- This topic has 9 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 11 months ago by
njtosd.
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October 16, 2016 at 5:51 PM #22157October 16, 2016 at 6:10 PM #802422
CoronitaParticipantThere’s a little story behind China’s space program… The entire Chinese Space Program was founded by a gentleman by the name of Tsien Hsue-shen (also known as Qian Xuesen)
.For those of you that don’t know Qian Xuesen was a former scientist at CalTech, and he, with a other people founded Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)…
So how exactly did this American Citizen end up becoming the father of China’s space program?
Well, we can thank the McCarthy and Red Scare for that… You see, during the Red Scare, our government accused Quan of being a communist, despite no evidence whatsoever.
He was stripped of his security clearance, and our government decided to detain him for 5 years under house arrest, despite all his colleagues vouching for him. And he was only released in exchange for American pilots captured in the Korean War. Upon which, he promptly leaves for China..and ends up being the father of China’s nuclear weapon program and space program.
I’m not from China, some from the Mainland would call me “Island Boy”. But you see, so it’s not I’m pro China…. But i just find the irony of the rhetoric “sending people home”, which would be the rhetoric offered by the Trump camp these days………Be careful what you wish for, lol.
October 17, 2016 at 7:25 AM #802423moneymaker
ParticipantVery interesting! Many geniuses come here to the US to escape persecution, perhaps the tide is turning.
October 17, 2016 at 8:39 AM #802424The-Shoveler
ParticipantI have come to the conclusion that the USA is a free society as long as you don’t step on anyone important toes LOL.
October 17, 2016 at 9:28 AM #802425millennial
ParticipantLike all these politicians who’s sole purpose in life is to take from the productive and those doing good-will for society. If they keep it up, there will be little incentive for the smart people from overseas to keep coming, let alone keeping the ones we have here.
October 17, 2016 at 10:12 AM #802427flu
Participant[quote=moneymaker]Very interesting! Many geniuses come here to the US to escape persecution, perhaps the tide is turning.[/quote]
We are already starting to see some of this. Huawei has been poaching a lot of Cisco engineers, simply because Cisco doesn’t want them anymore. Huawei is killing Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel, Lucent in Europe
October 17, 2016 at 4:38 PM #802434njtosd
ParticipantThis is an interesting post-I had never heard of this man before. I spent a bit of time reading about it this morning.
It sounds like somewhat of a difficult situation as he came to the United States when relations between United States and China were relatively good. He remained in the United States during WWII and presumably would not have had any issue with assisting in the war against Japan. The problems seem to arise when the Korean war began and he indicated that he did not want to assist in building weapons to “bomb his countrymen.” In addition, his wife was the daughter of one of Chiang Kai-Shek’s close circle , and my guess is his continued participation in the effort against Korea would not have improved family relations. It sounded like he wanted to leave and people became suspicious that he was leaving for subversive reasons. More likely it was both loyalty and an effort to keep peace in the family. He was put under house arrest for five years as they did not want to let him go as they couldn’t figure out what his reasoning was. So it doesn’t sound like he ever had any intention of staying in the United States-but again I’ve only read the little that I can find.But, it does highlight the issue of sharing classified information with a noncitizen and the problems that can arise when that happens .
October 17, 2016 at 4:59 PM #802435FlyerInHi
GuestChiang kai Shek was the leader of the anti communist nationalists in Taiwan after WWII.
If anyone was to be suspicious, the Red Chinese would have been.October 17, 2016 at 5:08 PM #802436GuestTalking about tech, I’m most impressed with the Chinese rail system and airports. They are now going around the world acting as contractors. The Chinese may well rebuild our rail system in the future unless we can do hyperloop.
My dad built infrasture around the world and at that time, only we, Americans, and some Europeans could do it. We were the technical talent that foreigners had to hire.
October 18, 2016 at 10:24 AM #802453Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]Chiang kai Shek was the leader of the anti communist nationalists in Taiwan after WWII.
If anyone was to be suspicious, the Red Chinese would have been.[/quote]In any event – he had misgivings about creating weapons to be used against his countrymen. He was leaving the U.S. with his wife, his kids and many crates of stuff, theoretically for a visit, when they detained him. I don’t think he planned on staying here – and there is an ongoing question as to whether he was a spy, although from what they can show it was more of an issue of national loyalty.
Overall – I don’t think it was us showing him the door.
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