1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:03,629 The following is part of Cornell Contemporary China Initiative Lecture 2 00:00:03,629 --> 00:00:07,980 Series under the Cornell East Asia program. The arguments and viewpoints of 3 00:00:07,980 --> 00:00:12,389 this talk belong solely to the speaker. We hope you enjoy. It's an honor and 4 00:00:12,389 --> 00:00:16,350 pleasure to speak to all of you today. Big Science with Chinese Characteristics. 5 00:00:16,350 --> 00:00:17,800 Actually the initial title I submitted to Robyn was called 6 00:00:17,800 --> 00:00:24,040 "My thoughts on Science with Chinese characteristics for a new era". 7 00:00:24,040 --> 00:00:25,800 As you might recognize, this is a 8 00:00:25,800 --> 00:00:28,859 play on the so-called Xi Jinping's "Thought on Socialism with Chinese 9 00:00:28,859 --> 00:00:33,120 Characteristics for a New Era". That's being written into the Party 10 00:00:33,120 --> 00:00:38,430 and the Constitution. Of course I'm not authorized to think Xi Jinping's thoughts so 11 00:00:38,430 --> 00:00:43,680 I'm just here to share some of my thoughts on science in China. I would 12 00:00:43,680 --> 00:00:49,050 like to start this lecture with a question. Should liberal democracies have 13 00:00:49,050 --> 00:00:53,760 a technological advantage over authoritarian regimes? I asked this 14 00:00:53,760 --> 00:00:58,170 question because as a Chinese scientist studying and working United States, this 15 00:00:58,170 --> 00:01:01,590 is a question I've asked myself many times over the past eight years. 16 00:01:01,590 --> 00:01:05,070 Whenever I see technological and scientific breakthroughs coming out of 17 00:01:05,070 --> 00:01:08,040 China I view it with mixed emotions. 18 00:01:08,040 --> 00:01:13,619 The scientist in me is excited at the advancements in human understanding of 19 00:01:13,619 --> 00:01:18,570 nature. The citizen in me wonders how these technology would be used by an 20 00:01:18,570 --> 00:01:22,830 authoritarian regime and what it might mean to the Liberal Democratic World 21 00:01:22,830 --> 00:01:23,840 Order when a free world could no longer claim a technological advantage. 22 00:01:23,840 --> 00:01:31,740 This question has an increased urgency with the news coming out from the past couple 23 00:01:31,740 --> 00:01:37,079 of weeks as Xi Jinping further consolidates power and indefinitely 24 00:01:37,079 --> 00:01:43,049 extends it as a leader of the unfree world while the free world appears leaderless. 25 00:01:43,049 --> 00:01:47,430 I would like you to keep this question on the back of your mind as we walk 26 00:01:47,430 --> 00:01:53,399 through the history and contemporary landscape of science in China. China is 27 00:01:53,399 --> 00:01:57,509 home to one of the oldest civilizations in the world, has a splendid history 28 00:01:57,509 --> 00:02:01,979 including in science and technology. However it did lag behind the West since 29 00:02:01,979 --> 00:02:06,240 the time of Enlightenment. As presented by 20th century British psychologist 30 00:02:06,240 --> 00:02:11,730 Joseph Needham as the so called Needham's grand question. He said gunpowder, 31 00:02:11,730 --> 00:02:15,480 the magnetic compass, paper and printing, what Francis Bacon 32 00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:19,980 called the inventions that were most instrumental in bringing the West 33 00:02:19,980 --> 00:02:25,290 out of the Dark Ages were invented in China. Then why did modernization of 34 00:02:25,290 --> 00:02:29,300 science, the mathematization of the hypothesis about nature and the 35 00:02:29,300 --> 00:02:31,800 technological advancements that come with it 36 00:02:31,800 --> 00:02:37,050 only happened in the West since the time of Galileo but not in the Chinese 37 00:02:37,050 --> 00:02:41,940 civilization? The Needham question is hypothetical in nature and there are 38 00:02:41,940 --> 00:02:47,040 many ways to answer it or challenge its premise. What is not a hypothesis is that 39 00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:51,270 China and the Chinese people paid a heavy price for its lagging behind in 40 00:02:51,270 --> 00:02:56,430 science and technology over several centuries resulting in a devastating 41 00:02:56,430 --> 00:03:01,080 defeat at the First Opium Wars, leading to a century of humiliation that 42 00:03:01,080 --> 00:03:06,870 technically ended when Mao Zedong stood on the Gate of Heavenly Peace and 43 00:03:06,870 --> 00:03:10,440 announced that the Chinese people have stood up at the founding of the People's 44 00:03:10,440 --> 00:03:16,890 Republic. Science in Mao's China largely mirrored the Soviet model where the 45 00:03:16,890 --> 00:03:21,870 space and nuclear programs were given priority. The so-called Liang Dan Yi Xin - 46 00:03:21,870 --> 00:03:26,130 two bombs and one star - the two bombs referring to the atomic bomb and the 47 00:03:26,130 --> 00:03:30,989 ballistic missile and one star referring to the man-made satellite. China 48 00:03:30,989 --> 00:03:37,019 successfully detonated the first atomic bomb in 1964 and its first man-made satellite 49 00:03:37,019 --> 00:03:43,560 six years later in 1970. It was named Dong Fang Hong - the Sun rises in the East. 50 00:03:43,560 --> 00:03:49,470 In the meantime through the anti-writers' campaigns in the late 1950s to 51 00:03:49,470 --> 00:03:55,340 the decade of madness called the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 52 00:03:55,340 --> 00:03:59,459 scientists were among the most persecuted groups in China through Mao's 53 00:03:59,459 --> 00:04:04,290 reign, tragically and ironically. The veterans of the Chinese space and 54 00:04:04,290 --> 00:04:11,670 nuclear programs were not immune to political persecutions. The rebuild from 55 00:04:11,670 --> 00:04:19,680 the era of devastation of Mao's reign was difficult and urgent. In 1977, the so-called 56 00:04:19,680 --> 00:04:24,270 full modernization was enacted referring to the modernization of 57 00:04:24,270 --> 00:04:29,370 agriculture, industry, national defense, science and technology. 58 00:04:29,370 --> 00:04:34,199 Sige Xiandaihua as it is called in Chinese came to symbolize the time when Deng Xiaoping 59 00:04:34,199 --> 00:04:40,889 was the paramount leader in China. On March 3rd, 1986, four of China's top 60 00:04:40,889 --> 00:04:45,539 weapon scientists, all of them veterans of the Chinese space and nuclear program, 61 00:04:45,539 --> 00:04:51,030 wrote a private letter to Deng Xiaoping, saying that China must join the Xinjishu Geming, 62 00:04:51,030 --> 00:04:55,470 the new technological revolution. This moment came to be known 63 00:04:55,470 --> 00:05:01,740 as China's Sputnik moment as it launched the so-called 863 jihua - program 863, 64 00:05:01,740 --> 00:05:08,729 named after the date of the letter or the national high-tech R&D program. It was 65 00:05:08,729 --> 00:05:13,889 followed a decade later by program 973 again named after the date in spring of 66 00:05:13,889 --> 00:05:19,620 1997, the national program on key basic research project. In the meantime there 67 00:05:19,620 --> 00:05:23,419 were also a number of university development plans that were put forth, 68 00:05:23,419 --> 00:05:31,860 most notably Project 211 which is named in a way to indicate "build a 69 00:05:31,860 --> 00:05:37,229 hundred university successfully facing the 21st century". It started in 1995 70 00:05:37,229 --> 00:05:43,560 enacted by Jiang Zemin and a few years later in May of 1998, the project 985 71 00:05:43,560 --> 00:05:49,560 which also identified a group of key universities to put resources in. I grew 72 00:05:49,560 --> 00:05:53,699 up on the campus of University of Science and Technology of China as the 73 00:05:53,699 --> 00:05:57,509 daughter of a professor in Mechanical Science & Engineering and I remember as 74 00:05:57,509 --> 00:06:02,069 a little kid in the late 90s hearing my parents say these obscure number 75 00:06:02,069 --> 00:06:07,590 combinations and sounding quite proud that their university is being selected 76 00:06:07,590 --> 00:06:13,020 for both programs. Both programs are now superseded by Xi Jinping's Double First 77 00:06:13,020 --> 00:06:17,880 Class which means building first-class universities and first-class disciplines. 78 00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:23,190 And growing up this line is passed down through generations. It traces back to 79 00:06:23,190 --> 00:06:27,840 the 1950s so-called "Xue hao shu li hua, zou bian tian xia dou bu pa" （学好数理化，走遍天下都不怕）. 80 00:06:27,840 --> 00:06:32,610 Learn well math, physics and chemistry and you can walk around the world unafraid. 81 00:06:32,610 --> 00:06:38,190 Three decades since China Sputnik moment, the country has made remarkable 82 00:06:38,190 --> 00:06:41,529 progress in terms of Science and Technology and I 83 00:06:41,529 --> 00:06:45,519 will use the next several minutes to walk through some of the key areas and 84 00:06:45,519 --> 00:06:52,119 highlight some recent breakthroughs. First is China's space program. As 85 00:06:52,119 --> 00:06:56,229 mentioned earlier this is an area that was prioritized since the 86 00:06:56,229 --> 00:06:59,949 founding of the People's Republic. However this is also an area that is 87 00:06:59,949 --> 00:07:04,779 extremely resource-intensive and where the United States and Russia had a huge 88 00:07:04,779 --> 00:07:11,439 lead. In the fall of 2003 China launched its first crewed space mission with its 89 00:07:11,439 --> 00:07:16,119 first astronaut Yang Li Wei. I remember as a middle school student at the time as 90 00:07:16,119 --> 00:07:20,919 cynical and hard to please teenagers, my classmates and I were wondering how much 91 00:07:20,919 --> 00:07:24,789 pride we could derive from this breakthrough when the United States and 92 00:07:24,789 --> 00:07:29,259 Russia have done this decades before. On the other hand a decade and a half later 93 00:07:29,259 --> 00:07:34,169 China is not only establishing itself as a player in space technology but also 94 00:07:34,169 --> 00:07:39,339 becoming a leader in this field with its space stations and laboratory programs 95 00:07:39,339 --> 00:07:47,019 so named Tian Gong, Heavenly Palace. Its rocket systems are named Long March after 96 00:07:47,019 --> 00:07:52,269 Mao's romanticized and propagandized massive military retreat during the 97 00:07:52,269 --> 00:07:56,259 Second World War. Changzheng and the Long March 5 are the 98 00:07:56,259 --> 00:08:00,459 heavy load rockets that are going to propel these missions to the 99 00:08:00,459 --> 00:08:05,079 further end of the universe including the far end of the moon which has never 100 00:08:05,079 --> 00:08:08,529 been explored before, Mars missions and beyond. 101 00:08:08,529 --> 00:08:13,749 In the meantime, China also has launched a number of ground-based astronomical 102 00:08:13,749 --> 00:08:19,449 and cosmological experiments including telescope experiments 103 00:08:19,449 --> 00:08:24,519 such as the fast 500 meter telescope experiment located in Guanxi Province 104 00:08:24,519 --> 00:08:29,139 that's designed partly with a specific purpose to search for extraterrestrial 105 00:08:29,139 --> 00:08:34,300 intelligence and the December issue of the Atlantic last year had 106 00:08:34,300 --> 00:08:39,399 a beautiful essay by Ross Anderson called "What if China makes first contact on the 107 00:08:39,399 --> 00:08:45,279 fast telescope". So as mentioned space technology is a field where it's 108 00:08:45,279 --> 00:08:50,110 resource-intensive and China has been playing catch-up. On the other hand there 109 00:08:50,110 --> 00:08:53,260 are also other nascent technology fields where China can 110 00:08:53,260 --> 00:08:57,760 quickly establish itself as a player and become a leader. One of these fields is 111 00:08:57,760 --> 00:09:04,180 quantum technology. One of the Long March rockets launched into space the world's 112 00:09:04,180 --> 00:09:08,140 first quantum science experiment satellite in the summer of 2016 113 00:09:08,140 --> 00:09:13,270 named after an ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi or Micius and then a 114 00:09:13,270 --> 00:09:17,500 year later, summer of last year, it was reported that the first object was 115 00:09:17,500 --> 00:09:22,900 teleported from Earth to orbit. A photon was teleported from Earth and received 116 00:09:22,900 --> 00:09:28,300 by Mozi - the satellite and then just a couple of months ago it was announced that 117 00:09:28,300 --> 00:09:34,290 the first quantum encrypted video conference was conducted across a 118 00:09:34,290 --> 00:09:38,590 significant breakthrough of distances between continents in this case between 119 00:09:38,590 --> 00:09:44,890 China and Vienna in Austria. In the meantime China is also constructing the 120 00:09:44,890 --> 00:09:49,240 world's largest quantum research facility. It's actually my 121 00:09:49,240 --> 00:09:53,650 hometown, Hefei, Anhui, by a lake and the construction cost is about 10 122 00:09:53,650 --> 00:10:00,570 billion dollars and the idea is to consolidate the resources, to achieve 123 00:10:00,570 --> 00:10:05,800 supremacy in terms of quantum computing communications and encryption. The lead 124 00:10:05,800 --> 00:10:10,480 scientist Pan Jianwei as he stated, "the goal is to achieve quantum supremacy by 125 00:10:10,480 --> 00:10:17,850 2020 or as early as 2018". Another field that China has been making strides in is 126 00:10:17,850 --> 00:10:22,720 biotechnology. As many of you might have read in the news, a couple of months ago, 127 00:10:22,720 --> 00:10:26,770 Chinese scientists announced that they produced the world's first cloned 128 00:10:26,770 --> 00:10:31,270 primates through somatic cell nuclear transfer. These are the very 129 00:10:31,270 --> 00:10:36,850 adorable monkeys and it was using the same technology that created Dolly the 130 00:10:36,850 --> 00:10:41,950 sheep 20 years ago. On the other hand there is another phrase that might have 131 00:10:41,950 --> 00:10:46,180 been the news for the past several years the so-called CRISPR gene editing 132 00:10:46,180 --> 00:10:50,110 technology which is why far the cheapest and most powerful gene technology ever, 133 00:10:50,110 --> 00:10:55,920 and in the summer of 2015, Chinese scientists shocked the world by 134 00:10:55,920 --> 00:11:02,140 being the first using CRISPR geno- editing technology to edit human embryos. 135 00:11:02,140 --> 00:11:06,760 That experiment was not successful but two years later, the first successful 136 00:11:06,760 --> 00:11:09,610 gene-editing in human embryos was conducted by an 137 00:11:09,610 --> 00:11:14,950 international group of scientists from United States, South Korea and China to 138 00:11:14,950 --> 00:11:20,440 fix a disease gene that would lead to heart disease. In the meantime there are 139 00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:25,600 at least nine ongoing clinical trials in China using CRISPR genome editing 140 00:11:25,600 --> 00:11:30,970 technology to treat cancer. On the other hand, due to a lot of ethical concerns 141 00:11:30,970 --> 00:11:36,190 and regulatory constraints, there is only one such clinical trial planned in the 142 00:11:36,190 --> 00:11:42,580 United States and just starting. When we think about quantum technology or 143 00:11:42,580 --> 00:11:47,890 biotechnology these are fields that have an explicit applicable application 144 00:11:47,890 --> 00:11:52,840 values and might even sound a bit sci-fi ish and one might understand why China 145 00:11:52,840 --> 00:11:57,220 would want to make strides in it. On the other hand I should also highlight that 146 00:11:57,220 --> 00:12:01,750 China is also making a lot of investments and progress in fundamental 147 00:12:01,750 --> 00:12:06,610 sciences and basic research and one of these fields is my field of research 148 00:12:06,610 --> 00:12:11,290 which is particle physics. There are a number of world leading particle physics 149 00:12:11,290 --> 00:12:16,450 experiments located in China including the Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment located 150 00:12:16,450 --> 00:12:21,790 at the Daya Bay Nuclear Reactor in Guangdong Province, the Panda X Dark 151 00:12:21,790 --> 00:12:26,740 Matter direct detection experiment which is located in Sichuan province in the 152 00:12:26,740 --> 00:12:32,220 world's deepest underground laboratory 2.4 kilometers or 1.5 miles underground 153 00:12:32,220 --> 00:12:37,120 using a giant xenon tank to try to detect dark matter particles that might 154 00:12:37,120 --> 00:12:42,670 have traveled through earth. On the other hand my specific field is collider 155 00:12:42,670 --> 00:12:48,310 particle physics. China has one particle collider which is the Beijing Electron 156 00:12:48,310 --> 00:12:53,250 Positron Collider. The project started in the late 1980s under 157 00:12:53,250 --> 00:12:57,370 explicit directives from Deng Xiaoping at the time when the country was still 158 00:12:57,370 --> 00:13:01,630 very poor but he thinks it's extremely important for China to become a player 159 00:13:01,630 --> 00:13:06,430 in collider particle physics and being on this campus I should also mention that 160 00:13:06,430 --> 00:13:10,030 the Beijing Electron Positron Collider is very similar to the collider 161 00:13:10,030 --> 00:13:14,080 experiment that used to be here the Caesar Cornell Electron Storage Ring and 162 00:13:14,080 --> 00:13:17,830 the main detector on the Beijing Electron Positron Collider, the Beijing 163 00:13:17,830 --> 00:13:25,480 spectrometer, is also very similar to the CLIO experiment here. One of my 164 00:13:25,480 --> 00:13:29,920 college research supervisors Professor Zhao Zhengguo, he actually worked here 165 00:13:29,920 --> 00:13:33,430 for quite a while and know some of the folks at the physics department 166 00:13:33,430 --> 00:13:37,899 well and he talked about back in 80's as an ambitious young scientist, how he 167 00:13:37,899 --> 00:13:41,620 would use to rally his colleagues to write letters to Deng Xiaoping to ask 168 00:13:41,620 --> 00:13:47,829 him to support particle physics. On the other hand China is putting forth an 169 00:13:47,829 --> 00:13:52,180 extremely ambitious plan to become the leader in collider particle physics 170 00:13:52,180 --> 00:13:56,769 within a generation so the experiment I work on is the Large Hadron Collider 171 00:13:56,769 --> 00:14:01,029 which is the biggest, most expensive and most complicated machinery ever built 172 00:14:01,029 --> 00:14:05,529 located at the Swiss French borders operated by the European Center for 173 00:14:05,529 --> 00:14:10,750 Nuclear Research CERN. The LHC would reach its technological limit in about 20 174 00:14:10,750 --> 00:14:16,029 to 30, in about 20 years, so there would need to be a successor to it and China 175 00:14:16,029 --> 00:14:21,310 is bidding to become the successor to build the future super collider, a hundred 176 00:14:21,310 --> 00:14:28,480 kilometer tunnel with about six times the energy of the current LHC and 177 00:14:28,480 --> 00:14:33,279 one proposed site is at Qinhuang Dao just outside of Beijing where the Great 178 00:14:33,279 --> 00:14:39,850 Wall meets the sea. China's advances in science and technology is getting noticed. 179 00:14:39,850 --> 00:14:43,920 If you flip through newspapers whether in the United States or Europe these days, 180 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:48,040 almost every week you are going to see a headline talking about China's 181 00:14:48,040 --> 00:14:53,410 breathtaking breakthroughs and becoming a scientific superpower. Some reporters 182 00:14:53,410 --> 00:14:58,389 and analysts might even think that America is already yielding its throne as 183 00:14:58,389 --> 00:15:02,620 the leader in global science and yielding the leadership to China. The 184 00:15:02,620 --> 00:15:07,420 Economist. Interestingly I read this editorial earlier this year saying, 185 00:15:07,420 --> 00:15:12,819 arguing that the next super collider should be built in China. Some of my 186 00:15:12,819 --> 00:15:19,329 colleagues are very much welcoming the idea as one of the quotes from Peter 187 00:15:19,329 --> 00:15:22,990 Jenni who is known as the father of the two largest experiments on a Large 188 00:15:22,990 --> 00:15:27,639 Hadron Collider, a 70 year-old Swiss scientist who said, "If I were younger 189 00:15:27,639 --> 00:15:31,899 I can totally see myself working in China". But if you read the rest of his quote 190 00:15:31,899 --> 00:15:36,760 you could see that this enthusiasm on one hand understandable and admirable 191 00:15:36,760 --> 00:15:42,010 but it's also deeply rooted in the sense of ignorance and naivete about China, its 192 00:15:42,010 --> 00:15:47,260 science and its political landscape. So science in China has made a lot of 193 00:15:47,260 --> 00:15:52,510 progress but has also has a lot of problems. Some of the problems are easy 194 00:15:52,510 --> 00:15:57,610 to spot and are getting attention. For example the poorly advised incentive 195 00:15:57,610 --> 00:16:04,740 systems. There are these, even this is not just that medium level or 196 00:16:04,740 --> 00:16:09,910 universities but even top universities have these kinds of incentive systems 197 00:16:09,910 --> 00:16:14,589 where they will give cash rewards to papers published. The better the journal, 198 00:16:14,589 --> 00:16:19,750 the more the money and also there are poorly enforced ethical standards that 199 00:16:19,750 --> 00:16:24,220 could lead to massive academic fraud. According to a New York Times report 200 00:16:24,220 --> 00:16:30,190 recently, since 2012, China has retracted more scientific papers because of fake 201 00:16:30,190 --> 00:16:34,510 peer reviews than all the other countries combined. This has been getting 202 00:16:34,510 --> 00:16:38,620 attention within China with Chinese authorities as well. As the Chinese 203 00:16:38,620 --> 00:16:43,959 Ministry of Science & Technology said in last summer that this academic fraud has 204 00:16:43,959 --> 00:16:48,459 quote seriously harmed the international reputation of our country scientific 205 00:16:48,459 --> 00:16:53,620 research and the dignity of Chinese scientists at large. No one would think 206 00:16:53,620 --> 00:16:59,380 about it right? Why would advance to crackdown on academic fraud but 207 00:16:59,380 --> 00:17:03,370 China is so good at censorship and cracking down on any kind of political 208 00:17:03,370 --> 00:17:07,780 dissent, why wouldn't it be able to crack down on academic fraud or let it 209 00:17:07,780 --> 00:17:14,980 exist in the first place? As late as the late 2010 only about half of Chinese 210 00:17:14,980 --> 00:17:19,900 hospitals and health ministries at the municipal level have ethical boards but 211 00:17:19,900 --> 00:17:25,780 every work unit, lab, school, hospital has a communist party branch. These issues 212 00:17:25,780 --> 00:17:31,419 with poorly advised incentive systems or academic fraud are only the symptoms, not 213 00:17:31,419 --> 00:17:35,799 the disease. If one truly wants to understand the flaws with science in 214 00:17:35,799 --> 00:17:40,750 China one needs to go to its political ideology and its political system 215 00:17:40,750 --> 00:17:43,410 itself. 216 00:17:45,150 --> 00:17:50,290 Astronomy is an area that developed in nation China since imperial times with 217 00:17:50,290 --> 00:17:56,309 the first recordings of lunar and solar eclipses recorded on oracle bones. 218 00:17:56,309 --> 00:18:02,200 However astronomy developing in Imperial China not for the primarily for the 219 00:18:02,200 --> 00:18:07,300 purpose of navigation as a Eurocentric perspective might suggest. On the other 220 00:18:07,300 --> 00:18:11,659 hand it is used to justify imperial rule - jun quan shen shou (君权神授）- 221 00:18:11,659 --> 00:18:13,870 as if the 222 00:18:13,870 --> 00:18:18,670 movement of the stars somehow is a divine indication of the Emperor's rule. 223 00:18:18,670 --> 00:18:24,670 I think one should always be careful in drawing from Chinese history and ancient 224 00:18:24,670 --> 00:18:29,050 culture to understand contemporary China because the current Chinese party state 225 00:18:29,050 --> 00:18:35,500 is very much more a Soviet import than an imperial heritage. However I mention this 226 00:18:35,500 --> 00:18:39,700 specific example of astronomy in Imperial China because there is a direct 227 00:18:39,700 --> 00:18:45,010 analogy to communism. Communism is a political ideology that purports 228 00:18:45,010 --> 00:18:51,580 objectivity and the scientific method but it does so in order to justify its 229 00:18:51,580 --> 00:18:57,100 power and demand obedience. If a government is scientific and if science 230 00:18:57,100 --> 00:19:01,540 is the one and only truth then this government's hold on power must be as 231 00:19:01,540 --> 00:19:08,200 undefiable and absolute as the laws of the universe or so as the ideology goes. 232 00:19:08,200 --> 00:19:14,050 And this kind of ideology doesn't actually respect science and actually 233 00:19:14,050 --> 00:19:17,890 sees itself as the paramount power above the laws of the universe. 234 00:19:17,890 --> 00:19:23,110 One example is after the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl in the former 235 00:19:23,110 --> 00:19:30,309 Soviet Union 20-30 years ago the local political officers were asking 236 00:19:30,309 --> 00:19:34,600 the people that they have to win this struggle, this fight against the atom, the 237 00:19:34,600 --> 00:19:38,679 universe, physics itself. They were boasting that the red flag was 238 00:19:38,679 --> 00:19:43,630 flying over the 4th reactor just four days after the catastrophe. Of course the 239 00:19:43,630 --> 00:19:47,950 laws of the universe cannot be defied and the flag was quickly damaged, 240 00:19:47,950 --> 00:19:52,960 destroyed by radiation and so the flags were constantly being replaced by human 241 00:19:52,960 --> 00:20:00,480 beings at great personal cost and ironically the reward to the workers 242 00:20:00,480 --> 00:20:07,040 who asked to replace the red flag above the flaming radio active 243 00:20:07,040 --> 00:20:16,650 reactor was Pepsi. When a political ideology takes the shape of an 244 00:20:16,650 --> 00:20:21,990 authoritarian regime its weapon is the sense of patriotism as a tool of 245 00:20:21,990 --> 00:20:28,950 control. This parochial nationalism is antithetical to the cosmopolitan ideals 246 00:20:28,950 --> 00:20:34,800 of science. Here we see a picture of two dashing young man. The one on the left is 247 00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:39,540 Chen-Ning Yang who happened to be from my hometown in Hefei, Anhui and I went 248 00:20:39,540 --> 00:20:42,300 to the same high school as he did and I should emphasize not at the same time. 249 00:20:42,300 --> 00:20:50,010 He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1948 as a student of Edward 250 00:20:50,010 --> 00:20:54,090 Teller and Enrico Fermi. He spent most of his professional career in the United 251 00:20:54,090 --> 00:20:58,260 States, later going on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics and was the Yang in 252 00:20:58,260 --> 00:21:02,790 the groundbreaking Yang-Mills theory. The one on the right was his best friend 253 00:21:02,790 --> 00:21:07,470 since adolescence, a man by the name of Deng Jiaxian, a couple years younger. 254 00:21:07,470 --> 00:21:12,990 Deng received his PhD from Purdue University in 1950. He boarded a boat 255 00:21:12,990 --> 00:21:17,760 back to China nine days after his Ph.D. graduation to devote himself to the 256 00:21:17,760 --> 00:21:22,560 scientific enterprise of the new China. He later became the father of the 257 00:21:22,560 --> 00:21:27,480 Chinese nuclear weapons program. Growing up both young and Deng was household name 258 00:21:27,480 --> 00:21:32,580 and I was always told that Deng was the superior scientist. 259 00:21:32,580 --> 00:21:37,980 Unlike Yang he did not make significant contributions to advancing human 260 00:21:37,980 --> 00:21:42,510 understanding of nature but what I was told was that Deng's science served a 261 00:21:42,510 --> 00:21:48,930 higher purpose, that's in defense of one's nation and one's people. What was lost in 262 00:21:48,930 --> 00:21:54,000 this patriotic propaganda was the ethical debate behind Deng's 263 00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:59,280 actions itself. Why would a scientist choose to build bombs, build the most 264 00:21:59,280 --> 00:22:03,570 powerful weapons on earth for a regime that has killed more of its own people 265 00:22:03,570 --> 00:22:08,130 than any foreign invaders in history? Why would a scientist choose to make weapons 266 00:22:08,130 --> 00:22:13,499 at all? In our middle school history textbooks we learned that going 267 00:22:13,499 --> 00:22:17,970 from the atomic bomb to the hydrogen bomb it took the Americans seven years 268 00:22:17,970 --> 00:22:22,889 it took the Soviets less than four years it took the Chinese two years and eight 269 00:22:22,889 --> 00:22:26,489 months. The idea that China was able to 270 00:22:26,489 --> 00:22:31,080 build the bombs faster albeit not the first was supposed to be a sign of the 271 00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:35,580 superiority of the Chinese science and in turn the superiority of the Chinese state. 272 00:22:35,580 --> 00:22:41,659 And again in this kind of debate it doesn't leave room for any ethical 273 00:22:41,659 --> 00:22:50,399 considerations. A more recent example is with these cloned monkeys. They're named 274 00:22:50,399 --> 00:22:56,639 Zhongzhong and Huahua where Zhonghua means the Chinese nation and people. They were not 275 00:22:56,639 --> 00:23:02,700 just the products of science. They were the products of Chinese science. If we 276 00:23:02,700 --> 00:23:07,440 think back at Dolly the sheep born in Scotland 20 years ago her name had beared 277 00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:12,299 no reference to British monarchs or Scottish kings but rather was a cheeky 278 00:23:12,299 --> 00:23:18,980 reference to the American country singer Dolly Parton and her well-endowed figure. 279 00:23:21,169 --> 00:23:28,019 The Chinese Party State constantly invokes the sense of patriotism in its 280 00:23:28,019 --> 00:23:33,239 scientific endeavours. One thing it is trying to do is to recruit scientists 281 00:23:33,239 --> 00:23:37,100 from overseas to return to China to work. 282 00:23:37,399 --> 00:23:42,720 My undergraduate research supervisor whom I mentioned earlier Zhao Zhengguo so 283 00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:48,359 he was among the first of the so-called thousand talent plan recruited back to 284 00:23:48,359 --> 00:23:53,639 China from the University of Michigan in the summer of 2008. If we look at the 285 00:23:53,639 --> 00:24:02,340 English-language website for China's thousand talent plan the banner in black 286 00:24:02,340 --> 00:24:08,070 reads, "welcome overseas high-level talent to come back to China" and then in 287 00:24:08,070 --> 00:24:13,619 parentheses: "Come to China to do innovative and enterprising work". However 288 00:24:13,619 --> 00:24:20,730 in larger font and in red it reads Zuguo （祖国） needs you, Zuguo welcomes you, 289 00:24:20,730 --> 00:24:24,600 Zuguo places her hope in you. Well naturally think the subject 290 00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:31,530 here would be Zhongguo, China, but it's not. It's Zuguo, the Motherland. The 291 00:24:31,530 --> 00:24:36,920 Chinese government is once again invoking a sense of blood and belonging. 292 00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:42,090 It's another reflection of how the government sees itself as not only 293 00:24:42,090 --> 00:24:46,620 controlling over a territory and a citizenry but actually claiming 294 00:24:46,620 --> 00:24:53,250 ownership of a people including its diaspora. The thousand talent plan does 295 00:24:53,250 --> 00:24:58,080 provide a number of tantalizing incentives to draw overseas talent. Some 296 00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:03,120 of these are more general like funding lab, space, staff and student resources. On 297 00:25:03,120 --> 00:25:07,530 the other hand there are also other incentives distinctively with Chinese 298 00:25:07,530 --> 00:25:12,450 characteristics from housing vouchers to spouse settlement and in particular the 299 00:25:12,450 --> 00:25:17,850 hukou guarantee. Hukou is China's notorious household registration system which is 300 00:25:17,850 --> 00:25:21,780 basically a caste system with Chinese characteristics that determines where 301 00:25:21,780 --> 00:25:25,440 you can get any kind of social benefits, where your children can go to school, 302 00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:31,410 where you can buy apartments and for these overseas returning high-level talent 303 00:25:31,410 --> 00:25:35,970 they are guaranteed Beijing or Shanghai or these first-tier city hukou if 304 00:25:35,970 --> 00:25:44,790 that's where their institution is located. Many scientists of Chinese 305 00:25:44,790 --> 00:25:49,860 ethnicity did answer the call of the motherland. From early in the 306 00:25:49,860 --> 00:25:53,400 aforementioned Deng Jiaxian the father of the Chinese nuclear weapons program 307 00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:57,450 to the father of the Chinese space program Qian Xuesen who returned to China 308 00:25:57,450 --> 00:26:01,560 in 1950s amidst the height of the McCarthy era Red Scare and he was 309 00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:05,640 actually accused of being communist spy placed under house arrest in the United 310 00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:08,970 States for an extended period of time before he was finally allowed to return 311 00:26:08,970 --> 00:26:14,730 to China. In a more contemporary era the aforementioned several areas of 312 00:26:14,730 --> 00:26:19,790 Science and Technology where China has been leading, making great progress in, 313 00:26:19,790 --> 00:26:26,550 they are almost always led by an overseas returnee. The top quantum scientist in 314 00:26:26,550 --> 00:26:31,410 China is Pan Jianwei who received his PhD from the University of Vienna. 315 00:26:31,410 --> 00:26:34,770 Wang Yifang, the director of the Institute of High-energy Physics in Beijing who is 316 00:26:34,770 --> 00:26:38,100 spearheading the super collider plan received his Ph.D. 317 00:26:38,100 --> 00:26:43,169 from the University of Florence. The principal investigator on the experiment 318 00:26:43,169 --> 00:26:49,679 that cloned the monkey twins Mu-Ming Pu. He was born in Hong Kong, emigrated to 319 00:26:49,679 --> 00:26:54,120 the US at a very young age and until recently was a faculty member as UC 320 00:26:54,120 --> 00:27:01,140 Berkeley. I have great personal respect and professional respect for my 321 00:27:01,140 --> 00:27:05,640 colleagues who do answer the motherland's call and go back to China 322 00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:11,370 to work and I believe their love for China is genuine, so is their curiosity 323 00:27:11,370 --> 00:27:18,210 in terms of exploring nature. However one is to understand that when one 324 00:27:18,210 --> 00:27:23,159 answers the call of the motherland had returned to China one is also subjecting 325 00:27:23,159 --> 00:27:28,380 themselves to the control of the Chinese Communist Party despite its market 326 00:27:28,380 --> 00:27:33,059 reforms and private enterprise. China remains a Leninist state which means 327 00:27:33,059 --> 00:27:37,919 that the Party controls everything as evident from Xi Jinping's speech at 328 00:27:37,919 --> 00:27:42,990 the 19th People's Congress last fall. Government, military, society and schools, 329 00:27:42,990 --> 00:27:48,690 north, south, east and west, the Party is the leader of all. The party's control is 330 00:27:48,690 --> 00:27:52,919 only intensifying. Some of the news coming out from last fall with China's 331 00:27:52,919 --> 00:27:57,240 asking even foreign enterprises and multinational corporations, their China 332 00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:01,830 offices have to set up a Communist Party branch as well and there is this almost 333 00:28:01,830 --> 00:28:07,950 comic news that Shanghai Disney Resort's Communist Party Chief held a study session 334 00:28:07,950 --> 00:28:11,610 of Xi Jinping's thoughts and presented the speaker with a Mickey Mouse doll. 335 00:28:11,610 --> 00:28:16,950 And if we go to the website of the Institute of High-Energy Physics, at the 336 00:28:16,950 --> 00:28:20,850 Chinese Academy of Sciences, we could see that there is a specific section 337 00:28:20,850 --> 00:28:26,520 dedicated to party building and one of these sections is the so-called "related 338 00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:34,799 knowledge on the United Front". The United Front, the term first came from the 339 00:28:34,799 --> 00:28:39,299 Soviet era, it's called, Mao Zedong called The United 340 00:28:39,299 --> 00:28:44,669 Front one of the three magic weapons, San Da Fa Bao, 三大法宝, the other two being Armed Struggle and 341 00:28:44,669 --> 00:28:49,380 and Party Building and the United Front is one of the ways the 342 00:28:49,380 --> 00:28:54,190 Chinese Communist Party exerts its influence and control and if we read 343 00:28:54,190 --> 00:29:00,390 here the ultimate goal is to win over hearts, act as a unifying force and 344 00:29:00,390 --> 00:29:07,480 strive towards the grand goals of the party and the State. One of the targets 345 00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:11,650 of the United Front efforts is explicitly overseas returnees. As a 346 00:29:11,650 --> 00:29:17,800 separate document on the same site host the numbers of overseas returnees, their 347 00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:23,290 family members, their respective levels of employment and this document is from 348 00:29:23,290 --> 00:29:28,809 almost ten years ago and this effort is only going to intensify as explicit 349 00:29:28,809 --> 00:29:36,510 directives from Xi Jinping and since the last People's Congress. Some of my 350 00:29:36,510 --> 00:29:42,520 colleagues in the West don't necessarily understand what a Communist Party branch does. 351 00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:47,890 They asked me if it is just a formality. However anyone who has an 352 00:29:47,890 --> 00:29:52,270 understanding of a Leninist state knows that the party branch is never just a 353 00:29:52,270 --> 00:29:57,880 figurehead, it's always the real boss. One example was last fall I wrote an article 354 00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:03,610 for Foreign Policy magazine on the future supercollider plan in China for 355 00:30:03,610 --> 00:30:06,550 which I interviewed a high-level official at the Chinese Academy of 356 00:30:06,550 --> 00:30:12,610 Sciences and I asked him a very simple question which made him extremely upset. 357 00:30:12,610 --> 00:30:16,870 I asked him, "would there be a communist party branch at this future 358 00:30:16,870 --> 00:30:22,300 supercollider" and he said, "I only agreed to the interview because you said you're 359 00:30:22,300 --> 00:30:27,730 a scientist. Why are you stirring the pot? You are too young. This is too sensitive. 360 00:30:27,730 --> 00:30:35,700 It could destroy the project. Don't you dare kill my project. Science cannot be 361 00:30:35,700 --> 00:30:43,620 independent from politics if science is subject to politics" and what he is 362 00:30:43,620 --> 00:30:48,850 referring to and which I understand very well he will keep saying “自己回去想”, 363 00:30:48,850 --> 00:30:53,530 “go home and think about it, why I am saying this". Through 364 00:30:53,530 --> 00:30:59,919 the history of contemporary China, science was supported by the government 365 00:30:59,919 --> 00:31:04,650 when it serves a political purpose but it can be crushed at any moment 366 00:31:04,650 --> 00:31:09,210 when it defies party doctrine whether for ideological, professional or personal 367 00:31:09,210 --> 00:31:13,680 reasons. The pseudoscience of traditional Chinese medicine is being 368 00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:18,540 supported because it serves a political purpose. On the other hand astrophysics, a 369 00:31:18,540 --> 00:31:23,970 field as fundamental as astrophysics, was risky business in China through the 70s 370 00:31:23,970 --> 00:31:29,550 and 80s because it was said that the ideas of the formations of the 371 00:31:29,550 --> 00:31:35,160 universe runs counter to Marxist ideology. On the individual level one of 372 00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:42,180 China's foremost astrophysicists, Fang Lizhi, his advocacy emerging as a leader of 373 00:31:42,180 --> 00:31:46,860 the democratic movement through 80s China not only led to his own demotion 374 00:31:46,860 --> 00:31:51,510 and eventual exile but because he served as Vice President of my undergraduate 375 00:31:51,510 --> 00:31:55,590 alma mater University of Science Technology of China, even years after 376 00:31:55,590 --> 00:32:00,510 Fang had left for the United States the university suffered political backlash 377 00:32:00,510 --> 00:32:11,400 and a reduction of funding. When China, when the Chinese government 378 00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:15,960 supports science, it has an explicit goal when they see science as a tool of 379 00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:22,290 national greatness. When Xi Jinping announced the Made in China 2025 plan it 380 00:32:22,290 --> 00:32:27,330 is with an explicit goal not of possession of foreign technology but 381 00:32:27,330 --> 00:32:32,880 internalization of it. A report from Mercator Institute for China Studies 382 00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:37,590 warned that political economic decision makers should not be blindsided by the 383 00:32:37,590 --> 00:32:42,390 lucrative business opportunities that made in China 2025 offered to foreign 384 00:32:42,390 --> 00:32:47,220 high tech suppliers in China. They should be aware that China's long-term goal is 385 00:32:47,220 --> 00:32:52,500 to replace foreign with domestic technology. One great example is a story 386 00:32:52,500 --> 00:32:56,160 of two synchrotrons. This is the Australian Synchrotron 387 00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:59,910 located just outside of Melbourne and then the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation 388 00:32:59,910 --> 00:33:06,630 Facility. The two synchrotrons are almost identical in design. However according to 389 00:33:06,630 --> 00:33:09,690 Professor Robert Rosner who is the former director of Argonne National 390 00:33:09,690 --> 00:33:14,790 Laboratory, the Australian synchrotron they imported every component from 391 00:33:14,790 --> 00:33:17,549 foreign firms because they were only interested in having a 392 00:33:17,549 --> 00:33:22,350 working synchrotron. However at the shanghai synchrotron they imported one 393 00:33:22,350 --> 00:33:27,600 of everything and they replicated the rest because they were really intent on 394 00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:32,519 obtaining the technology and it's not clear where, who actually obtains the 395 00:33:32,519 --> 00:33:37,200 technology whether it's for a civilian, commercial or military use. Another 396 00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:42,149 anecdote I should mention is we could see that the outside architectural 397 00:33:42,149 --> 00:33:45,600 design, the Australian synchrotron is very plain it's just a circle, 398 00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:50,759 well the Shanghai synchrotron is stunning. It is true that the Shanghai 399 00:33:50,759 --> 00:33:55,369 synchrotron was, the outside building was designed by a very famous architect and 400 00:33:55,369 --> 00:33:59,909 when the blueprint was already approved it was found that this building design, 401 00:33:59,909 --> 00:34:04,590 stunning from the outset, is actually not ideal for scientific experiments inside 402 00:34:04,590 --> 00:34:07,879 because they create inconveniences to extract the beam from the synchrotron. 403 00:34:07,879 --> 00:34:13,379 However the architecture cannot be changed because it was favored and 404 00:34:13,379 --> 00:34:17,280 approved by the local party boss so the science just has to find its way to 405 00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:23,579 work around it. The so-called 师夷长技, to learn the advanced technologies 406 00:34:23,579 --> 00:34:28,589 from foreigners, this phrase was first coined by the Qing Dynasty scholar Wei Yuan 407 00:34:28,589 --> 00:34:34,109 and the full sentence went: "师夷长技以制夷", to learn the advanced 408 00:34:34,109 --> 00:34:41,280 technology from the foreigners in order to subdue them. The Chinese 409 00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:45,619 government has been pushing this notion of the so-called 军民融合, 410 00:34:45,619 --> 00:34:50,819 military civilian fusion and we should take the Chinese government at its words 411 00:34:50,819 --> 00:34:57,089 this time, that when it says so we should assume that any technology acquired by 412 00:34:57,089 --> 00:35:01,559 the Chinese government would be to use for both civilian and military means and 413 00:35:01,559 --> 00:35:06,599 for an authoritarian state like China, any technology can be used for national 414 00:35:06,599 --> 00:35:12,420 defense could equally be used for its internal security. China is already using 415 00:35:12,420 --> 00:35:17,730 advanced technology such as artificial intelligence, advanced surveillance and 416 00:35:17,730 --> 00:35:22,829 imaging tools to build these 21st century police states in its further 417 00:35:22,829 --> 00:35:28,260 West regions like Xinjiang province and what happens in Xinjiang is 418 00:35:28,260 --> 00:35:30,950 only a testing ground and what happens there would not be assumed 419 00:35:30,950 --> 00:35:35,530 to be contained there. There is being a number of really incredibly brave and 420 00:35:35,530 --> 00:35:40,849 stunning investigative journalism on the plight of the augurs in ancient province 421 00:35:40,849 --> 00:35:45,829 and the overall so-called digital Leninism, the kind of social control 422 00:35:45,829 --> 00:35:52,550 aided by new technology. Another thing I should mention is the advances of 423 00:35:52,550 --> 00:35:58,160 biotechnology in China. China is already collecting massive amounts of biometrics 424 00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:03,800 information including DNA information from residents in Xinjiang masked as 425 00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:09,589 mandatory health check-ups and this is one of the things that actually keeps me 426 00:36:09,589 --> 00:36:13,730 up at night. When I think about this as a state that has used extremely crude 427 00:36:13,730 --> 00:36:19,430 measures such as forced abortions and forced sterilizations for population 428 00:36:19,430 --> 00:36:23,599 control and massive social engineering. It's a state that has written eugenics 429 00:36:23,599 --> 00:36:28,609 into the law. What is it going to be able to do with advanced biotechnology 430 00:36:28,609 --> 00:36:36,079 including genome editing. The new advances in biotechnology would become a 431 00:36:36,079 --> 00:36:40,490 powerful tool in the Chinese security and surveillance state and in the worst 432 00:36:40,490 --> 00:36:47,569 nightmares it could become a weapon of genocide. The potential military 433 00:36:47,569 --> 00:36:51,950 applications for these new technologies is rightfully getting attention outside 434 00:36:51,950 --> 00:36:57,680 of China, rattling quite a few feathers in DC. There has been a flurry of news 435 00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:03,650 coming out from DC over the past several months. Both the legislative and 436 00:37:03,650 --> 00:37:08,540 executive branches are considering putting, using different measures to put 437 00:37:08,540 --> 00:37:12,609 barriers in terms of Chinese investment in US high-tech firms 438 00:37:12,609 --> 00:37:19,970 or technological transfer from the United 439 00:37:19,970 --> 00:37:25,369 States to China. The FBI director Christopher Wray made a shocking claim a 440 00:37:25,369 --> 00:37:29,180 couple weeks ago basically saying that Chinese students and scientists are 441 00:37:29,180 --> 00:37:33,170 taking advantage of the open academic environment in United States to steal 442 00:37:33,170 --> 00:37:37,280 technology and act as agents of the Chinese State. The 443 00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:43,339 Eurasia group listed as one of its top global risks for 2018, a global 444 00:37:43,339 --> 00:37:48,680 tech cold war. This is a point where I would like to 445 00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:53,930 return to my opening question. Should liberal democracies have a technological 446 00:37:53,930 --> 00:37:59,960 advantage over authoritarian regimes? When if we think about the development 447 00:37:59,960 --> 00:38:04,820 and application of technology it's a reflection of the society and the values 448 00:38:04,820 --> 00:38:10,460 it is created in, then the idea of the free world losing its technological advantage 449 00:38:10,460 --> 00:38:15,470 is a frightening one. The analogy is not quite what if Hitler had acquired a bomb 450 00:38:15,470 --> 00:38:20,270 first but what if China had invented Internet? Would the internet still be a 451 00:38:20,270 --> 00:38:25,550 platform for the free exchange of ideas or would it become as a tool of state control 452 00:38:25,550 --> 00:38:34,430 and surveillance? Would the Internet be invented at all? I asked this question 453 00:38:34,430 --> 00:38:39,500 once last December when my graduate school alma mater at University of 454 00:38:39,500 --> 00:38:44,960 Chicago commemorated the 75th anniversary of the first self-sustained 455 00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:49,430 controlled nuclear chain reaction. It was achieved on the campus of the University 456 00:38:49,430 --> 00:38:55,220 of Chicago on December 2nd, 1942 in the beginning of the Manhattan Project. The 457 00:38:55,220 --> 00:38:59,540 experiment was led by a group of scientists, many of them refugees who 458 00:38:59,540 --> 00:39:04,339 fled Europe amid a rising anti-semitism. They were refugee 459 00:39:04,339 --> 00:39:10,430 scientists who joined who were embraced by America and who joined a war against 460 00:39:10,430 --> 00:39:16,430 their home countries that denied their humanity. The story at the dawn of 461 00:39:16,430 --> 00:39:19,910 the nuclear age told in a certain way could be an ode to American 462 00:39:19,910 --> 00:39:26,720 exceptionalism. As told by the head of the Manhattan Project during the Second 463 00:39:26,720 --> 00:39:31,460 World War General Leslie groves, when Manhattan Project scientists and then 464 00:39:31,460 --> 00:39:34,670 Chair of the Physics Department at University of Chicago Arthur Compton 465 00:39:34,670 --> 00:39:40,250 asked General Groves this question if he would ever put the welfare of the United 466 00:39:40,250 --> 00:39:46,160 States above the welfare of mankind, General Groves said, "if you put it that 467 00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:52,190 way you have to put the welfare of mankind first but show me, if you can, an 468 00:39:52,190 --> 00:39:56,390 agency through which it is possible to do more for the service of men 469 00:39:56,390 --> 00:40:00,859 than can be done through the United States". The sentiment 470 00:40:00,859 --> 00:40:05,839 expressed by General Groves was echoed by Arthur Compton himself who wrote in 471 00:40:05,839 --> 00:40:11,569 his memoir, "Atomic Quest", how he believed the United States has to organize and 472 00:40:11,569 --> 00:40:17,240 lead an effective World Police and to keep weapons of mass destruction out of 473 00:40:17,240 --> 00:40:23,599 the hands of authoritarian regimes. But is the world really this simple? Is the 474 00:40:23,599 --> 00:40:31,430 United States really almighty? When the bomb invention was eminent the Manhattan 475 00:40:31,430 --> 00:40:34,519 Project commissioned a group of scientists at the University of Chicago 476 00:40:34,519 --> 00:40:41,150 led by University of Chicago physicist James Frank to advise on whether or not 477 00:40:41,150 --> 00:40:47,420 to use this new weapon in war the Frank report advised against its usage and 478 00:40:47,420 --> 00:40:53,210 made this warning, "it may be asked whether we cannot achieve monopoly on 479 00:40:53,210 --> 00:40:57,710 the raw materials of nuclear power. One could further ask whether we cannot 480 00:40:57,710 --> 00:41:02,329 feel ourselves safe in a race of nuclear armaments by virtue of our greater 481 00:41:02,329 --> 00:41:06,740 industrial potential including greater diffusion of scientific and technical 482 00:41:06,740 --> 00:41:15,289 knowledge". The Frank report which was published in 483 00:41:15,289 --> 00:41:20,660 June 11th of 1945 its suggestion of not using an atomic bomb was not adopted, 484 00:41:20,660 --> 00:41:29,150 the rest was history but this prediction of him proved prescient as the United 485 00:41:29,150 --> 00:41:34,609 States was not able to keep nuclear technology to itself. An arms race during 486 00:41:34,609 --> 00:41:38,299 the Cold War brought the world to the brink of nuclear armageddon multiple 487 00:41:38,299 --> 00:41:44,690 times and also it significantly weakened the US's own democratic 488 00:41:44,690 --> 00:41:49,789 institutions from the expansion of executive power. Congress has not 489 00:41:49,789 --> 00:41:54,410 formally declared war since the United States acquired nuclear weapons saying 490 00:41:54,410 --> 00:41:58,579 that it needs quick executive action with these kinds of powerful tools and 491 00:41:58,579 --> 00:42:03,230 also the buildup of a massive security State. The co-inventor of the first 492 00:42:03,230 --> 00:42:08,000 nuclear reactor Leo Szilard said the most powerful weapon coming out of the 493 00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:14,750 Manhattan Project was not the atomic mom but the secret stamp. The United 494 00:42:14,750 --> 00:42:20,270 States cannot have its monopoly on technology nor could any entity. In April 495 00:42:20,270 --> 00:42:26,119 of 2011 Congress passed a resolution banning NASA from engaging in bilateral 496 00:42:26,119 --> 00:42:30,290 agreements and coordination from China. That has not stopped the Chinese space 497 00:42:30,290 --> 00:42:36,140 program. On the other hand China has its space program continue with increased 498 00:42:36,140 --> 00:42:42,830 collaboration with EU and Russia. First of all no country can have a monopoly on 499 00:42:42,830 --> 00:42:48,260 any branch of science or any technology. On the other hand when President Obama 500 00:42:48,260 --> 00:42:52,850 said in his first inaugural address, "As for a common defense we reject as false 501 00:42:52,850 --> 00:42:57,800 the choice between our safety and our ideals". No one should make false 502 00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:02,600 equivalencies between liberal democracies and authoritarian states but 503 00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:06,859 belief in liberal democratic values should not become blind faith in its 504 00:43:06,859 --> 00:43:13,100 omnipotence or infallibility. The United States also abuses its 505 00:43:13,100 --> 00:43:19,490 technology from surveillance to extrajudicial killings to, as Daniel 506 00:43:19,490 --> 00:43:24,710 Golden, author of Spy School, said, "the U.S. intelligence agencies also actively 507 00:43:24,710 --> 00:43:31,820 tries to infiltrate academic circles for intelligence gathering". When the United 508 00:43:31,820 --> 00:43:38,060 States betrays its liberal democratic values in a self-reported arms race it 509 00:43:38,060 --> 00:43:46,010 not only hurts its own credibility on the global stage it also makes itself 510 00:43:46,010 --> 00:43:50,619 less democratic and more authoritarian. 511 00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:56,570 At the end of the day when we think about these new technologies, whether its 512 00:43:56,570 --> 00:44:01,790 artificial intelligence, biotech, or anything on the horizon its innate risk 513 00:44:01,790 --> 00:44:09,260 is not a derivative of and cannot be masked by its nature of ownership. A tech 514 00:44:09,260 --> 00:44:15,800 race squeezes out the space for an ethical debate, reduces the transparency 515 00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:23,610 and actually makes everyone less safe and less free. So how should the global 516 00:44:23,610 --> 00:44:28,830 science community engage with China? There has been a lot of reckoning among 517 00:44:28,830 --> 00:44:33,660 China watchers or policy makers in the West these days saying how the West has 518 00:44:33,660 --> 00:44:38,670 gotten China wrong when we thought when China opened up its markets four decades 519 00:44:38,670 --> 00:44:44,280 ago, when China joined the WTO a decade and a half ago, if there is free 520 00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:48,690 choice of Starbucks Coffee, China is going to want free choice of political 521 00:44:48,690 --> 00:44:58,500 parties. It did not happen and I, my own argument on this, is the global community 522 00:44:58,500 --> 00:45:03,570 has often underestimated its power and influence but overestimated its 523 00:45:03,570 --> 00:45:11,310 commitment to values. It's easy to say, oh China's often a sealed scientific world 524 00:45:11,310 --> 00:45:15,630 to be cracked open by an infusion of foreign physicists as The Economist 525 00:45:15,630 --> 00:45:20,130 wrote in its argument why the next supercollider should be built in China. 526 00:45:20,130 --> 00:45:24,540 This kind of view is almost neo-colonial, to think that it will be just like 527 00:45:24,540 --> 00:45:31,170 knights in shining armor coming to China and opening it up. However when it really 528 00:45:31,170 --> 00:45:37,280 comes to occasions where one needs to defend basic principles of freedom, 529 00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:45,660 independence and transparency, Western participants in the Chinese sphere, 530 00:45:45,660 --> 00:45:50,820 whether it's science or business, are often willing to curb its own standards 531 00:45:50,820 --> 00:45:56,430 in order to meet Chinese government requests. The Internet is not free in 532 00:45:56,430 --> 00:46:03,090 China, nor at any of its scientific experiments with the global 533 00:46:03,090 --> 00:46:07,800 collaboration. When I asked my colleagues in the West whether or not they would 534 00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:11,820 demand, for example, if China builds next supercollider it needs to provide the 535 00:46:11,820 --> 00:46:16,800 free Internet. They tell me that they are not as dependent on Facebook or Twitter 536 00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:25,230 and will be okay with it as long as China provides free stream of data 537 00:46:25,230 --> 00:46:31,800 from the experiment and it's not unusual that scientists and 538 00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:36,330 technologists can be blinded by a technological arrogance 539 00:46:36,330 --> 00:46:41,720 and think that democracy and democratic institutions can almost be a hindrance. 540 00:46:41,720 --> 00:46:47,880 For example when Nima Arkani-Hamed who is one of the founding directors of China's 541 00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:53,310 Future Fuel Center for Future Particle Physics and the most prominent non Chinese 542 00:46:53,310 --> 00:46:59,280 face for China's supercollider plan told me that democratic systems make it 543 00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:03,600 harder to do long term things. In the top-down system of China can be more 544 00:47:03,600 --> 00:47:11,130 efficient in decision making. One really needs to question how much Western 545 00:47:11,130 --> 00:47:17,520 scientists saying that these huge scientific collaboration with China will 546 00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:22,350 be a beacon of hope, an open window, are really committed to these liberal 547 00:47:22,350 --> 00:47:26,520 democratic values. When I'm being constantly asked what is your priority, 548 00:47:26,520 --> 00:47:33,780 science or human rights, as if these are mutually exclusive, I would like to tell 549 00:47:33,780 --> 00:47:39,690 a story of two publishers. Last summer Cambridge University Press announced that 550 00:47:39,690 --> 00:47:45,720 it had responded to Chinese Government's request to censor over 300 journal 551 00:47:45,720 --> 00:47:51,720 articles from its China Quarterly Journal in order to meet the Chinese 552 00:47:51,720 --> 00:47:55,890 Government's censorship requests. It instigated a giant uproar from the 553 00:47:55,890 --> 00:48:00,720 academic communities including threats of boycott. Cambridge University Press 554 00:48:00,720 --> 00:48:07,050 quickly backed down and put the censored articles back online. However later in 555 00:48:07,050 --> 00:48:09,960 the year, Springer Nature, the world's largest 556 00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:16,560 academic publishing firm, blocked at least a thousand articles per China's 557 00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:21,630 request and the estimate, this is an initial estimation, it's 558 00:48:21,630 --> 00:48:25,980 actually estimated to be much greater at a percent level of Springer's entire 559 00:48:25,980 --> 00:48:33,750 archive. In this case Springer is not only passively responding to China's 560 00:48:33,750 --> 00:48:40,260 censorship requests but it is actively participating in the 561 00:48:40,260 --> 00:48:44,880 Chinese government's propaganda machine including obtaining the English 562 00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:49,680 translation rights of Xi Jinping's new book and signing scientific partnerships 563 00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:54,860 with Chinese technological firms. It has Springer Nature has also put forth 564 00:48:54,860 --> 00:48:59,580 advertisements in simplified Chinese hence targeting an audience in mainland 565 00:48:59,580 --> 00:49:05,070 China asking Chinese scholars in geography and history to use Springer Nature's 566 00:49:05,070 --> 00:49:09,030 global platform to put forward its research. There is nothing inherently 567 00:49:09,030 --> 00:49:13,290 wrong with having more Chinese scientists and scholars, having their 568 00:49:13,290 --> 00:49:16,860 work being presented on the global stage but one needs to understand that 569 00:49:16,860 --> 00:49:22,970 subjects such as geography and history are heavily censored and essentially an 570 00:49:22,970 --> 00:49:28,440 arm of the Chinese government propaganda and it's now going to be aided by 571 00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:38,280 Springer's global platform. I would like to conclude by going over what we talked 572 00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:45,060 about today. We know that China has made great progress in science but it has its 573 00:49:45,060 --> 00:49:49,470 strengths and we should acknowledge that but it also has a lot of challenges. Some 574 00:49:49,470 --> 00:49:54,480 of these issues are managerial and easier to fix but the deeper 575 00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:59,490 structural flaws are rooted in its political system and ideology. Nature is 576 00:49:59,490 --> 00:50:03,960 not political but science as a human enterprise especially as a primary 577 00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:07,440 government-funded enterprise is and no one should kid 578 00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:13,170 themselves otherwise. When we face China's rise in science technology, the 579 00:50:13,170 --> 00:50:17,130 West first should overcome its neo-colonial prejudices whether or not 580 00:50:17,130 --> 00:50:25,440 the Chinese people can do science or whether or not it can simply change 581 00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:31,620 China through a scientific experiment. What it should do is strengthen its own 582 00:50:31,620 --> 00:50:37,980 commitment to education and research. It's not only good for its own 583 00:50:37,980 --> 00:50:44,550 national security, it's good for science globally that any country should 584 00:50:44,550 --> 00:50:50,040 be committed to it because no entity can have monopoly on science. If we simply 585 00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:53,010 buy into a dichotomy of a Cold War mindset, 586 00:50:53,010 --> 00:50:59,370 it makes everyone less safe and less free. It will be incredibly tragic if in 587 00:50:59,370 --> 00:51:03,330 order to win a tech race with an authoritarian 588 00:51:03,330 --> 00:51:08,550 régime the free world becomes more authoritarian in the meantime. China's 589 00:51:08,550 --> 00:51:13,080 rise is not a reason to doubt liberal democracy but does present an urgency to 590 00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:18,390 defend it and I'd like to conclude this lecture with two messages. The first 591 00:51:18,390 --> 00:51:27,480 message is to citizens of the free world. What do you value? The global community 592 00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:32,670 should not seclude China. It should engage China but engagement must be 593 00:51:32,670 --> 00:51:39,270 conditioned on principles of transparency, independence and freedom of inquiry. It 594 00:51:39,270 --> 00:51:43,230 does carry a certain level of professional personal risk. But 595 00:51:43,230 --> 00:51:49,230 principles are only empty slogans unless one takes the risks to defend them 596 00:51:49,230 --> 00:51:54,980 and then to the people of China I ask, what do you deserve? 597 00:51:54,980 --> 00:51:59,310 There are no perfect dichotomy of the oppressor and the victim in an 598 00:51:59,310 --> 00:52:04,500 authoritarian regime. The people contribute to their own oppression by 599 00:52:04,500 --> 00:52:06,750 keeping their head down, keeping their mouth shut, 600 00:52:06,750 --> 00:52:12,120 becoming obedient and taking temporary personal comfort and hence 601 00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:17,340 becoming complicit in a system. When I spoke with the senior Chinese Academy of 602 00:52:17,340 --> 00:52:20,520 Sciences official on the supercollider project 603 00:52:20,520 --> 00:52:26,130 I left that conversation with a deep sense of sadness for someone of his 604 00:52:26,130 --> 00:52:30,140 generation who came of age during the Cultural Revolution who saw the 605 00:52:30,140 --> 00:52:35,940 remarkable transformation of China and the world, for someone as bold and 606 00:52:35,940 --> 00:52:42,030 ambitious as himself who has the grand vision of building and 100 kilometer 607 00:52:42,030 --> 00:52:48,780 tunnel in the mountains at the foot of the Great Wall, to create an experiment 608 00:52:48,780 --> 00:52:53,960 tens of billions of dollars in value with technology that doesn't yet exist 609 00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:58,980 to smash particles at nearly the speed of light to recreate the 610 00:52:58,980 --> 00:53:03,270 split-second at the creation of the universe with technology that doesn't 611 00:53:03,270 --> 00:53:07,050 yet exist which means this is an experiment that is not for the next year, the 612 00:53:07,050 --> 00:53:11,820 next five years or the next decade. It is for the next 30 years or next half of 613 00:53:11,820 --> 00:53:18,540 century. In that audacious and long term vision he could not see one of 614 00:53:18,540 --> 00:53:25,780 a lab free from a communist party branch let alone a free China and I 615 00:53:25,780 --> 00:53:32,110 think that is the ultimate tragedy. No matter how high the red flag flies 616 00:53:32,110 --> 00:53:36,030 Communist Ideology is not above the laws of nature. 617 00:53:36,030 --> 00:53:41,020 Whatever the Chinese government tries to tell the world that Chinese people 618 00:53:41,020 --> 00:53:45,760 are somehow unique and democracy doesn't apply to them, we know that there are 619 00:53:45,760 --> 00:53:51,940 certain values and certain principles that are as universal as the fundamental 620 00:53:51,940 --> 00:54:06,159 forces that bind us and our shared cosmological history. Thank you very much.