Did the White House snub Chinese American scientists?

Yesterday, President Obama held a state dinner for China’s president Hu Jintao. As is usual on such occasions, my local paper, the Washington Post, published the guest list .

The list had the usual Washington mix of politicians and journalists, along with business leaders. It also included several distinguished Chinese Americans (or Chinese who live in America). Figure skater Michelle Kwan, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Lang Lang, architect Maya Lin, and actor Jackie Chan were among the 255 guests, who dined on pear salad, poached lobster, rib-eye steak, and apple pie.

Chinese American scientists, however, were conspicuously absent. Granted, physicist Steven Chu and medical researcher Patrick Soon-Shiong were there, but Chu is also the US Energy secretary and Soon-Shiong is also a billionaire businessman.

By my count, seven Chinese Americans have won Nobel Prizes in science. All of them are alive, and at least two of them, C. N. Yang and T. D. Lee, have dedicated much of their lives to improving China’s science enterprise and to strengthening scientific ties between China and the US.

Now it’s possible that Chinese American Nobel laureates were invited, but for one reason or another could not, or chose not to, attend. It’s also possible that the White House did not invite the laureates to avoid offending President Hu. Nobel Prizes are a sensitive issue in China. The country’s first unhyphenated Nobel laureate, the writer Gao Xingjian, lives in political exile in Paris. Its second unhyphenated laureate, the human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, is imprisoned in northeast China.

Refraining from offending one’s guests is polite. Still, the contribution of Chinese students, postdocs, and researchers to science in the US is so great that the White House should have found a way to reflect it in the guest list.