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Byron Wan Profile picture
@Byron_Wan
Nov 15, 2021 • 88 tweets • 32 min read • Read on X
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🔥 WTA Chairman & CEO Steve Simon speaks out in support of Peng Shuai.

A small step in the right direction for international sports organizations to speak out against injustice and human rights violations in China.

1/n wtatennis.com/news/2350641/w…
WTA Chairman & CEO Steve Simon’s comments could endanger the tour’s extensive business relationship with China, where the WTA has 11 tournaments and a lucrative, long-term deal to hold its tour finals in Shenzhen.

2/n
nytimes.com/2021/11/14/spo…
“I think everybody fully understands what’s at stake here on many different fronts as we’re going through it. I think we’re certainly, from players to board to council, fully united that the only acceptable approach is that of doing what is right. If at the end of

3/n
the day, we don’t see the appropriate results from this, we would be prepared to take that step and not operate our business in China if that’s what it came to.”

4/n
ATP, the governing body of men's tennis, backs WTA’s call for China to investigate allegations of sexual assault made by Peng Shuai against former Chinese vice premier Zhang Gaoli.

5/n
reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
Stacey Allaster, the former CEO of WTA who negotiated millions of dollars of rights deals with China: “the tennis world has put Peng Shuai's health and safety ahead of business.”

6/n
reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
According to 🇨🇳 state media CGTN, Peng Shuai has sent an email to WTA Chairman & CEO Steve Simon.

Note there’s a “cursor” on the third line of the “email”.

7/n Image
👇🏻 WTA Chairman & CEO Steve Simon’s response to Peng Shuai’s “email” as shown in the previous tweet

8/n
wtatennis.com/news/2356029/s…
The purported email from Peng Shuai as revealed by 🇨🇳 mouthpiece CGTN looks more like a clumsy fake created by taking a screenshot of a Word doc in edit mode. The opening line “Hello everyone” is weird for an email supposed to be sent to Steve Simon.

9/n
bbc.com/news/world-asi…
China has now blocked CNN's broadcast signal to prevent further reporting about Peng Shuai...

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cnn.com/videos/world/2…
🚨 How come such so-called “evidence” is always coming from 🇨🇳 state media or anyone other than Peng Shuai herself?

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👇🏻 the Peng Shuai pics tweeted by Shen Shiwei of 🇨🇳 state media CGTN... CGTN again !

Is “彭帅2” Peng Shuai’s WeChat (weixin) id (screenshot in the lower right pic)?

12/n ImageImageImageImage
👇🏻 Peng Shuai’s weibo account, from which she posted her earlier accusation, has not been updated though. This doesn’t look right.

13/n ImageImage
👇🏻 IOC’s statement:

“Experience shows that quiet diplomacy offers the best opportunity to find a solution for questions of such nature. This explains why the IOC will not comment any further at this stage.”

14/n
apnews.com/article/sports…
“A lot of people will be watching carefully to see what happens with the WTA over the longer term... as it becomes increasingly untenable to operate in both China and the rest of the world, China may be the market that loses out.”

15/n
theguardian.com/world/2021/nov…
Novak Djokovic:

"I support the statement of WTA as an organization and also their president absolutely. The whole community, tennis community, needs to back her up and her family, make sure that she's safe and sound because if you would have

16/n
reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
tournaments on the Chinese soil without resolving this situation, it would be a little bit strange.

It's important because this is horrifying. I mean, a person is missing.”

17/n
🇨🇳 mouthpiece Hu Xijin of Global Times: “She will show up in public and participate in some activities soon.”

🤔

In Jan this year, Jack Ma re-appeared in a video of him attending an online meeting after disappearing for almost 3 months.

18/n
reuters.com/world/china/ch…
🇨🇳 mouthpiece Hu Xijin tweeted 2 video clips showing Peng Shuai in public participating in some activities as he “promised”.

🇨🇳 state media supplied such “evidence” again.

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👇🏻 video #1 of Peng Shuai from 🇨🇳 mouthpiece Hu Xijin

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👇🏻 video #2 of Peng Shuai from Hu Xijin

21/n
WTA Chairman & CEO Steve Simon on the videos released by Hu Xijin:

“While it is positive to see her, it remains unclear if she is free and able to make decisions and take actions on her own, without coercion or external interference. This video

22/n
wtatennis.com/news/2361225/s…
alone is insufficient ... I remain concerned about Peng Shuai’s health and safety and that the allegation of sexual assault is being censored and swept under the rug.  I have been clear about what needs to happen and our relationship with China is at a crossroads.”

23/n
👇🏻 this person was one of the people at the table with Peng Shuai. He tweeted a shorter version of the video posted by Hu Xijin, plus three photos of himself with Peng Shuai and others.

The last time he tweeted was 2012, prior to these two tweets involving Peng Shuai.

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👇🏻 丁力’s photos of Peng Shuai and others apparently at the restaurant shown in the video clips

25/n ImageImageImageImage
👇🏻 the man speaking on the left in the dinner video is 张军慧 (Zhang Junhui), China Open’s Director of Tournaments.

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👇🏻 丁力, the man who posted the photos of Peng Shuai in the restaurant above, is apparently the General Manager of Global D-Sports (德世界体育), the sports unit of Chinese electronics manufacturer Leyard (利亚德集团) which is also a sponsor of sports events in the country.

27/n ImageImageImageImage
👇🏻 🇨🇳 state media CGTN’s Shen Shiwei shows us Peng Shuai’s whereabouts again!

Here Peng Shuai shows up in public and participates in some activities exactly as Hu Xijin promised yesterday!

Wait, why didn’t she take the opportunity to say something to the world? 🤔

28/n ImageImage
👇🏻 video #1 from CGTN’s Shen Shiwei

29/n
👇🏻 video #2 from CGTN’s Shen Shiwei

30/n
👇🏻 a video clip of Peng Shuai at the same event posted by 🇨🇳 Hu Xijin

31/n
The biggest loophole in Beijing’s attempts to show the world Peng Shuai’s ok via the release of these pics and videos through third parties is that they also show us she’s not allowed to have direct, unrestricted contact with the world outside China via any form of media.

32/n
👇🏻 a short thread from @DemesDavid about the restaurant in the Peng Shuai dinner video and the building where the restaurant is located in

33/n
👇🏻 Reuters’ coverage of Peng Shuai‘s appearance at the Sunday morning tennis event in Beijing mentioned above

34/n
reuters.com/world/china/te…
👇🏻 one of the people in Peng Shuai’s dinner video is 李晓斌 (Li Xiaobin), China Open Promotions Ltd’s Party Committee Secretary & President (中国网球公开赛体育推广有限公司党委书记、总裁).

As the Party Secretary, Li wields more power than Zhang Junhui who’s also present.

35/n ImageImageImageImage
👇🏻 丁力 tweeted his pic with Peng Shuai taken at the event Sunday morning

36/n ImageImage
👇🏻 China Open also posted pics showing Peng Shuai at the Fila Kids tennis event on Weibo

37/n ImageImageImageImage
All the Peng Shuai videos released so far are about activities associated with the CCP: the dinner inside a government-owned building with China Open’s Party Secretary Li Xiaobin (李晓斌) present, and the tennis event, run and regulated by the state, Sunday morning.

38/n
So even if — just if — she wasn’t under any coercion or duress, these activities and the accompanying videos were all staged, cuz no one would risk angering the regime by posting or even shooting these videos without Beijing’s green light.

39/n
Peng Shuai had a 30-minute video call with pro-Beijing IOC President Thomas Bach, Chair of IOC Athletes’ Commission Emma Terho, and IOC Member in China Li Lingwei.

Beijing had prioritized IOC over WTA because of the upcoming Winter Olympics.

40/n
olympics.com/athlete365/voi…
This video call with Peng Shuai doesn’t really tell us anything. Based on what the IOC officials revealed about their conversation with Peng, they didn’t ask any important questions. This was a pre-arranged call; Peng could be under surveillance; there could be people

41/n
around when the call took place or that could be a room in a special facility. WTA was the first organization that voiced their concerns about Peng’s disappearance and also the most vocal one, while IOC adopted what they called “quiet diplomacy”. Yet Beijing chose NOT to

42/n
directly allay WTA’s suspicions. IOC has long been a Beijing-friendly organization and their officials would undoubtedly ask politically correct questions while avoiding “sensitive” ones. In an officially scheduled call like this, Peng would obviously say the “right”

43/n
things without putting herself or her family at risk. Given Peng was “free” to have dinner with “friends” and attend a tennis event with lots of people, why didn’t Beijing get her in a press conference where she can freely speak to western journalists, diplomats and others

44/n
in person? That would at least be a bit more convincing (well, even that could still be staged under duress, etc.)

A furtively-arranged private video call with a pro-Beijing group is no evidence.

45/n
There’re many ways of silencing people without actually making physical threats or using violence.

👇🏻 Here Michael Corleone shows us how he made sure Frank Pentangeli didn’t say things that may incriminate the Corleone family.

46/n
🚨 Beijing has little credibility, and IOC is hardly better.

47/n
thestar.com/opinion/star-c…
WTA: "It was good to see Peng Shuai in recent videos, but they don't alleviate or address the WTA's concern about her well-being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion. This video does not change our call for a full, fair and

48/n
reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
transparent investigation, without censorship, into her allegation of sexual assault, which is the issue that gave rise to our initial concern."

49/n
👇🏻 IOC President Thomas Bach met then-Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli in Beijing on June 12, 2016.

Maybe they can set up a video call for Bach and Zhang?

50/n
beijing2022.cn/sv1/wog/wap.ht… Image
“IOC is now actively playing a role in the Chinese government’s enforced disappearance, coercion and propaganda machinery.”

51/n
apnews.com/article/sports…
Amnesty International: “The IOC is entering dangerous waters. They should be extremely careful not to participate in any whitewash of possible human rights violations.”

52/n
reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
👇🏻 how China censored CNN’s live TV broadcast about Peng Shuai

53/n
au.sports.yahoo.com/tennis-2021-ch…
🇨🇳 state media and its journalists produced one piece of evidence after another to prove that Peng Shuai is safe and free. The world still doesn’t believe it.

🇨🇳’s propaganda machine doesn’t know how to craft narratives that stand up to scrutiny.

54/n
nytimes.com/2021/11/23/bus…
Searching for Peng Shuai: the extreme nature of the restraints on speech about Peng, and the appropriation of her voice by the organs of external propaganda, should be sufficient proof she’s now subject to serious restraints on her personal freedom.

55/n
chinamediaproject.org/2021/11/23/sea… Image
👇🏻 WSJ’s coverage of IOC President Thomas Bach’s previous working relationships with Zhang Gaoli (see tweet #50 in this thread)

56/n
wsj.com/articles/chine…
🔥 丁力 (Ding Li) posted a new “email” Peng Shuai wrote to Steve Simon — in Chinese!

Peng claims she’s fine and doesn’t want to be disturbed. She even confirms she sent an email to 4 ppl including Simon and WTA’s Flora on Nov 17 (the one from CGTN with “Hello everyone”).

57/n ImageImage
It’s funny that Ding Li questioned so seriously why Steve Simon didn’t reply to Peng Shuai’s email, as if that alleged “email” was irrefutable evidence of anything. 😂

And the new email in Chinese... 🤦🏻

58/n
🚨 “Privileged and confidential” communication — a legal term — is the interaction between two parties having a legally protected, private relationship. The party receiving privileged info must keep it private and confidential, unless the discloser waives the privilege.

59/n Image
👇🏻 BBC’s coverage of Ding Li’s latest tweet with a new email purportedly sent to WTA’s Steve Simon by Peng Shuai (see tweet #57 of this thread)

60/n
bbc.com/news/world-asi…
🔥 The WTA has suspended all tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, following the censorship of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai's sexual assault allegation against Zhang Gaoli.

61/n
wsj.com/articles/wta-c…
Steve Simon: “... with the full support of the WTA Board of Directors, I’m announcing the immediate suspension of all WTA tournaments in China, including Hong Kong.”

62/n
wtatennis.com/news/2384758/s…
👇🏻 WTA founder Billie Jean King

63/n
reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
Djokovic: "I support fully the WTA's stance because we don't have enough information about Peng Shuai and her well-being. I think the position of the WTA is very bold and very courageous.”

64/n

rfi.fr/en/djokovic-sa…
🇨🇳 mouthpieces Hu Xijin and Global Times lashed out at WTA and Steve Simon.

Given CCP’s vindictive and hideous nature, Beijing will certainly retaliate against WTA and Steve Simon. I wonder how they will go about doing it.

65/n ImageImageImageImage
🔥 IOC held a second video call with Peng Shuai on Wed evening Swiss time, just before the WTA announced an immediate suspension of all tournaments in China.

IOC: “Peng appeared to be safe and well given the difficult situation she is in."

66/n
reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
👇🏻 IOC passes on Beijing’s message: Peng Shuai is fine cuz we say so!

67/n ImageImage
Beijing now tries to punch Steve Simon and WTA into submission with its typical MO: threats, bullying and coercive language / tactics.

Steve Simon and WTA really have to brace for Beijing’s nasty retaliations even after Peng Shuai is finally freed.

68/n
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Inside China netizens have to work around the powerful censorship on social media if they need to reference Peng Shuai. Most people are probably not even aware of what’s been going on.

69/n
nytimes.com/2021/12/02/wor…
ATP — the governing body of men’s tennis — 🤐

70/n
reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
👇🏻 Safeguard Defenders’ open letter to IOC

I’m afraid this would most likely fall on deaf ears.

71/n
safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/open-l…
Left pic: Shen Shiwei of 🇨🇳 CGTN speaks on behalf of Peng Shuai again!

Right pic: Shen tries to show us he’s smart but he can’t tell the difference between “suspending all tournaments in 2021” and “suspending all tournaments until WTA is satisfied Peng Shuai is fine”.

72/n ImageImage
👇🏻 the statement from ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi

Kind of vague.

73/n
atptour.com/en/news/atp-st… ImageImage
Li Lingwei (李玲蔚), IOC member + VP of China’s NOC who attended the first IOC video call with Peng Shuai, was Director + Party Secretary of Tennis Administration Center of General Administration of Sport of China (Mar 2015 to Feb 2017).

Li’s been a CCP member since 1984.

74/n ImageImage
Each time Peng Shuai appeared in public (in videos from state media / Ding Li), a CCP member / party committee secretary (党委书记) was always present:

Li Xiaobin - dinner and tennis event (tweets #25, #28, #29, #31 and #35 in this thread)

Li Lingwei - the IOC video call

75/n
Here’s an accurate English translation of Peng Shuai’s Weibo post on Nov 2.

76/n
thetimes.co.uk/article/e6f897…
ITF will not cancel any tournaments in China over concerns for Peng Shuai, because it does not want to “punish 1.4 billion people.”

How would canceling tennis tournaments punish 1.4 billion people?

77/n
theguardian.com/sport/2021/dec…
It turns out that ITF president David Haggerty is an IOC member and on the board of US Olympic & Paralympic Committee. That’s why he’s echoing IOC’s call for quiet diplomacy and behind-the-scenes negotiations in Peng Shuai’s case.

78/n
apnews.com/article/sports…
WNBA’s Atlanta Dream tweeted a statement in support of Peng Shuai but there’s little immediate public reaction from major North American teams and leagues, many of which are heavily invested in China.

79/n
Image
ITF has decided to punish 1.4 billion people after all...

80/n
reuters.com/lifestyle/spor…
🇨🇳 mouthpiece Qingqing Chen of Global Times has news of Peng Shuai from a friend! Guess what? Yao Ming made a cameo appearance this time!

81/n ImageImage
🇨🇳 mouthpiece Qingqing Chen got this video of Peng Shuai and Yao Ming from a ‘friend’!

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👇🏻 pic of Peng Shuai, Yao Ming, Olympic sailing champion Xu Lijia and retired table tennis player Wang Liqin standing next to a banner for the "FIS Cross-Country Skiing China City Tour" with Shanghai's Yangpu Bridge in the background.

83/n Image
A reporter of Singapore-based Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao (联合早报) “bumped into” Peng Shuai, Yao Ming and others at the International Ski Federation's cross-country skiing competition in Shanghai on Sun Dec 19, and interviewed Peng.

84/n
zaobao.com/realtime/china…
Of course we know in China you never “bump into” someone you’re not supposed to bump into unless you’ve been approved to bump into that someone.

👇🏻 English coverage of the Peng Shuai interview by Lianhe Zaobao’s sister newspaper The Strait Times

85/n
straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia…
👇🏻 Peng Shuai’s interview by Lianhe Zaobao

Peng Shuai denied she had made any accusation of sexual assault by Zhang Gaoli and claimed she wasn’t detained or under coercion. She also claimed she had sent emails to Steve Simon on her own accord.

86/n
👇🏻 Reuters’ coverage of Lianhe Zaobao’s interview with Peng Shuai

87/n
reuters.com/article/us-ten…
Ding Li (丁力) was there too! Is he stalking Peng Shuai or is he a special agent keeping an eye on her? 🤔

88/n ImageImage

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Byron Wan Profile picture
Dec 20, 2025
🚨 China’s most advanced reactor, a molten-salt reactor that can be refueled without shutting it down, was the result of collaboration with American scientists.

This April, in a speech given at the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, physicist Xu Hongjie (徐洪杰) announced a breakthrough. For over a decade, his team had been working on an experimental nuclear reactor that runs on a lava-hot solution of fissile material and molten salt, rather than on solid fuel. The reactor, which went online two years ago, was a feat in itself. It is still the only one of its kind in operation in the world, and has the potential to be both safer and more efficient than the water-cooled nuclear plants that dominate the industry. Now, Xu explained, his team had been able to refuel the reactor without shutting it down, demonstrating a level of mastery over their new system.

This was yet another sign that the technology gap between China and the US had closed.

Xu explained that his team had based their design on an experimental reactor that had been built in Tennessee in the 1960’s. Known as the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment, or the MSRE., that project hit a dead end in the early 1970’s, when it lost federal funding. Xu’s team had learned everything they could about the MSRE so that, decades later, they could bring the project back to life. Xu compared their labors to the story of the tortoise and the hare: whereas the US had “gotten lazy and made a mistake,” China had seized the “chance to overtake” it.

In reality, China’s molten-salt reactor was less the product of a race than a collaboration. Less than ten years earlier, Xu’s team had been working with an array of American nuclear scientists. MIT had irradiated graphite samples for the Chinese scientists. Nuclear engineers from Berkeley flew to Shanghai to review the original design. And by 2015, at what was perhaps the peak of US-China amity in the sciences, Xu’s home institution, the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, or SINAP, had signed a coöperative R&D agreement with Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the site of the world’s first molten-salt reactor.

These agreements could be seen as products of Reagan-era neoliberalism. They allow national labs to hire out their facilities and staff to outside entities that, in exchange for funding, can secure a proprietary claim to any technologies US national labs discover while working on the designated project. For the most part, this has facilitated technology transfer from public institutions to the private sector. But the agreement between ORNL and SINAP created an unprecedented situation: a Chinese state-owned lab was paying an American lab millions of dollars to develop materials and plumbing for molten-salt reactors.

From the start, the American side operated under the belief that the Chinese would be the first to build a molten-salt reactor. China was spending the money to do it, after all. There was some funding for molten-salt research in America, but much less than was needed, and this was why the Oak Ridge researchers were willing to accept support from the Chinese. Through the partnership, the American researchers were hoping to advance work on a less complex reactor, in which molten salt would be used as a coolant rather than a fuel line.

Ten years later, the armature of assumptions and policies that enabled such a partnership has been blown apart. After Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election, the Department of Energy severed ties with SINAP and threatened to revoke licenses from American companies that exported nuclear technology to China. During Trump’s second term, the Administration’s hostility toward China has only increased.

Xu passed away while at work at his desk in Sep.

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newyorker.com/news/the-lede/…Image
To make sense of what is happening in nuclear energy today, it helps to know about what was once called “the first nuclear era” — a 37-year stretch between 1942, when Enrico Fermi oversaw the first controlled fission chain reaction, and 1979, when the second reactor at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station partially melted down. At the height of this period, around 1960, the US accounted for almost 70% of global spending on R&D. Nuclear energy, which sat at the nexus of defense and civil engineering, was a double beneficiary. From these investments came a series of ever more terrifying weapons alongside a fleet of experimental and commercial reactors that made the US the world’s largest producer of nuclear energy. America still holds this title, but China is poised to assume the mantle, probably sometime around 2030.

The MSRE epitomized the possibilities of this period. The concept originated in the late 1940’s, with a request from the Air Force to develop a nuclear-powered airplane. Alvin Weinberg, who later became the director of research at ORNL, didn’t think that such an aircraft would fly, but he was willing to try to build one. He had helped develop the reactors that produced plutonium for the Manhattan Project and moved to East Tennessee, after the war. There, he presided over the development of ORNL, which grew from a plutonium-production facility near the Clinch River. For Weinberg, the purpose of a national lab was to try “things too difficult or too risky for private industry to undertake.” An airplane that burned uranium was precisely that.

Weinberg wrote that the reactor would need to reach temperatures around 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit in order to power a jet engine. His team surmised that such heat would mangle any fuel rods small enough to install into an aircraft, so they decided to use fluoride salts. These melted into a liquid at around 400 degrees Celsius and stayed stable above 1,600 degrees. With uranium fluoride mixed in, the molten salt itself could function as fuel.

The system went critical in Nov 1954. In its brief life, it showed some remarkable properties, but the test also revealed some of the challenges of working with molten salt. Leaks were a constant problem, and the radiotoxicity of most of the apparatus made repairs next to impossible. As a stopgap, Weinberg’s team had to repeatedly off-gas the reactor compartment, bathing a nearby forest in radioactive xenon and iodine. At the hundred-hour mark, the project was shut down.

The MSRE gave him another shot. By then, the Atomic Energy Commission was ready to make major investments in order to develop breeder reactors, or reactors that produce more fissile material than they burn. Breeder reactors promised energy on a scale far beyond what could be provided by the global supply of coal and oil, fuels that were projected to become scarce within a century and which were already suspected of warming the Earth. Planning began in 1960, and five years later Weinberg’s team loaded 69kg of enriched uranium into the salt. This time, the experiment was a success. The MSRE logged over 13,000 operational hours, during which the researchers ran countless tests. “ They did, like, every calculation you could have done at the time to understand how you would build and run and fuel this reactor.” The most important finding was a simple one: the MSRE proved that a molten-salt reactor was viable.

Weinberg had hoped to move from the MSRE to a molten-salt breeder reactor. But in 1973 President Richard Nixon pulled federal funding for molten-salt research in order to go all-in on a competing breeder reactor that was cooled with sodium. In 1983, the sodium breeder, in turn, lost its funding. Plagued by budget overages, the project also fell victim to a conservative revolt, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. By then, the public had also soured on nuclear-energy projects, owing to the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, in 1979.

2/n
There are various ways to index the downturn of the US nuclear industry, but the starkest is probably by permits. From 1954 to 1978, regulators issued 133 construction permits for civilian nuclear reactors. Between 1979 and 2012, they issued none. “There’s been almost no real work on nuclear power since the seventies … The Department of Energy still had some research programs going, and I don’t want to slight anyone who was in one of those things. But they stopped building plants. When you stop building plants, it makes it very hard for companies to justify the enormous number of engineers it takes.”

“The thing that struck me the first time we went to China, in particular, is they assigned an awful lot of people to the problem,” said Charles Forsberg, a research scientist at MIT. “And if you assign several hundred engineers to the problem you will learn very, very rapidly.” Forsberg spent his early career as a researcher at ORNL before moving to MIT, where he is overseeing the construction of a molten-salt loop that will run along the side of the campus’s research reactor. He is also one of three engineers who, in 2002, hashed out the concept for a fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor, or FHR. That involved taking Weinberg’s molten-salt reactor and swapping the liquid-fuel loop for a more conventional core design, while still using molten salt as a coolant. This change simplified the most vexing problems, of corrosion and containment, while preserving the high process heat that molten salt makes possible. The FHR has played a significant role in rekindling interest in molten salt for fission reactors in the US — which is the reason that Forsberg initially travelled to China to meet with the SINAP team.

Forsberg’s travel, and the relationship that he developed with Xu Hongjie and other researchers at SINAP, took place at the outset of a relatively recent period of collaboration between the US and China. The partnership was formed under the framework of a 2011 “memorandum of understanding” between the DOE and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which provided for coöperation on nuclear technologies. That agreement was based on a previous agreement, from 2006, which had cleared the way for US nuclear firms to sell reactors to China. Both stemmed from the desire of each country to leverage the other to revamp its own nuclear industry.

China had only a handful of reactors in the early 2000’s, but in 2007 its planners had vowed to massively increase nuclear-energy production by 2020. That meant building something like 40 new reactors in about 15 years — a pace and scale only matched by the US nuclear industry in the 20th century. To meet that goal, China intended to buy the first fleet of new reactors from foreign companies, under contracts that required significant technology transfer. Although this now looks like a mixed bargain, at the time, the US nuclear industry was only too happy to take it. The industry had just weathered a quarter century of effectively zero domestic demand for new reactors, and had hundreds of experts unable to put their skills to use. These were “a bunch of old Navy nuke guys, or guys that studied nuclear engineering forty years ago, who knew a ton about aging management and cracking piping and corroding pumps and things like that,” said David Fishman, then a partner at a boutique China-based nuclear consultancy. “They were just so pleased to come over and find a young, eager market and industry that was planning to build dozens of reactors.”

US-China coöperation on molten-salt research proceeded under conditions not so different from the commercial melee. Forsberg and his collaborators — Per Peterson, a nuclear engineering professor at Berkeley, and Paul Pickard, formerly of Sandia National Laboratories — had pursued their design through academia for years, using oil or water to simulate molten salt, which is expensive and difficult to acquire in the US. Then, in 2011, they were awarded

3/n
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Dec 2, 2025
Wendy Mao (毛立文), Stanford’s Earth Sciences Chair and Deputy Director of Stanford’s Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences at SLAC, has co-authored over 50 publications, trained 5 employees, and maintained a visiting scholar position at 🇨🇳 HPSTAR, an “alias” for China's nuclear weapons program.

In 2020, the 🇨🇳 Center for High Pressure Science and Technology, or HPSTAR, was added to 🇺🇸 Department of Commerce's Entity List, which identifies organizations that pose a significant risk to national security. Since its 2020 Entity List designation, Mao has co-authoredat least 12 peer-reviewed papers with HPSTAR.

The US Entity List describes HPSTAR as an organization “owned by, operated by, or directly affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), which is the technology complex responsible for the research, development and testing of China's nuclear weapons and has been on the Entity List under the destination of China since June 30, 1997.”

According to Canada's 2024 Named Research Organizations List, HPSTAR is an “alias” for the institution behind China’s nuclear weapons program.

HPSTAR studies how materials behave under extreme pressures and temperatures using diamond-anvil cells, synchrotron beams, and X-ray diffraction. Mao is a leading US researcher in this very field.

"It is true that high-pressure experiments are used by scientists working on the domain of nuclear weapons. If anyone is using the diamond anvil cell or shock waves to study materials relevant to nuclear weapons, that's highly sensitive. If those same methods are then applied to sensitive nuclear materials, the combination of these kinds of experiments with these materials starts raising eyebrows."

Both Mao and HPSTAR extensively use diamond anvil cells and shock waves to study materials.

Mao and HPSTAR’s public research papers do not directly involve weapons testing, design, or development. However, these precise high-pressure measurements and theoretical knowledge are the necessary foundations of modern nuclear and advanced weapon design, where accurate modeling of materials under detonation-level conditions is critical.

Over the past two decades, Mao has co-authored at least 50 publications with HPSTAR. Funding acknowledgments show that Wendy Mao and HPSTAR co-authored research financed by US government agencies including DOE (including the National Nuclear Security Administration [NNSA], Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory); DARPA; DOD; NSF; NIH; ARO; NASA.

Mao has trained at least five 🇨🇳 HPSTAR employees as PhD students in her Stanford and SLAC labs. At least one HPSTAR postdoctoral researcher simultaneously worked on DOE, NNSA, and DARPA-funded research at SLAC.

For example, one of Mao’s current PhD students worked at HPSTAR for three years, from 2015 to 2018, receiving an MS in Condensed Matter Physics before joining Stanford as a PhD student in Mao’s lab.

The other four were trained in Mao’s lab and returned to China to work at HPSTAR. These are only the individuals we were able to identify via web and archival searches.

“Mao has trained 5 PhD students affiliated with China’s nuclear weapons program. Stanford should not permit its federally funded research labs to become training grounds for entities affiliated with China’s nuclear program. Mao’s continued and extensive academic collaboration with 🇨🇳 HPSTAR is adequate grounds for termination.”

Mao served as a visiting scholar at 🇨🇳 HPSTAR’s Shanghai laboratory from at least 2016 to 2019. She also maintains a HPSTAR email address. Her internal Stanford CV and profile list 43 affiliations, but they do not disclose her position at 🇨🇳 HPSTAR.

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“For someone with access to SLAC and other national labs, foreign affiliations must be disclosed under DOE Order 486.1A. Dr. Mao’s undisclosed HPSTAR role and active HPSTAR email raise legitimate concerns about whether federal disclosure rules were followed and whether Stanford had the information needed to manage foreign-influence risk.”

As a professor with appointments at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and other sensitive national labs, Mao is subject to this disclosure requirement.

Mao has also co-authored papers in Matter and Radiation at Extremes, a journal owned by CAEP, China’s nuclear development organization. She did so under a 2020 articletitled "Key problems of the four-dimensional Earth system."

The respective organizations responsible for the development of the US and China’s nuclear weapons programs, 🇺🇸 National Nuclear Security Administration and 🇨🇳 CAEP’s National Security Academic Fund, are co-funders for several of Mao’s projects.

China’s nuclear program started the National Security Academic Fund to strengthen “exploratory national security basic scientific research.”  According to leaked documents from China’s nuclear program, translated by Georgetown University, “The NSAF Fund has broken new ground for CAEP in attracting technological forces across China to start basic research with the pulling force of national security requirements.” 

Mao is listed as a co-author, contributing the aforementioned “national security basic research,” to at least 6 NSAF-funded research projects with HPSTAR collaborators. In funding acknowledgments, HPSTAR is described as an institution “supported by [CAEP’s] NSAF (grant no: U1530402).”

On Nov 23, 2024, Mao was published as a co-author on a paper titled “Iron Bonding with Light Elements: Implications for Planetary Cores Beyond the Binary System.” Wenzhong Wang, from the University of Science and Technology of China, is listed as a collaborator. This paper also acknowledges funding from NASA’s Exoplanet Program. 

The Wolf Amendment prohibits the use of NASA grants from collaboration “with institutions of the People’s Republic of China.” According to NASA’s document on the matter, “that means that it's not enough that a NASA grantee simply avoids sending funds to PRC; rather, the grantee may not spend any NASA grant money on any part of a bilateral project with PRC.”

“The Wolf Amendment bars NASA-funded researchers from participating in bilateral projects with Chinese institutions unless a waiver is granted. When a NASA-supported Stanford professor co-authors research with a scientist from a PRC university, the burden is on the institution to show an exemption. Stanford-Mao doesn't have an exemption. Without one, this places the work squarely in a serious Wolf Amendment risk area.”

The Review was unable to verify whether authorization for an exception was granted.

As recently as Sep 12, 2025, Mao published a paper with three HPSTAR co-authors. The research paper featured HPSTAR researchers using cutting-edge equipment at US government laboratories, including X-ray diffraction conducted by the High Pressure Collaborative Access Team at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source, the Beamline 12.2.2 at Lawrence Berkeley’s Advanced Light Source, and XRD measurements supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

“Fundamental research is generally legal, but export controls still apply to hands-on access to sensitive equipment. When export-controlled lasers at SLAC or national laboratories intersect with Stanford HPSTAR-linked students [Mao’s SLAC-trained PhD students] and collaborators, it creates a real risk of transferring controlled US technology and know-how to a PRC-aligned institution.”

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“HPSTAR should not have been granted access to or use of DOE national laboratories. Mao and her collaborators very likely facilitated the use of export-controlled items, including those regulated under the Export Administration Regulations, Category 6, such as sensors and lasers, and Category 3, including electronics and X-ray detectors, for HPSTAR, an institution affiliated with China’s nuclear weapons program. This is a shocking lapse of research security.”

For example, a research project was authored by Wendy Mao, Jin Liu of HPSTAR (formerly a PhD student in Mao’s lab), and Yue Meng of Argonne National Laboratory, among others. The research is “supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration… acknowledges… the use of computing resources from Brookhaven National Laboratory… and X-ray diffraction… conducted at Argonne National Laboratory… HPSTAR is supported by NSAF.” In this case, the NNSA and CAEP’s NSAF are co-funding Chinese “exploratory national security basic scientific research,” using sensitive national laboratories.

“Dr. Mao effectively provides HPSTAR-linked scientists access to US national-lab resources, training, equipment, and funded research, through her positions at Stanford and SLAC. That kind of access is exactly what China’s research system tries to cultivate abroad.”

In 2023, Chairman Mike Lee of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources wrote a letter warning “Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Argonne National Laboratories regarding reports that researchers at all three labs have engaged in research collaborations leveraging… the PRC’s military for federally funded research in sensitive fields.”

Beyond HPSTAR and CAEP, Mao conducted research with the Beijing Institute of Technology and Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU). Both institutions are part of China’s Seven Sons of National Defense: key research institutions for the Chinese military. These publications acknowledge co-funding from the DOE and DARPA.

Mao also conducted research with Shanghai Jiao Tong University's National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Nano Fabrication, which is also a key Chinese military-designated laboratory. 

Wendy Mao’s father, Ho-Kwang Mao (毛河光), was one of the leading US experts in high-pressure physics, a fundamental science behind nuclear weapons development.

He led the NNSA co-sponsored Carnegie-DOE Alliance Center (CDAC). Under his supervision, the center collaborated with and trained NNSA’s staff to ensure nuclear-weapons readiness and stockpile maintenance. Upon recruitment by CAEP in 2012, Ho-Kwang Mao established HPSTAR as a subordinate institution.

This investigation confirms that Wendy Mao has maintained extensive collaboration with organizations advancing China's nuclear program. This raises a fundamental question: how should US institutions respond? What is clear is that the status quo of inaction is untenable.

Over a year ago, documentation of Mao’s collaborations — including her formal role at HPSTAR — was presented to DOE, the FBI, and Stanford University. Yet federal agencies, including the DOE, DoD, DARPA, and multiple national laboratories, continue to fund research that intersects with US-listed entities such as HPSTAR.

To be clear, export-control restrictions, foreign-affiliation disclosure rules, and potential Wolf Amendment issues remain relevant. But the bulk of Mao’s work with HPSTAR appears to fall under the federal definition of fundamental research, meaning the results are “published and shared broadly, with no restrictions for proprietary or national-security reasons.” Under current law, such collaboration with a US-listed entity is generally permitted.

Wendy Mao’s case is not an outlier. It is a revealing example of a much larger institutional problem at Stanford.

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Read 4 tweets
Byron Wan Profile picture
Jan 22, 2024
Another woman in the video is Adelina Zhang (张宁), who has been serving as hosts in various 🇨🇳 state events in the UK for years. She’s also worked with Newton Leng, the man who yelled at Brendan in the video.

h/t @samdunningo @ftiauto_ptdauto



1/n sohu.com/a/726632135_23…



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Adelina Zhang has clearly undergone plastic surgery (left pic: Zhang in 2017)

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The CCP moved fast: they’ve scrubbed the Sohu article in the first tweet in this thread already!

Luckily I’ve archived the same article on another website!!!



3/nweb.archive.org/web/2024012301…
Read 4 tweets
Byron Wan Profile picture
Mar 26, 2023
Serbia, Mar 19: 🇨🇳 state-owned China Communications Construction Company demolished the monument to fallen soldiers of the First and Second World Wars in the village of Negrishori during the construction of the Pakovraće - Požega highway.

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The demolition sparked an outrage among veterans’ groups and local residents.

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👇🏻 the monument
In 2021 🇨🇳 China Communications Construction Company promised that the monument would be relocated and the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Kraljevo would be informed in advance. But the Chinese company simply demolished it…

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👇🏻 the monument in pieces
Read 6 tweets
Byron Wan Profile picture
Mar 24, 2023
🚨 Hong Kong department store Sogo removed LA-based artist Patrick Amadon’s digital artwork No Rioters, an Art Basel exhibit, that contained references to jailed dissidents such as Benny Tai, Joshua Wong and Gwyneth Ho, at the “request” of HK Police.

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Patrick Amadon: “It was too much watching Art Week in Hong Kong pretend the Chinese government didn’t crush a democracy and turn Hong Kong into a vassal surveillance state... because it’s a convenient location for a good market.”

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 news.artnet.com/art-world/prot…
“I think it sends the message that money can buy absolution yet again.”

The international community is colluding with the CCP-backed administration to put on an “everything is fine” facade for the police state.

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 apnews.com/article/hong-k…
Read 4 tweets
Byron Wan Profile picture
Feb 8, 2023
Tina Zhang (张), a 34-year-old 🇨🇳 woman from Qingdao, Shandong province, posted videos on Douyin of her hanging out on Yanaha Island (屋那霸岛) — the biggest uninhabited island in Okinawa — which she claimed she bought in 2020.

Yanaha is just ~60km from 🇺🇸 Kadena Air Base.

1/n twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The videos went viral on social media and 🇨🇳 news media 红星新闻 ran a story on it on Feb 3…

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🇯🇵 news site Sakisiru broke the news in Japan, causing an uproar and sparking national security concerns. I’m not sure if there’s any coverage in mainstream Japanese media though.

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sakisiru.jp/40825
Read 5 tweets

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