Chinese Scientists and Engineers Fleeing America
“Another scientist/engineer of Chinese descent, long in America, has returned to China.” I am reading versions of this headline in waves. These learned, successful immigrants are forsaking America to take up positions in academia and commerce in their homeland. Such losses are repeated own goals by America harming America. And they are an example of the past circling back on itself.
Qian Xuesen in the early 1940's (www.hlhl.org.cn at commons.wikimedia.org)
The Past
Qian Xuesen (1911-2009) was born in Shanghai but chose America as his home beginning in 1935. He was a scholar at MIT and Caltech; a scientist, aerospace engineer, and cyberneticist; and a member of the U.S. government’s Science Advisory Board.
Qian Xuesen US Military Badge (www.researchgate.net)
Qian was also an officer in the U.S. Army and a rocket engineer who led the Guggenheim Institute of Aeronautics at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By the end of World War II, he was “…one of the world's foremost experts on jet propulsion….”
And then came McCarthyism and the Red Scare in the 1950’s. Though there was no evidence of malfeasance or spying, Qian had his security clearances revoked, and he spent five years under house arrest. In 1955, the U.S. government deported him along with his family back to China.
Qian Xuesen and Mao Zedong (ww.chinadigitaltimes.net)
Thereafter, Qian used his talents to benefit China for more than half a century. He developed China’s ballistic missile and space rocket programs. He oversaw the country’s first satellite launch. He was instrumental in laying the foundation of China’s moon program. He trained China’s scientists of the future.
A government-endowed institute dedicated to this national hero was opened in Shanghai in 2011. The Qian Xuesen Library & Museum has been designated a key base of both “national patriotism education” and “national defense education.”
Dan Kimball (1896-1970), former Secretary of the U.S. Navy, once stated that expelling Qian from America “‘…was the stupidest thing this country ever did. He was no more a Communist than I was, and we forced him to go.’”
(graphic by Selman Design at www.technologyreview.com)
The Present
The U.S. Department of Justice ran the China Initiative between 2018-2022 with aggressive vigor. The stated aim was to root out and prosecute Chinese spies who were engaged in economic and intellectual property espionage here in America. Though bias, persecution, and the demonization of Chinese scientists dogged the Initiative, there are many now returned to power who want to bring the program back.
Those headlines I mentioned above indicate that the China Initiative, the fact that it may be reactivated, and the general animus toward China in a broad swath of America remain a powerful motivator for today’s Qian Xuesen’s to abandon America and voluntarily return to China.
(graphic by www.sccei.fsi.stanford.edu)
“While most China-born, US-based scientists intend to stay in the United States, departures have grown steadily, from 900 in 2010 to 2,621 in 2021.” These numbers seem certain to keep climbing:
Geophysicist Niu Fenglin, an earthquake prediction pioneer, returned to China last year after more than two decades in America.
Semiconductor engineer Wang Huanyu, who worked on cutting edge chips at Qualcomm and Apple (including Apple’s first 3-nanometer design M3 chip), returned to China at the end of 2024.
AI researcher and engineer Wu Yonghui, who was part of Google Brain, a Google Fellow, vice president of research at Google DeepMind, and an expert in machine learning, genomics, and natural language understanding, returned to China recently after seventeen years at Google.
Cancer research scientist Sun Shao-Cong, a pioneer in T-cell research who served as director of the Centre for Inflammation and Cancer at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, returned to China last year after three decades in America.
Computer scientist and Blockchain expert Chen Jing, a US National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Award winner and academic, returned to China in 2024 after fifteen years in the U.S. in order to “address gaps in [China’s] domestic research and develop cutting-edge theories to improve China’s blockchain technology,….”
In the past twelve months, Chinese breakthroughs in space (satellite-to-ground laser communications and Mars exploration), AI DeepSeek, and ocean drilling are just a few examples of how these returning Chinese scientists and engineers can now help China once again advance at the expense of America. More own goals that harm American national security.
When Qian Xuesen was boarding the ship to China with his wife and two young children in 1955, a reporter asked him if he would ever return to America. He said no. And he never did.
The legacy of Qian Xuesen continues in today’s America.
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