Sunday 3 June 2012

Is China’s culture holding back its scientists?

The nation produces research faster than Western nations, but little of it is top-quality, and it loses some of its best minds to freer countries

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Guanyu said...

Is China’s culture holding back its scientists?

The nation produces research faster than Western nations, but little of it is top-quality, and it loses some of its best minds to freer countries

Reuters
03 June 2012

China has increased its spending on science at a blistering rate and now publishes the second largest number of scientific papers in the world after the United States. Read the headlines and you might think that China is about to overtake the West.

But China’s scientific progress is no sure thing. Interviews with Chinese scientists working in the West, together with data from the OECD and some of the world’s leading science academies, suggest restrictive political and cultural attitudes continue to stifle science there.

International collaboration is harder from China, scientists say, while many still prefer to be educated in and live in the West.

“Freedom of expression is very sensitive and very crucial,” said Chinese-born Chen Deliang, a professor in the earth sciences department of Gothenburg University in Sweden. “I think it is a real issue. The scientific culture in China is quite different from Europe and the US. There is a much higher respect for authority, and in science this is not good.”

A Royal Society report on the global science landscape published last year found that 70 per cent of the 1.06 million Chinese who studied abroad between 1978 and 2006 did not return. Scientists say that figure has fallen, but estimate around half of all who study abroad still stay away.

Beijing is trying to change that. China’s government-sponsored Thousand Talents Programme, set up in 2008, has convinced some 600 overseas Chinese and foreign academics to return to China with promises of what Premier Wen Jiabao has described as “talent-favourable policies in households, medical care and the education of children”.

That’s a good start, but the biggest challenge of all these programmes is attracting people who are willing to move back to China permanently.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that China spends about US$154 billion a year on research and development (R&D), up from just US$30 billion a decade ago. That amount is only half the European Union spending of US$300 billion, and is dwarfed by US$400 billion for the United States.

The investment is paying off; the number of patent filings is rocketing. According to data from the US Patent and Trademark Office, China registered 1,655 patents in the US in 2009, up from just 52 in 1989 and 90 in 1999.

And the proportion of science and engineering doctoral graduates pouring out of China’s universities, at over 55 per cent according to the OECD, rivals the best rates in OECD member countries.

Chinese scientists are offered lucrative incentives to publish - equivalent to several years’ salary for a paper that reaches a top international academic journal - which Chinese scientists in the West argue have skewed the research effort towards quantity rather than quality, leading to damaging scandals involving plagiarism and data falsification.

But the main factor hurting China’s progress, says environmental scientist Gong Peng, is its cultural history. Gong, who holds posts at both Tsinghua University in China and the University of California, Berkeley, wrote an outspoken column for the journal Nature in January that argued Chinese science was being held back by a culture that discouraged curiosity and collaboration.

“Two cultural genes have passed through generations of Chinese intellectuals for more than 2,000 years,” he wrote. “The first is the thoughts of Confucius, who proposed that intellectuals should become loyal administrators. The second is the writings of Zhou Zhuang, who said that a harmonious society would come from isolating families so as to avoid exchange and conflict, and by shunning technology to avoid greed.”

Guanyu said...

China may be prolific, but the number of papers by Chinese scientists that are published in such top journals as Nature and Science is still far behind that in the West. China also earns far fewer citations in papers that result from international collaboration. According to OECD data, China produced 285,000 papers in 2009, or about 0.2 papers per 1,000 head of the population. Just 0.05 percent were published in top journals.

By comparison, the United States published 473,000 papers, or 1.6 for every 1,000 people. More than half made it into top journals. The figures for Britain, which punches above its weight, are 134,000 papers - just over two per 1,000 people, with more than half in top journals.

Tiny Switzerland, which spends about US$10.5 billion a year on R&D, produces nearly four per 1,000 people, and more than half appear in top journals.

Worldwide, the 50 universities with the best publishing performance are concentrated in a handful of countries, OECD says. Unsurprisingly, the US, home to 40 of the top 50 universities in a range of fields, dominates. China has just six in the top 50 for pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is rated among the best for computer science, engineering and chemistry.

China can still teach the West a thing or two, as those lobbying to defend science spending in Europe are quick to point out. The sovereign debt crisis in Europe, which has prompted governments across the EU to trim budgets, is causing what European Commissioner for Research Innovation and Science Maire Geoghegan-Quinn calls an “innovation emergency”.

“Almost all the member states have improved their innovation performance,” she said in a speech in March. “However, progress is patchy across Europe and the pace of change is still too slow to catch up with innovation leader United States.

“Without concerted action, we risk falling further behind, while China continues to close the gap.”

Others argue China’s rise should not be seen as a threat.

“These are additional people doing science rather than replacing people,” said Martyn Poliakoff, a Fellow of The Royal Society and one of the authors of its 2011 science report.

“The rise of science in China is not quite the same as manufacturing or producing zip fasteners in China. There are a certain number of pairs of trousers in the world but the market for science is not limited.”

Poliakoff says there are certain aspects of science that may move from West to East as China develops its scientific capabilities. For example, a colleague of his sent fruit flies to China to get their genes sequenced more cheaply.

The challenge for a country like Britain, he says, will be to keep the large number of foreign scientists who work there. He says over the last few years, Britain has had “an increasing number of foreign scientists” working there.

Scientists do not have much time for national borders - which is a strength in Poliakoff’s view. He recalls that his 60th birthday was celebrated with colleagues in a room containing 25 nationalities.

“In general, I think the participation of China in science should be welcomed and it isn’t something we should be frightened of.”