Soapbox Post

Among the many cultural myths surrounding the relations between science and contemporary China, the notion of a ruthless totalitarian state that unscrupulously persecutes their own scientists and the pursuit of science, is not alien to an average American ear. While China is assumed to be unique in many aspects ('a long history, good food and pretty women' are what Stephen Hawking told the media of his enthusiasm for China in 2006), the perception of Chinese science seems to be in line with the common perception of the Marxist-Leninist ideological repression of science that is widely considered to characterize Russian science in the twentieth century.  

I have been repeatedly bombarded with the following comment for umpteen times: 

“Yes, China is dumping more and more money into its  R&D development. And yes, there are more and more science and engineering graduates from China, but – they don’t have the democratic infrastructure that we have here in the United States that props up the unfettered frontiers of scientific research.” 

In this representation, American science is reduced to an ideal construct with nothing but democracy and freedom while Chinese science is reduced to its antithetical opposite with dictatorship and political interference only. The complex nature of the decision-making processes and public interests in science and technology in the United States is not given credit insofar as the myth of “endless frontiers” is perpetuated. It helps to maintain the international advantage of the United States if the rest of the world is infused with the myths of “unfettered research” and “infinite benefit.” It is easier to believe that science in the West is unquestionably good in order to project a sharp contrast to the incorrigible and questionable nature of everything in the rest.

“Wait, I thought we’ve been through this already. Isn’t this binary construct a bit threadbare?” I thought so, or rather, I hope so. 

In conversing with my Chinese colleague on the state of affair of the science-state relations in China, we found that this image is not exactly a matter of the past. A New York Times piece in 2006 reported the struggle of the disillusioned physicist Xu Liangying who was once a committed Communist member. As inspiring as his personal journey of fighting for human rights and political reform in China was, Dr. Xu presented an oversimplified picture of science and society interaction in the “developed Western countries” with absolute academic freedom, pure science for pure human progress, and the alleged universality of democracy and freedom for the human race. Before I release my anger into full furor, my colleague gave me a timely reminder of the history and context of Dr. Xu’s evolved attachment and conflict with the Chinese ruling party. We also laughed at how every news agency has its own political orientation. 

I wonder how CSPO-ites read into this account. Is it a problematic and ridiculed media portrayal of Chinese science? Or is the perception nine-tenths of the truth, as the saying goes? Reading Sarewitz’s celebrated work Frontiers of Illusion, I couldn’t help but wonder about the resemblance between the mystified divorce of science and societal needs in the American scientific community and the disparity of Chinese science and American science. While American leaders rationalize the prerogatives of the scientific community by isolating science from the needs and values of society in the name of “scientific excellence,” the discourse of “political repression” is invoked by those with personal vengeance against the Chinese state by insulating Chinese science from the international realm of “scientific excellence.” At the core is the politics of such a one-sided depiction, intended less to shed light on the complex interaction between science and the Chinese state than to reinforce self-preserving interests and self-fulfilling prophecy. 

I am not denying the infamous heresy-hunting campaign against scientists and intellectuals in communist China. I know that Einstein’s special theory of relativity was criticized during the Cultural Revolution as “reactionary” because the principle of the constant speed of light was considered to be a “profound reflection of Western bourgeois reactionary political viewpoints and that the principle of the constant speed of light is a fundamental violation of the materialistic dialectics.” I have much sympathy for the scientists who experienced the ordeal of political finger-pointing at different turbulent periods of Maoist China. But I also know this is not the whole story. I personally know a few established Chinese scientists who have been through the political tumult and still speak of the benefits socialism lends to the wholesome development of science in the interests of the society. After all, research crafted to serve public needs and engagement with the masses are two central goals in the science policy framework of the socialist states. Are these ideas undemocratic, totalitarian and infeasible for American science policy? 

It is easier to believe in the myth of disreputable science in China than to un-blackbox the scientific heritage in China that is readily dismissed as consisting of nothing but sheer propaganda for inhibiting freedom and democracy.