1955年10月8日：享誉麻省及加州两大理工学院、曾经参与曼克顿计划的火箭专家钱学森, 从久居的美国抵达香港。面对记者围访，钱氏不迎不拒，长问短答。临别时、他只向满口英语、不谙国语的香港记者回赠了這一句：华人总要说点国语吧。接着就携眷乘火车北上。甫入华界边城深圳，钱氏立即受到样板的英雄式欢迎。此后荣宠有加，不在话下。至于钱氏的弃美归华，与其说是因为周恩来的无量功德，毋宁说是因为麦卡锡的无限上纲。

有此传闻：艾森豪威尔政府暗以钱氏换回11名在韓战被俘的美国空军飞行员。不管该项传闻属实与否，钱氏确是决意举家返回中国的。况且，這位专研改善airframe来增速、卓有成就的尖端科才，早已因麦卡锡而投闲置散了好几年。一旦北京招手，能不感激知遇？事实上，对于钱氏、北京果然不虚前席。

For a fair and balanced book-length account of Qian Xuesen's contribution to China’s missile development, check out the late Iris Shun-ru Chang’s Thread of The Silkworm (1995).

Airframe (the structure of an aircraft): In case you enjoy thriller novels popular with the informed public, you might want to check out the late Michael Crichton's Airframe (1996), if you haven't yet.

…

Is McCarthyism still haunting America?

Around 1950, Republican US senator Joseph R. McCarthy was facing a tough re-election in his home state of Wisconsin. This was also a tough time for Americans who were witnessing the CCP’s takeover of Mainland China while the Soviet Union was catching up as the second nuclear power.

Channeling national angst into a self-serving campaign, McCarthy managed to regain his political fortune by blanketing America with Red Scare. Richard Nixon, a Republican young turk, picked up McCarthyism and ran with it, thus advancing his political career spectacularly. Nixon was not alone.

McCarthy's witch hunt for Communist sympathizers led to the detention and deportation of US-trained Qian Xuesen (Tsien Hsue-shen), later known as the Father of Chinese Rocketry. Cases of witch-hunt victims kept piling up until McCarthyism peaked four years shy of McCarthy’s death in 1957.

For the record, it was Owen Lattimore, himself a witch-hunt victim, who coined McCarthyism in his book titled Ordeal by Slander, which I highly recommend for your reading pleasure, if pleasure is the right word here. (It is also worth mentioning that Lattimore was truly an American expert on pre-1949 Mongolia and Manchuria, as attested by his published works.)

Today the far left is using the far right's playbook, re-enacting McCarthyism through Woke and Cancel Culture. Extremists on both sides, though disagreeable to each other, are actually no different from one another when it comes to power grab. Only voters can put every last one of them in his or her place.  

Author: Lingyang Jiang

Image: Google