The nomination of Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, by the U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for the position of Secretary of Energy has been applauded.  Chu, if confirmed, would become the first professional scientist to run the Department of Energy (DOE), thereby bringing fresh scientific thinking into an agency that has  significant science missions.  The nomination, along with selections of other top science advisors, also shows the determination of the Obama Administration to end eight years of official hostility towards science and “restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.”

The nomination of Chu, a Chinese American, has also been hailed by the Chinese American community, which had been angered by Obama’s naming Bill Richardson as secretary of commerce, as Richardson’s involvement in the Wen Ho Lee case has created a rift between Obama and Chinese Americans.

In 1999, Richardson, Energy Secretary-designate Chu’s predecessor, publicly named Lee, a Taiwan-born scientist working at the DOE-managed Los Alamos National Laboratory, as a suspect who might have given nuclear secrets to the Chinese government.  Later, Lee was cleared of espionage charges and won a settlement against the federal government for the accusation.

President Bill Clinton issued a public apology, saying that he had been “troubled” by the way Lee was treated . The federal judge who heard the civil case that Lee brought against the government remarked that “top decision makers in the executive branch … have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen.” Yet Richardson never apologized or expressed regret. 

The Chu nomination, therefore, is seen as a gesture to calm the outrage of the Chinese Americans toward the Richardson nomination and can be seen as a signal that Chinese Americans are trustful.

Moreover, Steven Chu could facilitate the cooperation between the U.S. and China in energy research and beyond.  Born in the U.S. to a family of two Chinese students, in 1997, Chu became the fifth ethnic Chinese Nobel laureate.  He is well respected in China, not only because he has won a Nobel Prize and is a foreign member (waiji yuanshi) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but also because he has trained many Chinese scientists, including some active in the research frontier of international science.  He is influential in China; he inspired (and is the honorary director of ) the Bio-X Center at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, which brings together scientists from physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering under one roof .

Given his stature and connection (guanxi), Chu has had and will continue to have access to China’s scientific as well as political leadership – he met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during his 2007 visit to Beijing.  Indeed recently, he has visited China almost every year.

Since becoming director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a DOE facility, in 2004, Steven Chu has encouraged scientists to develop technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as pursue collaboration with industry.  Leveraging this experience and the significant research portfolio in the DOE, from energy efficiency to renewable energy, Chu is expected to work with his Chinese counterparts and scientists on energy research collaboration and more importantly to push forward an agenda in China that combats global climate change.  This agenda will be of particular interest to China, a developing country whose environmental meltdown is imminent.

With these two countries sincerely joining hands, it is possible to ameliorate, if not completely solve, the global climate change challenge.  Steven Chu is on a historic misson!