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FANG Lizhi was in his new study in Cambridge last week working on a
favourite problem, whether the Universe is open or closed. To the astrophysicist
in him it is a technical question: Will the Universe carry on expanding
for ever, or is there enough mass for gravity to pull everything back together
again? To the Chinese dissident who was one of the leading thinkers behind
the prodemocracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, it is a matter of observable
fact: the universe of his home, China, is closed like a prison.

Fang fled to the US Embassy in Beijing the night after the massacre
in Tiananmen Square on June 4 last year. He stayed there for 13 months.
Barely 13 days ago he was allowed to come to England, and now that his second
son has joined him he feels he can speak his mind. Fang has spent his life
pursuing science and democracy and, in a way surprising to Western eyes,
sees the two as interdependent.

‘Science’ and ‘democracy’ were the two most popular words on the students’
banners last June. In Cambridge, Fang still argues strongly – and without
a hint of bitterness – for a love affair between science and democracy.
‘I am opposed to the idea of the Chinese character, that China is China,’
he said.

‘Even some Westerners think this. Of course, there are many local things
in which Cambridge is very different to Beijing, but many things are the
same in both places. Human rights are universal. Everybody should have the
right to freedom of speech and thinking.’

‘In science, anybody can question a theory. We don’t like authority.
This means that if I respect science, even the Communist party is lower
than science.’ The party knows this. After Tiananmen Square, all scientific
research was stopped for months, and many scientists remain in detention.

‘Science can be used for good or bad. This relates not only to scientists
but also to politicians and is a reason for linking science to democracy.
If only a small number of people handle science they may use it for their
own benefit.’

This liberal, Western ethos is unlikely to win favour with either a
communist or a Confucian. Fang sees himself as part of a scientific tradition.
‘There was a famous type of poster last year we called the Great Character
poster. It was just a map of the world with a slogan supporting science
and democracy written over it. It was just signed ‘a Global Citizen’. Of
course, the idea of the global citizen was Einstein’s. I got it from him
and the students got it from me.’

The accolade ‘the Chinese Sakharov’ was withdrawn from Fang when he
entered the embassy last year. After all, it was argued at the time, Sakharov
had spent years in internal exile. But the name has plenty of truth in it.
Einstein, Sakharov and Fang all studied matters at the very heart of nature.

Just as with his predecessors, it was this observation of nature’s basic
laws which led Fang to develop his views on basic human rights and brought
him into conflict with the Chinese government. His pragmatic side, fashioned
in schooldays skipping lunch to spend dinner money on radio components,
would not renounce established scientific theories for the benefit of the
party.

‘In China, cosmology was a forbidden field from 1949 to 1972. When I
published the first paper on cosmology in 1972 the party published a long
article refuting it because it contradicted something Engels had said. I
also got into trouble in 1985 when I tried to introduce (Stephen) Hawking’s
ideas on quantum cosmology. One of those ideas is that everything can come
from nothing. The politburo said the idea was not Marxist.’

The conflict led to Fang’s alternative to the party’s four cardinal
rules. In place of exhortations such as ‘maintain the leading role of the
party’, he puts science, democracy, creativity, independence.

For 13 months, Fang was the key to Sino-American relations. The Chinese
government burnt effigies of him and the US Congress would not give China
back its Most Favoured Nation trading status without his freedom. Billions
of dollars depended on his future but today he remains, firstly, a scientist.
It is the first thing he wants to talk about. ‘Science is something like
my religion,’ he said. ‘If I feel unstable, I do some science and I feel
²õ³Ù²¹²ú±ô±ð.’

Fang kept working all through last year’s demonstrations. Even on 4
June itself, he went to his study in the morning. In the embassy – in a
windowless room from where he could hear soldiers talking in the street
outside – he wrote four papers.

Newly ensconced in Cambridge, Fang is again wondering whether the universe
is open. He will stay in England for six months before moving on to Princeton
University in New Jersey. Cambridge turns out to be a diplomatically convenient
halfway house. The Chinese government wanted to put him on his own barren
Elba, the Americans said such places were hard to find these days and they
compromised on Britain.

Still, he is at least out. Cheng Ming Yan, a mathematician who was one
of the hunger strikers in Tiananmen Square, and Liu Gang, a graduate student
in theoretical physics and organiser of the independent student unions,
both remain detained.

The student movement of 1919, always held up by the Communist party
as a forerunner of China’s own revolution of 1949, first established the
twin heroes of Mr Science and Mr Democracy. ‘Nobody will again believe in
the party, so people will prefer Mr Science and Mr Democracy,’ he said.
‘They are quite strong, but it is very difficult for them to show themselves.
It could be 10 years before there is another liberalisation.’