Qian Xuesen, the father of China’s space and missile programs.
Qian Xuesen could today be a great American hero, but the US deported it and the scientist turned China a superpower.
In Shanghai, China, there is an entire museum with 70,000 artifacts dedicated to one of the most important men in the country’s history: The “Scientist of the People”, Qian Xuesen.
Qian is commonly known as the “Father of Spatial and Missile Programs from China”.
His investigation helped develop the rockets that launched China’s first satellite to space and missiles that became part of the Chinese nuclear arsenal.
For this reason, it is venerated as a national hero.
In the background, made the China a superpower.
But Qian’s troubled life story started many years earlier in the US – where he studied and worked for over a decade; And where, curiously, Qian’s important contributions are rarely recognized.
This case has recently been highlighted in US media in recent days in the context of President Donald Trump’s immigrant expulsion policy.
On May 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the government would work for.
However, The risks of expelling, instead of welcoming, talents like Qian have already harmed the US in the past. The United States can stumble and get rid of figures as bright as this Chinese scientist-and repeat the one who is known as “One of the worst mistakes in the country’s history”?
QIAN XUESEN: The star of a country
Qian was born in 1911, when China’s last imperial dynasty was about to be replaced by a republic.
From an early age it became evident that Qian had many talents. He graduated as the best of the class at the Jiao Tong University of Shanghai and won a rare scholarship for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In 1935, Boston arrived a young, elegant and well dressed. From MIT went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he shared a office with a prominent scientist, Frank Malina, an important member of a small group of innovators known as the “Suicide Squad.”
The Suicide Squad quickly attracted the attention of the American military, who financed the investigation into jet -assisted take -off, in which the thrusters were linked to the wings of the aircraft to allow them to take off from short tracks.
Military financing also helped create the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) In 1943. Qian, along with Frank Malina, was at the center of the project.
Until… Communism arrived
At the end of the decade, Qian’s brilliant career in the United States was suddenly interrupted and his professional life began to fade.
That china, Mao Zedong declared the creation of the Communist Popular Republic In 1949 and the Chinese were quickly seen in the US as “the tape wicked,” he explains to, Chris JespersenProfessor of History at the University of Northern Georgia, USA.
However, a new JPL director was convinced that there was a spy network in the lab and shared his suspicions about some members of the FBI team. “They were all Chinese or Jews,” says the same television, the historian Fraser Macdonald.
The cold war between the US and the Soviet Union was ongoing and anti -communist witch hunt was gaining strength. It was in this atmosphere that the FBI accused Qian, Frank Malina and others of being communists and a threat to national security.
The charges against Qan were based on a US Communist Party 1938 document, which showed that he had attended a social meeting that the FBI suspected was a meeting of the Communist Party of Pasadena.
Although Qian has denied being a member of the party, a new study suggests that he joined Frank Malina in 1938.
“This did not necessarily make him a Marxist. Being a communist at that time was a statement of anti -racism,” explains MacDonald.
The group wanted draw attention to the threat of fascismas well as for the “horror of racism in the US,” says the expert.
And Qian was arrested
Zuoyue WangProfessor of History at the Polytechnic University of the State of California says there is no evidence that Qian sneezed to China or has been a secret service agent while in the United States. However, POSSOTO in house arrest.
In 1955, after five years in house arrest, President Eisenhower made the decision deport to China. The scientist set out by boat with his wife and two children born in the US, telling journalists that he would never get their feet back in the US again. And fulfilled the promise.
“He was one of the most respected US scientists. He contributed a lot and could have contributed much more. So it was not only a humiliation, but also a feeling of betrayal“The journalist and writer tells BBC Tianyu Fang.
Qian arrived in China as a hero, but was not immediately admitted to the Communist Party. His resume was not blameless. His wife was the aristocratic daughter of a nationalist leader, and even her disgrace, Qian lived happy in the US. The scientist had even taken the first steps to request American citizenship.
But then joined the regime
When he finally became a member of the Chinese Communist Party in 1958, he embraced him and, from there, always tried to keep up with the regime.
He survived the purgos and the cultural revolution and managed to continue his extraordinary career.15 years later, would supervise the launch of the first Chinese satellite for space.
Over decades, formed a new generation of scientists and your work launched the foundations of China’s lunar exploration program.
Ironically, the Qian missile program helped to develop in China gave rise to weapons that were fired at the US.
The “seda” missiles developed by Qian were fired at the Americans in the 1991 Gulf War and, in 2016, against the USS Mason War ship by the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“Stupier thing the US has done”
“The US deported the means by which one of its main rivals could develop its own missiles and space program. It was an extraordinary geopolitical error. There is a strange cycle. The US expelled this knowledge and this has returned to biting it,” MacDonald notes.
A former US Navy Secretary, And Kimballwhich later became the director of the Aerojet rocket propulsion company, said on an occasion that the Qian deportation was “the stupid thing this country ever did”.
Although most Americans are unaware of the history of Qian and their role in the US space program, many Chinese and Chinese students in the US know the scientist and the reason he had to leave the country, and see a parallel with today.
Qian’s life extended for almost a century. He died in 2009, almost 98 years old. During this time, China has gone from being an economically insignificant country to a superpower on Earth and space.
Qian was part of this transformation. But it could have been an American hero. Who knows.
