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China Will Lead World Scientific Research By 2020
Hugh Pickens writes "An analysis of papers published in 10,500 academic journals across the world shows that, in terms of academic papers published, China is now second only to the US, and will take first place by 2020. Chinese scientists are increasing their output at a far faster rate than counterparts in rival 'emerging' nations such as India, Russia, and Brazil. The number of peer-reviewed papers published by Chinese researchers rose 64-fold over the past 30 years. 'China is out on its own, far ahead of the pack,' says James Wilsdon, of the Royal Society in London. 'If anything, China's recent research performance has exceeded even the high expectations of four or five years ago.' According to Wilsdon, three main factors are driving Chinese research. First is the government's enormous investment, with funding increases far above the rate of inflation, at all levels of the system from schools to postgraduate research. Second is the organized flow of knowledge from basic science to commercial applications. And third is the efficient and flexible way in which China is tapping the expertise of its extensive scientific diaspora in North America and Europe, tempting back mid-career scientists with deals that allow them to spend part of the year working in the West and part in China." Here's the Financial Times's original article.
But I wouldn't want to live in either.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"... China is tapping the expertise of its extensive scientific diaspora in North America and Europe, tempting back mid-career scientists with deals that allow them to spend part of the year working in the West and part in China."
Translation: Chinese academics and scientists working in the West are, for all intents and purposes, spys.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Since the PRC accounts for about 25% of the human race, while the US accounts for about 5%!
Let the Chinese steal from us and then start innovating on their own. We'll then just start stealing from each other.
As a researcher in the physical sciences, I have noticed that nearly all the Chinese groups working my area publish complete crap of no value to other researchers. There are quite a few good Chinese researchers at American universities, but I have not once found a reason to actually cite a group based in China. They have a long way to go still before they reach the same level of impact as any western country (or hell, even its neighbors Korea and Japan).
Maybe things wouldn't be this way if people in the U.S. started fighting the stigma of becoming a "nerd," gave college research priority over athletics programs, and provided students incentive to be hard-working and inquisitive.
Forget for a moment the nationalistic and economic competition between USA and China. What this means to me is that with China, Russia, Brazil and India increasing their research output, the rate of scientific progress will probably double from what we had 10 years ago.
That and the fact that I prefer (for moral reasons) a non starving Chinese population, means this is good to me. The current boom in biotechnology together with an aging population, means that scientific knowledge improves quality of life for all of us.
By the way, China is investing heavily and making fast progress in stem cell development, a research area where the religious lobby in the USA has delayed progress. The USA has it's own political problems.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Things are seriously backwards here when some of the most educated people in the world are paid so poorly.
Most post-docs doing basic research get paid between 30-40K. Perhaps if we paid scientists what they are worth there would be less brain drain.
and you could find this exact same article, just substitute China for Japan. And yet 25 years later very few Japanese have won nobel prizes, Japan is a leader in a few select fields, but is a far cry from what people were saying it would be by now. This despite spending massive amounts of money on R&D and whatnot. Time will tell if this holds true for China as well, but I think it's important not to extrapolate too much on a very limited data set.
Monstar L
Every time I point out how China will replace the US as the dominant force in the world, I get modded troll. Well, America, I understand. My mother is British, and consequently I have a British passport. I understand the denial that's happening - the way you feel is just like the British felt from the mid 1800's up until the middle of last century. The decline of the British Empire took 100 years. But nowadays things happen a lot faster.
Let's look at China:
They have all the industry they need - so much, that they are rapidly becoming the worlds biggest exporter of everything.
They have a huge population.
They have a strong leadership.
They have a real military. Uh this isn't Iraq, right? Their submarines are good enough to sneak up on US carriers, and they have demonstrated that they can shoot down satellites. Now I ask myself where the US will be with carriers on the bottom of the oceans and no satellites to coordinate communications for combined arms or provide overhead intelligence. They've chosen a very smart, asymmetric warfare route. They don't need to have ultra high tech main battle tanks capable of taking direct hits from M1's. They don't need hundred million dollar stealth aircraft. They just need lots and lots of reasonably good anti aircraft and anti tank missiles.
They are becoming scientific leaders, which will even take away the US technology edge.
They have a space program. They also have nuclear weapons. Combine the two and that means they can put a nuclear bomb anywhere on the planet with an ICBM. What's not known is their accuracy, but who needs accuracy if you have a multi-megaton device?
Everything they can't innovate (yet), they can copy. Adherence to patents and intellectual property laws is only given by consent.
They are the single largest holder of US debt, outside the US government.
Ohhhh, it's going to be ugly. I certainly wouldn't want to live in Taiwan in the next 20 years, for a start. Forget the argument that the US is China's biggest customer, that's irrelevant. Wars often start between the best trading partners. The US and the UK circa 1800. The US and Japan WW2. France and Prussia/Germany, quite often in the 19th century. The only hope I have is that China has not shown any expansionist tendencies in recent history. They've been content with defending their borders. But if suddenly they decide to play the imperialism game - watch out!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Maybe things wouldn't be this way if people in the U.S. started fighting the stigma of becoming a "nerd," gave college research priority over athletics programs, and provided students incentive to be hard-working and inquisitive.
The the real priority that is clearly disparate between Western countries and China is purely what percent of our GDP we dump into science versus defense on a federal level. Do a budget comparison between the United States and China for defense spending. I think you'll find that that leaves China with much more resources to dump into education, their growing economy, building infrastructure and science.
In the United States, military spending does foster more science and education but still not as much as dumping that new joint strike fighter contract into college educations for everyone. It ain't going to change but it's a very real difference that can be felt.
My work here is dung.
At least in my field (Mobile Robotics), Chinese papers are everywhere but none of the ones I found were some kind of breakthrough.
China is all about volume simply bc they are HUGE.
And also... I'm still waiting to see a major civil war there sometime..
so i don't believe any chinese researchers will be making amazing breakthroughs as long as they live in a country which is fundamentally opposed to the idea of the free exchange of ideas. the free exchange of ideas is not some cute tweak on the product of scientific research, it is a preceding requirement for quality research to even be done in the first place
a society which does not allow a free exchange if ideas does not result in minds flexible enough to grasp important patterns quickly out of a morass of data. which is the essence of science. a society which carefully controls information results in minds weakened by an artificially placid media environment, where all information is carefully chosen for its adherence to an official point of view. but the truth is often ugly, and when "harmony" is artificially imposed, you breed flimsy minds which can only be spoonfed ideas which aren't too challenging to them
a truly keen scientific mind is bred in an environment where it is constantly challenged by ideas contrary to established belief. the mind is a muscle: challenge it, and it grows strong. put it in artificially serene environment free of opposing ideas, and it grows weak. the information environment that china supports therefore is contrary to the production of good scientific minds, and therefore contrary to the production of good science
in science, you question everything. and therefore, you get the best scientific theories. but in china, you never question, you only behave and adhere to the official party line. and so china is not building the social environment in which high quality minds can exist and high quality science can be done. china is breeding a generation of minds that are made of cotton candy and fluff with their desire for "harmony" over ugly truths. it takes an adherence to freedom of expression to get minds that are free in thought, and therefore make good science
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My own experience as a researcher is that Asian countries in general (with the possible exception of Japan) have a long way to go before they match the impact of Western researchers. There are exceptions, such as the MD5 collision found by Wang et al., but in general most of the major breakthroughs occur in the West.
It's also not clear whether research produced by overseas Chinese is included in the total. Some of the very best mathematicians in the world are Chinese, but almost all of them are based at Western institutions. In any case, as good as they are, the number of overseas Chinese is so small that they don't represent anything close to a majority.
They have a one child policy. And lots of parents have sex selection abortion to avoid having their only child be a girl.
So you are going to have a population that will decline in number that has a bunch of young men with no hope of being married. Say what you will, the drive to take care of your family is important to society.
That's not a recipe for long-term success.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Let's get this straight. You argue that when politics (nee religion) strangles a line of research, and that line of research subsequently produces few results, that is justification for continuing to strangle that line of research?
If only the religious nuts would apply that principle to themselves.
Infuriate left and right