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Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

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Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#31

Post by porphyra »

bwv848 wrote: post #15
MaxPock wrote: post #13

Fun fact;In 1992 ,he advised Chinese leaders to focus on new energy vehicles as they would never catch up on ice. Looks like his counsel was taken as we can see the results today.

Also fun fact, he advised Mao on agriculture during the Great Leap Forward, using rough estimates of photosynthetic efficiency to calculate potential crop yields. Those estimates were far removed from reality and indirectly contributed to the Great Chinese Famine, while other countries were benefiting from the success of the Green Revolution.

He didn't advise Mao directly. He published his "rough estimate" in China Youth Daily on June 16, 1958 as 《粮食亩产量会有多少？》. It's possible, though unconfirmed, that Mao (or his secretary) read this article and was influenced. But yeah, the math was bad and off by an order of magnitude. Even geniuses can't be right all the time and I guess he was quite irresponsible for publishing a hand-wavy back-of-the-envelope estimate like that.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#32

Post by fragmede »

contingencies wrote: post #18
bwv848 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also fun fact, he advised Mao on agriculture during the Great Leap Forward, using rough estimates of photosynthetic efficiency to calculate potential crop yields. Those estimates were far removed from reality and indirectly contributed to the Great Chinese Famine, while other countries were benefiting from the success of the Green Revolution.

Central planning and heterogeneous large scale distributed agriculture don't mix.

That seems like an oversimplification of what happened to Soviet Russia and China under Mao.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#34

Post by saghm »

arjie wrote: post #4

An error rate of 0 is unachievable. Given that, it’s a question of your tolerance for error and the consequences of the opposite kind of error. Given the numbers of people involved in the exchange the comparative value must have been quite clear to both parties. The Chinese outcome was not nearly so certain even in 1990, half a century after the events in question. The counterfactual that China could not have indigen…

> Given the numbers of people involved in the exchange the comparative value must have been quite clear to both parties.

At least on the American side, it doesn't sound at all like this was uniformly agreed upon; there seem to have been people on the American side (including at least one relatively high-ranking military/government official) who felt strongly that this was a strategic blunder. That doesn't mean your counterargument is incorrect, but I don't think it's as simple as "they knew what they were giving up".

A large part of the argument of the article seems to be that the political pressures for the US were misaligned with the long-term incentives, which is a plausible explanation for why the president (who is not a subject matter expert for most things) might override a decision from someone who is much more knowledgeable about the specific circumstances. There are plenty of places to disagree with the analysis presented (e.g. whether it's preferable to have a system that optimizes for this sort of long-term planning or if other things should take precedence), but it's not clear to me from your comment whether you're actually trying to disagree with the conclusions they draw or about the history of what happened.

To be clear, disagreeing about the history would be reasonable, given that understanding what happened is rarely straightforward from reading a single secondary source like this, but if that's what you're doing, it might help to be more explicit about it.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#35

Post by saghm »

999900000999 wrote: post #12
ailun wrote: post #5

Definitely a famous story that gets retold and almost mythologized in China. When I taught over there, several different middle school students independently told me about this story.

It should be a cautionary tale. How many geniuses are leaving the US right now due to Xenophobia?

I had a friend working at a startup I interned at who had come over on a student visa, gotten a temporary visa to work, but then eventually was not able to keep it and ended up moving to Canada and working there. It's never made sense to me why we'd want to kick people out after they've received education here; if anything, it would make more sense to require them to work here for a bit after (although I'd also probably be opposed to that because I generally just don't like treating people as cogs in a working machine).

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#36

Post by bwv848 »

porphyra wrote: post #31
bwv848 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also fun fact, he advised Mao on agriculture during the Great Leap Forward, using rough estimates of photosynthetic efficiency to calculate potential crop yields. Those estimates were far removed from reality and indirectly contributed to the Great Chinese Famine, while other countries were benefiting from the success of the Green Revolution.

He didn't advise Mao directly. He published his "rough estimate" in China Youth Daily on June 16, 1958 as 《粮食亩产量会有多少？》. It's possible, though unconfirmed, that Mao (or his secretary) read this article and was influenced. But yeah, the math was bad and off by an order of magnitude. Even geniuses can't be right all the time and I guess he was quite irresponsible for publishing a hand-wavy back-of-the-envelope estimate…

Qian gave a talk about agriculture at the 6th Supreme State Conference in 1956, Mao directly talked to Qian about his article in 1958 '你在青年报上写的那篇文章我看了，陆定一同志很热心，到处帮你介绍。你在那个时候敢于说四万斤的数字，不错啊。你是学力学的，学力学而谈农业，你又是个农学家。', while later Qian admitted it was theoretically only and he miscalculated, he probably did it out of modesty and he didn't say shit about his impact on tens of millions of death whatsoever. In fact, Mao's secretary at the time was Li Rui, who was a pragmatist and quite liberal during his lifetime. He questioned Mao's sanity, and Mao just blamed Qian.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#37

Post by vasco »

jjk166 wrote: post #7
Animats wrote: post #6

That's fascinating. The article points out that nobody made a movie about this guy. That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring. Nobody ever made a biopic about Charles Wilson, head of defense production at General Motors during WWII, and later US Secretary of Defense. Hyman Rickover, who headed the 1950s effort to build nuclear submarines and warships, only has a l…

There are biopic films about people who founded or transformed businesses like Steve Jobs, Roy Kroc, Mark Zuckerberg, the founders of Blackberry, etc. Might not be everyone's cup of tea but I wouldn't describe that genre as boring. Probably the bigger issue is getting people to see a biopic about someone who isn't already a household name.

Putting Steve Jobs next to Charles Wilson is an insult to Wilson.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#38

Post by t-3 »

saghm wrote: post #35
999900000999 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be a cautionary tale. How many geniuses are leaving the US right now due to Xenophobia?

I had a friend working at a startup I interned at who had come over on a student visa, gotten a temporary visa to work, but then eventually was not able to keep it and ended up moving to Canada and working there. It's never made sense to me why we'd want to kick people out after they've received education here; if anything, it would make more sense to require them to work here for a bit after (although I'd also proba…

> It's never made sense to me why we'd want to kick people out after they've received education here;

That was (probably) never anyone's intention, American representative democracy is just schizophrenic by design. For the same reason the US has never faithfully abided by any treaty, laws and policies rarely end up functioning as intended after the political process.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#39

Post by trhway »

fragmede wrote: post #32
contingencies wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central planning and heterogeneous large scale distributed agriculture don't mix.

That seems like an oversimplification of what happened to Soviet Russia and China under Mao.

I grew up in USSR, and wrt agriculture it isnt oversimplification, it is exactly how it was there. It was the key factor resulting in the food shortages, and that was a major factor in the USSR collapse.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#40

Post by porphyra »

bwv848 wrote: post #36
porphyra wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't advise Mao directly. He published his "rough estimate" in China Youth Daily on June 16, 1958 as 《粮食亩产量会有多少？》. It's possible, though unconfirmed, that Mao (or his secretary) read this article and was influenced. But yeah, the math was bad and off by an order of magnitude. Even geniuses can't be right all the time and I guess he was quite irresponsible for publishing a hand-wavy back-of-the-envelope estimate…

Qian gave a talk about agriculture at the 6th Supreme State Conference in 1956, Mao directly talked to Qian about his article in 1958 '你在青年报上写的那篇文章我看了，陆定一同志很热心，到处帮你介绍。你在那个时候敢于说四万斤的数字，不错啊。你是学力学的，学力学而谈农业，你又是个农学家。', while later Qian admitted it was theoretically only and he miscalculated, he probably did it out of modesty and he didn't say shit about his impact on tens of millions of death whatsoever. In fact, Mao's sec…

Thanks for the correction. That sucks then. Dude should have stayed in his lane making rockets instead of commenting on agriculture.
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