Trump and Xi Jinping are on a boat, Trump falls into the water

Mathematician Liu Jun, during the official ceremony for his admission to Tsinghua University, August 30, 2025,

after he decided to leave Harvard University, where he taught for 25 years. Photo DR

Trump's attacks on American universities are partly to blame... After teaching at Harvard for 25 years, mathematician Liu Jun joined a Chinese university. And his case is far from unique. China now surpasses the United States in the number of leading researchers.

" Blindness is often the root of the greatest mistakes."

(Napoleon)

There are individuals whose lives embody and symbolize the entirety of a historical period. The story of Liu Jun, the world-renowned statistician, is particularly illuminating.

This specialist in data science, biostatistics, and artificial intelligence taught at Harvard until recently. He was born, in a world apart, in April 1965, into a family of Chinese academics in Beijing. This was just before Mao launched his infamous and criminal "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," which aimed, whatever the cost, to bring the Party and the country to heel through a bloody crackdown. From 1966 to 1976, the notorious "Red Guards" and the army murdered between 800,000 and 4 million Chinese, according to various sources. Their primary targets were academics, intellectuals, and Party cadres like Deng Xiaoping, guilty of not toeing the Mao line. ( 1)

Liu Jun and his parents, like almost all Chinese intellectuals, were forcibly sent to the countryside. There, they were all subjected to compulsory manual labor, interspersed with sessions of ideological "re-education." This criminal madness ended with Deng Xiaoping's rise to power, whose slogan marked the beginning of the Chinese takeover : " It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice ."

Liu Jun, returning to Beijing with his family, was then able to pursue scientific studies. He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1985. He went to the United States to begin graduate studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey , and then at the University of Chicago, where he earned his doctorate in statistics. This scholar settled at Harvard University, where he taught statistics and data science for 25 years.

Then, suddenly, Trump is re-elected, and a war begins against universities guilty of dissenting ideologies. These attacks had started during his first term, as early as 2016, but they have reached unprecedented proportions since the launch today of a neo-McCarthyist campaign. Liu Jin is familiar with these "bringings to heel" and has had enough of them. He and his family have already been victims. So, when the Trump administration tries to cripple Harvard by cutting $3 billion in federal funding, Liu Jin packs his bags and heads straight to Beijing to join Tsinghua University.

The official ceremony marking his induction into Tsinghua University on August 30, 2025, was highly symbolic. For his triumphant entry, Liu Jun received the university's highest academic title, "Distinguished Full Professor of Tsinghua." At his side stood the university president, who also served as the Communist Party of China Secretary at the university—a strategic position overseeing educational and scientific policies. The president is also a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

At this event, Liu Jun explained: " Leaving Harvard for Tsinghua was not an easy choice, but faced with drastic funding cuts and a climate of uncertainty, I had to seek an environment where research is truly valued and supported."

There could not be a better way to signify the reversal that is taking place in this global scientific competition.

The Chinese government is investing in and prioritizing this field of AI and big data exploration. For example, the university where Liu Jun currently teaches recently established a department of statistics and data science last July.

For several years, the Chinese government has been implementing very attractive programs for scientists, including the so-called " 1,000 talents " plan (2) which offers substantial bonuses, research grants, prime positions in universities and Research and Development centers, as well as advantageous living conditions to attract or even repatriate Chinese scientists working in the West.

It goes without saying that the attack on the country's best universities undertaken by Trump and his allies comes as a godsend to Beijing. China has pulled off a double coup: attracting the world's intellectual capital while simultaneously depriving the United States and, more broadly, the West of it. Liu Jun is part of this burgeoning movement. So is Yang Dan, the renowned neuroscientist from Berkeley, who returned to Beijing as early as 2024.

The highly regarded Harvard nanochemist Charles Lieber, convicted for failing to disclose Chinese funding for his research, joined Tsinghua University in May 2025 to lead nanoscience projects (3) . Mathematician Sun Song, a former professor at the University of Berkeley and considered a strong contender for the Fields Medal (the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize), joined Zhejiang University, near Shanghai, in 2024. Prior to him, this university had also recruited Chinese mathematician Ruan Yongbin, a specialist in algebraic geometry, who taught at the University of Michigan. Similarly, number theorist Liu Yifei from Harvard had joined this university.

French physicist and Nobel laureate Gérard Mourou accepted a professorship at Peking University in October 2024, where he is tasked with creating a new physics institute focused on international collaboration. Wang Zhonglin, a pioneer in nanotechnology and widely considered the "father of nanogenerators," also moved to China full-time in 2023, taking over as director of the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems. He previously taught primarily at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in the United States, where he held the Hightower Chair in Materials Science and Engineering. This is an endowment-funded academic chair, typically awarded to a distinguished professor in a specific field. It is named after the Hightower family, which funds it. His research has numerous applications in medicine, energy, industry, and defense.

The list of this unprecedented brain drain to China is therefore long. It grows in tandem with the rise of neo-fascism in the United States. The more Trump brandishes his Make It Now campaign , the more it increases. America Great Again , plus it destroys the future of the USA. Under the stunned and/or delighted gaze of the rest of the world. A March 2025 survey demonstrates the immense anxiety of American researchers. Conducted among a sample of 1,068 American academics and asking the question: " Are you a researcher who is considering leaving the country following the disruptions in the scientific field caused by the Trump administration? ", 75.3% of respondents answered " yes ". (4)

China's charm offensive thus has a bright future ahead. According to a report published in January 2025 by Dongbi Data (5) , a Shenzhen-based technology company specializing in data analysis, China had overtaken the United States in the number of top-level scientists, with a meteoric rise in its own scientific talent pool and a concomitant decline in the American talent pool. By 2024, China had more than 32,000 leading researchers, already surpassing the 31,700 listed in the US! (6) Since Trump's arrival, this trend has accelerated even further, and we are witnessing what appears to be a boomerang effect.

Mao Zedong liked to use the biblical expression "the colossus with feet of clay " when denouncing the United States and imperialism in general. He never imagined that the White House would orchestrate his suicide in this way.

" In everything, one must consider the end," concluded La Fontaine in his fable of the Fox and the Goat. It is said that Hitler's speeches are prominently displayed on Trump's bedside table. It would have been better for the United States if it had been the complete works of our national fabulist.

Michel Strulovici

NOTES

(1) I highly recommend, for this period, the biography entitled Mao: The Unknown Story, written by Jung Chang, a Chinese writer living in the United Kingdom, and the historian Jon Halliday. Published in 2005, this book retraces the life of Mao Zedong using interviews with people close to Mao, recently published political memoirs, and newly accessible Chinese and Russian archives.

(2) The Thousand Talents Plan (or “ 1,000 Talents ” program) is a Chinese initiative launched in 2008 by the Chinese Communist Party. Its objective is to recruit high-level scientists, entrepreneurs, and experts, primarily in the fields of biotechnology, information technology, and high-tech industries. Initially designed to attract Chinese citizens living abroad, it has since 2011 been extended to non-Chinese foreign experts. The program offers very attractive financial incentives, such as substantial bonuses at the start of contracts and various forms of assistance (housing, research) to attract these talents to China.

(3) In 2011, Charles Lieber was named by Reuters as the world's leading chemist for the decade 2000-2010 based on the impact of his scientific publications. He is known for his contributions to the synthesis, assembly, and characterization of materials and nanodevices at the nanoscale, the application of nanoelectronic devices in biology, and as a mentor to many leaders in nanoscience. (Source: Wikipedia )

(4). See the Grand Continent Review of March 29, 2025.

(5). Dongbi Data produces, among other things, reports and indices on global scientific research, such as the "Dongbi Index," which analyzes trends and the distribution of top scientists globally.

(6) The cited report indicates that between 2020 and 2024, the number of high-level scientists in China increased from 18,805 to 32,511, while it decreased in the United States from 36,599 to 31,781. This shift also reflects China's strategy of massive investment in training and research, while the United States faces challenges in investing in science education, exacerbated by the scorched-earth policy in these areas pursued by the Trump administration.

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