22 ms·
China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
- williesleg 8y agoThanks, Obama.
- whatshisface 8y ago>They document a rapid expansion between 2000 and 2016, as the Chinese share of global publications in physical sciences, engineering and math quadrupled. I really hate to risk being the guy who says "they will never best us," until they do, but in my field and many others Chinese papers are known to be of a lower quality standard and a lot more mill-like. This may come as a surprise to many, but the simple fact is that integrity issues are common in Chinese academia - a pattern not specific to China, but repeated almost everywhere. Globally, a high-quality academia with a strong sense of integrity is the exception rather than the rule.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- captain_perl 8y agoWhat I've read is that whereas Western academics and scientists are paid by salary or grant, Chinese scientists are paid substantially by number of papers published. So $500 for a paper in a top-tier journal, etc. Thus scientific papers provide indirect benefits in the West, but direct benefits in China - encouraging the "paper mill."
- Gustomaximus 8y agoThis or another similar article on HN said $40k in a top tier journal. Also companies produce 'research' and then offer it to scientist to have their name on it.
- jbsimpson 8y agoPublishing papers in the West provides a pretty direct benefit - there's a reason behind the saying 'publish or perish'.
- dwaltrip 8y agoI agree that the incentives behind "publish or perish" are quite problematic. However, this does not seem equivalent to directly earning cold hard cash for each individual paper.
- Al-Khwarizmi 8y agoI don't see what's so magical about cold hard cash compared to other economic incentives that eventually translate to cash too. In any Western university there's people fighting for tenure, which tends to hinge on publishing high-impact papers. This is an enormous economic incentive. The difference between getting tenure or having to leave academia and starting an industry career at a disadvantage can be measured in dollars, and it's large. In fact, even without measuring anything, I think it's quite clear that the overwhelming majority of people in this situation would take tenure over a $10K cheque. So it's disingenous to say that the Chinese incentivize publishing more because they pay cash. If anything I find that the system of paying cash is more transparent, and it may be somewhat more balanced than others. For example, in Spain people fighting for tenure have a very large incentive for the reason mentioned above (and a PhD has zero or even negative value for most industry job offers here, so the value of the incentive is really huge). Youngish tenured professors have a not so large, but significant incentive (there are salary supplements one can get linked to journal publishing in 6-year periods. They are not too large -around €100/mo- but each one you get is for life, so for professors in their 30s we can be talking about more than 30K for publishing a few papers. This is pretty much cash for papers too, but no one bats an eye because we are Western, I guess). A full professor 5-10 years away from retirement has practically no incentive at all, by the time they can get another of these supplements they will be retired or almost retired so they won't get much, if anything. So it is quite common to see professors in this situation just not doing research at all. The distribution of incentives would be more uniform with cash. To sum up, I think the outrage many people in the West express about Chinese universities paying for papers is pure hypocrisy. Either giving economic incentives to paper publishing is a good idea or it isn't. If it is, I don't see anything wrong with the incentive being cash, and if it isn't, we should probably criticise our own systems as much as the Chinese's. Eventually, I think the criticism of the Chinese way boils down to prejudice. The whole mysticism about cash is an excuse to not say "incentivizing publication in the West is good because we are going to publish good papers, incentivizing publication in China is bad because they are dishonest and are going to churn out lots of crap if they are incentivized to publish".
- njarboe 8y agoThis 2017 study[1] found the average payout for Nature or Science was $44k in 2016. Much less for others but still more like 2-3k per publication. Average professor salary: $8,600. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608266/the-truth-about-chinas-cash-for-publication-policy/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608266/the-truth-about-ch...
- noobermin 8y agoThe article points not just to number of publications but citations too, which hint that they aren't just paper mill papers. In my field, China is actually committing to investing in my kind of research in terms of facilities and such while the US is cutting of course.
- hatmatrix 8y agoThere is certainly good research coming out of China, but there are also journals set up to primarily publish articles citing their own papers, or papers in peer journals to boost citations...
- noobermin 8y agoI don't know if you know this but that it's a China only thing, most groups cough self cite because everyone does.
- lellotope 8y agoI'm skeptical of citation rate as well, although I'm not sure I have anything better to offer in terms of metrics. Hype, after all, is related to citation rate. I think what we need is something that is more like "sustained rate" or something like that. It's pretty clear China is progressing in the sciences substantially, so I don't want to discount that--no one should--but this progression is occurring in what I consider to be a crisis of academic integrity globally. The result is that metrics like publication rate and citation rate are much fuzzier to interpret, and something I distrust a lot because they are somewhat meaningless relative to replicability or something of that sort. I generally feel like academics and industry at large is suffering from a kind of hype crisis or bubble. I think it's strongly related to income inequality (inflated attributed value of higher-income individuals relative to lower-income individuals) and all sorts of other societal problems at the moment. How this relates to China I'm not sure but overall it makes me skeptical of any attempt to measure or rank countries relative to one another (I'd say the same thing about the US or any other country for that matter).
- 8y ago
- sjg007 8y agoFraud is one thing. Continued experiments to learn are another.. even if applied in different domains. Take applied math. It can be written is a math journal, biology, chemistry, physics etc.. I would be suspect of clinical trials specifically but any preclinical work should be replicated. CS work is easy to replicate. So I think the specific threat of fraud is limited. Me too publications suggest learning but probably lack originality. The challenges are the inductive leaps which are usually counter intuitive and outside of the mainstream. Funding agendcies need to promotes those.
- brahmwg 8y ago80% of China’s clinical trial data are fraudulent, investigation finds https://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5396 https://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5396
- benchplz 8y agoGatekeeper alert
- dang 8y agoPlease don't do this here.
- throw2016 8y agoThere are a number of factors at play here. It's not that fraud, cheating and corruption does not happen here but it doesn't taint the entire system but when it happens elsewhere it tends to 'stick' to them. In this case you may have perceived fraud or lower quality in a specific area and you are generalizing it to entire Chinese academia when like everywhere in the world they have high quality and low quality institutions and equal incentives for fraud. There has been multiple frauds in western academia [1], the Stanford experiments was the most recent discussed here, but no one uses these instances to paint the entire system as fraudulent, in social sciences there is a giant reproducibility crisis.[2] And given they are developing its inevitable the quality will rise with more investments and resources and developing a culture and infrastructure of research that others already have for decades, more investments in science and advancements is better for humanity. It's not a competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_misconduct_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_misconduct_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- whatshisface 8y agoThere once was a man whose house was burning down, having been lit by a fire that had started at his neighbors'. When the firefighters arrived he warded them off: "my house is burning?" he continued, contently, "their house is burning."
- simonh 8y agoThe problem in China is that ethical standards right across society are severely corroded. My wife is Chinese, we visit regularly and she has relatives in various business and state institutions. Corruption is endemic, it is the system. It’s hair raising. The problem with being ruled by a corrupt system of government for generations is that it infects everything. It’s really terribly sad, China is making terrific progress in so many ways and has huge potential, but so much of it goes to waste. The one mitigating factor is that the commercial sector is so savagely results driven that actual success really matters. That’s the one thing that stops the whole system devolving into a soviet style downward spiral of bureaucratic failure. Ruthless social and economic Darwinism has it’s costs, but at least it keeps some aspects if the system honest by pure necessity. I doubt state sponsored research and academia benefits much from this, but I don’t have any direct experience of that as none of my relatives are academics. We have a family friend who is a university lecturer in CS. The one anecdote I can pass on is that, apparently, students there can graduate in CS on a course based on Java at his institution without ever having to demonstrate a program actually running. Apparently it’s all theoretical. I find it hard to believe or understand how that can be, or how prevalent that is but that’s what he said. This was 3 or 4 years ago.
- jmmcd 8y agoI agree. In my field there are entire journals which I regard as rubbish and which are 95%+ Chinese/East Asian. Part of the problem is integrity, but a larger portion of the bad papers are just meaningless cargo-cult science.
- dnautics 8y agoi mean that's true across the board. A large portion of bad startups are just meaningless cargo culting, etc.
- ISL 8y agoIn my branch of physics, the best Chinese papers are beginning to make leading contributions to their subfields. As it turns out, if you make a well-funded and sustained effort at something, you can get good at it. As an example, within my specialty: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0431-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0431-5
- throwawa312312 8y agoDitto in Machine Learning; although this is mostly either from HK (CUHK-Sensetime-Alibaba), or from MSR-A. I haven't seen much come out of mainstream chinese universities.
- p0nce 8y agoWhen will we have to learn Chinese to get to state-of-the-art results? Honest question from someone that need to read paper from its field.
- Balero 8y agoHow many paper's are published? Would it be economical to have them translated? Could we have a few people translating papers as a full time job?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- oh-kumudo 8y agoGood, competition and more spending is always welcome.
- calebh 8y agoHopefully competition from China will spark a re-investment in education elsewhere in the world.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoOnce the US stops prioritizing stuffing the coffers of rich donors and actually puts American interests first, things will dramatically improve.
- jeffmcmahan 8y agoRight, so never ever. :/
- stochastic_monk 8y agoI don’t feel so hopeless. There are a lot of initiatives to reduce the influence of money in politics coming down the pipeline.
- jeffmcmahan 8y agoI hope you're right. Do you have specific policy moves in mind?
- stochastic_monk 8y agoI think this [0] is a step in the right direction. I also think legislation regarding campaign finance, which would supersede Citizens United, is desperately needed. [0] https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-delivers-speech-on-comprehensive-plan-to-end-corruption-in-washington https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...
- justicezyx 8y agoThere isn't much secret source here, more investment == more output.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Leary 8y agoA better index that measures QUALITY scientific research is the Nature index. By that measure, China is #2 in the world, tho far behind the US still. https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs/generate/All/global/All/score https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs/generate/All/glo...
- echevil 8y agoThere's a nice uptrend it seems: https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2018/country/all https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2018/country/all
- joshvm 8y agoIt's interesting to weight these numbers by population. They seem to be more or less the number of papers in select venues with an author of a particular nationality. As with sports, it's easy to say that the country X gets a lot of medals because they have a large talent pool. The US has a pop. of 325M and a score of 26k so a weighted score of 0.080 publications (per thousand people). Germany scores 0.094, the UK 0.10, Australia 0.097. These "academic" countries hover around 1 publication per ten thousand people. A lot of small countries punch slightly above their weight, mostly those with a long history of academia. Adjusted for population (1.37B), China would score 0.0095 - an order of magnitude less. That's not necessarily an indication of lack of quality, but it does suggest that they're not at capacity yet. Using national population is naive. There are probably a lot of interesting metrics you could dig out of this to get an idea of the resaerch efficiency of a country. For example China has more researchers than the US[1,2] (1.69M vs 1.38M), but not in proportion to its increased population size. The US has, proportionally, four times as many researchers than China, but doesn't spend four times as much on R&D (2.7% US, 2.1% China). Israel is a good disproportionate example, spending 4% of GDP on research to get a pop-weighted publication score of 0.12. They also have a lot of researchers - second only to Scandinvaia at around 7k per million inhabitants. So their publication success is probabily attributable to having an above-average number of scientists coupled with a huge research budget. [1] http://uis.unesco.org/en/news/rd-data-release http://uis.unesco.org/en/news/rd-data-release [2] http://data.uis.unesco.org/ http://data.uis.unesco.org/ EDIT: Most of this data is 2016-2017, might be some muddling of years. It's also 3AM so maths maybe squiffy. If you use the number of researchers instead of population, the US publishes 14.2 "good" papers per thousand researchers, China publishes around 5.3. Maybe that's a better basis for quantity vs quality. You could phrase this as "Given a researcher in a particular country, what are the odds of them publishing a top tier paper in a year?" and following on, "Do we expect that, given how much this country spends on research (per scientist)?" Using GDP from Google (11.2t and 18.57t) and figures from [2], the US spends about $365k on R&D per scientist. China spends $140k per scientist. That fits rather well - the US spends 2.6x more and gets 2.7x more top publications per scientist.
- ArtWomb 8y agoMore hard data from NSF global R&D spend. China seems laser focused on its momentum. But percentage-wise US allocation for pure science or basic research is roughly 17%. While China is at 5%. With a decided tilt toward product and materials based development. 2018 Overview of the State of the US Science & Engineering Enterprise in the Global Context https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/1387/overview.pdf https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/1387/ove... My feeling is US could stand to double its R&D spend from 4% of GDP as a goal by 2040.
- throwaway2048 8y agoCheating and fraud are endemic to Chinese culture, getting one over on a sucker is just an expected part of daily life there. I would not downplay this.
- kneel 8y agoNot all Chinese people that I've worked are like this. But the most cheating, backstabbing, manipulative coworkers I've had were all Chinese. From what I understand, in Chinese culture 'any means necessary' tactics are considered smart and fair game as long as they work.
- analyst74 8y agoI don't think you realize how racist this statement is. I'm also surprised you've never met manipulative people who are not Chinese, like, are you living in rural China?
- zuttton 8y agoThis is a known Chinese problem, not racist it is ingrained in their culture. Chinese will literally riot if they are not allowed to cheat..
- analyst74 8y agoAnti-cheating was incredibly strong in my experience, my mother taught middle school in China, and there has not been any widespread cheating scandals that she was aware of in her circles. Rich and powerful generally "cheat" by buying seats at prestigious schools with money or other forms of contribution, or by sending their kids to foreign colleges where the competition is easier.
- hatergonnahate 8y agoYou think you are from an objective view, but in fact the racism is built-in deeply in you. Nothing can change that.
- 8y ago
- KaoruAoiShiho 8y agoIncredible fear from America: https://i.imgur.com/bOqjzCs.jpg https://i.imgur.com/bOqjzCs.jpg
- maimeowmeow 8y agowechat is the modern day chinese "forwards from grandma" in the mobile age.
- KaoruAoiShiho 8y agoGot this from reddit. I don't think this is fake if that's what you're implying.
- abraham_lincoln 8y agoShould be 'again'.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DenisM 8y agoWhy, this is a great news! Facing the prospect of losing the primacy, and the face, on the world stage the US Congress is a lot more likely to pony up some cash.
- throwaway713 8y agoThe quality debate about scientific merit aside, if the U.S. wants to remain "the best", then we need to incentivize the best scientists and researchers in other countries to come here and become U.S. citizens. A lot of famous physicists, mathematicians, and logicians have done this over the past 100 years. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of becoming a U.S. citizen is waning because (1) current U.S. policies on science are extremely unfavorable to foreign researchers and (2) other countries are making it much more desirable to remain a citizen there than to become a U.S. citizen (this is a net win for humanity though) I think (1) is in part due to a culture in the U.S. that really just doesn't care about science anymore. When I was in grad school a few years ago, most of my peers were from other countries despite the fact that the majority of undergrads at the same school were born in state. So in effect, the grad students would get advanced degrees in the hard sciences and take that knowledge back home with them, whereas the U.S. students would get a B.S. in literature, advertising, or business (generalizing of course).
- hatmatrix 8y ago> current U.S. policies on science are extremely unfavorable to foreign researchers To U.S. researchers also - the proposal funding rate is so low on account of the resource/PI ratio that many U.S. researchers are moving to Europe where there is greater promise of hard funding.
- arcanus 8y agoThe USA spends more on R+D in aggregate and more as a percentage of GDP than the European Union[1]. It is not substantially easier to get a Professorship or permanent research appointment in Europe than the USA, at least generally speaking. Without data to back it up, I don't see how this comment holds up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_...
- tacomonstrous 8y agoWhat percentage is allocated to basic research? The US government is continuing to abdicate its responsibility towards funding it.
- paulsutter 8y agoPlease everyone don't underestimate China. Sure we can find 100 criticisms, but you can't deny their massive efforts in education, research, technology and manufacturing. Steady progress builds results over time. I really encourage doubters to go visit China and see for yourself.
- bitxbit 8y agoThis narrative that China is some academic powerhouse has to stop. Just look at the absolute expenditure in education despite all that growth. Their priority is sadly elsewhere.
- jeffmcmahan 8y agoThe average Chinese is just as clever, if not more clever, than the average Westerner. They'll absolutely produce good results given good funding. But the tradition of the University is not Chinese; the Areopagitica is alien to mainstream Chinese civic and intellectual values; the inviolability of the right to interrogate the universe as a free, searching, essentially individual being is not part of the mentality driving all this investment. It is essentially like 20th century Soviet enthusiasm for science and mathematics. The government expects the benefits of a world class intelligentsia with the downsides held in check at the point of a rifle. I think the US and Europe should slam the (academic) doors shut; no more collaboration until the Chinese government learns some basic humanity. The strategy of influencing the Chinese by educating their elite has not worked. Clearly.
- qd6pwu4 8y agothis is racism
- jeffmcmahan 8y agoNo. I said they're cleverer than we are, at least on average. I said the Chinese government should learn some humanity (which they obviously should -- and given the current state of the US gov't and Western politics broadly, ours should too).
- WilliamEdward 8y agoThere's no concrete way to measure intelligence, and if there were, copying a web browser from google and calling it their own would not be a sign of intelligence to me.
- paxy 8y agoAccepting Chinese and other international students is for the USA's own benefit, and not some form of foreign charity. We get some of the smartest people in the world who do great work here and finance a huge chunk of operating expenses of universities through high tuition fees. Plus loads of them stay back and work for or start companies right here rather than in their home countries.
- nicodjimenez 8y agoThe impact of publications in technical fields is so long tailed that 1000 mediocre publications doesn't equal one single breakthrough paper (eg the AlexNet paper in deep learning). Even according to the source cited in the article (http://www.nber.org/papers/w24829 http://www.nber.org/papers/w24829) impact per paper is much lower in China. Once China beats the US in both volume and quality, we'll know the balance of intellectual capital has really shifted. I'm skeptical this will happen. The US has a much better culture of intellectual freedom. It's much more likely that China will surpass the US economically than intellectually. Business culture is so strong in China and probably even better than in the US already.
- nicodjimenez 8y agoPeople over-obsess about how China is beating us in science and technology, and not enough about how China is becoming so entrepreneurial while US citizens are becoming extremely risk averse.
- Eridrus 8y agoAre people becoming more risk averse, or do we have more people in precarious positions where they face more serious down sides if their gamble doesn't pay off?
- tryptophan 8y agoI'd think that china had many more people in precarious positions than we do in the US. Perhaps it is that people are much more comfortable in the US and do not need to be entrepreneurial to have a decent life?
- d0100 8y agoBetting everything you've got when you have nothing doesn't compare.
- adventured 8y agoThe US social safety net is drastically better today than it was in the recent past (eg 1980 or 1990). It's now comparable to the OECD median. I know this is an unpopular statement, because for decades it has been a common attack point to go after the US on this front. However the US is spending a lot more per capita on its welfare policies, inflation adjusted, than it was a few decades ago. Particularly since the mid to late 1990s there has been a very large jump and it has had equally large, tangible results. It's important to point out the positive results, so that progress isn't rolled back. Poverty and homelessness are both near all-time lows (homelessness is at all-time lows). Homelessness is an area where the US has made very big strides in the last two decades, and it's not talked about enough. The poverty rate is down to 12.3% and has been declining since the great recession ended, accelerating the last few years. There are only two short periods of time in modern US history where the poverty rate was much lower (the peak of the late 1990s boom, and for about three years in the 1970s). In the last ~25 years the US has also reduced by about 50% the number of people that aren't covered by healthcare (currently 8.8% of people), mostly thanks to the ACA and Medicaid expansion. We're spending over $600 billion per year on free healthcare for the bottom quarter of people. In 2005, 42 million people (14% of the population) were covered by Medicaid, today that's 66.8 million (20.5% of the population). Cynics will claim that's a negative, it's not, it's an improvement in the US social safety net courtesy of expanding who is covered by Medicaid. CHIP and SS disability have further broadened free healthcare coverage in that time frame as well.
- zoom6628 8y agoLets not forget that China has over 3x the popn of USA so to surpass scientific output is to be expected at some stage. They havent got there yet because there is a history, culture and political environment to overcome and that will take a few more decades. In the fields that i pay attention to (Im not a scientist, just a curious part-time pythonista) such as materials science, practical uses of AI and vision, it seems (just an opinion, dont ask me for stats) most of the work are coming from China scientists. In some other fields like programming languages, computer networking they seem significantly fewer. Of course this may be biased by my sources. On a social level when one has a government where the top level politicians are mostly scientists and engineers this is a result to be expected. When govt is dominated by lawyers one can expect things go in other direction. China realised a long time ago that they had to educate and work to improve their position - productivity and improving standard of living comes from real productive stuff not from legislation. My 2c.
- partiallypro 8y agoThere's also the fact that some studies have show papers pushed from China are outright stolen research or fictional. I don't mean to downplay the actual science that many in China do...but there is a lot that is actually nonsense and contributes nothing.
- maehwasu 8y agoBecause nothing beats "volume of papers produced" for measuring scientific contributions. Time to call this what it is: utter shit journalism.
- yesenadam 8y agoYeah. Well...it's the same measure universities use with their academics isn't it?
- franzwong 8y agoMany good students move to U.S. I think this is the problems China needs to think about.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- known 8y ago"China competes and delivers inexpensive and high-quality products" --Jack Ma
- fangyuanziti 8y agoThat's just a joke for Chinese. Emmm..., Jack Ma is another joke.
- a-dub 8y agoOne brilliant way to stimulate and support cutting edge research in the United States would be to impose tariffs on high end equipment and research supplies that are made elsewhere in the world. By making it comparatively more expensive to buy equipment and supplies than other places in the world, the world's top research talent will be clawing at the door (assuming they can get visas) to take up residence in our universities!
- DoctorOetker 8y agoCan you explain that process in more detail please?
- linkregister 8y agoThe OP was being sarcastic.
- vixen99 8y agoAt least make the irony logical!
- DrNuke 8y agoThey are still copycatting ideas and methods from the West (and Russia, marginally) in so many hard engineering fields, though. On the other hand, they are very good and original in deep learning, which is more mechanistic than holistic. I mean, if the industry 5.0 revolution is going to come from China, they need to start deploying their own vision for society and the world full scale, which to be fair they are doing already through money, infrastructures and finlandisation of neighbouring countries, Africa and Eastern Europe. It is quite different from liberal and neo-liberal models.
- fangyuanziti 8y agoDon't worry. The Chinese love money instead of science.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoChina is well on its way reversing the roles with the US where the in the past the US was supplying knowledge and technology their way, it is increasingly the other way around. They have less and less need for US produced research and technology since they are able to do much of it under their own power now. Some time soon, they will out pace the US GDP as well. US universities have been running for decades on foreign grad students (many of which are Chinese). At the same time the US education system is not producing a lot of domestic talent at this point. Not surprising given years of under funding, budget cuts, the excessive cost of getting educated, etc. The fix is simple: invest, spend, nurture instead of divest, cut, and kill. Modern economies are primarily knowledge driven. Not investing in that is bad for business.
- mondaynightjams 8y agoI think the root cause of the problem can be tracked down to high tuition fees in undergrad and low remuneration in postgrad research. A large number of undergrads come out of school with high student loans at which point it gives little financial incentive to go back to school. Especially if you land to a job fairly quickly. I also think portraying someone pursuing science and tech as 'typical nerd' in media has something to do with it too. And not to say going through GREs for grad school admissions are kind of redundant as well.
- ElBarto 8y agoThis is a natural and unavoidable development. At some point the USA will have to wake up to the fact that they cannot stay ahead of a country that had as much natural resources as they have but 4 times the population forever.
- ianai 8y agoUS academia lost me because of standardized tests. Just no time or resources to devote to making sure I could ace them. Plus, tests make me panic. I’m sure I’m not alone.
- Paraesthetic 8y agoAnyone want to be controlled by a country that systematically represses and controls their citizens?
- dalbasal 8y agoOne of the reasons the 18th century scientific revolution was so fruitful in europe was the culture of sharing, publishing & debating across a large, catchment area. Instead of esoteric knowledge of mysterious origin, 18th century science produced de-mystified knowledge. This culture crossed language barriers, borders and such. Common cultural "hero's" of a scientific community (Newton, Copernicus..) helped a lot in developing this culture. One of the (related) reasons for US science/technology success in the 20th century was making that "empire of the mind" physical, in places like MIT. The wide catchment was achieved through migration. This was very obvious in the post war period, when scientists and technologists from everywhere came to these places. The Soviets also made use of their expanded talent catchment areas, and had some pretty impressive innovations at that time. China is now learning the power of inward migration. They are starting to open up and subsidize international students. I think political goals (eg Taiwanese students in China smoothing the path to unification) where the catalyst, but internationalizing the institutions themselves will be an inevitable side effect.
- jerryzh 8y agoAs a Chinese I have to say simply number is totally meaningless. China's research is still closely connected with government behavior and all of the top universities are founded and managed by the government. A few top universities are actually government departments. In China the only way to get more salary and promotion in title is too give as much as papers as one can. Thus a considerable amount of them are totally rubbish which was published only for appraise and competition.
- neuromantik8086 8y agoSo basically what we're seeing is publish or perish on steroids by your assessment?
- Myrmornis 8y agoIs it fair to say that China underperforms in the area of software that the rest of the world uses? I (a Brit living in the US and quite possibly very ignorant about the matter) can think of important (e.g.) Russian and Indian and Brazilian projects and open source contributors but no Chinese ones are coming to mind.
- iamshs 8y agoOff topic: Has anyone noticed purge of Muslim students from Chinese labs? I follow some Chinese professors, and they onboarded 2 Pakistani students and within two months, both were removed from the website. Same story with 4 more students in a different university and different laboratories. Incidentally, Xinjiang concentration camps started being mentioned in the news soon after. Also, noticed an uptick of Indian students doing research in China.
- selimthegrim 8y agoThis is disturbing given the paeans to the working relationship between the two countries, if not just down to poor Pakistani education quality
- iamshs 8y agoI don't even know if it is a widespread problem, or even if there was any malice involved in those cases. I found it a bit curious that the names were purged from the websites, not even put in the Alumni column. There can be myriad of reasons...
- coldtea 8y agoAutomatic defensive response: yeah, but they are subpar. Yeah, like those Japanese cars and devices were "subpar" compared to the US ones in the 60s and 70s...
- api 8y agoA lot of people are missing the obvious: China has roughly 4X the population of the USA. As they develop they are going to exceed the USA numerically in almost every category by sheer force of population size.