China has been progressing quite quickly considering how young their academic/research institutions are. A very common path for Chinese scientists is to go to

China has been progressing quite quickly considering how young their academic/research institutions are. A very common path for Chinese scientists is to go to a western university for their doctorate and post-doc, develop a research program, and return to a faculty position in China. Many Chinese grants include salary for the PI, so an investigator getting multiple grants can earn a lot of money. It's an attractive incentive that appears to be working quite well (from my limited exposure). As for reliability, there are certainly some issues, but I hesitate to paint with a broad brush. Science is often very discipline-specific in terms of reproducibility, openness of collaboration, funding, etc. etc. There absolutely are fields where the Chinese are quite strong.