equal ease. Dr Qian wasn't just rightly christened the father of China's missile and space programs; he set in motion the technological revolution that turned China into a superpower. His story has been top of mind for me (I've been working on a biographical book project on him for several years now) as we've watched the Trump administration ruthlessly target foreign students and researchers. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio turned up the pressure, announcing that the administration would work to 'aggressively revoke' visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in 'critical fields.' There are some one million foreign students in the United States — more than 250,000 of them Chinese. Dr Qian's deportation should serve as an important cautionary tale. It proved an American misstep, fueled by xenophobia, that would forever alter the global balance of power. In an echo of the current moment, he became a target of the hysteria around Senator Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare because he was a Chinese national and a scientist. He was humiliated when his security clearance was revoked. The price paid for shunning Dr Qian has been dear. Not only did the United States miss a chance to leapfrog the Soviet Union in manned spaceflight; it gave China the one resource it lacked to challenge American dominance in Asia: significant scientific prowess. In addition to closing that gap, his return to China ushered in generations of homegrown Chinese scientific breakthroughs. To this day, Washington spends billions of dollars on a nuclear umbrella shielding our Pacific allies from his technical achievements. When asked about America's deportation of Dr Qian, the former Navy Secretary Dan Kimball said, 'It was the stupidest thing this country ever did.' Dr Qian came to the United States as a young man of 23. He benefited from a scholarship that now seems to represent a vanished mind-set: the idea that international educational exchange would promote American values and foster world peace. Edmund James, the American representative in Beijing, set up the fund that brought Dr Qian and other students like him to the United States. 'The nation which succeeds in educating the young Chinese of the present generation,' Dr James wrote to President Teddy Roosevelt, 'will be the nation which for a given expenditure of effort will reap the largest possible returns in moral, intellectual and commercial influence.' By the 1960s, three-quarters of China's 200 most eminent scientists, including future Nobel Prize winners, had been trained in America, thanks to Dr James. In California, Dr Qian joined up with a group of other promising young scientists who called themselves the Suicide Squad, after at least one of their early experiments blew up a campus lab. At an annual meeting of engineers, two of the squad members announced they had worked out how to create a rocket capable of flying 1,000 miles vertically above the earth's surface. Soon they acquired a more official name: the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1949, Dr Qian was chosen to lead the laboratory, which by then was the precursor to NASA. He not only wanted to help the United States win the space race, but he also unveiled plans to use rockets in air travel to allow passengers to get from New York to Los Angeles in less than an hour. Was Dr Qian a spy? Was he a Communist? There was no convincing evidence of either, but it's unclear whether the American government ever cared. Protests by top defense officials and academics, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, who worked with Dr Qian on the Manhattan Project, went unheeded. After five years under house arrest, Dr Qian was begging the Chinese government to help him escape the United States. State Department documents, now declassified, suggest that Dr Qian had become a highly undervalued pawn in the eyes of the Eisenhower administration, traded back to China for US airmen. The Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, speaking triumphantly about the negotiations, said: 'We had won back Qian Xuesen. That alone made the talks worthwhile.' Dr Qian never returned to the United States and served the rest of his life as a celebrated leader of the Chinese Communist Party. He is seen as a national hero, too, with a museum built to honor his accomplishments. Most of his remarks in his later years were either technical documents or party propaganda against America. In 1966, however, one of his former Caltech colleagues received a postcard decorated with a traditional Chinese drawing of flowers and postmarked in Beijing. On it Dr Qian had written simply, 'This is a flower that blooms in adversity.' Mr. Rubio's announcement, although short on details, has surely set off waves of anxiety among international students and their colleagues at research universities, as schools and laboratories brace themselves for further disruption. Something larger has been lost, though: America once saw educating the strivers of the world as a way to enhance and strengthen our nation. It was a strategic advantage that so many of the best and brightest thinkers, scientists and leaders wanted to study here and to be exposed to American democracy and culture. Dr Qian's achievements on behalf of China demonstrate the risk of giving up that advantage and the potential dark side of alienating — rather than welcoming — the world's talent. There's always the chance that it will someday be used against us.
BBC News
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
University names building in honour of late poet Benjamin Zephaniah
A university has renamed one of its buildings in honour of the late poet and activist Benjamin from Handsworth in Birmingham, was a Brummie legend whose career spanned poetry, literature, music and acting. He died in December 2023, aged City University (BCU) has now renamed a four-storey building, formerly known as University House, as the Benjamin Zephaniah Vice Chancellor David Mba said Zephaniah had strived to "give a voice to the voiceless" and to show that education must be inclusive. Zephaniah, the son of a Barbadian postman and a Jamaican nurse, was dyslexic and unable to read or write when he left school aged he went on to have a career that included performing dub poetry, writing novels and children's books, and appearing in the BBC series Peaky awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2005. Zephaniah died eight weeks after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, sparking tributes across his home city that have so far included an open-air exhibition, a mural, and a commemorative blue also launched a poetry competition last year in his honour. The contest launched its second edition last week and is open for entries until 21 wife Qian, Birmingham poet laureate Ayan Aden, and Baroness Mary Bousted, former joint general secretary of the National Education Union, attended the BCU building's official opening last building, which is on the university's city centre campus, has science labs, a space for design and technology, an art room, and general teaching rooms. Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
South China Morning Post
08-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong congee chain's closure leaves mainland workers without wages, home
The abrupt closure of a three-decade-old congee restaurant chain in Hong Kong has left around 20 imported workers from mainland China facing eviction from their dormitory and worried about being sent home without collecting unpaid wages. Advertisement The mainland workers, who arrived in Hong Kong through the city's supplementary labour scheme in May last year, were among more than 100 employees of Ocean Empire Food Shop who sought help from the Eating Establishment Employees General Union over unpaid wages of about HK$3 million. They sought help on Thursday after Ocean Empire announced the previous evening that it had closed all of its seven outlets. The Labour Department said it received requests for help from more than 80 workers claiming outstanding wages of more than HK$8 million. A worker from Foshan in Guangdong province, who only gave her last name Qian, said the company had 'heartlessly' forced them to immediately move out of their dormitory in Yau Ma Tei. Advertisement 'The door just shut suddenly with no sign at all [on Wednesday]. Upon checking my bank records, I found my wage in April had not been deposited,' she said.
Malay Mail
24-04-2025
- Business
- Malay Mail
Tariff-hit and trapped: Chinese exporters say domestic market offers little relief
BEIJING, April 24 — Eno Qian, who runs a clothing factory in eastern China, says she makes a 20 yuan (RM12) profit for every item she sells abroad and only a tenth of that on domestic sales, making a shift to the local market 'not viable' for her tariff-hit business. Beijing has made increasingly louder calls on exporters to find local buyers as an alternative to the US market, now frozen after Washington hiked tariffs on Chinese goods by 145 per cent, but firms are concerned about complications in making the switch. Many export-reliant factories have decried weak domestic demand, price wars, low profits, payment delays and high product return rates in the Chinese market. Qian said she has 'decided not to pursue domestic sales,' because of thin margins and 'cash flow risks' caused by Chinese retailers not paying bills on time, or demanding to return unsold items. 'Foreign partners are more stable.' These difficulties highlight the world's second-largest economy's over-reliance on exports for growth and the urgent need for measures to boost consumer incomes, analysts say. Without fiscal stimulus that boosts domestic demand, any increase in product supply in the Chinese market may even backfire, by squeezing businesses and intensifying deflationary pressures, they say. 'In China, due to furious competition, the margin is very, very thin, or almost sometimes zero, which could cause some exporters to go out of business if they pivot to the domestic market,' said He-Ling Shi, economics professor at Monash University in Melbourne. 'This will further make the consumption power worse, because if people go out of business, obviously they don't have income to buy in the domestic market.' China's commerce ministry said this month that one of its key strategies to mitigate the impact of US President Donald Trump's tariff hikes was to support exporters to sell more domestically. The ministry has since organised 'matchmaking' events across China, including in Beijing, Guangzhou and Hainan island, bringing together manufacturers and e-commerce platforms, supermarkets and other retailers to see if deals can be struck. Local governments are forming special task forces to find solutions for the problems raised by exporters, including what officials identified as 'unfamiliarity with the domestic market, lack of operational experience, and low brand awareness.' Calls for stimulus E-commerce giant has said it would launch a 200 billion yuan fund to help exporters sell their products domestically over the next year. It said nearly 3,000 firms have already made enquiries — about 0.4 per cent of Chinese companies engaged in foreign trade. Delivery firm Meituan has also said that it will help exporters with marketing and in other areas. But Qian said what she actually needs is support 'in terms of taxes and subsidies.' She lost 30 per cent of sales as a result of US tariffs and has had to cut staff. 'In the worst-case scenario, we may have to shut down the factory,' said Qian. David Lian, who manages an underwear factory in southern China, says the domestic market is 'extremely price sensitive, with high promotion costs and frequent returns.' Foreign clients place large wholesale orders, while the Chinese market is primarily 'retail and small batches,' he said. He is looking for new customers in the Middle East, Russia, central Asia and Africa. Liu, who exports lighting products out of a factory in the eastern city of Ningbo and only gave her surname, said she would need to hire a separate team to push domestic sales. 'We are a small firm and don't have the energy for that,' she said. The Communist Party's elite decision-making body, the Politburo, is expected to meet this month and efforts to support exporters' domestic shift will likely feature in the state media summary of the discussions. Shi, the professor, says this would mainly serve to project strength to the domestic audience and defiance to Washington. Economists are more focused on any concrete demand-side stimulus steps. China's retail sales last year amounted to 43.2 trillion yuan, more than 11 times its exports to the US of 3.7 trillion yuan. Theoretically, a 2 trillion loss in US sales over the next two years could be offset by a 4 per cent rise in consumption over the same period, Capital Economics analyst Julian Evans-Pritchard estimated. But, he said, consumers won't dip into their savings if they don't feel confident about the economic outlook or unless the government commits to more generous social benefits. Alternatively, wages have to rise at a fast pace, which is unlikely given the tariff blow on employers, he said. 'Measures tied to the social safety net, particularly pension and fiscal reforms long overdue, are key,' said Minxiong Liao, senior economist at Lombard APAC. — Reuters
