What two people are arguing about is actually secondary, because even if one or two mathematicians have personality problems, plagiarism or intentional damage to others' reputation is not a big deal. But this incident will have some influence on Chinese mathematicians in the United States. Now many people do differential geometry because of the influence of Chen Shengshen. After coming to the United States, they often follow Professor China when choosing a tutor. Therefore, it influenced the whole field of (China) geometric analysis, one group was students from Tian Gang, and the other group was students from Qiu Chengtong. After studying for a doctorate, finding a job after graduation is mutually exclusive. Students attending the Tian Gang Conference will avoid mentioning Tian Gang in front of Qiu Chengtong. These academic politics are obviously not conducive to the development of mathematics. A simple example is that after Zhang returned to China, giving lectures there became a problem, because going there would offend people.
On the other hand, the mathematics level of most students in our country is already very poor, and most of them have not received strict scientific research training before studying for doctoral degrees. When I was a doctor, I had such an experience of talking about academic politics. My tutor didn't open my eyes to do groundbreaking research, but educated them to publish papers for the sake of publishing papers, hoping to gain an advantage in the future job market competition, which would not help them much in their future development. For young mathematicians, we should put aside academic and political arguments and choose a favorite tutor to do mathematics. In mathematics, both Tian Gang and Qiu Chengtong have made considerable contributions, and young people can still learn a lot from their work (such as Qiu Chengtong's lecture on differential geometry).
But mathematics and mathematicians are inseparable. It is not so easy for a person to accept the complicated reality of the past and stride forward. Richard Borcherds said that for him, reading papers is more direct than talking to others to understand mathematics. Geometric analysis is now a highly technical branch. Without a mathematician like him to participate in real life, it is very difficult to do a good job in research. For example, Cao Huaidong's students are very sensitive to the critical articles in The New Yorker-perelman's paper is very difficult to read, and my tutor has done a lot of work to fill in the details, saying that his article is not original and worthless! It's not fair! They have no ambition to surpass perelman's great works on the four-dimensional manifold, but they are keen to comment on these things, and they are complacent when they make a little insignificant achievement, and they are even more ashamed to learn from others in areas they are not interested in. At the academic conference, most people in China discussed money, jobs and how to get a foothold in the United States, not math. This is where academic politics destroys people.