A Chinese person proudly said: “From Chinese physicist Yu Min (于敏) to Chinese businessman Liang Wenfeng (梁文鋒) — back in the day, we developed hydrogen bombs. Today, we’ll do the same with AI.”
Who is Yu? He is known as “the father of the Chinese hydrogen bomb.” China’s first atomic bomb in October 1964 successfully detonated under Chinese physicist Deng Jiaxian (鄧稼先) and his team. Three years later, in October 1967, a research team led by Yu developed China’s first-ever hydrogen bomb. However, during the Cultural Revolution, the facility where those bombs were developed — Plant 221 in Qinghai Province — was politically persecuted, and Yu found himself in significant danger. He even faced death threats.
How did Yu survive? According to Deng’s wife, Xu Luxi (許鹿希), the relationship between China and the US was thawing at the time due to “ping-pong diplomacy.” Chinese theoretical physicist Frank Yang (楊振寧) in July 1971 returned from the US to China to visit his relatives and reunite with old friends, Deng being one of them. Then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) summoned Deng to Beijing, and Yu was also fortunate enough to be called upon and saved from the Cultural Revolution. From that point on, the Red Guards were unable to persecute the scientists at Plant 221.
Although Deng invented China’s atomic bomb, his family and colleagues were persecuted by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Deng, who had studied in the US, found himself in danger. Yu said that the so-called “Gang of Four”— Mao’s main radical allies at the time — had plans to eliminate all of the scientists involved in nuclear weapons development. Among them, explosives expert Qian Jin (錢晉) was persecuted and killed.
While the Chinese scientists were extremely intelligent and successful in the field of scientific research, they were clueless in the realm of politics and failed to see the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) malevolent nature.
In the words of physicist Albert Einstein, a man “must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he — with his specialized knowledge — more closely resembles a well-trained dog.”
The same can be said for those Chinese scientists, because the “motherland” to which they are so loyal lacks freedom, democracy, human rights and rule of law — the CCP’s regime is akin to that of a feudal dynasty. Therefore, it can be said that Liang — the founder of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek — also “resembles a well-trained dog.”
Teng Hon-yuan is a university professor.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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