Fu Ping's Interview with a Chinese Newspaper in USA

On July 3, 2013, Fu Ping was interviewed by Qiaobao, a Chinese language newspaper published in the USA, in which she answered some questions raised by her alma mater Suzhou University. The interview is originally in Chinese.

Qiaobao: Suzhou University accused you for falsifying academic credentials. They displayed your student registration and files at the school and proved that you had dropped out in March, 1982 and did not earn any degree there. Have you ever publicly stated that you have a Bachelor degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Suzhou University? 

Fu Ping: I rarely mentioned Suzhou University because I didn't obtain any degree there. In my social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc., I never included Suzhou University. In fact, in all places I have control, I never mention Suzhou University. 

But there are places that I have no control of. About 10 years ago, our company's marketing department has a girl from Malaysia. I told her that I did not graduate from Suzhou University. So she wrote on our page "post graduate degree." Because she thought "post graduate degree" could also mean "non degree" besides "masters graduate student." We made corrections right away and it was not on our company web site. But recently when our company changed web site, an program that was automatically fetching files made it visible again. I did not discover it in time. 

Right now there are many web sites, including Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, etc., all carried this incorrect information. I found out later that it was because their automated search feature. The real culprit of this academic credentials fraud is the automated search, not me. 

In fact, my business is in computers. I earned BS and MS in computer science in the US. I do not need a degree from Suzhou University for any of my work. It's not like a degree from Harvard, after all. 

Someone said that they obtained information from University of Illinois where I had worked to prove that I had claimed of possessing a degree from Suzhou University. But the information I do possess do not prove that. I have also inquired to University of Illinois. They told me that they have never told anyone that I had a degree from Suzhou University. I feel that those who are attacking me were misled. [Note: we do have evidence indicating otherwise.] 

Another place is a technological paper I wrote as the third author. The author's bio section of this paper stated that I earned a Bachelor of Chinese Language and Literature in 1983. As a matter of fact, I did not write that. I only published a technological paper. The author's bio was added by editors. 

Qiaobao: In your book, you said that in the fall of 1982, you "innocently walked across campus making preparations for graduation, someone sneaked up behind me, jammed a black canvas bag over my head ... escorted into a nearby car." Since you had already dropped out school that March, why were you walking on campus in the fall? 

Fu: This is a typo. If you read the whole passage, all the stories happened in the spring. The fall only occurred in this sentence. It was an error. 

In fact, I have corrected it as soon as I found this mistake. 

Qiaobao: You also mentioned in your memoir that you published a paper while you were in school, on the subject of female infanticide under the one-child policy. You were arrested and deported because of it. But Suzhou University said that all the graduation thesis in the Department of Chinese Literature were about literature or linguistics. They wouldn't be involved in sociology subjects such as infanticide. There were no teacher for this thesis of yours. How do you respond? 

Fu: Before graduation, I wanted to go to graduate school in journalism at Nanjing University. So I intended my thesis to be like a news report. In 1981, the one-child policy was going crazy in China and got my interest. With the permission from my adviser, I started interviewing people and then discovered the female infanticide problem in rural China. 

I heard a lot of stories from rural women and became their sounding board. In order to do this work, I had indeed spent a lot of time and missed a lot of classes. 

Then I wrote them down and showed my teacher. My teacher passed my article to his friend in Shanghai's Wenhui Daily. At that time I did not know where this paper reached, but heard later that it was handed higher and higher in the official hierarchy and reached the Party Central. 

This was not good news for the new leadership. Therefore I was arrested and locked up for 3 days. After the release, the police told me to leave Suzhou University and not tell anyone the reason. That's why my mother and I were insistent in dropping out of the school. 

Qiaobao: Who is the teacher who allowed you to write this article? 

Fu: It's not just one, but I cannot provide names. In fact, the person who approved my work no longer admits that. I don't think it's necessary to expose this. They are all my teachers and classmates. If they want to say I am lying, then let them say that. I know who I am and don't want to explain. 

Qiaobao: In your book you said that you experienced "finger checking" for pregnancy. This was strongly condemned by Suzhou University and your classmates. What happened there? 

Fu:  This is indeed my mistake. I wrote about "finger checking" to illustrate the difference between China's one-child policy and the population policy in the west. In 1981, getting pregnant in China could be illegal. Therefore there was checking with fingers. But the procedure was using one's own fingers to prove period, not allowing other people's fingers to enter. 

I told my coauthor Meimei Fox of this concept. But she did not write accurately. The illegal pregnancy checking was subjecting to those who have already given birth, not all females. It was written in the book as for all women, but not students of Suzhou University. 

But Chinese are not a precise language. It could be interpreted in different ways when viewed from different angles. It read like all female students in Suzhou University must submit to the checking. I discovered it later and corrected it on New York Times.
I feel sorry for this. I did not spot this mistake before the book went to press. Later Fang Zhouzi hyped on it and wrote it in a very dirty way. If this hurt the dignity of students in Suzhou University, I am willing to apologize. 

But the "finger checking" absolutely happened. It was not just me. Other articles have mentioned it too. I wrote it because I hope to raise the outside world's awareness of China's one-child policy. It was not meant to insult female students in Suzhou University. 

Qiaobao: You had participated in a literature organization called Red Maple Society. You said in the book that you were arrested and interrogated because an article published by the society. Suzhou University said that was a lie. What do you think? 

Fu: I had indeed not been taken into custody because of Red Maple Society. But in my book I used the word "arrest," which could mean "taking into custody" or "detain," it could also be understood as "stop." It was not as going into prison, but that they don't allow you to attend classes. They put several of you into a room, make you write confessions and expose each other. 

The Department of Chinese Literature had a student journal called Wu Gou. According to my memory, I was the editor-in-chief (主编) for Wu Gou, but not the ultimate decision maker (总编). Because I was the only girl in the society and the journal, they let me be the editor-in-chief, in charge of printing and logistics. Now some people say I wasn't the editor-in-chief. If they could tell me who was, I would like to correct that.
In January, 1979, Wu Gou published the article "The Confession of a Communist Party Member" by Liu Buchun. The article raised doubts on Communist Party and Communism. 

At that same time, Peking University, Tsinghua University and other 11 colleges co-founded the magazine This Generation. They reprinted an article from Wu Gou. Our journal sent a representative to Beijing to attend a meeting by This Generation. I don't remember who went, but it wasn't me. 

After arriving at Beijing, he didn't attend the meeting but went to the Great Hall of People to watch Deng Xiaoping receiving leaders of the Communist Youth League. There, Deng Xiaoping clearly stated that he wouldn't allow universities publish their underground journals. Afterwords, This Generation and Wu Gou all closed down. The school investigated and interrogated us. The Red Maple Society could not meet any more.

Questionable Fact: Fu Ping's Arrest by Kidnapping

The Original Story:
On Pages 255-257 of Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping details how she was arrested because of her supposed research on infanticide:

One day in the fall of 1982, as I innocently walked across campus making preparations for graduation, someone sneaked up behind me, jammed a black canvas bag over my head, and bound my wrists together tightly. "Don't scream," a menacing male voice whispered as I was escorted into a nearby car. 

We drove for hours...

After 3 days of solitary confinement, she was released:

...As he drove me to my birth parents' apartment in Nanjing, we chatted a little. He told me that I had brought shame to our country because of my research on female infanticide, which had caused an international human rights uproar....

The Later Story:
After her story and timeline was questioned, Jenna Goudreau of Forbes reported that:

Late last night, Fu’s publicist emailed me that they “confirmed that Ping started school in 1978 and left school in the fall of 1982 after being held by the government. She arrived in the U.S. on January 14, 1984.”

The Debunking:
There are several serious questionable facts in this little story:

1. The timeline simply does not work. Fu Ping entered college in 1978, so she should have graduated and left school before summer of 1982, if not having already dropped out earlier. Since her publicist has specifically reconfirmed it, it can't be a typo. But how could she still be "making preparations for graduation" in her school in the fall of 1982? (Graduation schedules were very tightly controlled in China at the time.)
2. The geography does not work. If she was arrested in her school in Suzhou. Why did the police not sent her back to the school but drove her all the way to Nanjing upon release? It was not an easy drive in those days when there was not yet a modern highway.
3. Most importantly of all, why would the police chose such an extreme manner to execute the arrest? In early 1980s, it's pretty common that school authorities or police visited "troubled" students in the open and took them to offices for questioning. There was no need to stage a dramatic, mafia-style kidnapping.

Is this another one of Fu Ping's imagination emotional memory at work?

Fu Ping's Explanation:
On July 3, 2013, Fu Ping told Qiaobao that the "fall 1982" was a "typo" in the book and the arrest actually happened in the spring. She did not bother the explain further of her publicist's clarification and other issues within this story.

Broken Fact: 30 Million Deaths in Four Years

The Original Story:

Other than her outrageous eyewitness accounts, Fu Ping did not include any statistics to substantiate her research in her book Bend, Not Break. But she did provide plenty in her interviews promoting the book.

In January, 2010, in a speech at University of North Carolina, she said,

Baby girls are being killed in the countryside because, being still primarily an agriculture society, people want boys. Later I knew -- now I know -- during that time when I was in college, 30 millions of babies were killed.

On February 17, 2013, she told D. G. Martin of NC Bookwatch:

I actually didn't know how wide-spread it was. I think a lot. But now we know, during 78 to 82, in 4 years, 30 million girls were missing. 

The Debunking:

We do not know what is the source of Fu Ping's number above since she never cited any references. But what we do know is that "30 millions of babies were killed" is not the same as "30 million girls were missing". The two statements can not both be correct.

As we have explained earlier, forced abortion and infanticide are two different things. It is likely the number referred to forced abortion (babies killed) which to the most part is gender neutral. It is of course possible to have gender-selective abortions, but the practice requires ultrasound technology which was not widely available in China in the early 1980s, especially in rural areas. Infanticide, on the other hand, is criminal and had never been widely practiced.

Furthermore, although the one-child policy was planned earlier, it was officially launched in the September of 1980 with an open letter from the Party Central. Therefore, what Fu Ping claimed above as the four years of her college, only the latter half of which was under the policy.

According to wikipedia, there were around 20 million total live births per year in that time frame. Yet Fu Ping found 30 million killed babies or missing girls in those 2 or 4 years!

Broken Fact: Public Reporting on Population Control and Infanticide in China in the 1980s

The Original Story:
On Page 255 of Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping made further claims on the impact of her infanticide research:

My findings wound up as the editor's comment in the Shanghai newspaper, which called for an end to the madness. The editorial comment was then picked up by China's national paper, the People's Daily in Beijing. It was the first time a Chinese official newspaper acknowledged that peasants were killing baby girls. The news spread to the international press, who used this acknowledgement as evidence of China's violations of human rights, prompting cries from the UN for economic sanctions. I unwittingly had set off a chain of events that, like toppling dominoes, resulted in a worldwide shaming of my country and its new leadership.

The Changed Story:
After no related editorials were found within the time frame of her research, Fu Ping clarified as:

Why does nobody else in China know that the UN placed sanctions on China in 1981? And how do you know that? 
A: I heard about the sanctions in China while awaiting my passport. I was told that the UN was unhappy about this issue. A quick web search shows that the American-based journalist Steven W. Mosher wrote about female infanticide in China in 1981. His book, called Broken Earth, was published in 1983 -- the same year I was waiting for my passport. Knowing this, it makes sense that I was asked to leave quietly. Anything else would have drawn more attention to the issue. According to the Los Angeles Times, Mosher successfully lobbied George W. Bush to cut UN funding for China. His story and the timeline are consistent with my experience. 

Didi Kirsten Tatlow of the International Herald Tribune concurred on the clarification:

By 1983, state news media were reporting on female infanticide. “At present, the phenomena of butchering, drowning and leaving to die female infants and maltreating women who have given birth to female infants have been very serious. It has become a grave social problem,” People’s Daily reported on March 3 of that year, according to a New York Times article dated April 11. 

The Debunking:
Once again, timeline should play a significant role here. Fu Ping's research and thesis, if actually existed, happened in early 1982. She was then supposedly arrested in the fall of 1982 and told to leave the country. Therefore, newspaper reporting in 1983 or later had absolute no relevance of her misfortune.

However, Fu Ping's research in 1982, if indeed publicized, was not the first public report of the issue either. According to Fang Zhouzi's research, as early as 1981, right after the one-child policy started, a couple of Chinese newspaper and magazine had already reported the criminal practice of killing baby girls influenced by the policy. The reports were even picked up by the American activist magazine Executive Intelligence Reviews in its Volume 8 issue of that year.

Of course, Fu Ping can plead innocence of now knowing these early reports that she honestly thought those phantom editorials were the first. But the more important thing here is, given the early open and public report, why would Fu Ping get into the kind of political trouble she said she endured if her work wasn't ground-breaking at all?

UN might not be happy with China. But anyone with political common sense would know that UN could never impose economic sanction to China, a member with veto power. In 1983, neither George W. Bush or George H. W. Bush was in power. There was indeed a policy change in the US to cut its funding for UN. That would be, at best, US sanction against UN, not UN against China.

Even if we accepted all of Fu Ping's clarification, the socalled international outcry on China's human rights would be a contribution made by the American Steven Mosher. What did that have to do with her own story?

Broken Fact: The Phantom Publicity of Fu Ping's Thesis Work

The Original Story:
On Page 255 of Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping tells how her research of infanticide got publicized and led to big political trouble for her:

When I completed my thesis in the spring of 1982, I never imagined that anything would come of my work. Unbeknownst to me, someone in my department sent a copy of my thesis to the Chinese press. My findings wound up as the editor's comment in the Shanghai newspaper, which called for an end to the madness. The editorial comment was then picked up by China's national paper, the People's Daily in Beijing.

She was more specific in her interview with Dick Gordon of The Story, providing the name of the Shanghai newspaper:

Gordon: So was this a college paper or was it the People's Daily? 

Fu: This was.. People's Daily picked it up from a different newspaper, the Shanghai Wenhui Daily, which is the biggest newspaper in Shanghai at the time. And People's Daily supported it too so they re-reported the same thing.

Yet in a later interview with D. G. Martin of NC Bookwatch, she changed People's Daily to Xinhua Newspaper:

DG: What was your problem about your research and writing about this topic?  

Fu: I was writing this for calling to a stop of killing baby girls for my thesis. One of my professor who took this material and gave it to a newspaper reporter because she is already aware this is happening. The reporter did an editorial comment. At that time, China didn't even have authorship. So she, out of compassion, wrote an editorial to call stopping killing. That piece got picked up by Xinhua Newspaper, which was an official government newspaper. That editor also wrote a syndicated editorial comment at his own, calling for a stop of killing baby girls. Unbeknownst to China, this was the first time Chinese official newspaper admitted this was happening. I actually didn't know how wide-spread it was. I think a lot. But now we know, during 78 to 82, in 4 years, 30 million girls were missing. It was... 

The Changed Story:
After many people searched and failed to locate any editorial that resembled her research of infanticide in People's Daily or elsewhere, Fu Ping issued a clarification:

In the 2005 Inc. Magazine article, you explained that your findings on female infanticide were later covered by Shanghai's Wen Hui Bao newspaper and later then by People's Daily, resulting in condemnation from around the world, sanctions imposed by the UN, and you getting tossed into prison. People's Daily archives for the period when your research would've been published have nothing regarding female infanticide in rural China. 
I remember reading an editorial in a newspaper in 1982 that called for gender equality. It was not a news article and not written by me, and I didn't know it had anything to do with my research (pp. 253-255). When writing the book, I did not name the paper, since I wasn't certain. However, I think that is where I read the editorial because it was the most popular and official newspaper. People who have not read my book made assumptions that I submitted the research to the newspaper, or I published the thesis, but that was not how I described it in the book. 

The Debunking:
It would be a wide, wild stretch to associate an editorial calling for gender equality to infanticide. But even so, there was no such editorial in 1982. There were, however, something close to it in 1983 which we should get to later, but by then Fu Ping had already been getting ready to leave the country.

In her clarification, Fu Ping blamed "people who have not read" her book for the misunderstanding. But her book, quoted above, clearly stated that a copy of her thesis was sent to a newspaper and served as the basis for the editorial. She has also repeated the same tale many times in her media interviews herself.

But apparently, now she does not even know if the news article, if existed, had anything to do with her research.

Broken Fact: Fu Ping's Eyewitness of Infanticide

The Original Story:
On Page 254 of Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping described what she witnessed during her infanticide research:

What I discovered was shocking. Everywhere in rural areas, infant girls were being killed. In spite of decades of Communist propaganda about the equality of the sexes, ours remained a patriarchal society. Out of desperation, some parents chose unborn sons over born daughters. I witnessed the horrifying consequences with my own eyes: female infants drowned in rivers and lakes, umbilical wounds still fresh; baby girls flushed down the sewage system or suffocated in plastic bags and tossed into garbage bins.

She repeated the same assertion in several of her media interviews. For example, in an interview with Leopard Lopate on January 14, 2013, she stated:

Yeah, I was doing my graduation thesis research and I heard that there were baby girls being killed in the countryside due to one-child policy. I went to research that and I saw hundreds of baby girls being killed right in front of my eyes. I saw girls being tossed into the river when their embryonic cord still fresh.

The next day, she repeated the same tale to Sir Harold Evans of Reuters, which cleared shocked the later in the video:

Evans: You saw babies are being killed?
Fu: I saw it with my bare eyes. I saw babies are being tossed into river with their embryonic cords still fresh. I saw babies being put in the plastic bags and tossed into garbage. 

The Changing Story:
When her tale was questioned, Fu Ping issued a semi-clarification to the Guardian on March 12:

The entrepreneur claims she was ordered to leave China after exposing female infanticide in the early 80s, writing that in a few months of research she "witnessed with her own eyes" drowned and suffocated female infants. Last month, she told a radio station she watched "hundreds of baby girls being killed in front of my eyes. I saw girls being tossed into the river."  

Therese Hesketh of University College London, an expert on population controls in China, said: "I have never heard stories of this kind. Infanticide did of course occur, but was not commonplace … It certainly was not done in public as even at that time to be caught meant a possible murder charge."  

Fu told the Guardian that she mis-spoke in the live radio interview and should have said "my research was based on hundreds of cases, and I saw baby girls killed right in front of my eyes".  

She added: "If you went to the countryside and to the family planning unit it was going on all the way down the line in every village and every school. Very few people were allowed to go to the poor areas. These kinds of things happened, and China doesn't want people to know it happened." 

But then on March 23, she spoke again at the Downtown Speaker Series at Last Vegas:

When I went to the countryside to look at that, I saw baby girls are being killed and I saw babies being thrown into river when their embryological cords are still fresh. I saw baby girls being suffocation in pillow cases and being thrown into garbage dumpsters. What I saw broke my heart. 

The Debunking:
First of all, we need to clarify two related but separate issues: forced abortion and infanticide. Forced abortion was applied as a means to enforce the one-child policy in which any "unauthorized" pregnancy, once discovered, was forcefully terminated by the authorities. This policy was carried out openly and widely. There had been many unborn babies being aborted this way, boys or girls.

Infanticide, however, was an entirely different matter. Once a child was born, even "illegally" under the one-child policy, the only punishment would be a heavy financial fine to the parents. There had never been a policy of killing babies after they had been born.

As Therese Hesketh stated in the Guardian article, infanticide did occur in China, when some parents sacrificed their first-born girls after birth in order to preserve their quota to have a boy under the one-child policy. It was not commonplace and it was, is, and always has been a crime of murder, even in China in those days.

Since it is a criminal act, when infanticide did occur, it was done by the parents or other family members in secret. It would be almost impossible for Fu Ping, an outsider from a big city, to witness any of such killings, not to mention "hundreds of them" " in front of my own eyes."

The corpses of infanticide would also have been carefully disposed to hide the evidence of murder. They would not have been tossed into rivers, flushed into sewage (there was no such thing in rural China) or thrown into trash in plastic bags (plastic bags were extremely rare luxury items in rural China at that time).

Fu Ping may have seen some of the remains of forced abortions when hospitals or clinics did not dispose them properly, but not infanticide. If she did, she had an obligation to inform law enforcement for the crimes she witnessed.

Questionable Fact: Fu Ping's College Thesis

The Original Story:
In Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping describes that she started research infanticide during her senior year in college, Pages 253-255:

During my senior year, I selected a somewhat obscure research topic for my thesis: China's one-child policy... Even the Communist Party leader at my school approved.

I spent a few months traveling around the Chinese countryside conducting research. I interviewed doctors and midwives, as well as farmers and government officials... 

When I completed my thesis in the spring of 1982, I never imagined that anything would come of my work...

The Changing Story:
In the somewhat original story in Inc. magazine, There was a different timeline:

A professor suggested that she go out to the provinces and research a rumored epidemic of infanticide. Ping accepted the assignment. 

For two years she traveled through rural China, visiting hundreds of towns and villages, interviewing hospital staffers, barefoot doctors, and citizens. The national practice of killing infant girls had long been tacitly acknowledged, but never fully investigated. Ping proved an able reporter--curious, meticulous, resourceful, compassionate. There was no explaining or forgiving the crimes she documented and often witnessed. Because the state had ordered that parents were permitted only one child, however, and because tradition enforced an ironclad, son-centered patrimony, Ping did not judge her compatriots. 

In 1980, she delivered her findings to her professor...

But to her credit, in all of her media interviews, she had maintained that she only did the research in her senior year. For example, at the Downtown Speaker Series at Las Vegas, she said,

In my senior year, I decided I wanted to pursue graduate school. I wanted to be a journalist. I chose infanticide as my thesis topic, and i went to research the phenomenon of killing baby girls in the country side due to one child policy.

Or at a BBC interview a little earlier:

Right before I graduated from college I was doing my thesis research. I thought I was picking a humanitarian topic, which is infanticide.

The Debunking:
The Inc. story was obviously wrong in both of the duration and the timing of her research. Fu Ping entered college in the fall of 1978. She would have spent all her freshman and sophomore years to conduct the two-year research in order to finish the research in 1980.

In her own book, she said she had completed the work in the spring of 1982. That would have been consistent with her college schedule as she was scheduled to graduate in that summer. The only problem is that we now know, according to her college, that she had dropped out of the school on March 16 that same year.

How did she complete the thesis work and then got into trouble after she left the school?

That aside, it is also highly doubtful that she would have conducted the research work for her thesis. In universities and colleges in China, the thesis work for undergraduate graduation never required original research work. Most only demanded a report or essay of some sort, if at all. Suzhou University was not a top-rated school and Fu Ping's major, Chinese literature, is not one that demands research or field study.

Fu Ping may have chosen this topic for research on her own, as she claimed that she "wanted to pursue graduate school." But it would be highly unlikely that her project would have been approved by her school, not to mention "the Communist Party leader."

Since Fu Ping had dropped out the school earlier, Suzhou University confirmed that she was not among their graduates. There was no record of her thesis.

Broken Fact: Fu Ping's Dropout from Suzhou University

The Original Story:
On Pages 253-258 in Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping describes how her graduation thesis got her in trouble in school:

During my senior year, I selected a somewhat obscure research for my thesis: China's one-child policy... 

One day in the fall of 1982, as I innocently walked across campus making preparations for graduation...[her story of being kidnapped and detained by government, to be debunked later] 

"I want to leave university, claiming a nervous breakdown," I declared. My parents didn't question the decision; Uncle W had shared with them the advice he'd given me during the Red Maple Society scandal two years earlier. They feared that, given the black marks on my personal record, I would likely be sent to a far-off corner of China for some obscure job upon graduation. Such an outcome would force to relinquish my residence in Nanjing, and I might never be able to return to a city again. It would be better if, by pleading mental illness, I could avoid losing my residency.

The Debunking:

While many of Fu Ping's stories in her book suffer from unclear or inconsistent timeline issues, none is more serious between her senior year in college and her leaving China in January of 1984. Since she needed to make the case of her "deportation," she had to muddle up the close to two years gap between her thesis and her "exile."

The above is a glaring example. We now know that she entered college in the fall of 1978. Therefore, she was scheduled to graduate before the summer of 1982. In those years, time spent in China's colleges were very strict. There is no way that she was still on campus "making preparations for graduation" in the fall of 1982 and then decided to leave the school.

So, did Fu Ping actually dropout Suzhou University? She did. Just not in the fall of 1982 but some time in that spring. In an interview with Didi Kirsten Tatlow of International Herald Tribune, she provided a letter from her former classmate which stated that she "left university abruptly, without graduation," because of a nervous breakdown. The letter was dated May, 1982.

Suzhou University has also confirmed that Fu Ping left school on March 16, 1982.

The last paragraph from her book cited above probably gave the true reason for her dropout, while faking the nervous breakdown. Suzhou University, a teacher's college, is a low-tier college whose mission is to train elementary and middle school teachers. Their graduates were assigned to teaching jobs all over the province, most of them might end up in quite remote areas. While favoritism definitely existed in the job assignments, this applied to the majority of graduates, not just those with "black marks."

Furthermore, as a teacher's college, students enjoyed free tuition, meal and board by the policy at the time to encourage enrollment and training of school teachers, which was suffering a huge shortage. By accepting such an offer, graduates were required to accept their assignments and serve as teachers.

Fu Ping feared losing her city residency so much that she chose to not fulfill her obligation by faking a mental illness. For justification, she might have made up the entire tale of her thesis research on infanticide.

Fu Ping's Speech at the Downtown Speaker Series

On March 1, 2013, Fu Ping gave a speech at the Downtown Speaker Series at Las Vegas. In the speech, she made a couple of subtle changes to her story. For example, she now says that she tool the Pan Am flight to US instead of United and it was not a direct flight. Instead of baby girls being killed with plastic bags, it is now pillow cases. She didn't mention the more outlandish claims surrounding her infanticide research (not even mention newspaper any more) or kidnapping.

More significantly, she used the opportunity of answering a question from the audience at the end to once again claim the "attack" she received on Amazon is a smear campaign originated from China, elevating its status to an "attack to democracy."

The speech can be viewed in its entirety here. Below is a partial transcript. Thanks to Jean and Z. Wang for helping out the transcript work.

I'm going to break this talk into three components. The first one I'll talk a little bit about
my life, which most of them are in the book. Then, I'll talk a little bit about my
entrepreneurial journey. And the third part will be what will be the future for 3D printing, sensors, and the digital world.  

So let me take you back almost 40 years, to 1966. At the dawn of Cultural Revolution, I was 8  years old. I was living with a loving family. My Shanghai papa and mama had 5 children and I was the youngest of the 6, the youngest one. i didn't know when I was little that they were not my biological parents. They were the only parents I knew. And they were incredibly loving and it's a normal family. 

When the Cultural Revolution started, I was taken away from them. That day when Red Guards came to my family to taken me away, to send me to Nanjing, which is a
city about 300 miles north of Shanghai to stay with my biological parents. That was when I was told that they were not my parents. I went to Nanjing in a very crowded train on myself and arrived only a little too late. My biological parents were put on a truck being sent away to exile also. And I was then placed in a dormitory room in a college where my dad used to be professor. It was there I found my little sister. She was 4 years old. And then for the next 10 years, I lived in a dormitory room, and taking care of my younger sister. My father was away for 11 years. I almost never seen him. My mother came back when i was 13. Life was very confusing at that time. One day I lost the parents who raised me, the parents who born me, and I became the surrogate mother to my sister. 

The first two years of the Cultural Revolution, the entire country turned upside down. Family, educated family been sent away, households are confiscated. I was out there to witness much of the atrocity scene, watching teacher being killed. Been sent to struggle sessions which I would be put on stage denouncing myself. Screaming very loud that I was nobody. That I wasn't worth the dirt beneath their feet. That was the very beginning of my education. I was supposed to be in the 1st grade. The schools were closed. I didn't have any academic education. 

But rather Chairman Mao, who was the head of communist party said that we need to study from farmers, workers, and soldiers. So I was working in the factory, many years, and also worked in the country side, planting rice, and doing some farming. Then when I was a little older, I also went to military camp to be trained on long march, shooting. So in the essence, although I didn’t have much in formal education, I learned how to make things with my hands, I built radios when I was 9 years old, I built speedometers, and later televisions, I put the lights up so on and so forth. 

When I was 10 years old, I also experienced a very dramatic event. I was gang-raped by a group of teenagers, and i was left on the soccer field to die. I had cuts on my body, probably more than 40 stitches because of a knife   It was not just the physical abuse that was hurtful. it was the emotional abuse that followed. I was called broken shoes. at 10, I was a broken woman. 

Fast forward 10 years, Culture Revolution was over, China re-opened university. Given that I have not had much formal education. I really wanted to go to college. I studied like mad. I was called the girl whose lights never turned off. I took the first college exam i didn't pass, the 2nd year i took it again. in 1978, I past the national exam and went to college. I really wanted to be an astronaut, but i didn't really have much choice. My father was a professor at Nanjing Aeronautics and Astronautics University before he was sent away. So when I grew up, my playground was airplanes and the slider was airplane wings. I have seen a lot of planes on the field.  But i was assigned to study Chinese literature. My mother said, oh please, don’t go study literature. A writer has no future in China. but i wasn't going to listen. I really wanted to go to school.  

So I was admitted to Suzhou University, majoring Chinese literature. I absolutely loved it. I couldn't believe that reading a novel, going to see a play or see a movie, and call that study. It was really fascinating time and China is completely changing its ideology and very open at the time. 

In my senior year, I decided I wanted to pursue graduate school. I wanted to be a journalist. I chose infanticide as my thesis topic, and i went to research the phenomenon of killing baby girls in the country side due to one child policy. In 1979, Chinese government decided that people can only have one child and they enforced one-child policy quite severally. In many countries, people, farmers, or families favor boys over girls. It's not a unique thing for China. But in China, what's unique at that time was the one-child policy. There was this policy called illegal pregnancy. You can be illegal to be pregnant for a second child if it is within 4 years of having the first child. The policy was enforced by local communities, the neighborhood communities. A lot of time, those enforcements are very cruel. 

When I went to the countryside to look at that, I saw baby girls are being killed and I saw babies being thrown into river when their embryological cords are still fresh. I saw baby girls being suffocation in pillow cases and being thrown into garbage dumpsters. What I saw broke my heart. 

Even though I was punished for missing schools and not return to college dormitories, I was possessed to do those research. So I went to many remote areas and interviewed hundreds of women. I heard many stories. I put my research in paper and gave them to my teacher. I haven't written my thesis yet. I just gave the teacher my raw material. 

Unbeknownst to me, she turned those material to the press and the material was apparently passed up and got the attention of the Chinese government. For that I was kicked out of the school. Actually I was put in jail briefly for 3 days. I thought I was going to die. They wouldn't tell me why I was arrested and I didn't know it was because of the infanticide research. I was just put in jail. There was no interrogation, no telling why I was there. 

But fortunately I was let out 3 days later. I was told to go home and wait to be told what I should do. Then I was told that I have two choices.  

One is to leave China and never talk about this again, just quietly leave. I was told to be careful what I say because my sister and family is still in China. This is fairly common in Chinese history back then, probably today also, that the threat to you is not yourself but your family. Or, I will be put in a place remote in China. I thought leaving was a better idea. 

So, it took me a year and half actually for me to get a passport to leave China. My family helped me to pull all the strings and eventually I was able to obtain visa and passport to leave China. I applied to many countries but the US was the easiest to get a student visa so I ended up coming  to the United States. How lucky I am. 

In 1984, January, I stepped on a Pan Am airline and flew from Shanghai to San Francisco, stop by Tokyo. I landed in San Francisco. I had 80 dollars traveler's check and only a few words of English. I tried to learn English when I was in China when I knew I was going to come to the United States. I tried to memorize them but somehow by the time I landed in San Francisco I only remembered 3 words. That was "help", "thank you", and... there was another word that I can't remember. 

Anyway, so I was in San Francisco. I have a traveler's check. Back then, Chinese dollar was not exchangeable with dollar so you should go to a bank, give them RMB and they issue you a traveler's check. For me to go from San Francisco to New Mexico where I got a student visa. The ticket price changed. It become 85 dollars and I only had an 80 dollar traveler's check. Because in China, it's a Communist society that the price doesn't change. I didn't know what to do. 

Of course, blessing San Francisco, there was a lot of Chinese-speaking people so one of the agents was able to explain to me the price changed. There was an American man standing behind me who gave 5 dollars to the counter so I can get my ticket. That was my first impression of an American. That taught me a lesson: when in doubt, always error on the side of generocity.  

To this day, I still haven't found that person who helped me. I was hoping someone who read to book would say, hey, that was me. Five dollars may not have meant much to me but it meant the whole world to me. 

So that's how I landed in United States and went to New Mexico. 

I enrolled in English as Second Language and I thought I was going to study comparative literature. I quickly realized that I didn't have enough English to do that. Also, my teacher who has a Ph. D. in literature couldn't find a job.  I was told to leave China and never to come back again so I don't have the luxury of studying something I couldn't find a job with. So I have to very quickly find something that's marketable. But I didn't have formal K-12 education so I couldn't quite go to study science. 

I asked around what I could study. Someone said why don't you go study computer science. It's a new field. I never heard about computer science so I asked what is that. The student said that is a man-made language used to make stuff. I was like, great, I am good with language and I know how to make stuff. That's what I am going to study. So, that's how I got into computer science. I was very lucky that it's a new field. 

Computer science of course at that time, and maybe today also, has a lot of group projects. It's not always individual projects. I wasn't the best programmer. Programming wasn't really a strong suite of mine but I quickly realized that I was a pretty good software designer. Being trained in literature, in structure, compositions, flow, I found software design to be very easy. So I end up with always having the best programmer in my group because, being a good software designer, our project always get the high scores from the professors. So that's how I got through my computer science career. 

I worked for a start up company and then I went to work for Bell Labs and then I went to work for University of Illinois at their supercomputing center. I went to the supercomputing center because they were doing graphics and visualization and I totally fall in love with that field. It's like art meeting science. 

At the supercomputing center I hired a student, his name is Marc Andreessen. Marc didn't quite like the match and geometry I was doing and decided to work on a browser. So Marc and severl other students wrote the NCSA Mosiac that became Netscape and was also licensed to Microsoft and became Internet Explorer. So he went to start Netscape and the rest was history. 

The university started to push me to start a business. They said, Ping, everything you touched turning into gold. I had no idea how to start a business. At university we have really good jobs. I love my job and also my daughter was 3 years old at the time. But one day my boss Joe Harding said, "All this talk and nobody is doing anything. I am really frustrated." So I said, okay, I will do it. So that's how I started Geomagic. 

[Talk about Geomagic and 3D technology...]

Q:  How is China like you now? What’s the potential of technology like this to solve the humanitarian crisis that factory in so many countries like China poses?

A: I certainly is on the attack by the Chinese at this point. The day after New York Time had a story broke on Chinese hacking on New York Time, I woke up with 2000 hate mail in my email. And I’m still on the attack by the Chinese. If you go on Amazon and look for Bend not Break Ping Fu, and you will see the full scale of the attack on me. They completely bombarded my book site, and if you saw the titles of five hundred comments, doesn't matter it is one-star or five-stars, they are all smear. 

You can’t see any good comments because it will... if you put a good comment, hundreds of them are gonna come and say this is not helpful. And if they call me a liar, fat liar, bitch, traitor, whatever, you will get one thousand five hundred people will say that is helpful.  

In comparison, the most helpful comment review on Harry Potter in its entire life is five hundred. And in twenty second, a smear comment on amazon will get three times more comments on this is helpful. How does that happen? It happens in twenty seconds! So someone is writing a program... notify something there. You can just go there to see it. It is incredible. 

So I look at it. My book is not available in China. None of those reviewers have read my book and they even say they have never read my book. So there are three things they really don't like me. They don't like me write about “gang rape,” “No, China has no rape.” That’s one. And they don't like I wrote about “infanticide.” “No, China didn’t kill baby girls.” It didn't matter the statistics says thirty million girls were missing. “It didn’t happen.” And of course I’m a traitor because I’m talking about bring job to United States. Actually i was talking about bring job locally ,distributed. And it is not just bring back to United States. For China, I talked about China should make product that carries Chinese Culture. And China has 1.3 billion people there, it is a huge market. It is good for China also. 

But it didn't matter, because, you know, that’s the attack. 

It is interesting, because I love Amazon, don’t get me wrong. I love Jeff. He is probably one of the most respected entrepreneur ever in my life. He is my hero. 

But I always believe failure and success go in hand in hand. Ironically a long time ago, I help to create Internet or the browsers. Today I become the victim of that technology. So the question is to the technologists here, what can we do to prevent this happen. Because those people hiding behind internet with fake ids are so cruel. The attack is so vicious and I don’t understand that phenomenon. And I don’t understand why we allow that happen. And it is more vicious to women than to men in general. It is not Chinese or American, cruelty has no nationality. But allow people to hide behind Internet to be cruel is something we should solve. Because that shouldn't happen to anyone. 

They are not just attack me, my family, my colleagues, but anyone who go voice something authentic get attacked. This is attack to democracy.

Fu Ping's BBC HARDtalk Interview

On January 29, 2013, Fu Ping was the guest of BBC's HARDtalk, hosted by Stephen Sackur. The interview is also available on YouTube. The following is a transcript:

Sackur: My guest today is fast becoming one of America's most celebrated female entrepreneurs. It is not just because the company she founded is revolutionizing manufacturing in the digital age, but also because her own life story represents a triumph over long odds. Ping Fu was just eight years old when her life was turned upside-down by Mao's Cultural Revolution. She endured years of abuse before being thrown out of China. Three decades later, she is an adviser to President Obama on innovation. What lessons lie behind this extraordinary journey?  

Sackur: Ping Fu, welcome to HARDtalk. You grew up in Mao's China. Your life was turned upside-down by the Cultural Revolution. I wonder if the sort of disruption you experienced in your childhood in a sense prepared you to thrive in a business sector, the tech industry, which is constantly being disrupted, where the roles are constantly changing.  

Fu: When I grow up, with the life journey that I had, I had a lot of practice in self-learning
 adaptability to change, and also the endurance of resilience in difficult times. Those were the skill sets that I needed for entrepreneurship. I just happen to have a lot of practices. 

Sackur: I suppose it gives you an awful lot of perspective when you have had such a very difficult upbringing.  

Fu: That's right. My life had been turned upside down, from a loving family with a nice big house in Shanghai, to a ghetto in Nanjing and lose both sets of my parents: the parents who raise me and the parents who born me. In one day, I became a surrogate mother to my little sister. She was only 4 years old. 

Suckur: We're talking about the early 1960s. In essence  you were grabbed by Red Guards who were obviously working for Mao's party, working for the Cultural Revolution. Because your family was regarded as intellectual, they were relatively privileged. You had to be taken away and reeducated, reprogrammed.  

Fu: Mao said we don't need formal education. We needed to be educated by workers, farmers and soldiers. We had to work in factories, farm rice or learning how to march in the military during K to 12, basically. 

Suckur: You have described how in the early days there was a lot of hate in the souls of the young guards looking after you in the military-style barracks. You were forced to eat animal dung. You were brought close to death at times.  

Fu: Yeah, we were fed bitter meals and, at age of 10, I was gang-raped by a dozen of teenage boys and left on a soccer field to die. It was very hard. 

Suckur: It was a long time ago. You are in a very different place. But, does the power of the memories you have still live with you?  

Fu: It does from time to time. It will catch up with me. I learned for a long time to put it away by writing the book that just came out. I learnt how to heal those wounds.  

Suckur: Your birth parents were not the lady and gentleman who raised you. You had two sets of parents. Was there any way in which either your birth parents or those who nurtured you were able to reach you at this terrible time when you and your sister were living the most dreadful and hard life?  

Fu: Not during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. My birth mother came back when I was 13. She was put away when I was eight. Otherwise all of the other parents were sent to remote areas of China.  

Suckur: What was it that you found within yourself that allowed you, enabled you, to cope with what you went through?  

Fu: My Shanghai papa was very wise. He anticipated the trouble coming to my life. So he taught me the "three friends of winter". Before I was taken away from the family, he told me, Ping, you need to be bamboo, bend with the prevailing wind and never breaking. That is kind of a mental symbol that stayed in my mind.  

Suckur: It is interesting that idea of bending and never breaking? Looking back on it, do you think you ever came close to actually breaking?  

Fu: Several times. When my journal was burned when I was 12 years old. I think I thought about dying. I wanted to jump into the fire.  

Suckur: That's where you had written your innermost thoughts and kept a sense of yourself?  

Fu: I did not have anyone to talk to. I didn't even know where to send letters to my parents. So I kept a journal on the backside of the Communist propaganda for years. That was the only place I could express my innermost thoughts and emotions. 

Suckur: It amazes me in a way that you were so resilient. I guess it was partly of being young as you were. You're so resilient that when the Cultural Revolution, this very hard-line phase of it, came to an end you were actually able to resume studies. You made contacts with your family and you ended up going to a university and studying journalism.  

Fu: That is right.  

Suckur: But it was not the end of your problems, was it?  

Fu: No. Right before I graduated from college I was doing my thesis research. I thought I was picking a humanitarian topic, which is infanticide. I heard that the one-child policy in China caused farmers to kill baby girls because they wanted boys. I did not realize how widespread the killing was. When I went to do the research, in my bare eyes I saw babies being tossed into river with their umbilical cords still fresh. It broke my heart. I was a mother since I was eight.  

Suckur: You mean since you raised your little sister? 

Fu: Right.  

Suckur: It strikes me in a way, looking forward and back, knowing what happened to you, that you made it to the States and made it into business, I am beginning to feel that there was something about you that refuses to bow down to authority. You refuse to accept the received wisdom. Otherwise you would not have embarked on this challenging university dissertation about the terrible impact of the one-child policy.  

Fu: That is quite insightful. I think when I was looking back, I realized that even though I was brainwashed that I was nobody, I never really believed it subconsciously. I always wanted to be somebody. It was not specific. I never knew how to stop it. I kept travelling and wanting to be somebody.  

Suckur: You talk about brainwashing. What do you really mean by that? It is a phrase that is easily used, but in what way were you actually brainwashed through your youth?  

Fu: We did not study anything in the normal academic field. We always studied Communist propaganda or Mao's Little Red Book. That's all we have. I was told that I was nobody, my parents were criminals. I was born with black blood. 

Suckur: You're in a black file, weren't you? You were a black element. I wonder that you, in turn, having been dismissed by the party, by the system, were you angry with the party? Even before you left China, had you decided that communism was deeply, deeply damaging to your Country?  

Fu: I believed some of the concept of what communists taught me, about helping others and being good. Yet at the same time, I did not believe much of what they said, like rather to grow Communist weed rather than capitalist rice. When we didn't have anything to eat, weed doesn't sound very good. 

Suckur: In the end, you were forced out of the country. Some people listening to your story might wonder how come, in a sense, you had the great fortune to be allowed to leave China and make your way to the United States when So many other people who were described as black elements, put on blacklists ended up either in the most hard and difficult provinces working in fields or worse than that, imprisoned or even killed. How come you were allowed out?  

Fu: I was kicked out. I did not speak any English, I had no idea what American life is like. At the time I was running from trouble. I thought anything is better than death or being exile to a remote area. I knew I did not have a future in China. The future was unknown to me when I came to the United States. Back then, I did not know it was going to be a good future. I was just asked to leave and never come back again. 

Suckur: You had no family in the US, and you had never been on a plane before. There you were, a girl in her mid-20s, on a plane from Shanghai to California and then onto New Mexico. It must have been phenomenally daunting.  

Fu: It was very scary. No family, no friends, I did not speak the language, I did not know what life was ahead of me. At that time, the unknown was better then trouble.  

Suckur: I supposed so. Yet when I picture you as a young woman in New Mexico, with no language, no money and no contacts, then I think about how quickly you got on. Within a few years you were becoming a specialist in computing and software. What was it within you that allowed you to get on so quickly? 

Fu: One part of it is that America is a wonderful place for immigrants. Many people helped me when I first landed in the US. The other part is that I've always learn how to do things by myself. When I grow up there were no teachers or parents around. I had to learn cooking very quickly. When I was at a factory, I learned how to put lights in the factory, how to build radios. I had this ability to learn. I never thought I could not do anything. Life just throw  at me with many things that wasn't supposed to be when I was at that age. Coming to the United States was not as hard as the life I had from 8 to 18.  

Suckur: You were arriving and studying science at a time when the digital era was just beginning. The era of computing was taking off. What drew you to that?  

Fu: First I wanted to study comparative literature. I could not do it because it did not have English skills. I asked somebody what I could study since I did not have a math, science background. Somebody told me to look a computer science. I said what is that. He told me it was a man-made language that is used to make stuff. I thought to myself, I'm good with language and know how to make stuff. So I just picked that up. The interesting thing is, even this experience teach me that behind every closed door there is an open space. Every time life slams the door at me -- in this case that I didn't have the language skills, I end up picking up a skill set that is very beneficial in my later life. 

Suckur: You say that with a degree of understatement. As it happens, by the mid-to-late Nineties, you had alighted upon an area of software development and computer technology which frankly over the last ten years has become the absolute cutting edge of where many people think the next phase of the digital revolution is going. Perhaps we should in simple terms explain to people that your interest in 3D printing, in a sense shaping things by computer and then turning those shapes into actual products in a new way, it's potentially revolutionary, isn't it?  

Fu: That's the next big thing. It's as big as steam engine, Henry Ford, assembly line, or the Internet.  

Suckur: That's a big claim, can you justified it for me?  

Fu: When I was at Supercomputing Center I hired a student whose name is Marc Andreessen. We started the Mosaic that became internet Explorer and Netscape. After that success I went out to start my own company called Geomagic. That was 15 years ago. I thought about combining the internet with manufacturing to create the internet of things. That was of course way ahead of its time. I went out and I saw this machine, which is a 3D Printer from 3D systems, and I was just totally amazed by this machine. It can literally print a 3D product from a machine. Not just paper. 

Suckur: Out of this machine comes a tangible product?  

Fu: Yes. It prints layer by layer. If you print on paper you just grinned one layer. Imagine you add a layer up... 

Suckur: The best way we can make sense of this at least visually is to look at your shoes.  You have come in today to the studio with a pair of shoes that were printed.  

Fu: That's right, this is the 3D design and 3D printed shoes that is made to mold to the shape of my feet. So I think, in the future, the product design will be in the software code. The product fabrication can be locally next to you. The product will be built start with the person. We call it mass customization of personal factories. 

Suckur: If you think of a shoe company that wants to make big profits by producing millions of pairs of shoes for the mass market, they can't use this technology, can they? Aren't you talking about something very local, very small scale and will never in terms of cost be able to compete with the traditional production line?  

Fu: It's actually not true because the traditional shoe, the most cost is not in the material and the making of the shoes. It is the inventory, shipping across the sea, retail shops and shoes that made nobody wants. 90% of the cost is in that. Less than 10% of the cost is the material in making the shoe. In this case the material and the making of the shoe is not more expensive because the machine is making it. You can make it locally so you don't have to ship across the sea, which is not only cheaper but less foot print.  

Suckur: In a sense it is the end of globalisation, the end of making something that has to  be originated in some place like China and have it shipped to the United States. It is bringing manufacturing back home? 

Fu: Absolutely. In 2006 When Thomas Friedman wrote the book, "The World Is Flat". I went on the stage and said, no the world is 3D. We were sharing a stage. I talked about globalisation is passing, it is now about localisation. We live on one earth, we watched one moon, we inhale the same air. Localisation is very interesting. 

Suckur: We will get to that but I want to stick with the shoes are a little bit more. The material, what are they made of?  

Fu: In this case it is a linen, a natural fiber.  

Suckur: Linen shoes?  

Fu: Yes.  

Suckur: The idea of 3D printing, would it be applicable to other materials? Could you make things out of metal?  

Fu: Yes.  

Suckur: Obviously plastic could be quite amenable?  

Fu: Yes, plastic, metal, rubber, linen, ceramic. There's more than 100 materials. 

Suckur: Could you make a mix of materials? Let's be ambitious, could you make a car via a printer?  

Fu: Not today, yet some of the car parts can be made via a printer, and even better, because you can design geometry inside of the metal to make it lighter, stronger on impact, and you can use material to make new material, which is very interesting.  

Suckur: The what-ifs that apply to this technology seemed to run in different directions, one is a dangerous direction. We have already seen the notion of a Wiki weapon aired on the internet, and there's one particular student and some associates of his in Texas who are determined to use 3D printing to make a home-made gun. All you need is the software and a 3D Printer and he believes you can make all the necessary components for a working weapon. It does raise real questions about where this idea of home made assembly and production ends up, doesn't it?  

Fu: Yes, but I always believe in our human history it always good against evil. The gun doesn't shoot itself, it is the human that takes the gun to shoot. Technology itself is not evil. Right?  

Suckur: But technology can play to our worst instincts. One of the things that seems to me a danger with the spread of 3D printing is that it enabled piracy, copyright infringement, to become even easier.  

Fu: Maybe. But it could generate more innovation. If you make one of a kind, not one in a million, why would you care about piracy?  

Suckur: You care about piracy and Copyright for lots of reasons. The one story that intrigued me, a German man saw a picture of a Dutch policemen carrying his handcuffs. He took a picture of those handcuffs, blew it up, looked at it in great detail, scan it, and he was able to make a key through a 3D Printer to fit the handcuffs. It sounds extraordinary but apparently is true. That's the sort of danger that you could never anticipate that might come with your technology?  

Fu: That's true. But innovation is also going to create so many more solutions that counter those bad intentions. It's interesting, in human history, when good against evil, there's always more good and evil otherwise we would have been erased from Earth already. The reason we evolve is that we are always able to make solution.  

Suckur: That's a very optimistic view. I want to reflect again on your background in China, you've been appointed to the US National Advisory Council on entrepreneurship and innovation, but there are voices in the US saying that they are losing their innovative edge, especially compared with China. You have got a unique insight into both cultures, is there some merit to that argument?  

Fu: The US has been a very inventive society. We invented many, many technologies that have been adopted by other countries. Innovation is about invention made real. Our US or developed Western countries have this issue of not adopting our own invention. We need to look at that more.  

Suckur When Peter Thiel, I don't know if you have met him, he is the founder of Paypal, he said innovation in America is somewhere between dire Straits and dead. You don't share that view?  

Fu: I'm not that pessimistic. I think the United States is still quite an innovative country. I don't share that. 

Suckur: Particularly in your field, information technology, and other economists, Robert Gordon, he said the benefits of information technology have largely run their course, which suggests he is not quite as thrilled with 3D printing as you are.  

Fu: Let's wait for ten years and see what happens. I think he would have a lot of 3D printed things at his home. 

Suckur: Do you ever go back to China and perhaps think about launching your business, that's done so well in the US, in China as well?  

Fu: I do have a subsidiary in China that sells products we made in the USA. I don't think China needs to be a dumping ground. China has 1.3 billion people, would-be consumers. I think the competition between the US and China or the rest of the world is healthy. I hope we will all get together and live as one world. 

Suckur: Ping Fu, we have to end that. But fascinating stuff. Thank you very much for being on our HARDtalk.

The Guardian: Ping Fu's Childhood Tales of China's Cultural Revolution Spark Controversy

Tania Branigan and Ed Pilkington, who had previously reported doubts on Fu Ping's story, published another report on The Guardian on February 13, 2013. This was the first media report on the affair in which the reporters actually sought out experts to exam, and almost unanimously refute, several aspects of the story, including her claimed family history, her episode with student magazine, and so on.

It's also worth noting that Professor Perry Link, who was quoted in this story, is still banned from visiting China by the government there for his pro-democracy involvement decades ago. So, he could be hardly grouped into the conspiracy theory of a Chinese government sponsored "smear campaign."

Top US software entrepreneur faces new contradiction claims over rags-to-riches memoir of personal torment in 60s China 

A successful US entrepreneur faces mounting questions over her widely lauded tale of childhood torment in China's cultural revolution, as fresh contradictions emerge and experts cast doubt on key elements of her story. 

Ping Fu's rags-to-riches memoir Bend Not Break says she was torn away from her parents at eight, brutally abused and sent to work in a factory; then forced to leave China for the US after triggering an international outcry over female infanticide as a student. She went on to found software company Geomagic, currently being acquired by 3D Systems. 

Critics acknowledge the horrors of the cultural revolution, but question Fu's personal account. She has already conceded that a description of Red Guards killing a teacher by tying their victim to four horses was an "emotional memory" and probably wrong. Closer examination of her book and interviews reveal numerous conflicting claims and experts told the Guardian several parts of her story were implausible. 

Fu, 54, said she was traumatised and hurt by the criticism, adding: "I don't know who is behind this, but somebody is." 

One of her most striking claims is that Sun Yat-sen, revered as the father of modern China, "raised my grandfather and granduncle as his own sons" – akin to a Briton being reared by Winston Churchill. Prof John Wong of the University of Sydney, an expert on Sun's life, said he had no knowledge of such wards. 

Fu told the Guardian: "That was what I was told by my family before I left China. I believe this is true. My mother says it's in history books." She then added that Sun was attentive towards them, rather than actually adopting them. 

In a chapter of her book titled Factory Worker, Fu describes labouring in factories for a decade until schools reopened in 1976. She describes working six hours a day, six days a week and told an interviewer she never went to school in 10 years. 

Experts on the cultural revolution told the Guardian schools mostly reopened in 1968 or 1969 and that pupils had lessons in factories to learn skills, but were not used as labour. 

Fu said: "For 10 years I didn't have proper schooling. I was sent to study in the factory, and sometimes in farms." 

A photograph supplied to media by Fu shows her posing with a little red book, Mao badge and armband. Michel Bonnin of Tsinghua University and Prof Yin Hongbiao of Beijing University said it showed she was not disgraced as a "black element" at the time, as she claimed; Fu said it was common for children to be pictured pledging allegiance to Mao, "whether 'black' or 'red'". 

Fu also says she was arrested and criticised by Suzhou University authorities after Deng Xiaoping, then China's paramount leader, met student publishers. She says Deng had seen a daring article from the popular magazine she edited. 

Perry Link, an expert on modern Chinese literature at the University of California at Riverside, said student magazine representatives met in 1979, but added: "I do not believe for a moment that Deng Xiaoping ever came near the group." 

Neither he nor others knows of a representative from Fu's group, Red Maple, attending. Fu said she believed the article was selected for This Generation, the joint publication from the meeting, but Link's copy shows it is not included. 

Yinghong Cheng, now a professor of history at Delaware state university, studied at the same time and in the same building at Suzhou as Fu, and had his own literary group. He told the Guardian: "I am completely unaware of that group [Red Maple] and publication, and if it had been that popular I would have known about it." 

Fu, who supplied a copy of her magazine, said her contemporaries might not have heard of the society because it was underground. She said Deng met the representatives at the same time as Communist Youth League leaders, noting that she was told about the meeting and was not present. 

The entrepreneur claims she was ordered to leave China after exposing female infanticide in the early 80s, writing that in a few months of research she "witnessed with her own eyes" drowned and suffocated female infants. Last month, she told a radio station she watched "hundreds of baby girls being killed in front of my eyes. I saw girls being tossed into the river." 

Therese Hesketh of University College London, an expert on population controls in China, said: "I have never heard stories of this kind. Infanticide did of course occur, but was not commonplace … It certainly was not done in public as even at that time to be caught meant a possible murder charge." 

Fu told the Guardian that she mis-spoke in the live radio interview and should have said "my research was based on hundreds of cases, and I saw baby girls killed right in front of my eyes". 

She added: "If you went to the countryside and to the family planning unit it was going on all the way down the line in every village and every school. Very few people were allowed to go to the poor areas. These kinds of things happened, and China doesn't want people to know it happened." 

The entrepreneur once said Deng personally intervened to free her when she was jailed due to the resulting outcry – a remarkable detail not mentioned in her book. 

Other questions include when Fu left China: she has said variously that it was two weeks or over a year after her release. 

Fu said she had been wrong to call the criticism a smear campaign, adding she had realised the people she thought were attacking her were telling their own stories of the cultural revolution. 

"I hope that this will turn into a more civil discussion about what happened and if any good can come from it I don't mind that people have turned their anger towards me so long as we can heal together," she said. 

Adrian Zackheim, publisher of Penguin's business imprint, Portfolio, said: "Ping Fu wrote in the Author's Note at the front of her book: 'I have tried my best to remember and describe the events and people in my life. Mostly, I have used real names, although some names have been altered to protect privacy. Many details happened more than forty years ago and I've tried as much as possible to verify the facts.' 

"Sometimes, despite everyone's best efforts, minor mistakes appear in nonfiction books. Whenever they are brought to an author's attention they are corrected in future printings. Ping has already acknowledged several of these, and if any additional corrections are required, of course those will be made as well."

The Telegraph: Doubts over Chinese Author Lauded by Michelle Obama

The following "Book News" was written by Felicity Capon and published on The Telegraph on February 5, 2013:

Ping Fu's descriptions of a tormented childhood growing up during China's cultural revolution fiercely criticised 

Doubts have arisen over the veracity of an autobiography written by the executive of a major US technology firm. 

In Bend Not Break, Ping Fu describes the horrors of growing up during China’s Cultural Revolution and her remarkable rags-to-riches tale that saw her become the chief executive and co-founder of the 3D software company Geomagic. She was named Inc. Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005 and was invited by Michelle Obama to the White House after the 2010 State of the Union address. 

The book describes how Fu was forcibly removed from her family by the Red Guards and sent to a re-education camp where she was starved, tortured and gang-raped, forced into child labour and deprived of an education. 

But her claims are now being challenged by several readers and Chinese critics who suggest her version of events may be exaggerated or fabricated. 

In one interview, Fu has described how she was forced to watch a teacher torn apart by four horses. 

But the influential Chinese blogger Fang Zhouzi claims that there is no evidence to suggest that such a barbaric act ever took place and considers it an unlikely practice at that time in China’s history. No witnesses have come forward to corroborate the claims. 

Indeed, Fu has now accepted that this detail could have been an “emotional memory”, confessing that her nightmares have blended into her memories: “Somehow in my mind I always thought I saw it, but now I’m not sure my memory served me right. I probably saw it in a movie or something, and I acknowledge that’s a problem.” 

Other questions have arisen in relation to her alleged deportation from China to the US. According to the book, Fu was forced to leave because of her thesis on female infanticide, which was published by the People’s Daily. This subsequently led to an international outcry and her detention. 

Yet the likelihood that the newspaper would ever have published such a piece has attracted widespread doubt. 

“In fact anyone with a bit of political common sense knows that People's Daily at that time was full of nothing but glorious and wonderful news and it's impossible anything affecting China's image as much as this would've received coverage,” commented Fang. 

Fu has attempted to defend herself against the allegations in a blog post for the Huffington Post: “I remember reading an editorial in a newspaper in 1982 that called for gender equality. It was not a news article and not written by me, and I didn’t know it had anything to do with my research…People who have not read the book made assumptions that I submitted the research to the newspaper, or I published the thesis, but that was not how I described it in the book.” 

As a result of the negative publicity surrounding the book, ratings on Amazon.com have plummeted, gaining a meagre 1.6 star rating. Vitriolic responses from Amazon users have flooded in, accusing Fu of being a liar, which has led some news outlets to suggest that critics are simply unhappy about the book's "airing of China's dirty laundry". One comment read “ It is too bad that innocent American people have to learn about China, Cultural Revolution and Chinese people through this kind of lies” – a statement widely echoed across the book’s webpage. 

Adrian Zackhein, the president of her publisher, Porfolio, commented: “We are proud of the book, and of Ping, and of her perseverance. Ping worked hard to get her facts right, but it’s her memory that she’s offering…it’s a personal memoir that’s written with candor.”

ZiLanZhai Master: Story always belong to those who have Stories

The author of this blog remains anonymous but claims to be a former classmate of Fu Ping's in college. Based on the story he told in this blog, even Fu Ping herself thought that is most likely to be true.

The post, published on January 26, 2013, is a reaction to the initial Forbes profile of Fu Ping. The author describes that some former classmates in their own social group had tried to recall various facts in Fu Ping's story but,

1. None of them had heard anything about her childhood suffering before, including their guidance teacher.
2. None of them ever heard about her thesis research on infanticide. Some remembered that Fu Ping was good at writing, but mostly novels.
3. Their class was separated into two classes for English lessons. Fu Ping was assigned to the "fast class" based on her English skills at the time. So, she knew a lot more than "three English words."

    信息时代，每天要在媒体上读到一些故事，成功人士的事迹催人奋进；偶一的失败让人叹息，但教训也能值得人借鉴。更多的时候，那些人和那些人的故事是我们绝对陌生的，自然也就没有任何可评判的了。一旦读到熟悉的人的陌生故事，情形就不一样了。
    今天，在我们为了迎接大学毕业三十周年而建立的QQ群中，得知了大学毕业之后就一直没有消息了的一位女同学的消息，这位同学的“事迹”或者说“故事”这些天已经成了媒体的热点。而且那故事是从“福布斯中文网”上用双语发布的呢（点击这里来看看）。
    这是一个在我们大学同学中年龄算是偏小却故事不断的同学，四年的时间里故事多多。从1982年大学毕业之后但一直没有了消息，如今，一下了成了名人，成了美国总统奥巴马团队中的人物了，而且那篇题为“从劳改犯到高科技企业家”的文章，还是从“福布斯中文网”上翻译转载过来的呢。真让人吃惊！而读了网友们的评论，更吃惊，也就不得不说一说了。
    在群上，我们同学就在努力地搜寻记忆。30年，毕竟还不是太久远，大家还能记得许多的事情。
    “在南京劳改队里度过了十年。她在那里接受思想改造，忍饥挨饿，饱受折磨，惨遭轮奸，被迫在工厂里当了一名童工，没有接受良好的教育。”我们都是从那个时代过来的人，文革不过是十年。当年的中国，再黑暗，还不至于将一个女孩关到牢中十年，去做童工的。再说，我们那些同学都是恢复高考后的1978年考取大学的，不要说是在在劳改营中度过了十年，就是曾经被派出所抓过关过的，“政审”就过不了关，怎么有可能被大学录取？就算是侥幸进了大学，四年的时间里，以彼人的性格，也不会不向同学们展示那一段“历史”的。可我们中文系的同学中没有一人，甚至是当年录取我们进校，后来又做了我们的年级辅导员的老师也从没听说过有此事。故事。
    “童工”一说，倒还是有些另一种可信的。我们那些人在那个时候是没有什么“童工”的概念的。当年能找到一份“童工”去做，算是有关系有后门的人了，我们普通人家的子女是连“童工”也做不到的。还是故事。
    “在毕业前几个月，傅苹发表了一篇毕业论文，讨论中国农村溺杀女婴的现象，引起了全国新闻界的关注。但她也因此入狱，被判劳教。”我们同学在群里互相问了，没有任何人知道在那个时候有过那么一篇文章——这个故事的主人公是能写些东西的，这是事实，但文学性的小说多，偏又不及另一位高我们半级的范小青同学。更不曾听说当年我们的同学中有哪一位因为文章而被劳教了的。因为我们的同学全是江苏的，没有一个外地人，如果哪一位因为文章而出了事，至少是会有人知道的。可没有一个人知道有此事，甚至三十年同学聚会五六次之多，没有人知道此人在何处。又是故事。
    那文章用不着细读，就可看出问题来，“劳改”与“劳教”，我不知道在英语中是不是有什么区别——我甚至不知道在英语中是不是有这两个词汇。“劳教”怎么会有十年之久的？故事啊！
    “在美国开始了她的新生活，当时她独自一人，身无分文，只会说3个英文单词”，那就更是故事了。当年我们中文系1978级两个班，这个人的英语水平算是高的，在快班。就我这个高考英语只考了4分（我们1978年高考英语不算分数，只好将精力集中在算分数的科目上去了），大学里只能在慢班的笨人，也不至少只有四五个单词啊。还是故事。
    讲惯了故事的人，有时会连一些真实的事情和经历也弄不清了呢。这位同学2012年“在接受中新社记者访问时说，1977年她在苏州大学学习中文（点击这里查看原文）”，我们这明明是1978年入学的，是在1978年的10下旬才上学的，就连高我们一届的1977级学生，因为特殊的历史原因也是在1978年的3月才入学的，她怎么会跑到1977年去？那时她不还在“做童工”吗？
    我们的这位同学现在在资本主义国家里，还发达了，这是事实，不是故事。我估计。
    钱钟书先生曾说过“暴发户续家谱”，那一年高考语文的现代文阅读还曾以此作为材料的呢。现在看来，有些暴发户还会“编”家谱，走的是与老暴发户们不一样的路数，是先将自己往最低处损，以显得自己“奋斗”的光彩！
    由此，再回过头来看许多的事迹，许多事迹的评论，冒出一个词“起哄”。至少我知道，在这个人的故事及评论中是有不少不了解情况而起哄的。
    突然想到一句话，“牛皮不怕大，就怕当场炸”。故事，永远只属于那些有故事的人。    

Fang Zhouzi: The Habitual Liar Fu Ping

The following post was published by Fang Zhouzi in his blog on February 5, 2013. It focuses on Fu Ping's claimed infanticide research, a bizarre tale she told in her book that, when she was in college, school officials would put their fingers in female students vagina to make sure they are experiencing periods (and therefore not pregnant), as well as her experiences of child labor and being gang-raped.

　　傅苹除了捏造她在文革期间的悲惨经历，也捏造她在中国开始实行严格的计划生育政策期间的见闻，因为她很清楚，计划生育是除了文革之外，最容易触动美国人神经的另一个中国丑闻，不管如何地夸大其词，美国人也会信以为真。她那一批留学生中，不少人就是以违反了计划生育政策遭到迫害为由在美国申请政治避难的。 

　　傅苹上个月接受美国电台WNYC的The Leonard Lopate Show采访时，说她在做大学本科论文时，亲眼看到几百名女婴被杀死，有的是刚生下来就被扔水里淹死。（http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2013/jan/14/bend-not-break-china-america/ 12:15） 

　　傅苹一直说，她之所以会去调查杀婴的情况，是因为中国开始实行一胎化计划生育政策。一胎化政策始于1980年9月25日中共中央发表《关于控制我国人口增长问题致全体共产党员共青团员的公开信》，号召“每对夫妇只生育一个孩子”。傅苹毕业于1982年6月，据她的说法，在她毕业之前经历了其论文内容被国内报纸广泛报道、国际舆论谴责、她被监禁等重大事件，这些都是在其论文完成后发生的。这样算来，傅苹做调查、写论文的时间最多也就一年多（实际上本科生一般都是在最后一个学期写毕业论文的，我们姑且相信傅苹很早就准备毕业论文），她亲眼看到几百名女婴被杀死，也就意味着几乎每天都有人在她面前杀死女婴。 

　　虽然中国自古以来就有溺杀女婴的陋习，但是自1949年以后这已被当成犯罪，即使没有完全绝迹，也是很罕见的地下行为。就算上个世纪80年代初实行一胎化政策（其实某些地区的农村实行的是一个半政策，即第一个是女孩的可再生一个）后刺激了杀女婴，那也是偷偷摸摸的行为，怎么可能有那么多人当着傅苹的面堂而皇之地杀婴？所谓溺杀女婴，指的是“旧社会”的一种做法，婴儿刚生下来时发现是女孩就把她淹死，然后谎称生下死胎。在医院生产显然不可能再这么做，在家中生产倒不排除这种可能，难道那些产妇临盆时都会通知傅苹上她们家去看如何把女婴杀死吗？ 

　　请问这是不是傅苹又出现了把想像当现实的“回忆错误”了？ 

　　傅苹在其书中说，1982年中国开始实行一胎化政策后，苏州大学官员查所有女生的月经，强迫她们每月上交卫生巾。有些女生上交了朋友用过的卫生巾，官员们就把手指插入“我们的”阴道检查有没有血。 

　　正如许多人指出的，在当时卫生巾还没有引进到中国。傅苹也许会狡辩说她用“卫生巾”的说法只是为了让美国读者容易理解。即便如此，这种每月检查月经，还要手插入阴道的做法，在当时中国大学校园绝对不可能发生。需知当时的中国在性方面还是极为保守的，当时的女大学生绝大部分都没有任何性经验，怎么可能允许让官员对身体进行这种侵犯？不要说有实质的实施，即使有此规定，也要舆论大哗了。全校女生那么多，月经又并非都同时发生，那么是不是天天都要有一大批官员忙着检查女生有没有来月经？所有女生都要查，而不是针对个别女生的，那就是一个全校学生都知道，因而在社会上也是众所周知的，那么怎么没有第二个江苏师范学院的女生反映曾经发生过如此不可思议的怪事？ 

　　请问这是不是傅苹又出现了把想像当现实的“回忆错误”了？这个人是不是得了某种受迫害性妄想症？ 

　　对一个已习惯于张口就说假话的人来说，把她在不同场合对同一个事件的说法做个比较，就不难发现其前后矛盾之处。例如，2010年1月，傅苹在演讲中说她在文革十年（1966～1976）实际上没上过学，而是去农村种水稻。（Fast forward 10 years, Cultural Revolution ended the year I was supposed to graduate from high school. I actually never went to school during the 10 years. I went to countryside planting rice fields.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulq55Z9O3bc 10:40） 上个月她接受PBS采访，却说她因为太小没被送去农村劳动，而是去工厂生产收音机和计速表。(I was assigned to work in a factory. Some of the older kids gets to send to the countryside. But I was too young to do that. So I went to the factory to build radios and speedometers. http://video.pbs.org/video/2330983908/ 7:22） 现在她又“澄清”说自1972年起学校复课，她就认真读书。这三种截然不同的说法都是她亲口说的，她要我们相信哪个？ 

　　傅苹在其“澄清”中实际上都已推翻了此前她在访谈中的所有惊人的说法，只坚持两点：她10岁时被红卫兵轮奸，她大学毕业前夕被秘密囚禁3天。她的共同作者Meimei Fox的嫂子、宾州州立大学研究中国古代历史的副教授Erica Brindley说，这是很个人的经历，你们没法推翻它。这也许就是傅苹至今仍一口咬定它们发生过的原因。但是如果仔细推敲她有关这两件事的具体说法，也是令人难以置信的。 

　　我们先来看她所谓在10岁时遭到红卫兵轮奸一事。在所有采访中，她都淡定地谈论此事，说是在她十岁那年，她妹妹被红卫兵扔进河里，她跳下去救出妹妹，激怒了红卫兵，10～12名红卫兵在光天化日之下轮奸了她，她醒来的时候，人在医疗室里。更令她伤心的是，这件事发生后，她被人叫做“破鞋”。 

　　我们认为傅苹说的这事不可信，并非如她说的认为“中国不会发生轮奸这种事”。中国当然也会发生轮奸这种暴行，在上个世纪七、八十年代我就见过因轮奸被判死刑的判决。但是在所有其他人有关文革暴行的回忆中，从没有过红卫兵在光天化日之下强奸女孩的叙述，更何况是十几个人参与的轮奸，更何况是十几个人轮奸/幼女。文革期间当然可能发生强奸，但是在一个极其重视女性“贞洁”的国家，即使在文革期间，强奸/幼女也是严重的犯罪。十几个人公然轮奸/幼女，而且广为人知（傅苹说她因此被称为“破鞋”），在当时也会被判死刑，却没有受到任何惩罚，可能吗？ 

　　有人也许会说，因为傅苹是黑帮分子的子女，所以再怎么折磨她都不用承担法律责任。傅苹虽然在各种采访中都声称自己是黑帮子女，其实她父母是南航的普通教师，连“地、富、反、坏、右”都算不上，根本不是黑帮。即使是黑帮子女，在文革期间被打死了也许没人管，但是被十几个人轮奸则肯定是不会被放过的。十几个人轮奸/幼女这种骇人听闻的事情，在中国历史上从没有记录发生过，傅苹是中国历史上最骇人听闻的轮奸案的唯一受害者，还是撒了个弥天大谎？为什么当时南航的其他教师子弟没有听说过傅苹曾经被轮奸？ 

　　我们再来看傅苹毕业前夕囚禁了三天一事。傅苹在PBS接受采访时说，在她的论文被中国报纸报道的那一年，碰巧美国人Steven Mosher也出了批评中国计划生育的Broken Earth一书，引起了国际舆论对中国违反人权的谴责，所以她就被抓了。 

　　在我没能找到中国报纸对她的论文的报道后，傅苹现在“澄清”，她的论文从未被中国报纸报道，等于自打了一嘴巴。Steven Mosher关于中国计划生育政策导致强迫人工流产（不是溺婴）的研究的确引起了中国政府和国际舆论的注意，但是Broken Earth一书是1983年9月出版的（http://bookmooch.com/detail/0029217008 ），成为畅销书并引起舆论注意是1984年（1984年9月开始出平装本）。而傅苹自称是在毕业前夕被抓，即1982年，那显然发生在Broken Earth书出版之前，与它无论如何都扯不上关系。 

　　傅苹声称，她被抓后，担心自己会被判死刑，但是由于邓小平过问了一下“那个写论文的学生现在怎么样了”，她被关了三天就被释放了，并被命令离开中国。（她接受谷歌的采访，http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4vRtvswO8s 从10：30开始） 

　　居然连邓小平都知道她，还亲自过问？她据称是被关在南京，邓小平的随口一句话是怎么得到如此快速的传达和执行的？她是怎么知道邓小平过问的？又是某个匿名人士告诉她的，还是仅仅是她的想像？如果连邓小平都知道她，保护她，谁还敢动她，她还用得着被迫离开中国？ 

　　我们也许无法用直接的证据推翻傅苹在10岁被轮奸和毕业前夕被秘密关押3天这种“个人的经历”，但是在能够核实的其他问题上都已证明了傅苹说谎，我们为什么要相信她独独在这两条没有证据的惊人事情上说了真话？