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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.
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).
Read http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/28/060828fa_fact2?currentPage=all for more on how the Chinese approach science...
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.
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.
Be in research in North America for more than 15 years now. In reality, the important number of Chinese researchers in north American universities is due rather to the lack of interest from North American students for long term studies: 80% of Masters and PhD students in computer science in North American universities are from the third world, e.g. China and India. this is not simply a matter of conjecture, it's a deep trend which takes root in North American value system which everything is evaluated in dollars. In these terms, how to motivate the students to pursue higher studies, paid a misery for 4-5 years to have their Ph.Ds in order to have a job underpaid compared to their colleagues who went to the industry?
Let me bust some myths here...
1. By publication numbers, YES! China or even any Asian institution can easily knock down a Western institution. But once you bring in "Impact Factor", Asian institutions sink in to the bottom of the pacific!!
Maybe Westerners don't know much about what I'm about to tell. In general, researchers in Asia (especially of Chinese descent) loves to publish barrage of papers every year. Most institutions in this part of the world gives you incentives/bonuses based on the "number" of publications.
How do I know this? Because I'm a PhD student in an university in south-east Asia. When I entered this department, head of research was a mainland Chinese. His first rule was "publish at least 1 journal + 1 conference paper every year. Without 2 journal papers, I won't even read your thesis".
As a consequence of this rat-race, people here are just publishing every crap they can and they don't respect the quality or adherence to ethics of sciences. Even one time, a chinese-descent researcher asked me to fake/make-up data and publish (in fact, that's how she get really amazing data for publications). Here people may call it "scientific discovery", but for a proper trained eyes (like myself), its nothing but "scientific fraud".
Personally, I'm very disappointed with how research departments operate here. Hence I applied to US grad schools last month.
2. Can China improve ? I'm not sure. But certainly I have met several extremely talented mainland Chinese researchers, but all of them reside in some other country (e.g. Australia, Singapore).
Then again, I was asked to review a conference paper, written by *post-doc* students from a non-popular rural university in China. Literally, it was unreadable. It seems they have heavily used the thesaurus or used a translator altogether. Lets forget about the language (even I am happy to help them re-write the paper). That particular paper I read, it didn't prove anything significant nor important, knowledge contribution wise.. NULL. Undergrads in my university report much better research outcomes.
So it is hard to predict... but surely, western institutions still have the mojo.
3. Despite what we see and read, I strongly believe they (Chinese) have a proper R&D knowledge sphere hidden out somewhere. Otherwise, they won't be able to progress in nuclear, military and other technology fronts. Also not to forget, they have journals and other publications in *chinese*.... which I believe are out of reach to us, as we can't read Chinese and those material hardly get translated to English and reach to science databases in west.
As of 2010, it is safe to say... US/UK/EU institutions have the monopoly in Research.. and Asia is nothing but spammers to periodicals. Just my $0.02...
'Translation: Chinese academics and scientists working in the West are, for all intents and purposes, spys.'
It's much worse than that! My extensive research has revealed the existence of a vast network of 'scientists' of all nationalities, operating (like the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group) with little regard for conventional geo-political boundaries. Despite often working in laboratories funded by national governments (or even so-called 'charities'), these sinister 'researchers' have for decades (even centuries!) made the results of their arcane 'experiments' available in communistic fashion to other members of the cabal. To protect their work from the 'unenlightened', these results are usually presented (much like the treatises of the medieval alchemists) in highly cryptic language that is largely unintelligible to anyone who has not been suitably indoctrinated. This 'training' process usually takes the form of an extended apprenticeship to an individual further up the hierarchy who, as in most cults, holds out the promise of greater enlightenment and an elevation in status in return for performing often menial tasks at unsociable hours while being exposed to mind-bending concepts. The final initiation process, the esoterically titled 'viva voce' ('living voice') ritual is particularly dreaded.