Song Jian is a Chinese aerospace engineer, demographer, and politician.
18 Facts About Song Jian
1.
2.
Song Jian was deputy chief designer of China's submarine-launched ballistic missile and one of the country's leading scientists in the post-Cultural Revolution era.
3.
Song Jian served in high-ranking political positions including Vice Minister of Aerospace Industry, Director of the State Science and Technology Commission, vice-premier-level State Councillor, President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Vice Chairperson of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
4.
Song Jian was born on 29 December 1931 in Rongcheng, Shandong Province.
5.
Song Jian published seven papers in Russian on control theory, which won praise from Soviet and American scientists.
6.
Song Jian was one of China's top experts on missile guidance systems.
7.
At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Song Jian's home was ransacked by the Red Guards before Premier Zhou Enlai included him in the list of the top 50 scientists considered indispensable to national defence and afforded special protection.
8.
Song Jian was sent to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the desert, where he could focus on his studies and research, before returning to Beijing in 1969.
9.
Song Jian was appointed deputy chief designer of JL-1, China's submarine-launched ballistic missile in February 1980, and Vice Minister of Aerospace Industry in 1982.
10.
Song Jian held both positions until 1998, when he was appointed President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Vice Chairperson of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
11.
Song Jian was an alternate member of the 12th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and a full member of the 13th, 14th, and 15th central committees.
12.
In 1978, as China made its initial announcement to tighten the restrictions to one child per family, Song Jian attended the Seventh World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control in Helsinki, Finland, where he encountered the cybernetic-based population control theory associated with the Club of Rome.
13.
Song Jian saw the theory as a precise and scientific approach to the population control problem, which seemed superior to the Marxist perspectives that had long predominated in China.
14.
Song Jian's work was endorsed by Vice Premiers Chen Muhua and Wang Zhen, who recommended it to Chen Yun, the second most influential official after Deng Xiaoping.
15.
Song Jian oversaw the Spark Program, which aims to popularize scientific knowledge and technology to benefit common people, the Torch Program, which encourages scientists to commercialize their scientific discoveries, and the 863 Program, which aims to stimulate the development of high-tech research in China.
16.
Song Jian is an academician of both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
17.
Song Jian is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.
18.
Song Jian is a member of the Euro-Asian Academy of Sciences and the International Academy of Astronautics.