Out of the Gobi

by Weijian Shan

  The Wharton School had a policy of allowing professors to take their students to dine in the university’s Faculty Club from time to time. Sometimes, students took their professors out to lunch. I always enjoyed conversations in these intimate and casual settings, exchanging stories and sharing a joke or two with my students. I still remember one I heard from one of my female students when a group of us were talking about the differences between international airlines during lunch. After we’d generally agreed that Lufthansa, the German flag carrier, offered some the most exceptional service, the student told us a joke about a Lufthansa plane that had experienced a mechanical failure and had to make a crash landing in the ocean. As the plane began to sink slowly beneath the waves, an announcement by the head stewardess came through the speaker. The student imitated the announcement in English with a thick German accent:

  “For those of you who know how to swim, please exit the rear door. For those of you who don’t, thank you very much for flying Lufthansa!”

  When I was teaching a course in international business, I had a few students on an exchange program from West Point, the famous United States Military Academy. I enjoyed chatting with them over a meal and found them as intellectual and curious as any other Wharton students. They came across as deferential and humble, which pleasantly surprised me, maybe because I had expected them to be macho and direct. I didn’t know what relevance an education in international business management had to their careers in the military, but I was impressed that the education for these elite cadets was so broad.

  Then as now, top business schools competed for the best students. It was a big deal for a school to be ranked as the number one business school in the United States in BusinessWeek or U.S. News & World Report, as Wharton was from time to time. I personally don’t believe there is a marked difference in the quality of teaching and learning among the top-ranked schools, as the teaching methods and materials are all similar. But brand names matter to employers, as do rankings. For that reason, I think there are two major purposes for a student to go to a top business school in addition to learning: to get labeled (by the brand name of the school) and to network (as the friends they make will help them in their future careers).

  Most of my time was spent on research. I became a faculty member without having published any prior research papers. Navigating the process of getting published in academic journals was a new experience for me. My colleagues, especially my fellow assistant professors, were generous in dispensing advice and in helping review my manuscripts. In most cases, an academic publication would subject a submitted paper to peer review; I never liked this process because it could take months or even years for a paper to be accepted or, even more frustratingly, rejected. Sometimes one of the three reviewers would request that a paper be reworked repeatedly, even though the other two reviewers had endorsed it. Peer review, however, is probably the only way to ensure the quality of published papers. At the same time, I also felt that to some extent getting academic papers published was like a game one had to learn to play: You had to choose the right journals to submit your work, and certain topics and certain ways of writing would give you a better chance that the editor would send the paper to reviewers who would appreciate your work.

  * * *

  Just as I’d settled into a routine at Wharton and our family life in Cherry Hill, Bin and I received a surprise that threatened to derail our comfortable life. On Thursday, September 15, 1988, shortly after the fall semester had started, I received a letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service ordering my family and me to leave the country.

  The notice was not clear about the reason. In fact, the whole thing was puzzling because we all had valid visas. At the advice of my colleagues, I engaged a law firm to find out what happened. The lawyer advised me that the INS notice bore the identification number of my wife, Bin, suggesting the problem had to do with her. It turned out that when the Asia Foundation had helped her obtain a visa, it issued a form usually reserved for individuals who obtained financing from their own governments to study in the United States. Such individuals had to go back to their country of origin for two years after their studies were completed. Bin’s trip to the United States was clearly not funded by the government. She could have obtained a student visa form from the University of San Francisco just as easily; none of us knew the implications of the form issued by the Asia Foundation, whose staff had probably just checked the wrong box.

  The notice from the INS threw our life into disarray. After discussing with our lawyers, I wrote to the INS to explain that Bin’s visit to the United States was privately sponsored and financed, as the code letter “P” indicating “private,” for her program clearly showed. For weeks, there was no response. With this uncertainty hanging over our heads it was impossible for me to plan my work and research or for our family to plan our life. It had been a long time since I had had to face such bureaucratic arbitrariness, and I had almost forgotten what it felt like. It was like pleading with someone who was holding a gun to my head, and I had no idea if he would step away or pull the trigger. The suspense was so agonizing I sometimes thought it might be better if he just pulled the trigger and got it over with.

  The school was supportive. Dean Russ Palmer and the associate dean, Jeff Sheehan, launched a multipronged effort to help us, using Wharton’s connections in Washington, DC, and other places. Via Russ’s introductions I spoke with a number of DC policymakers about my case. It was unbelievable how many friends of Wharton, who were strangers to me, stepped forward. I received a call from Carl Covitz, the deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who asked me how he could be of help. He patiently listened to the nuances of our problems and said he had friends in both the Department of Justice (of which the INS is a part) and the Department of Education, and he would be happy to talk with them about my case. I was quite touched. If an American got into a similar problem in China, I thought, I could not imagine a vice minister would pick up the phone to call and offer help.

  The law firm I had engaged was not being much help. So I called Bob Patterson, my old mentor at Graham & James, and within half an hour he connected me with a colleague named Brian McGill in his firm’s DC office. Brian specialized in immigration law. He was experienced and responsive. He advised me to wait until he had done all the research and analysis of our case before asking anyone to help. I felt I was in good hands.

  I had to drop everything to fight this battle with the INS. Bruce Kogut and other faculty members stepped in to teach my classes from time to time. In late October, I told the students in my class about the problem, and that I could be kicked out of the country at practically any moment. I had to inform them because I might not be able to finish teaching the class. I was moved by my students, many of whom offered to help me, although none had any idea how. One student came to my office with an unusual proposition: She offered to marry me, so that I could stay in the country. I told her I was happily married and in fact our family was facing this crisis, not just myself. I knew she made the offer to help me at the expense of complicating her own life. I was so touched and thanked her profusely.

  About a month after we received that fateful letter, Dean Palmer invited me to speak at a luncheon for Wharton’s board of overseers and board of advisers. Russ must have told some of them about my plight. After the lunch, one of the board members came up to me. It was Jon M. Huntsman, head of Huntsman Chemicals, the largest company in Utah. Huntsman was a Wharton alumnus and a major benefactor. By the time of his death in 2018, he had given some $50 million to the school. In 2002 Wharton’s new main building, Huntsman Hall, was named in his honor.

  Jon invited me to give a speech at a conference organized by his company the following January. He also offered to help with my problems with the INS, through some friends of his in the US Senate. I accepted the speaking invitation, but I thought I wouldn’t want to trouble him with my personal problems unless I had exhausted all other means. But Jon insiste
d on helping and asked me to send copies of our files to him.

  Huntsman was a man of his word. A few weeks later I received a phone call from his son, Jon Huntsman Jr., who surprised me with his impressively fluent Chinese. Jon Jr. had graduated from Penn, where he’d studied the language. He had worked in the White House as an assistant to President Ronald Reagan—“carrying his bags,” Jon Jr. joked—and had stayed for two months at the State Guest House in Beijing, where he was responsible for the logistics of Reagan’s presidential visit in 1984. His father, he told me, had put him in charge of helping with my case.

  A few colleagues at Wharton suggested I might obtain the support of some US government agencies on the basis of my research. At the time I had been examining biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, an extension of my doctoral thesis work at Berkeley. My colleagues and my lawyer, Brian McGill, recommended that we approach the Department of Commerce and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, or OTA.

  The OTA was created in the early 1970s essentially as a research institute for the legislative branch; its role was to provide members of Congress with analyses of complex scientific and technical issues. It was governed by a 12-member board made up of senators and representatives from both parties. I asked Brian McGill to check in the Congressional Directory which lawmakers currently sat on OTA’s board. Today, if one wished to find that information—and if the OTA hadn’t been defunded in the 1990s—one could simply Google it. But in 1988 it required tracking down a physical copy of the directory, of which few were readily available outside Washington, DC.

  A senior member of the OTA board, Brian discovered, was Utah senator Orrin Hatch. I called Jon Huntsman Jr. to let him know and ask him about our plan to approach the OTA regarding my case. Jon said his father knew Hatch well, and in fact the senator and I would be speaking at the same conference in January. This was a fantastic coincidence. Jon asked me to send my background and some research papers to him to be forwarded to the senator.

  I was very impressed with Jon Huntsman Jr. He was only 28 years old but he sounded much more mature. He had extensive knowledge of American politics and international affairs and was so lucid in his discussion of various issues. I wrote in my journal on November 7, 1988: “I spoke with Huntsman Jr. He pays great attention to politics and is thoroughly familiar with the backgrounds of various political figures. He says if Bush is elected, he may be appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary of State. It seems to me that this man will very likely become the US ambassador to China one day.”

  Thirty years later, I was proven right. Jon Huntsman Jr. was appointed ambassador to China by President Barack Obama in 2009, after serving as the Republican governor of Utah. It is quite unusual for a Democratic president to appoint a member of the other party to such an important post, which showed how extraordinary he is, to be a leading US politician and an expert on China at the same time.

  Meanwhile a Wharton colleague, Professor Ian MacMillan, connected me with a friend at the Department of Commerce. I wrote letter upon letter to various agencies and individuals to plead our case. It was autumn 1988, an election year, and as November loomed Vice President George H. W. Bush held a solid lead over his challenger, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. I wished that Bush would win the election, not because I had any political leanings but because I worried that all the powerful people whom Wharton had enlisted to help me would be kicked out of office if he and the Republicans lost. Happily, Bush did not disappoint me. Orrin Hatch was handily reelected as well.

  I was surprised and grateful to get so much help from so many people in my fight to stay in the Unites States. But there is a Chinese saying: “A clever rabbit always has three holes to his nest.” I needed a backup plan, in case the order from INS proved irreversible and my family was kicked out of the country. I hadn’t entertained the idea of returning to China, as I knew I could only develop my academic career in the West. With some of my colleagues agreeing to cover my classes, I traveled to France to visit INSEAD, the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires, located in Fontainebleau, just outside Paris. It was reputed to be the best business school in Europe and one of the best in the world.

  INSEAD was a very international school, drawing students from every corner of the globe. Most classes were taught in English, and I was told I did not have to know any French to function perfectly well there. I liked the school and its faculty, its beautiful campus, its proximity to the many attractions of Paris. But even though teaching required no French, I felt that it would be difficult for our family to live there without speaking the language. Sometime after my visit, INSEAD made me an offer to join its faculty. But I decided I would only consider it if I was forced to leave the United States.

  Through the help of my friends at Wharton, the Department of Commerce issued a letter to the INS to recommend that Bin and I and our son be granted permanent visas, which came as a tremendous relief. But just as we thought the issue was resolved, we received a registered letter from the INS on December 1, 1988. The letter informed us that we would have to leave the country “voluntarily” by a certain date. Of course, this notice was anything but voluntary. It reminded me of the time when I had to “volunteer” to go to the Gobi Desert.

  Fortunately, the INS was not known for its competence. Just as they had mixed up Bin’s visa status in the first place, the service had made a mistake on the new letter: the date by which we had to leave the country was left blank. I supposed if we simply ignored the letter, we could stay in the United States legally forever. Brian McGill immediately wrote back to the INS to request an extension as our case was still being processed.

  We finally received word that our visa problem had been resolved at the end of February 1989. But our troubles weren’t quite over yet. The INS had somehow lost our file, and it was only recovered following the intercession of Senator Orrin Hatch and his distinguished colleague, Senator Jake Garn of Utah, thanks to the help of both Huntsmans— Sr. and Jr. The INS might not be the most competent government bureaucracy, but it acted quite efficiently when the offices of two senators called. Thanks to all the twists and turns in our case, it was June 1989 before Bin, Bo, and I received our permanent visas.

  * * *

  In May 1989, there were almost daily news reports about student demonstrations in Beijing. Tens of thousands of students had taken over Tiananmen Square, waving banners, making speeches, and singing patriotic songs. The crowds were so great that the leadership had to change the venue for the welcome ceremony for Mikhail Gorbachev, the first state visit by a Soviet leader in 30 years. Citizens from all walks of life were coming out in support of the students. There seemed to be widespread discontent.

  The demonstrations had been triggered by the death of Hu Yaobang, the former Party general secretary. I had strong memories of him. As a young teen in Beijing in 1966, I had witnessed his “struggle session” on the balcony of his apartment, where he was forced to stand bent over while being denounced by Red Guards not much older than I was.

  Hu was ultimately rehabilitated and supported the return of Deng Xiaoping to power. He became the general secretary of the Party in 1981 and held the top position until 1987, when he was removed after clashing with the old guard on the Politburo, including Deng himself.

  Hu was seen as a reformist—a “bourgeois liberal,” as Party conservatives labeled him before his 1987 ouster—but was widely respected. He was open-minded about freedom of expression and advocated bringing more democratic elements into the system. In 1986, for example, he became the first to propose abolishing lifetime tenure for senior leaders.

  Hu’s reputation for integrity and for his liberal-leaning mind stood in sharp contrast to what was increasingly being seen as widespread corruption among government officials, not to mention an unpopular recent crackdown on political dissent and “spiritual pollution” (i.e., Western liberal ideas). Thus his untimely death on April 15, following a heart attack he had suffered during a meeting of the Polit
buro, triggered a massive outpouring of grief.

  The memorials to Hu Yaobang soon turned into political demonstrations. Article after article and poster after poster appeared on university walls, demanding more freedom, greater democracy, and an end to official corruption. These demands were perceived by the conservatives in the leadership as representing the very bourgeois liberalism that Hu’s tolerance had engendered. When these demands were ignored, protests and demonstrations followed. University students were at the forefront of the protest movement.

  At no time since I first arrived in the United States had I seen the media cover China so intensively. We followed the news of what was going on in Beijing every day, watching as more and more people went to Tiananmen Square to protest. By mid-May, some of the students in Tiananmen Square had gone on a hunger strike. Now even official newspapers such as the People’s Daily began to report the protests and to print articles sympathizing with the student movement.

  In the early morning of May 20, the government declared martial law in Beijing. Troops moved into the city. Tensions in Beijing were so high that it was nerve-wracking, even for us on the other side of the world. My wife and I were gripped by the news reports coming out of China, and every day we were worried what would happen next. It seemed that neither the students nor the government were going to back down from the confrontation.

  If the students had wanted their protest to reach the widest possible international audience, they could not have timed it better. Every major US TV network and newspaper had sent correspondents to cover Gorbachev’s historic visit to Beijing. There was probably more news media in Beijing than when Nixon visited. But Gorbachev’s visit had been completely overshadowed by the protests. We were transfixed as live coverage of Tiananmen Square filled the airwaves every day. The same day the government declared martial law, it also ordered all foreign networks to terminate their broadcasts from Beijing. We watched as CBS anchorman Dan Rather argued with Chinese officials on live television as they attempted to shut down the network’s makeshift studio in a Beijing hotel. He managed to stay on the air for nearly half an hour before the plug was pulled. In all, though, these attempts to black out the news were quite futile; there were probably thousands of foreign journalists in Beijing. Live reports, photos, and videos continued to pour out of the city.