钱学森 Qian Xuesen also known as Hsue-shen Tsien (1911-2009)
You might wonder about my use of Tsien for 钱学森 Qian Xue-sen. He came to the US in 1935 on a Boxer Rebellion scholarship, staying for twenty years. For all of his time in the US, he was known as Hsue-shen Tsien, which is the Wade-Giles transliteration used in the 1950s. That is the name on his American-published papers and in the FBI files. Using the Wade-Giles transliteration seems to acknowledge the American side of him.
Tsien spent twenty years in the US studied under Theodore von Kármán, served in the US military, and stepped into von Kármán’s shoes as a professor at Caltech and then head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His genius was widely acknowledged. Tsien had settled into a successful life and even applied for American citizenship. In 1950, he was accused of being a communist under McCarthyism, detained for five years, and then deported. He returned to China and was instrumental in developing the organizational infrastructure for building the nuclear bomb in 1964, launching a nuclear warhead missile (also called the Silkworm) in 1967, and the satellite Dongfanghong in 1970, all of which he proposed to China in the late 1950s.
Tsien arrived in the US in 1935 as a Boxer Rebellion Scholar to do his Master’s degree at MIT after which he was mentored by Theodore von Kármán, considered the “Father of Aeronautics.” He completed his PhD at Caltech under Theodore von Kármán. Along with his mentor, he is considered a leading authority on rocketry. He continued to follow a successful trajectory stepping in von Kármán’s shoes as a professor at Caltech and then head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After World War II ended, with von Kármán, Tsien served as a lieutenant in the US Air Force with security clearance and interrogated the German scientists involved in developing rocketry including von Kármán’s mentor Prandtl. He also helped von Kármán develop the blueprint for the US Air Force which presented a radical vision of aerial warfare decades in the future. He applied for US citizenship in 1949.
In 1950, Tsien’s life was upended by the Red Scare. He was accused of not disclosing he was a member of the Communist Party, deported, and put under house arrest for five years. Many intellectuals, including scientists at Caltech, were accused of being communists. This included the double Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling. Tsien’s accusations were tied to Sidney Weinbaum, who had befriended Qian in his early days at Caltech. Sidney Weinbaum was an aide to Linus Pauling, who supported Weinbaum throughout his ordeal. Tsien was deported, but not allowed to leave until the government thought the knowledge he possessed was outdated. From 1950 to 1955, he was restricted to a small radius in Pasadena where he lived.
This Red Scare narrative has continues to plague Chinese American scientists with government inquiries like the 1989 Cox Report which accused the Chinese of stealing military secrets despite critiques that suggested the conclusions were flawed. This narrative led to the 1999 Wen Ho Lee case, another instance where espionage was unfounded and publications such as the New York Times engaged in sloppy journalism in reporting it. The China Initiative was launched in 2018, where U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) targeted Chinese Americans for alleged conduct that would benefit the Chinese state. From 2018 to 2021, DOJ brought high-profile cases against professors, but several prosecutions collapsed when the government was unable to establish intent and material omissions. Chinese American leaders stated that the China Initiative was a failed program that fueled racial animosity, xenophobia, and suspicion towards the AAPI community and Chinese Americans in particular. But this targeting has not stopped. From 2022 to 2024, DOJ focused on educational institutions and researchers with affiliations with China, using the False Claims Act (FCA). In 2025, DOJ accelerated this effort, launching multiple FCA investigations against academic institutions linked to researchers with allegedly undisclosed Chinese affiliations.
China traded American pilots for Tsien and other Chinese scientists and engineers in 1955. He returned to China and was instrumental in shepherding the nuclear bomb in 1964, launching a nuclear warhead missile (also called the Silkworm) in 1967, and the satellite Dongfanghong in 1970, all of which he proposed to China in the late 1950s. He died with great honors in 2009 at age 98.
Tsien adamantly refused to allow a biography to be written about him while he was alive. But the Qian Xuesen mythology was propagated with multiple biographies, monographs, journal and newspaper articles, children’s literature, coffee-table books, graphic novels, television programs, documentaries, and feature films. The five facets include: a genius humiliated abroad and rescued by repatriation, the perfect family man, a humble people’s scientist learning from the people and serving the masses, a compliant functionary, and most important of all: the ‘father of spaceflight’ and ‘king of rocketry.’
The Qian Xue-shen Library and Museum was established at Shanghai Jiaotong University, and funded by the Propaganda Department of the CCP in Beijing. The museum’s vast collection includes Tsien’s former library, newspaper clippings, artwork, and copies of documents gathered from archives and libraries worldwide, totalling 76,000 items, 1,500 pictures, and 700 objects.
After the passing of Deng Xiaopeng, Tsien was lionized as the new kind of hero in China. The combination of his experience in the US and his scientific brilliance was what the Chinese government wanted as a model for young people to emulate. The Making of an Intellectual Hero: Chinese Narratives of Qian Xuesen details this. The valorization has increased after Tsien’s passing. Other articles provide possible reasons for this.
While under detention in the US, Tsien worked on the book Engineering Cybernetics published in 1954 which theorized control of complex and interrelated systems, a topic that emerged from how missiles were guided in a feedback loop to make changes. He proposed its use to solve economic, social and cultural problems. Through Tsien and his proteges, cybernetic experiments were used in the Great Leap Forward, the management of markets during Deng Hsiao-peng’s Reform and Opening, the 1983 Strike Hard Campaign, the One Child Policy and is credited for the comprehensive system of surveillance that is extant throughout China. A Brief History of Chinese Cybernetics by Dylan Levi King outlines how Tsien’s dissemination and infrastructure generated a distinctly Chinese form of cybernetic thought and conception, which is providing the basis for Chinese artificial intelligence.
In the 1980s and 1990s, as part of his inquiry, Tsien was drawn to 人体特异功能 or “special capacities of the human body”, also translated as “exceptional functions” that he said manifested in qigong practices which were booming in China. He believed the human body to be part of a vast communication system in which information could be transmitted via the invisible medium of qi and that this called for the development of the new field of 人体人体科学 or somatic science. He declared that qigong and research into supernatural somatic capabilities like telekenesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, or levitation typically touted by the qigong masters would lead to a new scientific revolution that would be as profound as the scientific revolutions of quantum mechanics and relativity. Here is a 1991 article written by Qian and translated by the CIA.
Hsue-shen Tsien in America
I feel that the definitive biography is still Iris Chang’sThread of a Silkworm. Although she never talked to Tsien himself, she did a thorough job of researching the National Archives and interviewing friends, family, and colleagues in the US and China. She did it at a time when people were more candid. The Chinese seem to agree that her work is significant. Although first banned in China, it is published in Chinese, albeit with the last chapter omitted. It is also widely cited in articles about Tsien.
On the basis of that interrogation, Tsien’s security clearance was taken away which prevented him from doing the bulk of his work as the head of JPL. It is noteworthy that Tsien continues to stand by his friend’s loyalty even though he knows that Weinbaum was accused and Tsien had no contact with him for a number of years. With his father’s health in question, he decided it would be best for him to return to China. He packed several boxes of his research to ship home. All of the materials were reviewed by Caltech and found to be information that was available in scientific journals.
Nonetheless, the material was seized and news reports suggested that Tsien had taken classified material. Tsien was put into the INS San Pedro Detention Center for two weeks. This incarceration was extremely humiliating to him. It was later determined that none of the material in the boxes was classified.
Tsien went through deportation hearing which included a last-minute mystery witness who claimed that Tsien was a Communist. The evidence was shaky at best, handwriting and testimony that he was seen at meetings. It was later disclosed that the witness was pressured to testify against Tsien to save his own neck.
In 1955, Wang and Johnson the respective ambassadors to the US and China for their countries negotiated a trade of Chinese citizens for American prisoners. Tsien and his family returned to China.
