High-Ranking Chinese Scientist Leads Study Group to Harvard

A former Harvard student returned yesterday to Cambridge for the first time in almost 50 years.

Dr. Tang Pei-sung, a onetime doctoral fellow in botany and plant physiology, leaned back on the couch in the hotel lobby and took a sip of his bourbon and Seven-up. "I'm so pleased to come back to the United States," the director of the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, half-said and half-sighed.

The 76-year-old Tang, who will spend the next several days in Cambridge as the leader of a delegation of eight Chinese botanists, says he has come to Harvard to "find out what the science of botany will be like in the year 2000."

Specialists from the delegation--co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Botanical Society of America--plan to exchange views and research findings with Harvard scientists in fields from paleontology and geology to plant physiology.

The delegation is part of a barrage of scientific and technical study groups which will visit the U.S. and other Western countries this year as part of the Chinese Academy of Science's increased scientific exchange plans.

Tang, who was recently elected chairman of the Chinese Society of Botany--a group responsible for intersectoral communication in botanical sciences in China said the current Chinese regins is not moving in the direction of the West but rather trying to adapt foreign techniques for its own uses.

"We have our own concept of modernization," he said. "If you want to modernize you have to adopt things of the West but you must do this according to the particular needs of China," he added.

China has launched a drive to achieve "the four modernizations"--a campaign which includes plans to reach state-of-the-art world levels in science and technology.

"We're not doing basic research for basic research's sake." Tang explained, noting that applying recent research is a priority among Chinese scientists.

"But application is not our only aim." Tang countered, saying that there "should be some research that can not be practically applied in the near future" to provide a basis for growth in the level of science and technology in China.

Tang, who was purged at the beginning of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966, said the atmosphere surrounding scientific work in China, is only now returning to what it was in the early and mid-1960s.

Dressed in a light brown suit with a flashy orange and white tie. Tang said he believes students in the U.S. "are more mentally mature and more socially conscious" than they once were, citing student protests against the Vietnam War.

Since his departure in 1933, Tang, who got his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota and his Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University, said there have been changes that are so huge they are hard to describe.

"On thing has not changed, however," Tang said, smiling. "The generosity and open-mindedness and friendliness of the American people--everywhere we go they give the best to us."