China’s Hebei Provincial government recently announced a list of candidates for the province’s Natural Science Award this year. One scholar on the list sparked a public uproar when he used Marxist philosophy to invalidate Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity.”
Li Zifeng, a professor at Yanshan University in Hebei Province, proposed in his project titled, “Adhere to the Materialist View of Space-Time-Mass-Energy and Develop Newtonian Physics,” to use Marxist philosophy to overthrow Einstein’s theory of relativity. The Hebei Provincial government recommended his “research” for the Natural Science Award, as “a non-consensual theoretical physics project that adheres to materialistic philosophy and is subversive and innovative.” The content of the research is about “the most fundamental problems of philosophy and physics, correcting fallacies in physics, and exploring answers to ancient questions.”
The recommendation states that Li’s project “resolves a possible contradiction between physics and philosophy” and even “overturns Einstein’s theory of relativity, which has misled the physics community and mankind’s basic approach to understanding the world, and clears a huge obstacle to the healthy development of science.”
Li is a researcher and Ph.D. advisor at the School of Vehicles and Energy, with a focus on oil and gas mechanics and drilling engineering.
Although Li’s academic specialty has nothing to do with Marxism, his research has been encouraged by the Minister of Science and Technology and is featured in official media, including Xinhua News Agency.
A writer named Cai, who is based in mainland China, told Radio Free Asia that there are many cases like this. “These professors and scholars are doing these studies totally against basic common sense, and actually he was able to get funding for the subject.”
Source: Radio Free Asia, June 22, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/ac-06222021062526.html