Chapter 25: The Selected Chen Jingrun
“You don’t need to worry too much about this.
You are a Chinese person and are not familiar with the logic of how American politics operates.
A billionaire has enough authority in America to make everyone, whether Blue Origin or other external audit institutions, ignore you.” Li Xiaoman explained.
Lin Ran was somewhat surprised. He indeed did not understand America, and his past impression of America had only stayed at superficial abstract concepts like being developed, domineering, sucking in global elites, and offering good treatment.
After he successively got in touch with Horkheimer, John Morgan, Arthur Rudolf and this group of people in 1960, he knew that in America’s operational logic, relationships were far more important than rules.
But he felt that Li Xiaoman’s understanding might give him a completely different perspective to understand America, and such a perspective was very important, and could also become a part of building his information gap advantage.
“Sister Xiao Man, your answer is still a bit abstract. What do you mean by ‘ignore’?
With me here, but they all act as if I don’t exist?”
Li Xiaoman thought for a moment: “You’re right, it is indeed a bit abstract. Let me explain with an example.
The most straightforward example is corruption. American-style corruption has all its behaviors out in the open, all embezzlement behaviors are completely placed out in the open, written in reports to Congress.
Like USAID, that is, the America International Development Agency’s annual reports to Congress, where it details its own problems to Congress, and even every member of the public can check them on USAID’s official website.
But the definitions of these problems are all ‘meet standards,’ or ‘issue alert,’ or ‘no misconduct.’
Possibly a total of 100 audit issues, and not a single one convicted.
The most outrageous was in 2010, when there was the big earthquake in Haiti, then USAID announced it would allocate 1.15 billion US dollars to Haiti, plus allocations from other Western countries, and donations from global public, and the final aggregated number exceeded 5 billion US dollars.
In the end, only less than one-tenth of this money was actually spent on Haiti’s post-disaster reconstruction.
And the flow of these 5 billion US dollars was clearly written in USAID’s reports, given to Washington, Maryland, Virginia these three places, and foundations that have various relationships with politicians.
Like spending 4 million US dollars to study the feasibility of building a new port in Haiti, announcing research failure, and the money directly going into the pocket of the winning bid enterprise. Spending 300 million US dollars just to build the Caracol industrial park, and it wasn’t even completed.
Clearly rescuing the wounded and post-disaster reconstruction were more important, yet still spending over 300 million US dollars on HIV/AIDS mitigation projects.
The flow of all this money was placed out in the open, but no one would be penalized, no one would have any issues, all of this was reasonable and legal.
Why no accountability? Because the funds were allocated through multiple international organizations, contractors, and non-governmental organizations, the chain of responsibility is long, making it hard to track specific responsible persons.
Hard to track specific responsible persons, then I just won’t track them.
This is the peculiarity of American logic.
With corruption like this, if you are a researcher at a commercial aerospace enterprise, even if you really accessed rocket launch devices, really accessed a large amount of Blue Origin internal data, these matters are clearly written in the audit institutions’ reports to NASA, published on NASA’s official website, everyone will still turn a blind eye to it.
As the world’s richest man, Bezos absolutely has this ability.
So you don’t need to worry too much.
If you are even more careful and cautious, not appearing in public information, then there will be even less issue.”
When Li Xiaoman mentioned American-style corruption, her face showed indignation, giving people the feeling of a state-owned great thief yet being powerless.
Lin Ran was also dumbfounded after hearing this. It could be played like this; he had still underestimated America too much.
“Dean Qian, Secretary Wang from the Science and Technology Committee is here, asking what mathematical problems we have that cannot be solved? Asking us to pick some out.”
At this time, although Zhang Kewen had been transferred to the Academic Affairs Section to serve as Section Chief, because Dean Qian’s new secretary had not yet arrived, she was still concurrently serving as his work secretary.
“Oh, it’s the matter from Hong Kong side, right?” Qian Xuesen asked. Although all his thoughts at this time were on the R&D of the DF-1, he still had some understanding of the outside world.
Like Fermat’s Conjecture being proved by a Chinese descent mathematician, and this Chinese descent mathematician would go to Hong Kong University to lecture in the summer, and had told the president of the Overseas Chinese Daily News that any mathematical problems could be brought to him.
The Science and Technology Committee had long ago informed the relevant departments, asking them to prepare in advance, and then uniformly send people to invite this world-famous mathematician to solve them at that time.
Qian Xuesen had no expectations. After the Science and Technology Committee notified everyone, he had also asked Hua Luogeng to discuss it, and Hua Luogeng’s meaning was that the other party’s main direction was number theory and algebraic geometry, which was not much related to the differential equations they needed for missile research.
He was very clear that although number theory and algebraic geometry were mathematics, and differential equations were also mathematics, in the broad category of mathematics, different subcategories were like different industries separated by mountains.
So Qian Xuesen didn’t take it too seriously either, and handed a long-prepared equation to Zhang Kewen: “Give this to Secretary Huang’s side.”
Something that so many mathematicians in China couldn’t do, no matter how great the other party was, it would probably be impossible to solve it in just two months.
After all, the time the other party could stay in Hong Kong was only two months.
Zhang Kewen was overjoyed, carefully putting the paper into an envelope from the Mechanics Research Institute and sealing it.
And at this time in the Chinese Academy of Sciences Mathematics Research Institute, Hua Luogeng was earnestly telling Chen Jingrun: “Jingrun, this time you’re being sent to Hong Kong to attend Professor Lin’s courses, you must remember that learning itself is secondary, building a good relationship with Professor Lin is most important.
For the problems you’re taking, the premise is building a good relationship, only then can you ask more, and others will be willing to spend time on you.
I know you are honest and straightforward, which is naturally an advantage, but from another perspective, it is somewhat dull, which naturally is not good for interpersonal interactions.
So this time you go to Hong Kong, remember to do more, see more, think more, answer more. Your talent has no problem, I believe your talent is enough to impress Professor Lin.”
And the one finally selected to be sent to Hong Kong was precisely Chen Jingrun. At this time, Chen Jingrun was working at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Mathematics Research Institute, conducting research in a number theory discussion class centered on the Goldbach Conjecture organized by Hua Luogeng.
Lin Ran’s direction was number theory, and his direction was also number theory.
Besides the overlap in direction, more importantly, his English was good and his memory was astonishing.
At this time point, not many had good English, and going to Hong Kong, this England temporary control area, to deal with an America Chinese descent professor, knowing English was too crucial.
Although China did not expect Lin Ran to really solve these problems, but what if? What if he really could solve them, then the answers definitely had to be brought back, especially since among these problems there were some related to intercontinental missile guidance algorithms.
So astonishing memory was also equally important.
With these three overlapping, only Chen Jingrun met the conditions.
