The United States and China Must Collaborate, Not Compete, to Meet Today’s Existential Threats to Humanity – Editorial by the Union of Concerned Scientists

By Joel Wong

From the latest column by Joel Wong:

“The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. It was founded in 1969 by faculty and students of MIT.

In this article, Johanna Chao Kreilick, President of UCS on August 10, 2023, stated that her grandfather Dr. Edward Ching-Te Chao experienced persistent racism, hostility, and xenophobia, even though his research shaped the fields of mineralogy and geophysics and generated billions of dollars for industry. “When he died in 2008, his Washington Post obituary read “A Rock Star of Geology.”

“Unfortunately, his treatment as a Chinese scientist working in the US was not an isolated incident. Nor is it uncommon today. In recent years, rates of racial profiling of scientists of Asian descent in the United States have risen steeply, according to a 2021 study by the Committee of 100. One study participant, a biophysics professor, told the researchers, “Even though I do not work in a sensitive field, nor do I deal with any privileged or proprietary information, I am increasingly hesitant to interact or collaborate with scientists from China for fear it may be misconstrued by overzealous authorities as a conflict of national interest.” Another said, “I sometimes feel my Chinese identity may be the limiting factor for my career advancement in the U.S…….. This racist targeting is not only horrific for thousands of AAPI scientists and STEM students, but it is devastating for science. And it doesn’t have to be like this.”