China scholars generally agree that the policy of the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) towards intellectuals has experienced significant changes in the last three decades. With forced “ideological remoulding” suspended and repression minimized, the Party has taken considerable effort to mobilize intellectuals for the country's modernization. It also actively enlists intellectuals into various governing bodies and advisory networks such as think tanks. Although the Party has no intention of tolerating political opposition, both critical and establishment intellectuals have been able to articulate or accommodate Western-imported concepts and push for socio-political transformation, with their voices heard and greater intellectual freedom achieved. All of these signify a dramatic reversal of Mao's policies.Footnote ¹

Together with these changes, the Party has developed some improved techniques for handling its relations with intellectuals. A noticeable one is selecting certain scientific elites for commendation and eulogization: praising their academic achievements, extolling their political virtues and granting them honorific titles, in order to inspire others aiming for advancement. Among various Party projects, a typical case was a campaign to commend and eulogize scientist Qian Xuesen 钱学森 (also known as Tsien Hsue-shen).

Between 1989 and 2001, a rambling “learn from Qian Xuesen movement” descended upon China's public sphere. Qian, a leading expert of rocketry, was bestowed with an array of honorable titles by the state including the exclusive “State Scientist of Outstanding Contribution,” accompanied by the “Medal for the First Class Heroic Model,” the highest honour a scientist could receive in China.Footnote ² He was also revered by high leaders as “the People's Scientist,” “National Hero” and “the Pillar of the State.” Numerous activities – conferences, symposiums, exhibitions and ceremonies – were organized in his honour; writers produced biographies and stories about him; television and print media heaped praises on him. When he died in October 2009, the posthumous honours and commemorations again demonstrated his importance in China's political life. In post-Mao China, Qian became virtually the only individual to receive such adulation, eulogy and honour, second only to the Party patriarch Deng Xiaoping. However, behind the fevered endeavours to glorify a scientist for the good of the nation were the overt and covert considerations, political and practical, of various actors, especially the party-state, Qian's biographers and Qian himself.

This article analyses three forms of Chinese narratives about Qian in the decade of 1991–2001: official eulogies of Qian, stories told by his biographers and Qian's self-presentation. It aims to show that although the CCP showered Qian with compliments seemingly because of his contributions to China's national defence and space programmes, the real reasons were Qian's political fidelity and the Party's aim to build a role model for the educated elite to emulate. The article also discusses the works of Qian's biographers who joined the chorus in gushing over Qian. These writers, in an effort to adapt to the political climate and to capitalize on current and fashionable trends, manufactured dozens of biographical pieces of dubious quality, leaving considerable confusion over who Qian really was. Qian wanted to portray himself as a devoted scientist with moderate ambition but high political consciousness, in order to build an ideal image acceptable by both the regime and the public. By investigating these various narratives, this article suggests that while the CCP's intellectual policy has changed and the techniques and messages used by the authorities for hero construction are not entirely the same as those in Mao period, its propaganda regimen still strives to provide moral and political guidelines for specific social groups. The article also shows that the Maoist practice of using history for the present tenaciously persists, and that the writings of “unofficial history” are heavily influenced by official historiography. This state of affairs continues not simply to suit state interests, but because individuals (in this case Qian) and non-state actors (in this case biographers) benefit from such hero construction.

Qian Xuesen: A Profile

Qian Xuesen has been considered a leading aeronautic scientist of the 20th century. Born in 1911, he received his early education in China, and left for the United States in 1935 for graduate study. He gained his Master's degree at MIT and his PhD at Caltech. Because of his pioneering work in super-aerodynamics and rocketry, Qian, together with his mentor Theodore von Karman, was considered the authority on rocketry in the world. In the late 1940s he was successively employed as a professor at MIT and Caltech.Footnote ³

The 1950s, however, saw a dramatic change of Qian's life trajectory. He was interrogated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist Party member, and then arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Services when he attempted to leave the United States, accused of trying to ship “technical materials overseas without informing Customs.” Upon release, he lived under US government surveillance and partial house arrest for five years. After the intervention of the PRC government, Qian and his family were eventually permitted to leave for China in August 1955, under the American official edict of “deportation.”Footnote ⁴

The newly founded People's Republic set a full stage for Qian's career in rocketry. As the PRC leaders were contemplating missile projects to counteract American military superiority, his return greatly facilitated their drive. With Qian serving as the general director, China vigorously embarked on a series of missile and space programmes. From successfully testing the first short-range rocket in 1960 to launching the first satellite in 1970, China made striking progress in aeronautic enterprise. By the end of the 20th century, when China possessed the third largest nuclear missile stockpile in the world and had ascended to the first rank of space powers, Qian was credited for his pioneering role in these accomplishments and was hailed as “the father of China's ballistic missile” and “the father of the Chinese space programme.”Footnote ⁵

Apart from his profession, Qian displayed unusual interests and versatility in other fields. From the late 1970s when he started retreating from the front line of national defence enterprise, he began writing papers and giving speeches on topics such as geography, military science, human science, urban studies, architecture and horticulture. He was a patron to numerous projects, such as the development of hybridized grass strains in sunny environments and the experiment on the concept of Grand Wisdom (dacheng zhihui 大成智慧) to accelerate “nurturing talent” for the nation.Footnote ⁶ Some of his protégés consider him the “greatest scientist” in modern China.Footnote ⁷ Although his Caltech colleagues believed that he was not such a world-class scientist as Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, his repute as “undisputed genius” (the words of his mentor von Karman) and his leadership in China are recognized in aeronautic circles throughout the world. He was named Aviation Week and Space Technology Person of the Year for 2007.Footnote ⁸

There is little Western scholarship on Qian, probably because the confidentiality that surrounds his work constitutes a barrier for scouring sources, and also because his arid face as a Party scientist hardly provokes interest in scholars who seek new trends in China's scientific world. Lyman Miller, though concisely outlining Qian's career, treats him as a figure representing official scientism and technocracy, antithetical to liberal political values advocated by other scientists such as Fang Lizhi 方励之, and mainly focuses on Qian's involvement in the “natural dialectics debate” in the 1980s.Footnote ⁹ Brian Harvey's narrative of Qian is restricted to his leadership role in the early stage of China's space programme.Footnote ¹⁰ In Thread of the Silkworm, Iris Chang told a private story of a “shy, introspective, brilliant” Qian, and how he successfully helped propel both the United States and China into the space age. A strength of Chang's work lies in her effort to put Qian's life and career in the vortex of world politics, such as American anti-communism and the Chinese drive to ascend to world military power. But the brevity of information about Qian's experience in the 1970s and 1980s may disappoint readers who want to know more about his old age.

Official Adulation of Qian

It is interesting that official commendation of Qian remained moderate during the Mao and Deng periods when his contribution to China's missile and space projects was superlative. Although he was appointed to a number of fairly high professional and administrative positions, such as the director of China's Space Research Academy and the vice-director of the Commission of Science for National Defence, the honours and awards he received did not exceed other national defence experts, and were officially grounded in his excellence in mechanics, aeronautics and his role in “developing natural sciences.”Footnote ¹¹ His achievements were highly valued, epitomizing the Party's “respect for knowledge and talent,” but the honours conferred upon him were not exceptional.

This situation began to change after 4 June 1989. The Party leaders started to praise Qian and other intellectuals who articulated their support for the Tiananmen Square crackdown as “pillars of the state.” After that, the honours heaped on Qian outstripped all other renowned scientists.

The first commendation campaign occurred in October 1991 when the honour of “State Scientist of Outstanding Contribution” was conferred by the State Council. During that month, top Party officials took every opportunity to lavish praise and compliments upon Qian, and the General Secretary Jiang Zemin delivered a warm speech at the bestowing ceremony held in the Great Hall of the People, extolling Qian's scientific achievements and political merits.Footnote ¹² Echoing the state citation and Jiang's speech came dozens of adulations over Qian for the rest of the year, initiated by the Party's propaganda establishment in collaboration with various actors. The Commission of Science for National Defence, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Chinese Association of Science and Technology all issued formal directives asking their staff to “learn from Qian Xuesen.” People's Daily, Guangming Daily and influential magazines were full of laudatory pieces about Qian's life, virtues and contributions. Qian's colleagues, ex-students and secretaries were invited to talk shows on television, radio and university stadiums, elaborating on how Qian enlightened them and advised on their professional works.

An avalanche of even greater praise came in the second half of 2001 at the time of Qian's 90th birthday. He was crowned the “People's Scientist” when Jiang Zemin brushed a calligraphic inscription “We should learn from People's Scientist Comrade Qian Xuesen,”Footnote ¹³ which started another phase of “Qian Xuesen fever.” At this auspicious time, high leaders came one after another to visit Qian at his home or had bouquets of flowers delivered to celebrate his birthday. Various symposiums on Qian's life, thoughts and achievements were held in universities and research institutes. The celebrations reached their highest pitch around Qian's birthday (11 December): students were encouraged to send letters, greeting cards and flowers to him, poets wrote poems and artists painted paintings for him; some official organs even sent congratulatory plaques, birthday couplets, jade seals and longevity peaches (traditionally dedicated to highly prestigious people who attain great old age).Footnote ¹⁴ The words of adulation used for Qian, such as “winning people's deep love” and “standing high in public esteem” that appeared in the People's Daily and PLA Daily were reminiscent of the official reverence for Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in previous decades, and comparable with that for Deng Xiaoping during 1992–97.

What were the reasons for this campaign? Why did the party-state outdo itself in making such pageantry to adulate a scientist who had retired from his professional position a decade earlier? Was the outpouring of praise merely because Qian excelled in missile and space science? Qian well deserved high honour for his undisputed leadership role in China's missile development, but why was it granted at this specific time – the last decade of the 20th century – rather than before?

Cong Cao discusses the intrusion of politics into the process of selecting academic division members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the 1950s: scientists with Party membership were treated favourably, candidates were politically screened, and the Central Propaganda Department was entitled to veto nomination based on political scrutiny.Footnote ¹⁵ Although the social context Cao examines is significantly different from that for Qian's case, the “intrusion of politics” framework helps understand current CCP intellectual politics. The pageantry of glorifying Qian, far more than recognizing his scientific achievement, reflects sophisticated considerations by the CCP leadership.

The first and most obvious reason was Qian's deep engagement in China's national defence programmes. In February 1956, three months after he returned, Qian raised “Suggestions for establishing our aeronautic national defence,” which prompted the high-tech ambition of Chinese leaders and inaugurated China's missile projects.Footnote ¹⁶ After he was made general architect of the missile enterprise Qian constantly suggested new ideas to the leadership, and he even went beyond his field to facilitate China's nuclear projects.Footnote ¹⁷ His role was far more than that of a general architect and chief director of missile projects; he was an energetic driving force pushing for updating China's defence strategy, which was considered by the top leaders as political activism.Footnote ¹⁸ The Mao-era leaders were reluctant to commend openly the important role played by an individual in a state project, especially in the military field, but this policy was reversed by the “third generation” leaders who are depicted by Cheng Li and Lynn White as a “technocratic leadership.”Footnote ¹⁹ Qian's role in national defence was unequivocally recognized in public.

The second reason is Qian's allegiance to the Party and his well-articulated commitment to state ideology. Ever since he returned to China in the 1950s, Qian carried on unremitting political activism and firmly followed the Party line in every political campaign. His critics speak of his scathing denunciation of “rightists” in the Anti-Rightist campaign, his erroneous advice on crop yields during the Great Leap Forward, his opportunistic attack on his “revisionist” colleagues during the Cultural Revolution, and his denunciation of student demonstrations in 1989.Footnote ²⁰ These criticisms, substantiated by written records, point to the fact that Qian followed the political initiatives of the top leaders with a complete fidelity that many other scientists found hard, or were reluctant, to do.Footnote ²¹ In addition, his commitment to ideological orthodoxy was well articulated. From 1958 to the early 1990s he wrote numerous articles on the guiding role of Marxist philosophy in China's science and technology, and the necessity for scientists to study Marxism. In the 1980s when Marxism was challenged in scientific circles, Qian actively came to its defence.Footnote ²² It may be argued that following the voices of top leaders and state ideology was Qian's internal economy of instinct; to the Party centre, it was an exemplary political virtue, the central thing that the state wanted to promote.Footnote ²³

The third reason to praise Qian can be explained in the context of the rapid emergence of Chinese anti-Americanism. In the post-Tiananmen period, a number of issues such as human rights and Tibet were frequently used by Western (particularly American) politicians to attack the Chinese government, which led to the emergence of anti-American sentiment in China that the state liked to encourage and exploit.Footnote ²⁴ Qian's experiences – his persecution by the US government in the early 1950s, his persistent attempt to return to the motherland, and his unrelenting pursuit of developing China's own missiles to counteract the threat of American imperialism – all made perfect sources to nurture what the CCP government called “patriotic spirit” or “patriotism.” Although patriotism generally refers to love of and devotion to one's nation, its meaning is highly dependent upon context, ethics and philosophy, and subject to politicized interpretations. With its idiosyncratic style, the CCP not only interpreted patriotism in conjunction with “love of socialism” and “devotion to the socialist modernization,” but also claimed that Qian's activities fully deserved the honour of patriotism. In both official citations and the speeches of Party leaders, Qian's return and engagement in China's missile industry was imbued with sublime political meaning, representing “the true spirit of patriotism” and “lofty national integrity,” particularly instrumental in fostering Chinese “determination not to yield to any external pressure” in the post-1989 period.Footnote ²⁵ Although the government claimed to avoid “parochial nationalistic sentiment,” Qian's experiences were ideal examples used by the Party's propaganda establishment to edify Chinese, especially Chinese youth. For instance, when refuting the US House of Representatives' Cox Report of 1999, which accused Qian of using the knowledge he had gained from the United States in the PRC's missile programmes, the PRC State Council Information Office issued a tit-for-tat statement about Qian's persecution in the US, and praised his “noble national self-esteem, national confidence and national integrity.”Footnote ²⁶ Qian was once again put into the forefront of Chinese anti-Americanism.

The fourth, and probably the most important, reason for eulogizing Qian is the Party's updated policy towards intellectuals. Immediately after the Tiananmen crackdown, political pressure was strongly felt by educated elites. However, while rejecting Western values and ideology, the Party leaders continuously stressed the importance of intellectuals in modernizing China, and the need to rekindle their enthusiasm.Footnote ²⁷ Picking out an individual from the intellectual community to praise and reward was helpful to the Party to improve its relations with the intelligentsia and to prevent their further alienation from the state. Giving priority to scientific circles could align with the state policy of “invigorating the nation through science and technology (keji xingguo 科技兴国).” More significantly, since astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, who questioned the relevance of Marxism to science and advocated political liberalism, was considered a role model by many Chinese intellectuals in the 1980s,Footnote ²⁸ the post-1989 Party leadership felt a need to establish an academically prestigious and politically dependable scientist as a “red model.” The process by which Qian was chosen is unknown, but it seems that he was finally agreed upon as the best candidate to meet the Party's need. What he displayed was not only a highly qualified scientific mind, but also utter loyalty to the Party; what he represented was not simply remarkable contributions to China's defence industry that the state highly valued, but also a role model for the scientific elite to follow the Party line, to guide themselves with mainstream ideology and to offer uncomplaining service to the state. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than Jiang Zemin's speech:

In this context, the Party's revised policy towards intellectuals was entwined with its intention to find a proxy within the scientific community who could speak along official lines, the one the Party could identify as “one of us.”

Putting the glorification of Qian in a larger context of the CCP's hero construction in the post-1949 period allows for deeper understanding of the techniques and messages used by the authorities, as well as the similarities and differences in campaigns between the Mao and post-Mao periods. In terms of hero selection practice, the modus operandi was to select individuals from various occupations, to demonstrate that people of different walks of life are all able to develop exemplary behaviour under the Party. At the national level, at least one popular hero should emerge from each important group (such as worker, peasant), with some figures “coming and going” according to the changing political climate. Wang Jinxi 王进喜, Lei Feng 雷锋 and Jiao Yulu 焦裕禄 were constructed in both the Mao and post-Mao periods as heroes representing industrial workers, PLA soldiers and “revolutionary cadres,” while Chen Yonggui 陈永贵 and Shi Laihe 史来贺 were successively assigned to represent peasant heroes. The ways to publicize heroes include, in addition to issuing official documents, top leaders giving an audience to and/or writing inscriptions for heroes, publishing their “diaries,” producing artistic works based on their lives, and putting their stories into elementary and secondary school textbooks.Footnote ³⁰ Times have changed, but the practice of choosing heroes from important groups and the general promotion techniques persist.

While both the Mao and post-Mao states use similar techniques to award exemplary behaviour, the messages delivered to the public and the values promoted significantly differ. In the Mao period, construction of a hero typically focused on virtues such as unswerving devotion to Chairman Mao, undying love for revolutionary comrades and class brothers (in the case of Lei Feng), or willingness to sacrifice one's life for the national interest (in the case of Wang Jinxi and Jiao Yulu). In the post-Mao period, however, the values to be promoted reflect the Party's shifting concerns. For instance, Zhang Zhixin 张志新 and Yu Luoke 遇罗克 were praised for their righteous opposition to the radicalism of “the Gang of Four”; Shi Laihe was a designated peasant hero for leading his fellow villagers in the direction of “common prosperity” representing the newly formulated rural policy under Deng. Some old slogans continue to be advocated in the post-Mao years, but are often given new meanings. For example, “serving the people” is no longer connected to highly politicized “love for revolutionary comrades and class brothers” but is reinterpreted as having the more humanistic and universal connotation of taking pleasure in helping those in need.Footnote ³¹ Mao's legacy is appropriated in post-Mao China but with changed focus: service rather than revolution and pursuit of common good rather than independent struggle, although political loyalty is still required.

Another major difference is that as the status of intellectuals has been elevated since Mao's time, scientists have been increasingly incorporated into the list of heroes, such as mathematician Chen Jingrun 陈景润, physicist Jiang Zhuying 蒋筑英 and agricultural scientist Yuan Longping 袁隆平. Qian's rise as an intellectual hero, though a bigger political event, was an understandable result of these changes in hero construction techniques and messages.

Qian's case reveals complex relations between official propaganda and popular readership. If we delve into Mark Elvin's description of the canonization of virtuous women in imperial China, we may agree with his argument that by conferring prestige on some of its subjects, the state has a powerful means of influencing people's minds and political behaviour.Footnote ³² In Qian's case, however, the implication was ambiguous. What appeared in the news media throughout the campaign was that Chinese scientists recognized Qian's accomplishments, his devotion to China's scientific cause, his tutorship for young scientists and his deep love for the nation. But it is hard to find in the press of those years any praise of his endorsement to the official line, Party leadership or Marxism, except for articles written by his secretaries.Footnote ³³ The implication is that the receivers of the campaign only accepted certain parts of the message the Party was promoting and silently rejected others.

In the non-public setting, things were even less encouraging: Chinese criticized both Qian and the “Qian campaign.” His secretary admitted that during the eulogization campaign of 1991 some scientists complained about the Party's apparent favouritism for Qian. When Iris Chang travelled to China in 1993, she was surprised that those who vehemently cursed Qian “included Chinese scientists, students, journalists and even friends of Tsien.”Footnote ³⁴ Some critics pointed to political issues, “despised him for his support of the government in crushing the pro-democracy movement,” or “perceived him as nothing more than a member of the old guard – a man more politician than scientist.” Others pointed to “scientific issues,” blaming Qian for his erroneous estimate on crop yields in 1958 that might have encouraged Mao's unrealistic agriculture policies, or expressing disapproval for his academic dilettantism, or blaming him for supporting the controversial claim of ESP.Footnote ³⁵ It seems that the propaganda campaign did not stifle the dissenting voices against this most hailed hero. Nevertheless, in the accompanying “Qian Xuesen fever” in the 1990s, young students claimed to appreciate Qian's scientific accomplishments and the significance of science and technology, taking him as a model and swearing to study hard to be the “next Qian Xuesen.” Except for this, though, it is not known if the hero construction endeavour generated substantial edifying effect on individuals in a period when people talk differently in public and in private.

Biographers' Narratives of Qian

Qian's biographies published over the past two decades constitute a significant part of this glorification campaign. Unlike Mao, Zhou, Deng and other top leaders whose official biographies were entrusted to Party historians housed in the Party Literature Research Centre (Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi 中央文献研究室) and various “composing groups” (bianxiezu 编写组), Qian's official biographies were started by his designated secretaries at the request of official organs. In 1991 Qian was required to provide a biography for the “Biographies of Modern Chinese Scientists Series,” a project initiated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The result was A Biography of Qian Xuesen written by his secretary Wang Shouyun 王寿云.Footnote ³⁶ An expanded version was compiled by another secretary, Tu Yuanji 涂元季, in 2002 for the “Important Figures in CCP History” project initiated by the Central Propaganda Department, and has since been published by different publishers with limited variations.Footnote ³⁷ Tu also wrote numerous essays about Qian's life, personality and contributions over the past ten or more years. These works, produced by Qian's secretaries, sponsored by official organs and previewed by Qian himself, could be considered as official and “authoritative” biographies.

Interestingly, these official histories provide indispensable sources for the proliferation of Qian's “unofficial” biographies. Taking full advantage of Wang and Tu's works, Chinese writers produced dozens of other biographies, plus countless reports and short stories. Among many, Wang Wenhua 王文华, Qi Shuying 祁淑英 and Hu Shihong 胡士弘 are considered important writers of Qian's biographical pieces. These writers were unable to participate in any official projects about Qian, he was inaccessible to them and their knowledge of him was second-hand. However, in the feverish political climate to glorify Qian, their efforts were permitted by authorities and, to some extent, assisted by Qian's friends and colleagues. Their works supplied a wealth of personal stories – his family background, early education, experience in America, association with friends, love affairs and even his psychological world – in addition to his professional feats. At first glance, this literature provides a flesh-and-blood picture of the life and work of this most honoured scientist.

From these multifarious biographies we learn that Qian was a prodigy, a scientific genius from the outset. He was gifted with a golden mind in mathematics and displayed multiple talents at young age – such as memorizing hundred of poems when he was three – and was good at music and painting when growing up. In MIT and Caltech, Qian was brighter than his classmates and surprised professors with the intelligence of Chinese youth. He was particularly good at playing darts in childhood, which presaged his talent in rocketry.Footnote ³⁸

We also learn of a Qian who remained politically progressive from childhood to old age. He participated in the May Fourth demonstration at the age of eight, developed strong interests in Marxism in secondary school and consciously conducted research based on Frederich Engles' theory. At Caltech, he participated in gatherings of the American Communist Party, for which he was persecuted during the “red scare.” When persecuted, he fought courageously against the repressive American judiciary in court, and so on.Footnote ³⁹ These narratives create a near-miraculous Qian, with a strong impression that he was not only a missile expert, but an all-rounder; not only a scientific giant, but a built-in communist revolutionary.

This whole body of “Qian literature” obviously needs to be treated with critical care, which is currently lacking in both China and the English-speaking world. However, scholarly discussions of post-Mao historiography provide conceptual tools for analysing Qian literature perceptively. In dealing with the CCP Party historiography, Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik demonstrates that although the number of topics on which Party historiographers could undertake research grew considerably in the 1980s, “the overall framework for Party historiography had not changed”; some historians continued to interpret Party history along the line of the Party's “resolution” and treated official documents as the only reliable sources.Footnote ⁴⁰ If the extension of the old genre to the 1980s was due to the time closeness to the Mao period and the Party's imposing guidelines of “resolution” upon historians, how should we view the literature that exploded in the 1990s and even 2000s when historians actually have much more leeway? Thomas Scharping treats the explosion of “Mao literature” in the 1990s as a revival of traditional Chinese preference for personalized history focusing on the moral behaviour of great men, and “the desire to continue the hero cult.”Footnote ⁴¹ If preference for an idealized history of great men was firmly rooted in Chinese political culture, how does this trend extend to the “secondary” figures? What are the new development and problems in, for instance, the eulogistic “Qian literature?”

Bearing these questions in mind, the biographical literature on Qian reveals four key characteristics of current PRC historical writing and documentary collections as shown below: the issue of authenticity; the influence of official history upon unofficial history and their blurred boundary; the persistence of the Maoist historiography; and capitalizing on political trends by individual writers for personal gain.

The first issue concerns the veracity and reliability of these biographies, both official and unofficial. They are seriously flawed by a lack of citations for the sources used, which, together with the dubious nature of some stories, poses questions about the authenticity of these narratives. The biographies composed by Qian's secretaries Wang Shouyun and Tu Yuanji provide few references to source materials, except for occasionally mentioning “Qian once recalled ….” While it is reasonable that Qian could provide reminiscences of his past, such as his school years and life in America, such indications are rare and, when given, frequently have no time reference.Footnote ⁴² For the vast majority of narratives and stories, Wang and Tu do not explain if the information comes from Qian's own reminiscences, or who else helped recollect his stories, or to what extent the authors borrowed from the works of others.

The “unofficial history” of Qian is no less dubious than the “official” one, at least in terms of sources. Some authors, such as Wang Wenhua, sweepingly indicate in prefaces that their work refers to materials including Qian's academic writings and official reports on China's national defence, but provide no footnotes about where the information they are using actually comes from: for example, Qian's participation in the May Fourth demonstration when he was eight, or his generous alms to a Boston beggar who then expressed lavish gratitude to the civilized Chinese.Footnote ⁴³ I am not claiming that these authors were fabricating sources or that all of their narratives are unreliable. However, given the contested nature of their stories, their failure to point out exact sources and the absence of corroborative evidence, it is difficult to say that these narratives are factually convincing.

The influence of the official narratives is discernable in unofficial ones. As mentioned above, Qian's unofficial biographies proliferated overwhelmingly after the official glorification campaign of 1991. Careful examination of these biographies leads to my suspicion that these authors unscrupulously copied the works of Qian's secretaries in terms of sources, narrative structure and even language style.Footnote ⁴⁴ For instance, for Qian's family background, early education, motive to leave China for the US, participation in the Marxist study group in Caltech and role in prompting the CCP leadership to start up the missile programme, the unofficial biographers Hu, Wang and Qi borrowed in full not only sources but also interpretations of secretary Wang Shouyun; hence, the problems embedded in official biographies extended into unofficial ones.Footnote ⁴⁵ One example is a conversation between Qian and PLA general Chen Geng 陈赓 and its role in Qian's career. Wang Shouyun tells the story this way:

Wang Shouyun did not provide a source for this information, and it is hard to believe that his interpretation of the role of this conversation to Qian's career is true, as Qian's involvement in China's missile enterprise, if Tu Yuanji's narrative can be believed, entailed a series of decisions of the higher leadership.Footnote ⁴⁷ But the descriptions of this episode by Hu Shihong, Wang Wenhua and Qi Shuying in the unofficial literature are almost entirely identical to that of Wang Shouyun without any explanation or analysis, except that in Hu's book Qian allegedly said one more sentence “Are we Chinese inferior to foreigners?”Footnote ⁴⁸ Since the Qian–Chen conversation had never been released before secretary Wang Shouyun's work was published in 1991, I have no doubt that the same accounts in unofficial biographies came from Wang's work. It is unknown if these authors truly believe the reliability of the official sources, or if they simply did not bother to do their own work to access the sources.

Here the boundary between “official” and “unofficial” history is blurred. Whereas official history is often considered as history written not only from the perspective of the state, party or other institution but also with their active support, unofficial history is seen as the opposite, and thus is supposed to provide an “alternate” history. From the above-cited narratives, however, we find that the messages and interpretation conveyed in the official projects seamlessly permeate other biographical works, whose authors have nothing to do with official projects. In almost all the aspects of Qian's political life and personality, from his precocious pro-communist consciousness to his selfless devotion to national defence and his “serious scientific attitude,” the non-official narratives were no more than reiteration or rephrasing of official history, thus provide no alternative history.

On this front, it is interesting to see how Qian's political image was steadily perfected or elevated in the hands of both official and non-official authors. Take young Qian's “access to Marxist classics” as an example. The first official biography by Wang Shouyun, as well as Tu Yuanji's 2002 version, merely mentioned that in 1930 Qian read works by Georgi Plekhanov and Nikolai Bukharin; however in Tu's 2003 version, Karl Marx's Capital was added to the list.Footnote ⁴⁹ The non-official biographer Qi Shuying went even further to say that Qian “had developed strong interest in Marxism and Leninism [in the early 1930s],” and that “the works of Marx and Lenin always circulated among Qian and his friends.”Footnote ⁵⁰

When adding the works of Marx and Lenin, none of these authors provided any citation of sources. Were the new entries recollections by Qian or his family members, or merely the authors' “logical” speculation? It is hard to believe that Qian forgot Capital, the communist bible, when first recollecting his Marxist readings, while remembering the works of two lesser Russian writers. Thus it may not be presumptuous to conclude that Tu added Capital to make Qian's reading list perfect, although I do not exclude another possibility that Tu asked Qian later on if he could remember reading Capital and Qian said “yes.” In the case of Qi, it seems that she had no hesitation in expanding Qian's reading list without any proof, now that it is politically acceptable. This shows, therefore, that when the official biographers carefully worked to make Qian's political background more orthodox in a Marxist sense, non-official biographers were no less enthusiastic or unscrupulous in doing so, to adapt to the feverish political climate at the expense of minimal scholarly rigour. That is, when producing high-flown “Qian stories” the non-official biographers worked in a similar vein to how official narratives were constructed.

Here we face another important issue: how to evaluate the Maoist historiography in the post-Mao period. There is no doubt that despite the Party's advocacy of “seeking truth from facts” in writing history, Maoist practices such as idolization of select figures and using history for the present continue to exist, with a typical example being eulogizing Deng as the “General Architect of China's socialist modernization.” In the case of Qian Xuesen, who had not been previously well-known to the general public, building up his image involved not only a campaign by the regime but also the co-operation of others. In his biographies found so far, all information that is disadvantageous to Qian was carefully cleaned up, in order to tell a particular story. His less than exemplary acts in the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, as mentioned above, are all entirely purged. What was left was a glorious image: a scientific giant, a staunch communist and a national hero. At this point, Chinese narrative makers are simply following the standard practice as handed down. An interesting distinction, however, is that in the Mao period exploitation of a personal story for a larger picture was entirely orchestrated in the officially controlled press or by officially designated writers as part of the state's overall effort to establish its ideological dominance in society. But in the post-Mao period, as the state's ideological dominance waned, embellishing and eulogizing chosen figures such as Qian was in significant part an individual undertaking by private initiative.

The motives of biographers to join in the eulogization chorus and portray Qian in this way merit careful exploration. For Qian's secretaries, composing the biographies was a task entrusted from above and they certainly meant to do their jobs properly; there is also the possibility that they were true devotees of the man they worked for.Footnote ⁵¹ For them, exaggeration of Qian's life, virtues and wisdom did not seem politically or ethically problematic.

For the non-official biographers, any motive to help Party propaganda was probably minimal and there was no political pressure for those outside the establishment to write such adulatory things in the 1990s. For those who spent their formative years in the Mao period it may have felt more comfortable and convenient to write in the old genre. Their admiration for Qian could also be genuine. But practical considerations, such as the “fame and gain” generated from writing Qian's biographies in a desirable tone, were probably more important. Since the central authorities had designated Qian to be a model scientist, manuscripts that sang his praises could easily pass censorship and have good sales. A book on a theme of “grave importance,” once approved, can be published by different publishers, which thus encourages authors to produce books on “big names.”Footnote ⁵² Winning book prizes is probably another incentive to write along official lines. The allocation of prizes, finalized by the Party's Propaganda Department and the State Publication Bureau at various levels, places considerable importance on the subject and political line of manuscripts, so that works on a “central theme” (zhuxuanlu 主旋律) close to the official one would be likely to receive a good rating. Therefore, writing on important Party figures (including Qian Xuesen) in a hagiographic way became a preferable choice for writers.Footnote ⁵³ The flourishing of “Qian literature” reflects people's efforts to seek to capitalize on current fashionable trends, or to take advantage of a state-sanctioned topic to make personal gains.

With all of these elements behind the scenes playing roles in the writing of Qian's biographies, can readers expect to find the real Qian Xuesen? And further, what can be expected from the post-Mao Chinese historical narratives?

Qian's Self-Presentation

Despite his monumental contributions and high prestige, Qian tried to keep a low profile, to remain modest and humble, and to avoid any implication of pride and assertiveness. According to his secretaries, Qian did not like to reminisce about his past or elaborate on his achievements; he was even reluctant to take official positions.Footnote ⁵⁴ Before being revered as “State Scientist,” Qian had declined all suggestions to prepare his biography, and refused to provide any personal information to private individuals or the mass media.Footnote ⁵⁵ This may be explained as a Confucian gesture of humbleness or the prudence of a scientist, but it also points to his familiarity with Party politics: “modesty makes progress.” After being awarded the “State Scientist” title and with increasing demands for biographical materials, Qian began to come to terms with this situation and gave permission for his secretaries to compose his biography, but still tried to avoid too much publicity. If Tu's narrative can be believed, Qian several times required the articles that praised him to be withdrawn from magazines.Footnote ⁵⁶ There is no sign that he was behind the adulation campaign.

In sharp contrast to his prudence and humbleness, however, Qian was eager to make known his political stance and, through public speeches and articles, was unequivocal in trying to build his image as a devoted and patriotic scientist with moderate ambitions but high political consciousness. First, he wished to be seen as a staunch patriot. Since he had lived in the United States for 20 years, his commitment to the motherland might be questioned in the “new” China where political scrutiny was strict and anti-American rhetoric was high. Qian tried to convince Party leaders that his determination to return to the motherland had been unbending, and that when he left for America in 1935 he firmly promised to an underground Party member that he would return after graduation.Footnote ⁵⁷ He also used his lack of any American pension plan to show that his loyalty to China was unswerving.Footnote ⁵⁸

Qian's well-articulated patriotism is conveniently meshed with anti-Americanism. Straight after his return, he began to use his experience to condemn the American system fiercely. He told the media and his colleagues that “the persecution the US government committed against me has made me see clearly the fascist colour of the US today,” and that since he had stayed in the United States through McCarthyism, he was “fully aware of what American democracy really meant.”Footnote ⁵⁹ He chose to disassociate himself from Americans in any official capacity, avoided contact with American organizations and declined all invitations from the United States, even the chance for academic dialogue. In 1979 Caltech named him a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of his excellence in rocket science, but he refused to travel to the US to accept it.Footnote ⁶⁰ When Caltech's former president Harold Brown visited China as Secretary of Defense in 1980, Qian avoided seeing him, and when he met his Caltech colleague Frank Marble, he was careful not to touch on any sensitive issues.Footnote ⁶¹ This avowed anti-American stance and political cautiousness reflect Qian's talent in warding off suspicion and thus securing political trust.

Qian also attempted to portray himself as a devoted scientist with modest ambitions. He refrained from showing any arrogance over his accomplishments but constantly stated that all he had achieved should be attributed to the correct leadership of the Party and the senior proletarian revolutionaries, and that “a humble person like me is merely a drop in the ocean; what are truly great are the Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party.”Footnote ⁶² In a political meeting to celebrate his being granted the Rockwell Jr Award, instead of expressing his happiness about the award, Qian said: “As a Chinese scientist, I set the purpose of my life as to serve the people. So I see the people's satisfaction for my work as the superlative honour.” The combination of apparent modesty and “standardized” language shows that Qian is gifted with not only a remarkable scientific mind, but also the art of building a good profile through self-effacement and self-restraint.

Probably, the most important aspect Qian wanted to present was his political stance as a faithful follower of the Party line and leadership. He was sensitive to political currents and did not hesitate to display his endorsement of the Party leadership. According to Tu Yuanji, Qian “not only carefully read important Party documents, theoretical works and important speech of central leaders, but also constantly pondered on the implication of even a slogan of the centre and an inscription of certain leaders.”Footnote ⁶³ Treating this sensitivity positively, Tu reveals Qian's painstaking effort in reading the minds of Party bosses. Even in retirement Qian kept updating himself on current political issues and made efforts to build good connections with, and show endorsement of, “the third generation of Party leadership.” He lavishly praised Jiang Zemin's “Three Represents” theory as an “important development of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong thought and Deng Xiaoping theory,” and tirelessly advised his secretaries on how better to understand Jiang's speech. He also praised Jiang's political and scientific attainment, calling him “a true Marxist.”Footnote ⁶⁴

Do these political expressions necessarily mean Qian was a sycophant, or was he merely doing political play-acting? These questions are notoriously hard to answer, because we cannot gauge the dimension of his mind to find hard evidence. However, given Qian's rich experience of CCP leaders, it is not presumptuous to say that he was familiar with Party politics and the dynamics of Party-intellectual relations, and hence aware that Chinese scientists could only realize themselves by going along with the Party line and serving the agenda of the Party centre. The fact that he constantly talked about “the combination of science and politics” and the importance of scientists having a clear political orientation indicates that his long-term service to the state and exposure to the Party's propaganda regimen made him internalize Party ideology. In terms of enthusiasm and willingness to serve the state, Qian was not an anomaly among his fellow scientists, but his talent in following the political tide and articulating his political activism was truly exceptional and thus contributed to his eminence.