Dr. Chang’s interview in The Catholic University’s Envoy magazine, published in February 1973, was one of several rare accounts of his immediate reflection after the 1972 visit. Courtesy of ACUA.

Shortly after President Richard Nixon’s icebreaking trip to China, Dr. Chang visited his country of birth with a group of Chinese American scientists in 1972. Members of the group were “invariably impressed by the social and material progress in the People's Republic and upon their return helped shape the American perception of the New China by giving public lectures and writing articles in the mass media.” Dr. Chang shared their excitement and optimism. When touring Tsinghua University, he could not recognize the old campus, which was “now the center for new industrial development of automobiles, power plants, and computers.” As a meteorologist, he was surprised to learn that weather stations covered even the most remote areas in China. As a typical husband of the Second World War generation, he was impressed by how urban Chinese mothers habitually kept their “minor children...in nurseries” and worked “outside the home.” The enchantment was so overwhelming that he even argued for Chinese people’s abundant access to outside information, which was far from the reality. “They have 800 million people to feed and clothe,” he concluded, “and have done a remarkable job in just a few years.”

However, what Dr. Chang described was only half the story. Behind the advancements Chinese government put on display, the cost and suffering were at least as astonishing. 

More than two decades of revolutionary culture and cult of personality had fatally disabled the education system in China. The devastating Cultural Revolution, a populist movement-turned-social catastrophe orchestrated in 1966 by the nation’s increasingly bigoted leader Mao Zedong, had disconnected countless intellectuals and scientists from their work. Many prominent scholars were forced to live in bottomless disgrace, on the brink of social death. Cooler heads in the administration had protected Chang’s former friend and mentor at Caltech, Qian Xuesen, from damages of the political turmoil, but even this acclaimed scientist was constantly fearing for his life. In his Catholic University interview, Dr. Chang only talked about the curiosity and brilliance of the Chinese scientists he had met but did not mention the ordeal these scientists had been through. For this marginalized group of scholars, meetings with American scientists were often a personal turning point that, according to Nobel laureate and leader of a delegation to China, Glenn T. Seaborg, greatly “increased their legitimacy.”

The recollection of his friends in China indicates that Dr. Chang’s visit caused significant changes in personal lives. As a friendly gesture to their new American ally, the Chinese Communist Party offered to arrange reunions of American scientists and their friends in China. Many of these Chinese individuals were criminalized because of their western education and often received better treatment from the government after a meeting with the Americans. When Chang offered to meet a friend from college, a "Mr. Gu," the man was hastily recalled from a labor camp and dressed up for the meeting. According to one account, Dr. Chang detected the staged nature of the reunion and told Mr. Gu in public that he would like to meet him again. Although a second meeting never took place, his words were believed to have freed Mr. Gu from penal labor.