Xenophobes Posture, The Scientists Invent

But could recent U.S. and Chinese policies cripple Nobel-quality collaborations? HOUSTON--The homely laboratory is many worlds away from London’s Old Vic theater. But the two jumbled floors of the University of Houston’s Science & Research Building #1 are a stage nonetheless, the setting for one small but important scene in an international drama of Shakespearean proportions. For while two mighty governments indulge in spasms of xenophobia, citizens of those nations are quietly collaborating and, in doing so, have pushed back the frontiers of science here in their cluttered, jerry-built lab. The scientific collaborators are U.S. citizen and superconductivity superstar Ching-Wing Paul Chu and Chinese citizen and materials researcher Ruling Meng. Super Scientists The governments are the current administrations of the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Because the collaboration of Drs. Chu and Meng has brought pioneering results, their governments may overlook those aspects of the partnership that conflict with current national policies. No doubt, both nations would prefer to avoid the storm of protest that would greet any attempt to break up the team. But scientists throughout the U.S. are showing increasing alarm that, away from the limelight, officials of both countries might attempt to dissolve less famous lab teams at the cost of scientific progress. Consider first certain policies of the Reagan administration. Despite the protests of most of the U.S. scientific community, the White House continues its attempt to erect walls around U.S. research so as to prevent unwanted technology transfer both to the Communist block and to increasingly competitive noncommunist trading partners like Japan. One means to this end has been to discourage foreign researchers from attending specific scientific meetings held in the United States. Another has been to grumble publicly about foreign nationals in some U.S. research facilities. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has recently radically restricted emigration of its scholar, so far primarily students, for fear that they will either not return at all, creating a debilitating brain drain, or that they will return corrupted by Western values. So far untouched by these policies but theoretically vulnerable are Drs. Meng and Chu. For Chu, the last two years have been exhilarating. Just last month he ended months of speculation over his next career step when he announced that he was staying in Texas. A disappointed suitor was the University of California at Berkeley. But in less than a year the University of Houston had rewarded Chu with a compensation package worth an estimated $150,000, the promise of a new building to house the Texas Center for Superconductivity (of which Chu would be director), and a job offer of a permanent part-time professorship at Houston for his 77-year-old mathematician fatherin-law. All this came about, of course, because of Chu’s stunning achievments in raising the temperature at which superconductivity can occur. Those accomplishments didn’t win him a piece of the Nobel Prize, as some expected, but they did guarantee his ascension into the firmament of physics. Largely overlooked in the hoopla over Chu was his senior research assistant, Ruling Meng. Since Chu recruited her nearly a decade ago from the Institute of Physics at the Academy of Science in Beijing, Dr. Meng has been a valued colleague who brought the Chu team two decades of experience in materials science. But it wasn’t Meng’s lab expertise that guaranteed her a role in the history of science; it was her voracious and insightful reading of the scientific literature. In the fall of 1986, Meng came across a little-noticed paper in a German journal. The paper was eventually to win its authors—IBM’s J.G. Bednorz and KA. Milller, the Nobel Prize in Physics, but at the time, few scientists noticed it. Meng showed the paper to Chu, who immediately put his research team into overdrive. Three months later, Chu announced that his team had raised the temperature at which superconductivity takes place by 68 K. Thus, the collaboration of a U.S. citizen and a citizen of the People’s Republic of China entered the annals of scientific triumph. Surely no one in either government would dream of breaking up the team of Chu and Meng. Perhaps not. But what if the consequences of recent Reagan and Deng Xiaoping administration doctrines were visited upon the homespun University of Houston laboratory? Take the philosophy implicit in the superconductivity initiative being currently pushed before Congress by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The initiative is meant to promote scientific cooperation within the U.S., thus fostering quick communication of scientific research. But at the same time, it is designed to make it as hard as possible for foreign competitors to pick up U.S. discoveries on the cheap. It would do this in two ways: it amends U.S. patent laws to increase protection for U.S. innovators; and it authorizes federal agencies to withhold from release under the Freedom of Information Act commercially valuable scientific and technical information generated in U.S.-owned or -operated labs. The latter portion of the initiative has some scientists concerned. Ironically, when the initiative was announced last summer, Chu was the only scientist mentioned by name in a White House press release touting the key role of federal funds in advancing research. The White House ostensibly was proud that Chu had received grants from both the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. But if the initiative is passed by Congress, federal funds might be with-held from any laboratory that is viewed as a potential leak to foreign competitors. Could this mean, scientists worry, that grants administrators would be tempted not to provide funding to labs employing, say, Japanese researchers or citizens of communist countries? If so, a severe chill would surely fall on international science cooperation, resulting in a darkening of the stage on which science is carried out. Deborah Winze, Assistant Director of International Affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology, in an interview with The Scientist, openly admitted that the presence of certain foreign nationals in U.S. labs is of concern to the White House. But she draws a sharp distinction between the Reagan administration’s view of Chinese nationals and citizens of certain other countries. Pointing out that the United States’ most extensive government-to-government science and technology agreement is with China, she added: "We don’t see China as a problem in the intellectual property area the way we do a number of other countries." Rather, she said countries like India and Brazil are "pretty notorious. for exploiting the intellectual property advances they are exposed to in collaborative arrangements." Thus, it would appear that a list, however informal, exists in the White House of countries whose citizens should not be automatically permitted to collaborate with U.S. scientists in U.S labs. Further, it is clear that certain non-communist nations would find themselves in the company of the Soviet Union on that list, while certain communist nations would not. Less clear is how determined this administration is to actually attempt to block particular instances of scientific collaboration. That the White House is ready to play the villain in this drama was proved to most scientists last year. At a meeting on superconductivity sponsored by the U.S. government in July, presidential science adviser William Graham excluded all non-U.S. citizens. The rationale given at the time was that the conference had been organized strictly for U.S. commercial interests, the implication being that the U.S. gives away too much to its trade competitors. But the result was a public relations disaster. British, French, West German, and Japanese science counselors were barred from attending the meeting at the very last minute. The U.S. science community responded with a howl of protest. And even the chairman of the president’s own science council, AT&T Bell Labs executive vice president Solomon Buchsbaum, was quoted at the time as opining that there could be no justification for closing this one conference considering the raft of international. conferences being held on superconductivity. The Chinese threat to international science is at once more recent and more oblique than its U.S. policy counterpart. Since 1979, the leadership of the People’s Republic has wanted the nation’s scholars to benefit from overseas exposure. But more than at any time in the last decade, it has become concerned that its brightest students, scientists, and engineers will not return home. And for good reason there are ample signs that of the record numbers of Chinese students who have been allowed to study in U.S. universities of late, proportionately high numbers have been "forgetting" to return promptly, typically after two years, to share their expanded knowledge with their countrymen and women. It’s been a good deal more than two years since Meng went home, although she did go home for three years during the early 1980s and did share the knowledge she’d gained in Chu’s lab. So how should the Chinese government look upon her stay in Houston? From the beginning, as Chu recalls, Meng was viewed by her superiors as an emissary through whom modern technology could be imported into China. "I was invited by the Chinese National Academy, Chu recalls of the 1979 trip that brought him to Meng’s lab. During that period of time the Chinese [were trying] to find some conduit to send people to the United States or other places to learn modern technology and to have contact with the Western world. So I told her management that I would like to invite her to our laboratory to spend a year or maybe two years here." They readily agreed and have been amply rewarded. "Science," says Chu, "should be without national boundaries. I think that all parties involved will be benefited by a mutual exchange of information. Take Ruling Meng’s case. I definitely think she helps us tremendously. On the other hand, we also help them [Chinese scientists] because Ruling first came to this country in 1979 for two years and then went back to China for a few years. Still, the Chinese can’t help but see how much their citizens are changed by the experience of going abroad. In Ruling Meng’s case, she remembers being nervous and surprised at Chu’s first invitation: "What? Go to the United States? I didn’t even know how to say ‘How are you?’ or ‘What’s your name?’ or anything. He said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’ My college was encouraging me, [saying] ‘That’s a very good opportunity You better go." So she went. Over time, however, she grew to love not only her work but also her temporarily adopted country. This is obvious in the sacrifices she has made. Meng works 10 to 12 hours a day, six or seven days each week, including holidays, and has done so for years. And although she has been permitted to bring her son and daughter (both young adults) to the United States, by having extended her stay here, she has lost her job at home. Her feelings for the United States are also apparent in her current worldview: "I’m very little concerned about politics," she says. "High-temperature superconducting material belongs to the world. From our lab, I feel proud for the University of Houston. I feel proud for the United States. . That’s my feeling." Then she says something extraordinary that would make the staunchest xenophobe in the United States smile with satisfaction: "As a Chinese, I also feel proud that I have the opportunity to join this work. I'd rather see the United States do better than Japan because I'm here." So What will happen to this extradordinary team, so emblematic of the social benefits of international collaboration? Chu says he is not sure of Meng’s visa or immigration status. "As long as the immigration office does'nt tell us it's illegal and we're working really nice in the laboratory, I never even ask that question," he admits, adding, "There's no problem either from her country or from this country." When Meng is asked if she envisions herself still in the United States and working with Chu a year from now, she replies: "Sure." Two years from now? "I guess so." Three? "I don't know." What happens after this? "I don't know. I have to see. It depends on the situation."

Xenophobes Posture, The Scientists Invent

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