Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: Fang Lizhi, the Chinese astrophysicist and political dissident, died on 6 April 2012, in Tucson, Arizona.He left China in 1990, after a year spent inside the US consulate in Beijing.Fang and his wife had gone to the consulate for refuge following the violent suppression of the 1989 democracy movement, which the Chinese authorities accused him of fomenting.In 1992 Fang took a position teaching physics at the University of Arizona, where he worked until the time of his death at age 76.He never returned to China.Fang Lizhi's life story is remarkable, and provides a unique window into recent Chinese history.He was born in 1936 in Beijing, where his father was an accountant for the national railroad.He grew up under Japanese occupation, and joined an underground Communist youth organization during the Nationalist interlude.At the age of 16, Fang was admitted to Beijing University in physics, the premier department in China's premier university.Fang's professors included many of China's top foreign-educated physicists, who also served as government advisors and research institute directors.While at Beida, Fang was admitted to the Communist Party, and met physics classmate Li Shuxian, his future wife.He graduated at the top of his class in 1956 and was assigned to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Modern Physics, where at age 21 he led a team doing calculationssometimes by abacus, in the absence of computersto optimize nuclear reactor design for production of plutonium for weapons.In May 1957, during the Hundred Flowers movement, Beida became ground zero for criticisms of the Party.Physics students played a leading role, due partly to their prestige and partly to their privileged access to foreign news sources, which made them aware of events in the Soviet bloc such as Kruschev's criticism of Stalin and the Hungarian uprising.Though he had graduated, Fang was frequently on campus visiting Li Shuxian, who had been posted there after graduation as a translator for a Soviet expert.The two took part in the Hundred Flowers criticisms, and as a result became targets the following month when Mao Zedong reversed course and launched the Anti-Rightist campaign.Li was labelled a rightist, dooming her physics career.Fang avoided the worst consequences simply because the Party required CAS to purge five per cent of its personnel as rightists, and this quota was met before Fang's activities came to light.Nonetheless, he was removed from classified weapons research and expelled from the Party.
Source: The China Quarterly
Author: James H. Williams
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2333559949