The recent news of Mr. Rao Yi taking the dean's position in Pking University is certainly a fresh one, but hardly anything surprising. Many people, most of whom in his camp, are overjoyed and praised him as a savor of Chinese science! I do appreciate their optimism, but not their judgment. Rao and others are not the best people that China could attract. The best are in a silent group who have been in US and other countries for years and are the pillars in many fields of science and technology.

Looking back at the short history of the people who did go back to China, either permanently or temporarily, we could not help but being disappointed. Most of those are opportunists. They either used their modest achievements as bargain chips to get money, fame, and resources for themselves, or use the opportunity to advance their own "plan" to change things in China. Most of those people do not really understand the meaning of science and democracy, not to mention that they have very limited exposure to the western culture. It is therefore not surprising to see what they did.

Tian Gang is one of the biggest blunders among those people. Using or being used for his technical achievements, he did more damage to Chinese science than anything else we could think of.

Rao is another example. One big blunder is his boycott of Dalai Lama's speech in a national conference in US. His mastery of timing and use of "democracy" shows who he really is. He is no more than another CCP brain washed puppy although he can wash bikers and test tubes well. Do you think China's science would benefit from him?

He is a little pond, a noisy one, not an ocean.

Then who are the best ones and why don't they go back to their "motherland"? The answer is very simple: Most of those came from the system and know how bad it is and how hopeless it is. It is not worth one's life to fight the system. As long as CCP is in power, there will not be the best who want to go back to China, or CCP's China.