Trigger
Today, I came across an
article in Le Monde Diplomatique titled “A second cold war, this time in
space/China goes ballistic” (subscription only) published in the May 2013
edition. The opening paragraph mentions “Just after the second world war, a
young engineer from Hangzhou, Qian
Xuesen, was working for the Pentagon at Caltech’s jet propulsion”.
This engineer died in 2009.
The Ney York Times wrote an obituary
about him, but left the circumstances of his return to Communist China in 1955
sketchy. To quote from this article (Emphasis added): “But by 1950 his American
career was over. Shortly after applying for permission to visit his parents in
the newly Communist China, he was stripped of his security clearance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
accused of secretly being a Communist. The charge was based on a 1938 document of the Communist Party of the
United States that showed he had attended a social gathering that the F.B.I.
suspected was a meeting of the Pasadena Communist Party [Mr. Xuesen was a
founder of the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory]. … Mr. Qian first sought to
return to China but was placed under virtual house arrest by the government;
later, he sought to stay and fight the accusations, but the government sought
to deport him.
In 1955, Mr. Qian was sent
back to China, where he was proclaimed a hero and immediately put to work
developing Chinese rocketry. By many accounts, he later became a committed
Communist and served on the party’s ruling body, the Central Committee.” For the
LA Times obituary see here.
Released in 1955, in exchange for the
repatriation of 11 US airmen captured by China/North Korea
during the Korean War
during the Korean War
The Wikipedia article on Mr. Xuesen does not go into any
details regarding his repatriation. Are the records still classified?
Is it indeed true that the US
government released one of the top rocket scientists of the 20th
century to Communist China in an exchange for a few prisoners of war?
Why did nobody sufficiently question
the FBI allegations against this brilliant scientist?
Was this an attempt by the
Eisenhower administration to create a counterweight in China to the Soviet
Union?
The Stupidest Thing
The NYT article continues: “The
loyalty allegations have never been fully resolved. Aviation Week, which named
Mr. Qian its man of the year in 2007, quoted Dan Kimball, a former undersecretary of the Navy, as calling Mr.
Qian’s deportation “the stupidest thing
this country ever did.” A 1999 United States Congress report on Chinese
espionage called Mr. Qian a spy, but critics say the report provides no basis
other than a claim that he passed to China the secrets of the American Titan
missile program, which began years after he had been deported.”
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