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Comment by walid | Hacker News Reader

Looking at it through your lens: if he stays he's a spy, if he leaves he's a spy.

Any third option?

False dichotomy. He had many options: he could've fought the deportation, he could've gone elsewhere than China, he could've gone to China and not worked in their ICBMs, etc.

The article does mention that he did fight deportation. On the other hand not going to China or working on Chinese rocket projects would have been ludicrous considering his ethnicity and field of expertise. You expect a human to simply drop their life's opus because of accusations of being a communist. Frankly it doesn't matter if he was or wasn't a communist. It doesn't matter in the larger scope of things because being a communist doesn't mean betraying your country. The question is why was he charged with communism (which is not a crime) without proof. Any charge without prior proof is over reach. And him ending in China is the best option he had after being stalled in the USA.

> The article does mention that he did fight deportation.

And that he dropped it: "He later changed course, however, and sought to return to China."

> On the other hand not going to China or working on Chinese rocket projects would have been ludicrous considering his ethnicity and field of expertise.

Why couldn't he go to Europe or any of the other countries in the world which are not China? And when he went to China, why did he work on what he did? It's possible to work in NASA rather than NSA.

> The question is why was he charged with communism (which is not a crime) without proof. Any charge without prior proof is over reach.

He apparently was not an American citizen (eg "Qian was born in the eastern city of Hangzhou, and in 1934 graduated from Jiaotong University in Shanghai, where he studied mechanical engineering."). You are applying the incorrect standards.

Do I read your last paragraph correctly? Are you saying that it's fine to make unfounded accusations against people as long as those people are not American citizens?

Why not quote the complete paragraph, it is very relevant to have the whole context: "For years, Qian was in a sort of limbo, being watched closely by the U.S. government and living under partial house arrest. Eventually he quit fighting his expulsion and actively worked to return to China."

yeah. the third option is be born white.

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