A controversy over a Nobel laureate’s return to China
Society & Culture
Top society and culture news for February 24, 2017. Part of the daily The China Project news roundup "A whirlwind set to shake up China’s banks."
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Nobel laureate courts controversy over decision to come back to China / Global Times
World-renowned physicist and Nobel laureate Yang Zhenning 杨振宁, together with Turing Award winner and computer scientist Yao Qizhi 姚期智, has given up his American citizenship and joined the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Yang, 94, went to the U.S. for his Ph.D. In 1957, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with Li Zhengdao 李政道, becoming the first Nobel laureates of Chinese origin. Seven years later, Yang was granted American citizenship. Chinese netizens are divided on Yang’s return — see this Weibo comment thread (in Chinese). Some applaud Yang’s decision and view it as a sign of China’s growing appeal to talents. Others insinuate that his real motive is to dodge high inheritance taxes in the U.S. Yang has previously been the subject of a controversy: In 2004, at the age of 82, he married a 28-year-old master’s student.
- ‘Grey wall of China’: The town at the frontline of a looming aging crisis / The Guardian
- No baby boom for China after end of one-child policy / Financial Times (paywall)
- Two men stand trial in Beijing for human trafficking – accused of “smuggling in dozens of women from the Philippines and Indonesia” to work as domestic helpers / Caixin
- Divorced Chinese women stare death in the face to regain control of their lives – “Participants lie in shallow pits to contemplate that their lives are precious after all” / SCMP
- China believes domestic tourism can promote ‘ethnic unity’ / The Economist (paywall)
- That viral video of tigers chasing a drone is from a slaughter farm, folks / Vice Motherboard
