A critical account of the career of China's top rocket scientist, Tsien Hsue-shen (Qian Xuesen). One of the most academically gifted students in China in the 1930's, Tsien went on to brilliant career in the USA, taking a leading role in aeronautics and rocket design. Throughout World War II Tsien had the highest security clearances and was responsible for teaching a generation of US rocket scientists who went on to build the US space programme. In the 1950's Tsien fell victim to a McCarthyist witch hunt and was at same time threatened with expulsion from the US, and forbidden to return to China to visit his ailing father. The impasse saw Tsien effectively unable to continue working in his own field and at times under arrest.

Iris Chang observes that up to this point there wasn't the slightest suggestion that Tsien wasn't headed for a major role himself in the development of the US space programme, and to the extent that he had any interest in (or time for) politicis, he seemed to be more opposed than supportive of the communist regime in China. Ultimately Tsien was 'swapped' by the US for some US prisoners held in China since the Korean War, and returned to a warm reception from the Chinese Communist regime. He then went on to an extraordinary career in China, heading up that nations missile and rocket development, advancing it perhaps by decades ahead of where it might otherwise have been today. Chang draws upon both Chinese and US sources to conclude that it wasn't the specific knowledge that Tsien brought back from the US to China (and notes that it was almost certain than none of it was classified or secret information), but rather his reputation and intellectual rigour that helped drive the success of the Chinese space program.

The sanitised version of history supported by those who direct China's future would likely coincide with Chang's account thus far. But Chang was contracted by her publisher, and strongly supported by US academic institutions where Tsien had worked in the 1930's through to the 1950's, to get to the 'bottom' of the story of Tsien. Because Tsien, who had been very 'apolitical' during his time in the US, and who was very scornful of too-close ties between science and the military in that time, went on to become a leading light in Chinese science politics, and the developer of the first Chinese inter-continental nuclear ballistic missile. Looking at this astonishing turn-around the question was; did Tsien conceal his true inclinations while he was in the US, and were the suspicions about his loyalty to the US well founded? It is somewhat ironic that part of the reason Chang was selected to take on this job was her Chinese language and writing skills, but it was actually her Chinese cultural heritage that supplied the answer.

Chang observes that Tsien was genuinely committed to continuing working for and living in the US. He was already financially well off, was one of the leading scientists in his field and well respected, and as a full professor at a very young age could only look forward to further social advancement. But, Chang concludes, Tsien was so appalled and so offended by his mistreatment by at times very petty US officialdom that he vowed to cut all ties with the US and give up all of these advantages for a very uncertain future in China. It wasn't a secret agenda that took Tsien back to China, but his immense sense of humiliation and loss of face at the hands of the US Government. Tsien was recognised as a near genius, but he was also notoriously arrogant and prickly with those he regarded as his intellectual inferiors. To be pulled down by people who had no understanding of his work was an impossible situation, but it was compounded by what he might have perceived as a lack of support for him by his peers.

Chang is pretty clear in her account that this wasn't a personal vendetta against Tsien, but a paranoia that gripped nearly all of the US at the time, and if not forgiveable then at least it was understandable in the context of the Soviet spy scandals of the time. But she also fingers a very dark undercurrent of racism, and reflects that Tsien would have been very conscious of this in a way that only those who have been on the receiving end would understand - even today. It was said at the time that Tsien, if he had been patient, could have fought through the US Courts to clear his name, or at least 'sat out' the period and gone on to a distinguished academic career. Many of his intellectual peers 'kept their mouths shut' , even to the extent of distancing themselves from those who where under suspicion. That he wasn't willing to do this was seen by some as proof that his loyalty to the US had been a facade all along.

What Chang hints at - and her coyness on this point is very interesting - is that it wasn't just the case that Tsien's immense pride was offended by the nature of the attack on him and by the lack of support for him, but that he also perceived that the motive behind the attack and the perceived betrayal, was essentially racist. It might seem extraordinary that Chang was speculating on all of this 40 years after the events she describes, and that there were then (and to an extent there still isn't ) any information source other than Chang about these matters. Tsien never shared his views on the matter, apart from some very cautious platitudes. Both Chang and Tsien I suspect were dealing - 40 years apart - with the same troubling question. As a victim (or an observer) of racism do you actually give the idea, and the perpetuators of it, more power by talking about it and bringing the discussion down to 'their level'? Do you refuse to dignify and inflame it with a response? We might assure ourselves that - these days - racism can be tackled head on and those who espouse it will be shamed and sanctioned by society. But the victim of racism - even now - doesn't necessarily have that confidence. Not only is it the case that it's sometimes hard to see beyond the immediate difficulty of their situation, but sometimes (I'd suggest) they see 'too well' and perceive what the more liberally minded choose to ignore, that there are deeply racist views widely held in society still today.

What happens next is fascinating. Chang really struggles to follow Tsien's subsequent career in China through the 1950's up to the 1990's. For the rest of his life Tsien refused to speak to westerners about his experiences or share his thoughts about the US, apart from stating that his grievance was with the US Government and not with its people. Colleagues of Tsien in China were very reluctant to talk with Chang, and Tsien's involvement with the Chinese missile programme meant that a lot of his work is still secret. What Chang can observe is that Tsien became a political chameleon. He seemed to side with whatever faction was in power, and didn't (at least seem to) hesitate to speak up for them, even if it involved cutting loose his colleagues or acting against the interests of his students. Throughout the political and social turmoil and terrible suffering of all of those years, his family, his career and very largely his precious rocket programme were protected by powerful interests.

Chang eventually concludes that Tsien had lost his soul, and perhaps even in his later years, some of his sanity. Her final judgement on him goes something along the lines that he was a brilliant scientist, a difficult personality, someone who would have remained loyal to the West if he had been treated more fairly (and intelligently) by the US Government, and ultimately a man who having been driven back to Communist China was initially forced to go along with the madness of the regime, but eventually fell into that madness himself. That if he was the hero of the Chinese space program (as China states) then he was a flawed hero and a caution alike to scientists who get involved with oppressive regimes, and to liberal regimes that sometimes act oppressively towards science and scientists.

The point that I think Chang misses, or the one that she feels isn't what her publisher wanted to hear, is that Tsien's outrage at his treatment at the hands of the US Government didn't just drive his decision to leave the US and never return, but may have driven all of his subsequent career. Chang is clearly appalled that Tsien would do 'whatever it took' to advance himself in China and that this went far beyond just protecting himself and his family. If he didn't encourage Mao Tse-tung to undertake some of the most devastatingly ruinous agricultural and industrial policies the world has ever seen. then he was one of the few people in a position to speak out against them early enough to perhaps rein them in. But he didn't. Ten of millions of Chinese died as a result of those policies, and many hold Tsien responsible along with Mao. I'd suggest that through all of this Tsien was still driven by the humiliation of those years in the 1950's when he was held in US detention, and in US contempt. It wasn't so much self advancement that motivated him, or indifference to the fate of millions of ordinary Chinese, (although they were both still part of it) but most of all an absolute mania for revenge, using the only means available to him, beating the US in the 'space race'.

Of course we are still talking about a mania, a madness that is irrational and because of the way other people suffered because of it, unforgivable. And some might say, pointless, because of course the US did 'win' the space race. They, after all, landed on the moon while Tsien was still struggling with short range missiles in China. What Tsien might say - although we can't tell, he died in 2009 - is that the race isn't over. It's widely believed in the science community that the next person to land on the moon will be Chinese, and that Mars might be next after that. And Tsien might argue that if millions died in China's sometimes too-rapid and thoughtless rush to industrialization and world power status, then it would be justified in the long run by the opportunities given to billions of people working and living off-planet.

Chang leaves all of this speculation to the reader, and did extraordinarily well with the very limited material available to her. Hemmed in on one side by military secrecy, and on the other by Tsien's obsessive privacy, she has managed to piece together a fair account, and a strong indictment of the US Government's treatment of foreign scientists. At the same time she has produced a valuable addition to the history of both the US and the Chinese space programmes. That she has also hinted at these larger issues, the persistent racism against Asians in the US (and the West generally), and the moral intersection of science and human existence is enough to make this a very important work, and hopefully something that would lead the reader to further research. Chang's style is a little rough, particularly in the chapters leading up to World War II, but it becomes apparent as the sources become richer that she was struggling with very limited sources for those early days and preferred (correctly I think) to leave awkward jumps in the narrative rather than try and invent material to smooth the gaps. ( )

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